Chapter 368: Balance

"That's good to hear."

For an adapter, confidence was the most important thing, so Charlie was quite relieved to hear that he would've still been considered an extremely formidable adapter in the outside world. However, he was also rather surprised that Adam would tell him this.

"Why did you tell me that? Isn't this the best chance for you to crush my confidence?"

"If I wanted to crush your confidence, I may as well just crush your psychic body. You're completely at my mercy right now, and I could easily crush you like an actual ant," Adam replied.

Following this period of training, Adam's powers had become significantly enhanced, and this battle had provided a major confidence boost for him.

"Then why are you sparing me?"

Charlie appeared to be quite a calm and steadfast person. Even though his life was in Adam's hands, there were no apparent fluctuations in his emotions. It was as if his extensive prison sentence had already sapped away all the passion that he had for life.

However, Adam knew that he was just putting on a fa?ade.

If he truly had no passion for life, then he wouldn't have become the head of a faction, nor would he have carried out the chief warden's instructions or cared so much about how he compared with adapters in the outside world.

However, Adam chose not to expose him. Instead, he said, "There are two reasons for that. Firstly, there are a lot of your men outside right now, and killing you could turn them against me. Secondly, I want to join your Desert Gang."

"Why?" Charlie asked.

"It's simple. As I'm sure you're aware, there are people trying to kill me. I presume it's the wardens, right?"

Charlie offered no response to this, choosing not to confirm or deny this notion.

Adam continued, "If the wardens want to kill me, they definitely wouldn't do so in person. Over these past few days, I've managed to get a rough idea of how the wardens are perceived among the inmates.

“Due to differences in ethnicity, the Asian Gang don't like to deal with the wardens, and the Radiation Gang is full of screwed-up people who are very difficult to communicate with. Hence, they can only rely on the Desert Gang or the Survival of the Fittest faction to have me killed. I'm wondering if you'll spare me if I join your faction."

"Even if we don't come after you, other people will do it."

"Then let them! I just want to know if I can join your gang or not."

Charlie was silent for a moment, then nodded in response.

"Of course you can."

He didn't know what Adam's thought process was, but that wasn't important to him. This wasn't the right time to be going after Adam, and his own life was currently being held in Adam's hands, so he had no choice in this negotiation. No matter what happened from here onward, he had to ensure his own survival first.

Adam scrutinized Charlie for a moment, then left his psychic world.

The two of them awakened one after the other in the real world.

Everyone was watching the "battle" as it unfolded, and they had no idea what had happened, so they were all trying to gauge the outcome of the battle from the expressions of the two combatants.

It was Adam who broke the silence first.

"You really are a formidable adapter, Boss Charlie. Even in the outside world, adapters of your caliber are exceedingly rare."

"You're not so bad yourself," Charlie replied in an ambiguous manner, then gestured toward his subordinates before departing with them.

After all of the Desert Gang members had departed, Mole and Armadillo approached Adam, and the former asked, "How did it go?"

"He was pretty strong."

While it was true that Adam was simply a more powerful adapter than Charlie, the reason why he had been able to secure such an easy victory was because Sludge was a perfect counter to the silver ant's strengths.

If Mole and Armadillo had gone up against Charlie, there was a very good chance that Charlie would've come out on top thanks to his speed advantage. IN particular, Mole was completely powerless without his speed advantage.

"However, I won anyway."

"Good. Regardless of what the circumstances are, the winner is the one who calls the shots."

……

It seemed that the incident had blown over without leading to anything, but that night, as Adam returned to his cell, he noticed several people waiting for him outside.

"Our boss wants to see you."

Generally speaking, there weren't many people who would start trouble in the cell area, but the Desert Gang was an exception to this. The members of the gang worked closely with the wardens, and sometimes, the wardens would adjust the direction that the surveillance cameras were facing, essentially turning a blind eye to what the Desert Gang members were doing.

Adam looked around to find that there was no one else around. Aside from these Desert Gang members, the only one in the general vicinity was his cellmate, Guang Fei.

After a moment of contemplation, he nodded in response.

"Let's go."

He followed the Desert Gang members to a corner area. Due to certain special reasons, there were some surveillance blind spots here, and most of the Desert Gang's core members resided in this area.

As soon as he arrived, Adam was immediately struck by a sense of pressure.

There were at least 100 people standing in this area, and if they were to swarm him all at once, there was no way that he would survive.

𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"We hear you've been going after a bunch of cash cows lately."

"The members of the Survival of the Fittest seem to be getting pissed off at you as well."

"You're not gonna have too much longer left to live..."

As he was passing through the area, the surrounding inmates were openly taunting him while also knocking some metal objects against the walls for intimidation.

Adam was completely expressionless as he squeezed past them, and he was led into a cell that was more spacious than all of the other cells in the area.

Atop the bed in the cell sat Charlie Thompson.

"I didn't think you would actually dare to come," Charlie said as he took a glance at Adam, and judging from the look in his eyes, it seemed that he was making an important decision.

An amused smile appeared on Adam's face as he sat down next to Charlie, then said in a quiet voice, "Quit acting. I know you can't kill me today. If you kill me now, not only will you not be rewarded by the chief warden, you'll be punished instead, and you could even lose your life over this."

Charlie didn't say anything, but Adam was very confident.

During these past few days, he had constantly been blatantly hunting down cash cows without any fear for consequences because of the information that was constantly being fed to him by Thilan from the outside. Through Thilan, he was able to gain a very clear understanding of how the entire prison worked, and he had even learned a great deal about the Hosman Family.

Without the information being supplied to him by Thilan, perhaps he would've refrained from taking these risks, but given what he currently knew, he was confident that his actions wouldn't be met with any repercussions.

Adam continued, "I'm fully aware of the situation that I'm in. In the outside world, I'm still a public figure. The chief warden isn't going to kill me now, and I won't die in a pure murder plot, either, isn't that right?"

Charlie put away his menacing expression upon hearing this, and a smile also appeared on his face as he said, "Alright, seeing as you know everything, I won't bother keeping up these pretenses any longer. Tell me about your plan and how you want us to work together."

……

Of course, Adam wasn't going to tell Charlie his true plan, and the same applied to Charlie as well.

Charlie was only trying to placate Adam and ensure that Adam would be within reach when the order came for him to be killed.

As for Adam, he wanted to gather more information, and as an adapter, there were countless ways he could achieve that objective.

Thus, both of them had their own objectives, and that led to the formation of a tenuous balance.