“Thank you, Mr. Li Chen.”

Before entering the simulation pod, Dr. Lisa solemnly thanked that “experimental subject.”

“Th-thank… you for what?”

Standing on the high platform, wearing only a sterile gown from head to toe, allowing a group of female researchers beside him to poke and prod him as they checked all kinds of data and fitted him with the simulation equipment, Li Chen blinked in confusion.

“Thank you for choosing me.”

Dr. Lisa rarely reached out and pushed the sliding door.

Click.

The simulation pod slowly opened and Li Chen walked forward without hesitation.

“Just for that?”

Right before the hatch closed, Li Chen slightly turned his head back and flashed a brilliant smile at the mad scientist who was famously cold and indifferent to the outside world.

“Come on, Dr. Lisa, me choosing you has nothing to do with personal feelings.”

He shrugged nonchalantly.

“It’s simply because your offer was better.”

Beep beep.

Along with the indicator lights flashing, Li Chen slowly lowered himself inside.

‘My offer was better?’

Lisa stared blankly at the figure disappearing from in front of her and couldn’t speak for a long time.

In theory, the conditions Dr. Lisa offered were naturally better than what Kate offered.

But that was only on the surface.

Any Hive City citizen with basic common sense would not hesitate at all when choosing between the two.

Compared to joining the consortium system and even being valued by someone powerful within it, what did a mere “better offer” even count for?

What if one day some Uppermost Hive big shot takes a liking to you and simply grants you honorary Upper Hive citizenship and even arranges a luxurious manor for you in the Uppermost Hive?

As long as you aren’t an idiot, no one would choose wrong.

‘But is Li Chen an idiot?’

Lisa glanced at Li Chen’s entry assessment report.

‘Someone who could score that high, how could he be an idiot? Then why did he use such a clumsy reason to explain his choice?’

Lisa didn’t have an emotional disorder.

She simply preferred using a scientific lens to analyze everything.

So she very quickly used logic to deduce the most likely answer.

‘He doesn’t want me to… feel too burdened?’

Dr. Lisa felt as if something had stabbed her always-numb heart hard.

It hurt.

But it was kind of sweet too.

‘I clearly, clearly only treated him as an experimental subject and I even called him trash…’

As a scientist, Dr. Lisa naturally observed things in extreme detail and every tiny clue was within her calculations.

Yet even so, he still stood on her side.

For some reason, a figure suddenly surfaced in Lisa’s mind.

* * *

A girl wearing a cloak, hiding her entire body in shadows, standing alone at the lab doorway and looking at her.

“Hey, Miss Lisa, have you really decided not to join our Utopia?”

On that pitch-black rainy night, that green-haired girl completely ignored where she was—Titan Heavy Industries’ highest security level, a secret laboratory in the Uppermost Hive.

“Someone as outstanding as you, following those consortium people around is such a waste.”

In the torrential rain, the mysterious girl seemed like a demon from hell as she spoke words full of temptation.

“Join me and become someone who changes Hive City’s order.”

That was what the girl said.

Lisa stayed silent, neither resisting nor showing agreement.

She just watched that girl with all her strength—Xiao Mengya, the Psionic Queen, simultaneously wanted by the Uppermost Hive’s top ten consortiums and ranked as the highest leader of Hive City’s criminal world.

Lisa didn’t think she would survive that night.

So she decided that before her life ended, she would do as much research as possible.

For example, observing a top-tier martial artist attempting to overturn Hive City’s existing system.

“Why?”

Finally, Lisa asked.

“With power like yours…”

Lisa looked at the experts sprawled all over the laboratory.

They had been responsible for guarding this lab.

They came from the corporate security department, the Public Security Bureau’s Special Operations Unit and the trump cards of major criminal organizations.

They had gone through layers of selection and then been modified by inhuman taboo secret techniques, forming a personal guard unit directly under the consortium board.

Every single one of them had at least eighth-tier strength.

The strongest among them even held singularity technology and stood at ninth tier.

But they were all dead.

Dead at that girl’s hands.

So Lisa was genuinely curious.

“This world, this Hive City, really is miserable, but for someone as strong as you, isn’t it the most beautiful heaven?”

The strong do as they please and the weak endure whatever comes.

Unlike the pre-civilization era, there was no law, no morality and no so-called moral justice.

To many people, including Lisa, it might be terrible.

But for a super powerhouse with maxed-out psionics like her, what’s so bad about it that she’d rather risk her life and go to war with all ten consortiums at once?

“It is very good.”

The girl walked past Lisa, casually picking up one piece of classified material after another.

“But I don’t like it.”

‘Don’t… like it?’

For the first time, there was a blind spot in the worldview Lisa had built with absolute rationality.

“But why?”

Driven by a scholar’s instinct and by a dying person’s pursuit of truth, Lisa couldn’t help pressing on.

“There was someone once, yeah, you can count him as my teacher, he told me that just because the world has always been this way doesn’t mean it’s right, it’s a mouthful, isn’t it?”

The girl’s face was full of longing.

“But I believe him.”

‘Believe?’

Lisa thought about it and truly couldn’t figure out how to analyze it.

In the end, she could only casually ask, “Then he must be very strong, right?”

“No, he’s very weak, even weaker than you.”

Xiao Mengya packed all the files away, then turned around.

‘She isn’t going to kill me?’

Lisa widened her eyes in confusion.

She only felt that the brain she had always been proud of had become a useless burden, serving no purpose except to transmit unnecessary emotions.

“Then why do you still believe him?”

As the Psionic Queen of the underground world was about to vanish into the heavy rain, Lisa asked her final question.

“Because his body being weak only highlights how strong his soul is.”

Slash!

That night, the secret laboratory the Schufestan family had spent decades preparing and poured countless resources into went up in flames.

No one knew who did it.

Except Lisa.

The only survivor of that calamity lab.

She should have been memory-searched.

She should have been tortured with every method imaginable.

But she wasn’t.

Because she was the only hope those people had to recoup their losses.

If she died or if other changes made her unable to use the materials left behind in that confidential laboratory, then the Schufestans would truly lose everything with no return.

* * *

Years passed and Lisa’s life circumstances changed dramatically.

But one thing never changed.

That was…

Exploring what “the body is weak but the soul is strong” really meant.

For some reason, Lisa felt that the “experimental subject” in front of her might be able to give her an answer.

‘Intuition? I don’t even really believe in that kind of thing…’

Ding ding ding—

A series of urgent ringing sounds snapped Lisa out of her thoughts.

“What’s going on? How’s the technique simulation effect?”

Lisa suddenly raised her head and refocused on the new technique deduction in front of her.

Could something have gone wrong?

That too made sense, after all, even if he had compatibility with this technique, it still couldn’t possibly…

Beep—

[Current simulation deduction effectiveness evaluation: AAA]

[Live-combat test: S]

[Qi-sensing power circulation: S]

[Side effects: 0]

‘Th-this, th-this?!’

Dr. Lisa stared blankly at the screen in her hands as all kinds of prompts and reports kept popping up.

For the first time in her life, she felt an overwhelming doubt toward the worldview of “rational, objective and materialist” that she had always upheld.

“But this isn’t logical!”

‘What on earth happened in the simulation deduction?’

Lisa desperately wanted to know the answer.

* * *

At the same time, inside the technique deduction simulation space.

‘Hoo… so this is Supreme Freedom Art?’

Feeling the technique’s master outline being transmitted into his consciousness, Li Chen immediately began examining its operational principles with his sharp eye.

‘So that’s how it is, the qi-sensing part uses Type-14 module calibration and then it’s fitted with a Morphing Method. Just like I guessed, the prototype of this technique really is connected to singularity technology.’

In the virtual space, no matter how broad his knowledge was, once “singularity technology” was involved, Li Chen had to treat it with the utmost seriousness.

That was singularity technology!

Even if this technique was only one of many cobbled-together fragments, even if it was just derived from a relatively unimportant field within it, it was still genuine singularity technology!

‘I really struck it rich.’

Li Chen stared feverishly at the prompt text in front of him.

[Detected player has obtained S-rank technique <Supreme Freedom Art> · Incomplete, current proficiency 0.01%.]

‘Back before I transmigrated, only the very top guilds could barely brush up against singularity technology…’

Li Chen couldn’t help thinking curiously.

‘Once you truly master complete singularity technology, starting from nothing and founding a consortium might not even be impossible.’

How come no one dug something this good out of the game before he transmigrated?

There was only one possibility.

After he transmigrated, his experiences with those bad women changed history.

‘Probably related to the Schufestan family extermination case? Forget it, I’ll study this technique properly first.’

Feeling the abundant qi-sensing in his body, Li Chen’s gaze turned razor sharp.

‘After all, that’s singularity technology. If you want to advance into a top-tier martial artist, you have to master singularity technology.’

And now, Li Chen was holding a ticket that led straight to the supreme realm of martial arts.