Before scaling the cliffs to establish their tactical broadcast position, Lin Tao spent another thirty minutes stress-testing the corpse’s command syntax.
Deploying an unchecked command payload to a production environment without thorough unit testing was an unforgivable sin. If Lin Tao injected a corrupted opcode into thousands of marching corpses during an active battle, the receivers might enter an unhandled exception state. He locked their joints in place or triggering random, uncontrolled spasms.
He needed an approved, regression-tested order set.
Lin Tao sat cross-legged on a flat dark rock slab, his metal pen resting against the Precursor Relic’s main output port, his field journal open on his knee. Beside him stood the hijacked cavalry corpse, its barbed glaive held at the ready.
Lin Tao tested each opcode systematically, recording the physical response of the dead body-refiner:
Opcode 0x02: FAST_MARCH. The corpse sped up from four paces per second to eight paces per second. Its boots hammered the frozen gravel in a sprint that rivaled a galloping mountain pony. The stone-hardened marrow in its thigh bone held firm against the increased moving stress, showing zero micro-fracturing.
Opcode 0x04: HIGH_GUARD. The corpse raised its six-foot glaive horizontally above its helmet. Its elbows were locked at one hundred and twenty degrees to deflect downward strikes from polearms or falling rocks.
