A Visual Novel eroge released by nitro+ in 2002.
In a future Shanghai, there are two types of Kung Fu masters, those who mastered their internal qi, and those who mastered their physical skills. The qi masters are able to output a stronger energy coming from their life itself, but it took a long time to master it. It was easier to just train their physical skills, but there was a limit to how strong a human body can be. So there were a balance of many average physical skill masters and few strong qi masters. However that balance broke when cybernetics came into play. Kung Fu masters would replace their body with robotic parts and attain a strength that a normal human can never achieve. That's how no one tried to become qi masters anymore when they can easily become powerful by using cybernetics, and qi masters decreased in numbers.
Kong Taoluo is one such qi master out for blood. He must kill those that betrayed him and scattered his younger sister's mind into five seperate gynoids.
A Fan Translation patch for the remake version has been released in 2015. It can be obtained here
Tropes employed in this series are:
- Anti-Hero: Kong Taoluo at first appears as a typical modern example - he's a tough, seemingly unstoppable master of combat walking over the bodies of anyone who opposes him on his path of revenge. However as the story unfolds we learn that he is actually a Classical Anti-Hero - under his tough unremorseful facade lies a flawed, awkward and clueless individual who is filled with doubts and regrets, does not see what is happening with his closest friends and family, makes tons of poor judgment errors, and ultimately proves as big a reason for his distruction as his foes. He did not even become the successor of his style because of his skill, as he wasn't that good of a fighter - Liu was more talented than him, but his duties in triad forced him to augment himself making him incompatible with the style, and the succession automatically passed to Taoluo.
- Anti-Villain:
- The Yuen twins, who're only "villains" insofar as they work for the Qingyun Society. They're otherwise the most moral characters in the entire story.
- As it turns out, Big Bad Liu Haojun himself. While not exactly good in any sense of the word, the only people he truly makes suffer through his plan is Taoluo himself. He actually gets fewer innocent people killed than Tanluo himself.
- Back from the Dead: Bringing Ruili back through the reconstruction of her "soul" is Taoluo's main goal besides revenge against her killers. While a lot of debate is thrown about how legitimate the "resurrection" is, it ends up more or less working.
- Badass Normal: Taoluo is the last living practitioner of the Neija Kung Fu, designed to take down cyborgs. As such he is one of the most dangerous and badass characters of the story despite lacking any cyber enhancement.
- Badass Longcoat: Both Taoluo and Liu are wearing one.
- Bittersweet Ending: Tse Ida is able to reunite the Kong siblings inside Ruili's hard drive, however all the bloodshed could have been avoided had Taoluo reciprocated his sister's feelings.
- Body Horror: Ng's gynoid is actually designed to also be his bodyguard. When in combat mode, it becomes a spider-like combat robot - in an EXTREMELY painful manner to the gynoid. Ng effectively uses the gynoid's suffering as a terror tactic against Taoluo.
- Break the Badass: Taoluo during his last battle with Liu, as Liu confronts him with the fact that he didn't answer to Ruili's feelings and that he is the one to blame for all the suffering that Ruili has gone through.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Ruili is in love with her brother Taoluo, very much so. It's his inability to notice that leads to Ruili's death and the events of the visual novel.
- Cast from Lifespan: The overuse of the Lightning Palm technique damages the user's internal organs. Taoluo knows this, but it doesn't stop him from using said technique again and again.
- Combat Pragmatist: Knowing that as a Non-Action Guy he wouldn't have a chance against Taoluo in a fight, Ng instead relies on treachery, terror tactics as well as Taoluo's feelings towards Ruili when forced to confront him. It still isn't enough to stop Taoluo.
- Creepy Twins: The Yun twins, a pair of qi masters so skilled that even Taoluo hesitates to confront them. Subverted however in that they're actually quite normal.
- Cyberpunk: Some classic ideas come into this series with people receiving cybernetic enhancements and how it affects society.
- Cyberpunk Is Techno: Most of the soundtrack is techno, some have traditional Chinese sounds mixed in it.
- Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: Due to constant pollution, the downpour is acidic.
- Death by Irony: Ng's cyberbrain is consumed by a modified version of the computer virus that he himself created and unleashed in a last-ditch effort to escape from Taoluo.
- Determinator: Taoluo will absolutely not back down as long as he has even the smallest chance of saving his sister. By the end of the story he is a walking corpse purely powered by his determination.
- Disposable Woman: Ruili's main role in the story is to be brutally raped and killed, pushing her brother to pursue revenge against her attackers. Only this turns out to be a subversion, as she not only willingly consented to what happened to her, but is a far less innocent character than she appears.
- Dual Boss: Chapter 5's big fight is Taoluo fighting both of the Yuen brothers.
- The Ending Changes Everything: Learning the true nature of Ruili and Liu as characters recontexulizes vast swaths of the story.
- Foreshadowing: When he's about to be killed, Zhang desperately tells Taoluo that he didn't rape Ruili. He's not actually lying, as the "rape" was staged by her and Liu.
- Implausible Fencing Powers: Taoluo manages to thrust at supersonic speeds to put an end to his final duel with Liu.
- Leeroy Jenkins: After hearing about Zhang's death, Zhu proceedes to immediately go find Taoluo and confront him in a battle even after being warned about his powers. Regardless to say it's quite obvious how that battle wound up.
- Mad Scientist: Xie Yida was forced to become a black market cybernetics clinic owner to continue his research as his peers considered it too amoral and insane.
- Non-Action Guy: Ng Wing Shing, the only member of the Syndicate who's not a skilled fighter but a professional hacker and computer genius. He's also a huge coward.
- Oh, Crap!: A common reaction of Taoluo's enemies when he manages to put them on the ropes despite not being an augmented combat cyborg. Special mention goes to Ng Wing Shing, moments before the computer virus he himself created consumes his cyberbrain.
- Rape as Drama: Taoluo's sister Ruili was raped and murdered by his former companions. She willingly went along, seeing humiliation and death as a better alternative than keep on living with her love for Taoluo unreciprocated.
- Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Jang's specialty, as a Waija practitioner.
- Red Baron: The Cyber Slayer, Taoluo's nickname. Liu and his partners-in-crime also have nicknames.
- Oblivious to Love: The fact that Taoluo was unable to notice and to that right answer to Ruili's feelings towards him is essentialy what started the events of the story.
- Updated Re Release: The 2011 Rated 15+ Remake came with redone artworks, character sprites and scriptwriting and the characters are voiced by an
All-Star Cast. H-scenes are still intact but were toned down (e.g no genitals and nudity shown) and shortened to the point that they are shown very briefly. - We Could Have Avoided All This: The twins tell this outright to Taoluo in their fight, telling him that had he come to other members of his former organisation at once he would have found allies who would've willingly supported him (since many grew dissatisfied with how things were managed by current leaders, and Taoluo could serve as a unifier for their dissent, and helped him reach his goal faster and easier). Instead, he went on his one-man rampage and later tried to ally with russian mobsters, antagonising his former friends and causing colossal collateral damage making things worse for everyone, so now those who would've supported him before want to kill him.
- World of Badass: Other than Ruili, the gynoids based on her (exept for Petrushka, Ng's gynoid) and Tse Ida, pretty much everyone is a badass at least in some way. Even the cowardly Ng turns out to be a dangerous hacker.
- Wuxia: A Cyberpunk take on the genre.
- Yandere: Ruili, being unable to love her husband Liu and realising that Taoluo is too oblivious to notice her romantic love for him, decides that, since she isn't going to ever going to be together with Taoluo, she would rather die the most horrible death than to continue living in a world where she wouldn't be able to be with Taoluo as more than siblings. At the end of the story, Ruili, now complete again after absorbing the fragments of her mind stored in the gynoids, asks Tse Ida to merge Taoluo's mind with her own, fulfilling her wish to be together with her brother.
