Chapter 29: The Golden Iron Triangle

With that, the old man began to teach the class using a very bizarre method.

He brought Adam to an underground chamber, inside which were several massive machines. He plugged all of these machines into his body, then placed a strange object onto his head.

"What is this?"

"It's a sensory magnifier."

The old man's voice was like rumbling thunder. His voice has been amplified countless times, and Adam's eardrums were in severe pain.

However, the old man didn't pay any heed to Adam's discomfort as he continued, "I'm going to amplify your senses so you can detect the differences between the real world and the psychic world."

As he was speaking, he invaded Adam's psychic world, and this time, Adam finally noticed a difference. All of the nearby sounds, regardless of whether it was the old man's breathing or the brushing of his clothes when he moved, had become different from before.

Adam was immediately able to detect that he was in the psychic world.

After that, the old man turned off the sound amplification before switching on the visual amplification. As a result, Adam was able to see everything in exceptional detail, even down to the finest dust particles. The old man then invaded Adam's psychic world once again, and sure enough, Adam was able to notice a difference.

"This is known as sensory training. Discerning auras using your five senses is the most rudimentary method, but also the most practical one. I'm not the only one who owns this set of machinery, but it's extremely expensive. Also, aside from a master like myself, no adapter would be able to invade your psychic world over and over again at such a high frequency. I'm telling you all of this to assure you that you're getting your money's worth studying under me. By the way, my name is Sadou. People like to call me Taoist Bean Army, but you can just call me teacher."

"Yes, Teacher."

Adam didn't care what the old man was referred to as by others. As long as they could make him strong, everyone was a teacher in his eyes.

"The doctrine of the Psychic Church is 'Pain Cultivates Power', and that's a very practical doctrine for adapters, but in my books, sensitivity is the most important thing. Only sensitive people can have sharper perception. Sensitivity can amplify the degree of pain that one experiences, and it can also improve the connection between you and your invoked entities. Inside the psychic world, what class you belong to and the techniques you're able to use are all directly connected to your personality. Those who like to use invoked entities enjoy having that feeling of control, but only the most sensitive people with the greatest attention to detail can truly control invoked entities to the fullest extent."

For the first day, Sadou continued to feed Adam pieces of knowledge related to invocator-class adapters while constantly invading his psychic world over and over again, allowing him to switch back and forth between reality and the psychic world so that he could experience the differences between the two.

After the first day of training, Adam quickly grew accustomed to this training method.

Once he emerged from the underground chamber the following day, he was able to sense the differences even more vividly.

In contrast with the silent and mundane underground chamber, there were far more pieces of reference for him to examine in the outside world, such as the blowing of the wind, the chirps and cries of insects and birds, the rumbling of machinery, neon lights of advertisements... The more references he had, the more opportunities his five senses would have of verifying whether he was in the real world or not.

After training like this for three days, Adam managed to master the sensory discernment method.

After those three days, Sadou nodded as he said, "You're not completely devoid of talent, but you're not exactly exceptional in that regard, either."

During the past few years, a great number of people had come to him to study, and among them, Adam's talents ranked somewhere near the middle.

"Now, we'll begin the second phase of our training, which is the training of telegnosis. Only after you develop a certain level of telegnosis can you truly be considered to have reached an elementary level in aura discernment."

"What's telegnosis?"

"Try placing your fingertip directly in front of your glabella around a centimeter away."

Adam did as he was told, placing his fingertip in front of his own glabella, and he immediately developed a strange sensation.

"What is this feeling?"

"That is telegnosis. Everyone possesses additional senses outside of the five senses. For example, if someone is pointing a gun at you from behind and giving off intense killing intent, you'll develop a sense of discomfort, and that comes from your telegnosis. Adapters have more powerful neurons than the average person, so they also possess more potent telegnosis. However, telegnosis must be trained in order to be mastered. Once you master telegnosis, you'll be able to detect danger in advance. Otherwise, even an ordinary sniper would be able to take your life, let alone an adapter hitman."

"How is telegnosis trained?"

"It's trained through meditation. I will teach you a special method of meditation, then help you enter a state of deep meditation in the psychic world. Make sure to remember this feeling!"

Sadou dragged Adam into the psychic world once again as he spoke.

……

Meanwhile, in a high-end hotel not far away from Sadou's home, three men in professional suits were gathered together in a room.

The three of them were all hitmen on the black market, and they were registered under the codenames "Black Archer", "Heavy Hammer Hooligan", and "Frost Magician". Not only were the three hitmen familiar with one another, they were always operating as a trio, and they had developed a decent reputation among black market hitmen. On the dark web, they were referred to as the Golden Iron Triangle.

In the past, all three of them had been completely unknown because individually, none of them were very powerful in battle, and each of their psychic bodies was marred by massive flaws.

However, after coming into contact with one another during a mission, everything changed for the three of them.

They discovered that their abilities complemented each other perfectly, and when combined, it wasn't just a simple matter of 1+1+1=3. Instead, their combined powers were far beyond the sum of their constituent parts, to the extent that they were at least 10 times more powerful when working as a unit, thereby allowing them to take on advanced missions that would've been far beyond their capabilities in the past.

No one was going to turn down the possibility of increasing their flow of income, and the three of them immediately formed a team. They were always taking on missions that offered hefty rewards, then splitting the reward money evenly among them once everything was said and done.

Thus, from a trio of unknown hitmen, they had developed to become the renowned Golden Iron Triangle. Everything had been progressing smoothly on an upward trend ever since their team was formed, and the chemistry between them was only improving with each passing mission.

At this moment, they were looking at the massive estate in the distance through the floor-to-ceiling window of their hotel room, and the shortest and smallest figure among them said with tightly furrowed brows, "Aren't we being a little too greedy taking on a mission with a 70,000,000 reward? I can't shake the feeling that there's more to this mission than meets the eyes."

"Give it a rest, Black Archer. I know you always like to lurk in the shadows, but since when did you become such a coward? Haven't we already established from reliable sources that the target for this mission is a blank slate? There's no way a blank slate would be able to pose any threat to us," a burly man assured as he approached Black Archer from behind.

"I agree with Black Archer. There's definitely more to this mission than meets the eye. Otherwise, Oni no Hanzou wouldn't have failed." The third person in the room rose to his feet as he spoke. This was a very clean-shaven man with not a single trace of facial hair. "Oni no Hanzou is a formidable adapter who specializes in assassination. Under normal circumstances, there's no way he would've failed to capture a blank slate."

"Didn't they say there was a special reason for Oni no Hanzou's failure of the mission? I don't know exactly what that reason is, but if I'm not mistaken, it has to have had something to do with the pawn shop. There are some powerful adapters in the pawn shop, especially that woman who no one wants to mess with. Oni no Hanzou must've failed the mission because he didn't find the right place to initiate his attack on the target. Just because he failed doesn't mean that we're also sure to fail. Besides, with the three of us together, I don't think we're necessarily inferior to him."

Despite what he was saying, the burly man was clearly still rather fearful of Oni no Hanzou, and he quickly changed the subject to alleviate the awkwardness.

"That kid's been in there for a few days now, and given how Taoist Seed Army has always done things in the past, he should be coming out in three or four more days. Once he leaves this area, we'll strike right away."

"Alright, but we still have to proceed with caution," Black Archer replied with a nod.

1. The old man's name in Chinese (撒窦) is a homonym to the term (撒豆), which means to spread beans. There is a Chinese idiom, 撒豆成兵, which literally translates to "spreading beans to make an army", and this comes from an ancient Chinese text which proclaims that a spell exists that can allow one to spread beans, and those beans would give rise to an army, hence the correlation between the name Sadou and the nickname of Taoist Bean Army.