Chapter 104: Bad Guys

Even though they were no longer in any danger, the atmosphere in the car was very grave.

No one had gotten what they wanted.

Hook had lost his claim to fame, Adam and Shae had lost the leverage that they were counting on using to uncover the secrets of their past, Shi Feng had lost the opportunity to launch a smear campaign against the southern congress, Red Spider had failed to complete the mission assigned to her, and Shota Sato had lost all of his comrades from the Psychic Church.

If anyone had gotten what they wanted, then it could only have been Nie Yiyi.

Her objective for coming on this mission was to experience the horror of coming face-to-face with death. She was looking forward to fighting powerful enemies in battle, and she had gotten what she wanted. She had brushed shoulders with death on several occasions during the two battles that she had just endured, and she could've easily already been dead by now. In addition to that, she had been able to witness many formidable adapters in action.

The psychic mutant, Oni-faced Dragon, Sadou, Oni no Miko, Oni no Hanzou... Every single one of them was far more powerful than she was. In particular, the likes of Oni-faced Dragon and Sadou stood at the very pinnacle of the adapter world, and watching them in action had been a riveting experience.

She was from the Green Gang, but she had never seen any of the gang's top leaders. At the academy, she mostly dealt with students and teachers, and among them, she was already near the top.

However, the gap between herself and the likes of Sadou and Oni-faced Dragon was simply unfathomable.

How are those people so powerful? What could they possibly have experienced to grant them such incredible psychic power and willpower?

Nie Yiyi was pondering these questions with tightly furrowed brows, and the car continued to slowly drive onward under a glum and oppressive atmosphere.

Half an hour later, they arrived at the largest childcare center in Area 66, where they met up with May.

Upon their arrival, May was in the process of instructing people to remove the transmission devices on the ground.

"Yes, there are still ejector synapse transmission devices on the wall! Are you blind? Those black dots disguised as bugs, take them all down!"

May's telegnosis was very sharp, and before she even turned around, she already knew that everyone had arrived.

𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

"It's good to see that you're all still alive," she remarked with a pleased nod as she turned to face Adam and his friends.

"How did things go on your end?"

"Not bad. I managed to hold down the fort," May replied. "They sent dozens of psychic mutants here, and they were a little troublesome to deal with, but they're all either dead or have been captured."

May pointed in another direction, where Mechguard officers were taking some disheveled and unkempt individuals into custody. It was clear from a quick glance that these were very abnormal people, and even though there were Mechguard officers behind them, they were still spouting random nonsense.

Adam just so happened to catch sight of a familiar figure among the detained psychic mutants, and he drew a little closer with an intrigued look on his face.

"Isn't that Mice King?"

Adam wasn't very familiar with the majority of psychic mutants who had escaped from Carlin Asylum, but he was particularly knowledgeable about Mice King. After escaping from Mice King during that attack on the underground pub, Adam had specifically done research on him, so he was very familiar with Mice King's height, appearance, and past experiences.

"I'm surprised he's also been captured."

"There's nothing to be surprised about, they're just a bunch of lunatics," May remarked with a yawn, indicating that the battle she had just endured had been somewhat taxing on her psychic power.

"Why aren't those nutcases executed on the spot?"

Compared with Adam, Shae was more extreme in her mindset, so the questions that she raised were also sharper.

"Officially speaking, there are clauses in the law designed to protect the mentally insane. On an unofficial basis, these psychic mutants make for very valuable test subjects. They were all adapters to begin with, but they went on to be controlled by certain factors and lost their autonomy. Every single adapter could potentially become a psychic mutant under the wrong circumstances, so studying these psychic mutants benefits the entire adapter community at large. There are also some deeper underlying reasons at play as well..."

May turned to Adam, then lowered her voice slightly as she continued, "I'm talking about producers and consumers of blank slates. This technology only came into maturity about a decade ago, so no one can be sure if there will be any long-term after-effects later down the road. Installing a normal person's persona into the brain of an adapter will result in the adapter's synapses housing someone else's psychic data, and it's very difficult to say whether mutation will take place in the future. Hence, there are people paying big money to support the field of adapter research. Carlin Asylum alone receives an astronomical sum in donations every year."

So once again, it's the immortals pulling the strings behind the scenes.

After hearing what May had to say, Adam developed a clearer understanding of the immortals of the world who controlled unimaginable amounts of wealth and power.

These powerful figures played a role in everything, including legislation, the media, the Metaverse immortality scam, psychic mutant research, taking adapters from orphanages and welfare homes...

The entirety of society was operating under the rules established by these people, and everyone was working to provide the services that they desired.

"Thankfully, it's finally all over now. Almost all of the escaped psychic mutants were sent out for these attacks, and they've all either been killed or detained, so that should put an end to these attacks for now," May said as she heaved a sigh of relief. "The only piece of bad news is that one of the schools was successfully infiltrated, but that doesn't have anything to do with us. The rest is up to the northern and southern congresses."

Most of the psychic mutants had been detained throughout Area 66, and Adam thought that he would finally be able to rest easy for some time in the wake of these attacks.

After all, with all of the psychic mutants taken care of, the arm wrestle between the nothern and southern congresses was going to progress to the next stage, and there was no need for small fry like him to get involved.

Looking at all of the civil servants cleaning up the scene, Adam decided that he was going to dedicate himself to taking on more jobs and eradicating more anomalies so that he could make further strides as an adapter.

However, the anticipated period of peace never arrived.

……

During the coming few days, all of the news outlets were reporting these large-scale attacks.

Around 800 students had perished during the attacks, and they were immediately classified as extremely severe terrorist attacks.

Everyone was riled up and calling for the psychic mutants to be punished, but with intentional steering of public discourse from the media, the focus was quickly shifted elsewhere.

"The psychic mutants are only a bunch of lunatics who do things without any reason or logic, so the key to the problem is the people who set all of these attacks into motion!"

This was a frequently discussed topic, and initially, it was the northern congress that was fanning the flames, but this time, it was the southern congress that was taking advantage of the situation to thrust this subject under the limelight.

Everyone in the two congresses were well aware of who was responsible for instigating these attacks, and right when the northern congress was feeling rather perplexed about why the southern congress was seemingly engaging in self-sabotage, a piece of footage was released to the public.

A terrifying anomaly raised its carving knife before lashing out violently at a congressman who was in the midst of a battle.

The anomaly had an extremely fearsome appearance that resembled a mummy, and looking at its physical appearance alone, it was even more sinister to behold than the psychic mutant.

It was a natural emotional response to detest something that looked so hideous.

Not only was the congressman being attacked by the anomaly, he had been surrounded by a group of adapters who seemed to have the support of a representative from the northern congress.

We've been framed as the bad guys!

All of the fine hairs on the back of Adam's neck instantly stood up on end as he watched the footage, and he was struck by an immense sense of foreboding.

The perspective of the footage was masterfully manipulated so that Prince was framed as the victim, while everyone else was attacking him for no reason.

There were also some shots of students being murdered included in the footage, and even though there were no explicit points being made, the natural conclusion that one would arrive at from watching the footage was that the demise of these students had been directly caused by the in-fighting among the adapters.

The legal system championed evidence above all else, and with such concrete evidence being presented, Adam saw no possible way to clear his own name.

Before he had a chance to consider what he was going to do next, he received a text message from an unknown number.

"The arrest warrants are still in the process of being issued. Go to the following address, and make it quick! Everyone else has also already been notified."

1. The Greeb Gang was a secret society that came into existence in China during the Qing Dynasty. If you're interested, you can check out the following Wikipedia link for more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Gang#Origins