Players Invade Cyberpunk

"It was like this back then, and it’s the same now. In your eyes, the so-called Huang Clan and the Greater Empire of Japan in your heart, including me and Hua Zi, are nothing more than your personal property, aren’t they? In that narrow little heart of yours, I’m afraid you can’t make room for anyone but yourself."

There was not a trace of emotion in Huang Ban Sanlang’s low voice; he sounded like a cold, unfeeling machine.

"Lai Xuan."

"What? Did I hit a nerve by spelling out what’s in your heart?"

"No, I never expected you to understand me."

Huang Ban Sanlang reeled in, hooked a small grouper, and casually tossed it to one of his men.

"You’ve never seen that glorious era. Our fleet swept across the western Pacific Ocean; every country in East Asia bowed its head to us. Our army dominated the entire East Asia, took more than half of Southeast Asia and Tokyo University, and our strength was in no way inferior to the Anglo-Saxons in Europe."

"The United Kingdom, Russia, the United States—all of them couldn’t match us. In several wars we stripped them of large amounts of precious colonies. The Yamato Race was, without a doubt, the greatest people in all East Asia. When other nations were being enslaved and abused by white men, we were the only ones who could stand up."

"Unlike now, where the Far East is in the hands of a bunch of short-sighted idiots who cower before the Europe and America devils. Every time there’s a war they only drag us down...."

His words were full of yearning for that militaristic era when the whole nation was soldiers.

But even more than that, they carried regret and anguish, because of that generation back then, only Huang Ban Sanlang was left alive—no one could truly understand him.

Through the bug on Lai Xuan, Lin Miao let out a sneer and joked to Lucy,

"To me, this guy is just someone who hasn’t been beaten enough by life to be saying this kind of crap. The old bastard’s skin is thicker than the city walls."

Lucy didn’t quite get it.

She didn’t know much about the history from more than a hundred and fifty years ago, so she had no idea what Lin Miao was laughing at.

"So your ideal, and the ideal of your era, is built on everyone else’s pain and fear, is that it? A country like that might as well be wiped out!"

Lai Xuan finally couldn’t take it anymore and slammed his fishing rod on the ground.

"All you want is to squeeze the last drop of blood out of the people at the bottom to satisfy your own desires! Stop dressing it up in grand, righteous words. You and your country are just hiding behind the masses and using those you’ve deceived as human shields!"

His body was shaking with rage.

Scenes from the past flashed before his eyes.

Forced to live in the slums, everyone, despite their poverty, struggled to survive and still kept warmth between them. The food was scarce and disgusting, and everyone went to bed hungry every day, yet there were smiles on their faces. It was there that Huang Ban Lai Xuan first understood what "family" really meant.

The slums had far more human warmth than that cold, lifeless Huang family mansion.

Yet just because of his arrival, Agent Huangban slaughtered the entire slum, claiming that lowborn trash had tainted the noble blood of the Huang Clan, and dragged him back to the family mansion from a pile of corpses.

Huang Ban Lai Xuan would never forget the sight of that elderly couple dying right in front of him.

From that moment on, the seed of destruction was planted in his heart.

Huang Ban Sanlang raised a hand to stop the guards who had raised their guns, waved them away, and left some private space for father and son.

And after a scan, there was indeed no sign of any combat exoskeleton or weapons on Huang Ban Lai Xuan.

"To die for noble blood is a warrior’s honor. That’s the gap between you and your elder brother. The interests of the Huang Clan are above everything else."

The argument between the two was getting more and more heated, but Lin Miao was only half listening.

Because this old bastard was talking pure bullshit; it wasn’t even worth hearing out.

Back then during World War II, Japan frantically sucked the resources of the lower classes dry to fill the enormous void left by the war, practically trying to squeeze the last drop of blood out of the poor Japanese.

And you think all those resources were sent to the frontlines?

Sorry, nope.

If they really had done that, Lin Miao might at least look at this old bastard differently.

On the eve of Japan’s surrender, there were still three hundred million tons of war supplies stockpiled on the home islands: rice, meat, medicine, flour, cloth, and so on.

So where did all that go after the surrender?

Back into the market?

Of course not. It was all devoured clean by the major families of Neon, who completely wrecked the grain market at the time. Rice prices shot up twenty- or thirtyfold, making an already collapsing Japanese society even worse.

If it hadn’t been for the United States’ investment and garrisons brought by the Korean War, those useless Neon nobles would probably have been blown sky-high by the Red Army in the seventies.

The reason Huang Ban could rise so fast after the war was precisely because of that stash of resources, plus pimping out women to win over a huge number of leftover militarist scum.

Family honor?

Noble bloodline?

What a joke.

For god’s sake, at least pretend you’re capitalists.

"Lucy, you see that old bastard?"

Lucy nodded.

"Take a good long look while you can. You won’t be seeing him again. Going fishing without a helmet is no different from eating hotpot without sitting by the burner."

"Who wants to look at that wrinkled face."

Lucy said with disgust,

"Just seeing him makes me sick."

Lin Miao laughed over that for quite a while.

Huang Ban Sanlang’s sudden trip to Night City had caught many people off guard, but Huang Ban Lai Xuan knew about it.

The reason Lin Miao deliberately had him choose this place for the meeting was to lure the target in.

And Huang Ban Sanlang was both the bait and the fish.

Just imagine: while Horizon Corporation is at war with the Cuban and European forces, Huang Ban suddenly sails a strategic weapons carrier all the way to the port of Night City and docks it there, and Huang Ban Sanlang himself shows up at one of Horizon Corporation’s subsidiaries—a fish farm.