Chapter 971: Cool Bionic Human Technology
Zhou Jiangping looked around. It was Chen Mo’s voice, clearly coming from outside the game pod.
“I feel... like I’ve gotten twenty years younger.” Zhou Jiangping moved his arms and legs, even jumping a couple of times, drawing sidelong glances from the armed police standing guard nearby.
Chen Mo spoke through the microphone: “President Zhou, first get used to this feeling. Try not to make too many strange movements. The NPC intelligence in this game isn’t super high, but if you keep bouncing around, they’ll still complain about you.”
Zhou Jiangping: “...”
Chen Mo continued: “Alright, now keep moving forward. There will be corresponding prompts in your field of vision. During combat in this game, actions will be executed automatically, so don’t worry.”
Zhou Jiangping walked forward as he said, “To have Serent personally guide me through a game, I’ve got some serious clout.”
This place looked like a luxury mansion, very spacious. On the left wall was a massive aquarium built into the wall, and on the right table sat a family photo of three. Just the foyer alone was bigger than the living room of an average home.
Zhou Jiangping turned a corner, and a fully armed police officer and a middle-aged woman with tear streaks on her face walked toward him.
All the police here were heavily armed, fully wrapped up in gear, with full-coverage helmets that gave off a sci-fi vibe. Clearly, the game’s background was set in some future timeline, not too far off.
“Please, save my daughter...”
“Wait, you’re sending a bionic human? You... you can’t do this! You’ll get her killed!! Why aren’t you sending a real person?!”
“Why waste time sending a bionic human to negotiate?!”
The middle-aged woman, who had seemed to grasp at a lifeline moments before, instantly changed like a different person when she saw the ring on Zhou Jiangping’s temple. She was practically wailing as the police dragged her away.
Zhou Jiangping was a bit confused: “Bionic human? I’m a bionic human?”
Continuing forward, a prompt appeared in his vision: “Scan can be activated at any time to search for target information.”
Zhou Jiangping tried activating the scan. The moment it turned on, a stream of pale blue data swept across his vision, scanning the entire room.
The Matrix glasses had a similar function, but the scan in this game was clearly much more powerful.
In this mode, all surrounding sounds vanished, and everyone’s movements froze. Zhou Jiangping felt like he had stopped the entire world’s time. Space was divided into small squares by pale blue lines. On the left side of his vision, the current mission objective appeared: [Find Captain Allen]. Behind a distant wall, a faint deep-yellow outline was visible—that should be the target location.
Zhou Jiangping turned off scan mode, and the flow of time around him returned to normal.
The police were nervously preparing for battle. Some were moving quickly, some were loading their guns, some were hiding behind cover observing the outside, or communicating via walkie-talkies.
Zhou Jiangping strolled through the living room, heading toward the master bedroom.
This time, Zhou Jiangping wasn’t going to jump around or make any other strange moves. Not because of Chen Mo’s advice, but because in this environment, it was really hard to do such things.
Many players liked to make repetitive, meaningless movements in some games, like running around or jumping, because those games weren’t that immersive. Facing a third-person character on the screen, many players enjoyed making them bounce around when idle—it had almost become a habit.
But in VR games using neural connection technology, players essentially teleported into the character’s body.
In other words, the scene gave Zhou Jiangping the feeling that he had truly arrived in this luxury mansion, that countless police were moving around him with tension and seriousness. Everything was so real that he subconsciously stopped making pointless movements.
It was like how many people might be goofy in private, but once on a stage under the spotlight, they’d become serious—that was the effect of the environment.
“Captain Allen? I’m Connor, the bionic human sent by CyberLife.”
Arriving beside Captain Allen, Zhou Jiangping’s character spoke automatically.
During this period, Zhou Jiangping lost control of the character again. He could clearly sense what he was doing and saying, but couldn’t intervene.
Still, he was mostly used to this feeling by now—it was just like waiting through a cutscene.
Captain Allen clearly had no good feelings toward Connor. He very perfunctorily briefed the situation and then turned away, ignoring Connor.
At that moment, an interface appeared in Zhou Jiangping’s vision, with different options: Ask for the deviant’s name, Ask about the deviant’s behavior, Whether the deviant experienced emotional stimulation, Whether the bionic human shutdown code was attempted.
(In the original, these options were very brief, and some could cause ambiguity. Chen Mo specifically filled out these dialogue options to help players understand better.)
Zhou Jiangping started communicating with Captain Allen according to the options. After selecting one, Connor would talk with Captain Allen, but the captain quickly lost patience, bared his teeth at Zhou Jiangping, and walked away.
Zhou Jiangping regained control of his body, and a new piece of information appeared on the left side of his vision: [Success Probability 48%].
Zhou Jiangping roughly understood his situation. He was an AI bionic human with many cool abilities, like scanning surrounding information, recording current targets, calculating target success probability, and so on. His mission was to analyze the crime scene and rescue the hostage.
Zhou Jiangping activated search mode again, scanning the room for useful information.
The first piece of information was a briefcase on the floor beside the bookshelf. Zhou Jiangping crouched down to examine it closely and found that this briefcase should have contained a pistol.
His gaze focus swept over the entire briefcase. When the focus paused at a specific spot, the bionic human’s intelligent system automatically analyzed that location and reconstructed the entire clue.
Zhou Jiangping fixed his gaze on the groove in the briefcase where the pistol had been placed. Text began to appear above: “Collecting data,” along with a steadily growing progress bar. At the same time, many red lines outlined the shape of a pistol, continuously forming.
The moment the analysis completed, specific information appeared on the pistol’s phantom image.
“MS853 Black Hawk, Capacity: 17 rounds (.335 caliber), Total length: 22 cm / Barrel: 13 cm”
After analyzing the bullets nearby, an option [Reconstruct] appeared in Zhou Jiangping’s vision.
Then came the moment to witness a miracle.
A phantom figure made of lines appeared before Zhou Jiangping, and a timeline appeared at the bottom of his vision. Zhou Jiangping found he could freely control this timeline, previewing the entire sequence of events related to this investigation element.
Rewind, fast-forward. Zhou Jiangping felt the entire timeline clearly laid out before him, as if he had personally seen the deviant bionic human take the gun from the shelf.