When Lin Mo seriously said, "I want to become a legend," Xu Wanxue froze for a few seconds. Finally, she couldn't hold it in any longer and burst into laughter.
Her mood at that moment was like that of ordinary parents hearing their child say seriously, "I'm going to become Ultraman and defeat the two monsters."
It was amusing, funny, and yet a bit heartwarming.
"Tell me, how do you plan to become a legend?"
Xu Wanxue hugged her knees, tilted her head, and smiled at Lin Mo.
She naturally remembered how Lin Mo used to secretly sneak off to his private little training base to train.
But in her eyes, all that so-called physical training was just childish play. In an era where cyberware was widespread, physical training was the most useless and time-wasting activity.
Even the Animal Gang members, who revered physical strength and worshiped wild, animalistic power, wouldn't do such things.
Although each of them had huge muscles and trained daily, Xu Wanxue even suspected that some of them might have muscles in their heads, making them not so sharp mentally.
But they wouldn't be foolish enough to waste time on old-fashioned physical training. Instead, they used various synthetic hormones and drugs to enhance muscle growth quickly, combined with high-intensity muscle-stimulation workouts.
This reckless drug use often resulted in the strongest Animal Gang members possessing physiques that could rival wild beasts!
When Xu Wanxue first discovered Lin Mo training his body, she was worried he might be using excessive amounts of hormones.
Luckily, he hadn't.
Otherwise, Xu Wanxue couldn't imagine her sweet, fragile brother turning into a bloated, tough, foul-smelling yam.
When faced with Xu Wanxue's skepticism, Lin Mo didn't offer much explanation. He turned and walked into the house. When he returned, he was holding a ruler.
"You hold the top, I'll place my hand at the end of the ruler. Then, you suddenly let go, and I'll grab it," Lin Mo said.
"Testing reaction speed, huh? Not bad, I often do similar experiments at the company," Xu Wanxue remarked.
Xu Wanxue immediately understood the purpose of this little game and was happy to join in.
Once they were ready, Lin Mo placed his hand at the bottom of the ruler, focused intently on it, while Xu Wanxue held the top of the ruler, glancing at Lin Mo before casually letting go.
The next moment, she froze.
Because the ruler didn't fall due to gravity. Instead, it remained suspended in mid-air, as if she hadn't let go at all.
Looking down, she saw Lin Mo effortlessly holding the bottom of the ruler, almost not allowing it to drop even a centimeter.
"Such fast reaction... Did you implant the Krenzikhov? No, your spine doesn't show signs of the Krenzikhov implant," Xu Wanxue muttered, incredulously.
Krenzikhov, known as the neural reflex component, was a type of cyberware born during the technological explosion, similar to the Sandevistan implant.
If the Sandevistan, known as the "speed component," was the sharp spear of top-tier mercenaries, the Krenzikhov, called the "neural reflex component," was the essential shield for mercenaries to dodge attacks.
The cyberware was shaped like a long strip, resembling a spine. Many mercenaries jokingly called it the centipede.
To implant this cyberware, a person had to undergo surgery to remove several of their original vertebrae and replace them with the Krenzikhov.
After the surgery, the implant would appear as a metallic, shell-like structure along the back, like a centipede living on the spine.
Unless the person used synthetic skin to cover it, the implant was easily noticeable.
In the game, this cyberware, like Sandevistan, had a "slow time" effect. However, it was passive and triggered for a short time, whereas the latter was an active trigger.
Now that it had turned into reality, after years of exposure to cyberware, Lin Mo was quite familiar with this implant. The game's settings no longer applied perfectly.
The Krenzikhov was supposed to enhance neural reaction speed but was nowhere near as powerful as Sandevistan's time-slowing effect. Its main effect was to increase a person's reaction speed and add a form of neural reflex similar to a knee-jerk reaction.
When the implanted person was in a tense or stressed state, the cyberware would passively enhance their neural reflex speed, creating a "pseudo-time-stop" effect.
In this state, everything around you would feel like it was slowing down, but you, too, would slow down.
Because the implant only enhanced your reflexes, it didn't stimulate your body, unlike Sandevistan, which allowed the user to maintain their original speed in a time-slowing state.
"The Krenzikhov provides its effects only when the nerves are tense, but I'm different. My reaction speed is naturally this fast," Lin Mo explained.
He placed the ruler back on the table. Suddenly, he felt a chill and looked up to find his sister staring at him with a fiery gaze.
"Just like you, my little brother. With such talent, if the experimental personnel at the company had your level of talent, the speed of product development would increase by several times," Xu Wanxue couldn't help but praise.
If she found such talented ordinary people, Xu Wanxue would certainly do whatever it took to involve them in the company's product development experiments.
But now, the one revealing this talent was her own brother, and Xu Wanxue couldn't bear to make him a lab rat.
Lin Mo froze when he heard this, seemingly recalling something, and asked:
"Do the experimental personnel's talents affect the effectiveness of the cyberware?"
Xu Wanxue raised an eyebrow and sipped her wine, looking at Lin Mo with a curious expression. She hesitated, unsure whether to reveal the company's research results.
But in the end, tenderness won out. She put the wine glass down and answered the question:
"Yes, this is one of the most troubling things. Every person is a unique individual, and it's hard to control the differences in their body functions, talents, and other aspects. The experimental data from various products shows the importance of talent."
"Some people have exceptional talent, like fast reflexes, which makes them much more tolerant of cyberware like Sandevistan or Krenzikhov. While normal people can only use them a few times a day, these people can use them ten or more times."
"Not only that, but people with talent also experience a stronger time-slowing effect when using Sandevistan. The 2nd generation speed components on the market slow down time by 50%, but for people with high talent, it can reach 60-70%."
Lin Mo was taken aback and then asked, "Why?"
Xu Wanxue shrugged helplessly.
"It's all because of the complexity of the human nervous system. Do you think the real world is like a game? Humans are not machines, and you can't just plug in a number and expect it to stay the same all the time."
"The speed components on the market are said to slow time by 50%, but that's just the average result based on lots of experimental data. For normal people, it should slow down by about 50%."
Lin Mo finally understood.
As Xu Wanxue had said, he had been approaching cyberware from a game mentality.
After all, humans were not machines. Though cyberware could be implanted into the body, humans remained the primary entity.
It couldn't be like a game where time could be slowed by exactly 50% all the time.
Lin Mo frowned, suddenly coming up with a guess and quickly asked:
"Does this rule also apply to Sandevistan's model? The higher the model, the harder it is for an average person to withstand the side effects?"
Xu Wanxue looked at her brother with surprise, as if asking, "How did you know?"
"Is this your intuition again?" She shook her head and smiled.
"No, it's from the game's settings..." Lin Mo thought to himself but smiled mysteriously outwardly.
In Cyberpunk 2077, most cyberware in the game required the character's stats to meet a certain level before they could be implanted.
But Xu Wanxue's words seemed to indicate that ordinary people could implant those high-load, side-effect-filled cyberware, but with different tolerances?
It made sense—if attributes had to meet specific conditions for higher-model cyberware to be implanted, these would never end up in cyberware doctors' hands or be sold to top mercenaries.
Xu Wanxue sighed, and after so many years with Lin Mo, she wasn't surprised by his "future-predicting" intuition.
"You're right. According to our research, the higher the model of cyberware, the greater the burden. The Type-2 is a generation ahead of Type-1, so it naturally comes with more performance but also more load," she continued.
"And we've discovered that people with high talent can implant lower-model cyberware without any side effects, no matter how many times they use it."
Xu Wanxue lowered her head, swirling the remaining wine in her glass, the liquid reflecting her deep, soulful eyes.
"But Type-3 is different. We tested it, and to carry Sandevistan-3 or Krenzikhov-3, the required talent ability far exceeds the human limit."
"Our company has not only tested the data but also gathered information from other companies. So far, no experimenter's talent has been strong enough to ignore the side effects of Sandevistan-3."
Lin Mo frowned, recalling the setting in the game.
For Sandevistan-3, the character's reaction attribute had to reach 12 before it could be equipped.
A reaction attribute of 10 was already the human limit, and to break that limit, other cyberware would have to be implanted to enhance the reaction.
So, people who could meet this requirement wouldn't end up as experimenters.
In reality, that meant you had to meet the corresponding attribute requirements to ignore the cyberware's load, just like the game character V.
Lin Mo fell into deep thought.
Xu Wanxue continued to watch Lin Mo and walked up beside him, gently patting his hair.
"Actually, with me around, you don't need to implant those harmful cyberware."
"Even if you want stars from the sky, with today's aerospace technology, I can get you a meteorite from the sky!"
"Is there anything else you're unhappy about?"
Xu Wanxue's gaze burned as she looked at Lin Mo, her eyes full of tenderness.
..
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