Chapter 136: Bundled Data

"We want to know a bit of everything, really. We want to know about his childhood experiences, why he has so many evil urges, how many young women he's imprisoned and killed in the past, and how he felt when killing those people," Nie Yiyi replied after some brief consideration.

One's childhood experiences were the foundation of their personality, and often the root of one's emotional anomaly.

As for how many people he had imprisoned and killed, that would reflect just how much his evil urges had been allowed to expand and govern his actions.

Furthermore, the emotions that he felt when killing his imprisoned victims would shed light on the attributes of his anomalies. Emotions like anger, anxiety, fear, and guilt would all give rise to anomalies of different attributes.

"Got it, I'll make sure to question him very thoroughly. Do you want to come in?"

"I'll pass, I don't want to watch."

"I'll pass as well."

Adam and his friends had no intention of going in. Even an idiot knew what was going to happen next.

Sure enough, after entering the room, Jiang Senior roused the subject from his unconscious state, and Adam and his friends had no idea what torture methods were employed by Jiang Senior, but the subject didn't stop screaming even for a single moment in the following three and a half hours.

At the end of the session, Jiang Senior emerged from the room, and he was such a seasoned professional that there wasn't even a single drop of blood on his body.

"He's confessed basically everything."

"That's really impressive!" Adam couldn't help but praise.

"His name is Sithu. To answer your question about his childhood, he spent his formative years living on an island in the Pacific Ocean, and his mother worked as a prostitute in a bar."

Adam immediately thought back to the beer bar he had during his first venture into Sithu's psychic world. All of the aberrations inside had enormous genitalia, and the attacking methods employed by his mother were also very strange.

The fact that his mother was an anomaly in his psychic world indicated that he sorely detested his mother as a child, yet the child that had rushed out to protect his mother had most likely also been him.

He detested his mother, yet he also felt inclined to protect her. The more conflicted one's emotions were, the more prone those emotions were to becoming twisted, and those emotions would only become more and more twisted amid this emotional tug of war.

"What happened after that?"

"After that, his mother disappeared after he grew up into an adult, and he traveled to Sandrise City."

"Did she disappear, or was she killed by him?"

"I'm not sure. When he was talking about this part of his life, his emotions were clearly very unstable. A small child persona came out and began to spout nonsense. By the way, he has multiple personalities. It's very clear that he's suffering from schizophrenia."

"Schizophrenia!"

"So that's what it is!"

Adam and his friends were enlightened by this revelation.

"So not only does he have multiple personalities, every single one of them has mutated into an anomaly. What a remarkable case!"

"To think that adapters like us have to rely on non-adapters to dig up information for us..."

Generally speaking, adapters were supposed to be the ones who could venture deepest into one's psyche to dig up the most closely guarded secrets, such as business secrets or confessions to crimes.

However, Sithu's psychic world was a terrifying place with a bunch of powerful anomalies inside. For the average adapter, entering such a psychic world was almost guaranteed to spell certain death, so it was actually more effective for a professional like Jiang Senior to interrogate the subject for information.

"How many personalities does he have?"

"I can't say for sure, but I was able to clearly discern roughly five personalities during my interrogation. As for whether there are more than that still in hiding, I can't tell you."

"Five... How many anomalies did you two encounter in there?" Shae asked.

"We encountered two anomalies, one of which seemed to be his mother, while the other one was himself in child form. In addition to the three anomalies that we encountered in there together, that amounts to a total of five anomalies."

His mother clearly wasn't one of his personalities, so there was at least one more persona that was still lurking beneath the surface.

"What were the defining traits of the personas that you saw?"

"One of them was a child..."

"Yes, we saw that one," Adam said as he began to keep a count with his fingers.

"One of them wanted to kill me as soon as it saw me. That one was most aggressive in its speech."

"That's probably that alien anomaly."

"There was another one that was very interested in blood. In fact, when that personality came out, he began licking his lips even at the sight of his own blood."

"That sounds like the chef anomaly."

"There was also a persona that seemed to be horrified, and that was the one that confessed the most. It told me everything that it knew, and most of the information that I was able to obtain came from that persona."

"That's the last anomaly that we saw," Adam mused with a nod. "What about the final one?"

"The final one was a female persona that didn't appear to be as deranged as the others ones. She told me that she was the one who released the woman from his underground dungeon, and she warned us not to go into his psychic world again because there's something extremely dangerous lurking in there. However, she didn't get a chance to elaborate before she suddenly disappeared with a loud scream. It seems like she was forcibly dragged back by another one of his personas."

"Something extremely dangerous..." Adam repeated with a contemplative expression. "She's clearly warning us that there's something even more terrifying that we don't yet know about lurking in there."

"Forget the unknown, we can't even deal with the anomalies that we've seen so far," Shae said in a defeated voice. "We've already seen five anomalies, and all of them are really strong. Those things are all manifestations of his personas, so I'm sure all of them are already aware of our existence. If we go in now, we're going to get killed for sure."

"Ultimately, the problem is that we're still too weak." This was the ideal subject, but they were powerless to exploit it. Adam felt like he was standing in front of a mountain of gold, but was unable to carry it away. He didn't want to leave it, but at the same time, he was also powerless to do anything. "Let's keep him here for now and find some other ways to grow stronger, then come back to him when we're ready."

"We still have Hook and Shota who can help us out. If possible, I can call in Mr. Li to help us next time as well."

"Mr. Li? You mean Fighter Li?"

Adam had a very strong impression of Fighter Li. In terms of pure technical proficiency, he was superior to even most top tier adapters.

Setting aside absolute power and looking purely at technique, Fighter Li could stand toe to toe even with the likes of Oni no Hanzou.

"That's right. We're friends now, and we've already sparred many times in the psychic world. He's always interested in facing different opponents, so I'm sure he won't turn down an opportunity to fight against anomalies."

No one knew a fight addict better than a fellow fight addict, and Nie Yiyi was very confident that Fighter Li would be willing to help.

"If we count in Fighter Li, we'll have five battle units and a scouting unit. That's still not enough. We should wait until I become a bit stronger before we go in again."

……

For Adam and Nie Yiyi, the next few days were constantly spent fighting in the ring.

Through these constant battles, Adam was able to master more and more fighting techniques, and he was even beginning to develop some techniques that were unique to him. Finally, he was able to experience the process that normal adapters went through to become stronger.

These constant battles and victories instilled within him a sense of immense confidence, and confidence was the key to the development of the power of one's persona. Thus, his increased confidence also elevated his absolute power.

Furthermore, with the extensive experience that he was gaining through his battles, he was able to develop more and more techniques, and eventually, these techniques would add up to give rise to abilities.

At this point, Adam had already developed his first autonomous ability, which was "Observation".

𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

This ability didn't come from his anomalies. Instead, it stemmed from his psychic body itself, so he could use this ability no matter which anomaly he was fused with. This ability couldn't be used to enhance his powers, but it allowed him to see through his opponent's moves more accurately. This was a very rudimentary passive ability, perhaps one that the likes of Fighter Li and Nie Yiyi had already attained long ago.

In any case, attaining this autonomous ability was undoubtedly an improvement for Adam.

As a result of his constant battles, he was also promoted to the C tier. At this point, there were already many spectators and a high level of income to be earned for each match, and his record had remained immaculate up until now.

The matches were going very smoothly, but the procurement of anomalies, which was even more important, was proving to be extremely difficult.

None of the Green Gang, Crocodile, or Red Turtle had been able to find any suitable candidates for him. The people that they found either had no mental problems, or their mental problems weren't severe enough to satisfy Adam's needs.

On this day, he was contacted by Crocodile once again, and he immediately rushed off to meet Crocodile following the conclusion of his matches.

Having already worked together so many times, a certain level of trust had been established between the two, and they were conversing with one another far more casually than before.

"You've already called me up more than 10 times, but you haven't even been able to find a single suitable subject. I already told you that if you want to earn money, you have to catch the people that look like they're guilty of something!" Adam arrived at the headquarters of Crocodile's faction, then took a glance at the tied-up young man in the room before asking, "What's this guy's past history?"

"How am I supposed to know what his past history is? I asked you to come here so you can tell me!" Crocodile wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, and he spoke in a very aggressive fashion, but he was a good fighter with a righteous personality, and he was very fair when splitting money, so his lackeys were very loyal to him. "You told me to look for people who look like they're guilty, but if you ask me, who isn't guilty if they've come to Shadow City from Sandrise City? If they're not guilty of one crime or another, why would they come here? For tourism?"

"Forget it, I can't get through to an idiot like you!" Adam didn't waste any more time as he crouched down in front of the subject. Even though Crocodile and Red Turtle had failed to find any suitable subjects for him, he had managed to dig up some valuable information for them, so the two gang leaders were quite happy to work with him. "Go stand at the entrance and keep a lookout. Make sure no one interrupts me."

"Y'all hear that? Get out of here! If anyone dares to come into this room or makes any unnecessary sounds, I'll put you in a wheelchair!" Crocodile yelled as he chased his lackeys out of the room, giving Adam the privacy that he desired.

Now that he had some peace and quiet, Adam began to inspect the subject's facial features.

He had been searching for mentally ill individuals every day, and at this point, he was able to roughly gauge one's mental condition from their outward appearance alone. For people with certain mental attributes, the way that their facial muscles were set was different from those who didn't suffer from any mental illness. This couldn't be used as a concrete parameter for him to form his judgments, but it was certainly well worth looking at.

Even though the subject was in a state of unconsciousness, his lips were tightly pursed, and his facial muscles were also in a very unnatural, stiff state. It was clear that he lived in a constant state of anxiety.

We might be onto something here!

Adam was very excited to see this, and he immediately invaded the man's psychic world.

……

On this occasion, he appeared in what seemed to be a company.

The construction style in the room was very simplistic and high-tech, and it was clear from the construction materials used that this was a very high-end place.

A place that was simplistic yet extravagant in appearance hinted at twice the extravagance as it was very expensive having to use a relatively small amount of materials to create an air of luxury and opulence. However, this company certainly didn't seem to be lacking in money.

Adam searched for the logo of the company in a curious manner as he wanted to see what company was this wealthy, and he was stunned by what he discovered.

No wonder this place is so rich, it's the Metaverse's Gaia Headquarters!

Adam was astonished to see that he had arrived in one of the main branches of the Metaverse.

This was completely different from Cowboy's game company, which had been established on the foundation of the Metaverse. Using a tree as an analogy, Cowboy's company was like a fruit or a leaf on the tree, while the Gaia Headquarters was like the trunk of the tree.

Half of the basic logic that the entire Metaverse ran on was controlled by the Gaia Corporation.

What does this guy do here?

Spurred on by his curiosity, Adam quickly tracked down the host, and judging from the work that he was doing, he seemed to be a programmer.

Adam crouched down beside him to watch him work, and even though he was far from a programming expert, after a while, he was able to understand the nature of the man's job. Essentially, he was responsible for archiving useless data, and this useless data were "people" in the Metaverse who weren't self-sufficient and had no one on the outside to financially support them.

They were treated like pieces of trash, compressed over and over again before being placed into a storage space.

Judging from the watch and accessories that the man was wearing, Adam could tell that he was very wealthy. At the very least, his income had to be significantly higher than what was earned by the other programmers that Adam had encountered before.

However, looking at his expression, it seemed that this job placed immense psychological pressure upon him. His expression was extremely stiff, and his fingers were trembling slightly each time he compressed the data.