Hunter of Immortals

Chapter 137: Benevolence and Righteousness

Looking at how much the programmer's fingers were trembling, it was as if he were pulling the trigger of a gun to carry out executions rather than compressing data with a mouse.

Perhaps he really is killing people with what he's doing...

Adam turned his attention toward the programmer's work badge to find that it carried the name "Liu Shouyi".

"Hey!"

"Huh?" Liu Shouyi was greatly startled by the sound of Adam's voice, and he turned around with a slightly panicked expression as he asked, "Who are you? Which department do you belong to? Why have I never seen you before? How did you get in here?"

Just like in dreams, people in the psychic world retained basic logical thinking abilities, but they were always going to be a bit more sluggish and oblivious. In the real world, if Adam had been standing behind him for so long, he would've surely already noticed.

Adam looked deep into Liu Shouyi's eyes, trying to discern his emotions as he replied, "I'm here to help you. What you're doing right now seems to be making you feel very afraid... or should I say, guilty?"

Adam's question had drawn out the darkest part of the target's mind, and sure enough, the entire psychic world around them immediately displayed a reaction. Firstly, all of Liu Shouyi's colleagues in the surrounding area immediately turned toward them, following which some of them contacted their supervisors, while others called out for security.

In Adam's past experience, the superiors of those who worked in such oppressive environments generally were generally manifested as aberrations or anomalies in the psychic world.

This was because those superiors were a major source of psychological pressure for those subjects, and with emotional baggage building up over long periods of time, even if those superiors didn't evolve into anomalies, it was a very common sight to see them appear as aberrations.

However, the situation this time was completely different.

Right as Adam fused with one of his anomalies and turned around to prepare for battle, he was greeted by the sight of an "angel".

This "angel" had a very strange appearance. Not only was it of oriental descent, it had a bulging belly and flabby rolls all over its body. Most importantly, this supposed angel's wings were black, but there was no faking the holy light radiating from its body.

Adam had seen this type of light in Li Qi's psychic world, and the holy light radiating from this angel's body was rather faint, but it definitely did exist.

In order to verify that this angel was indeed considered to be a positive force in this psychic world, Adam turned to gauge Liu Shouyi's reaction, and sure enough, following the angel's arrival, the anxiety and guilt in his eyes had abated slightly.

At this point, the security guards downstairs had also stormed into the room, and this was the first time that Adam was facing a situation like this, so he didn't know whether to fight or try and defuse.

"Let's all be civilized now. I'm here to help Liu Shouyi."

After a few seconds of contemplation, Adam refrained from choosing violence. After all, up to this point, he still didn't know how powerful Liu Shouyi's anomaly was, assuming one existed at all, and if he were to make an enemy out of Liu Shouyi from the get-go, that could very much come back to bite him later down the line.

After so many days of searching, he had finally found what appeared to be a suitable subject, and he couldn't afford to squander this opportunity.

"You're here to help him?" the angelic supervisor asked as he scrutinized Adam. "Who are you?"

"I'm..."

In his current form, Adam was quite terrifying to behold, but everyone in the psychic world was like bystanders in a dream, and they weren't particularly afraid of him.

Seeing as Adam couldn't provide an answer to the question, two of the security guards quickly approached him, then grabbed onto his arms to escort him out of the building.

The two security guards were very weak, only slightly stronger than the average person. They weren't very tall, either, and Adam knew that there was no way that they would've been able to do anything to him. Even if he were to only use 10% of his current strength, he would've been able to easily send the pair of security guards flying back by over 10 meters, but he refrained from doing so.

Once again, he didn't want to get on the host's bad side before he ascertained just how powerful the anomaly in this psychic world was.

"Alright, I'll leave."

Adam took a glance a the portly angel once last time before allowing himself to be escorted out of the room by the pair of security guards.

After being escorted out of the building, he was subsequently taken out of the complex, and he couldn't help but marvel at all of the high-end buildings that he saw outside.

The Gaia Corporation must be extremely wealthy, considering this entire massive area belongs to them.

The Gaia Corporation's headquarters was situated on the outskirts of Prosper City, which was another metropolis like Sandrise City, where land was worth its weight in gold, and it was extremely rare to see a single company's industrial complex taking up virtually half a district in such a metropolis,

After being kicked out of the Gaia Corporation's headquarters, Adam didn't waste any more time here.

This wasn't the real world, and in here, there were many ways to learn more about someone's past, such as through their psychic modules.

All of one's deep-rooted memories would leave psychic modules in their mind, and Adam didn't have to go very far before the surrounding streets came to an abrupt end. He stepped over a dark rift, arriving in another one of Liu Shouyi's psychic modules.

In this module was a mansion that was constructed halfway up a mountain. In contrast with the smart apartments inhabited by the impoverished and underprivileged, this mansion took up a massive area, with large distances separating the living areas, and privacy was also quite good.

Outside the mansion was a massive private pool and spa with a group of gorgeous women playing inside, but Liu Shouyi was staying indoors with a glum look on his face.

"What's wrong with you? Why do you look like that all the time?"

Seated across from him was his superior, Liu Shouren, who was sipping on some champagne.

The names "Liu Shouren" and "Liu Shouyi" were very similar, and Adam had been quite surprised by this discovery after spotting the name on the angel's work badge right before he was escorted out of the building. Given the similarity in their names, they were most likely not just colleagues at work, but also brothers.

In the east, the characters for "ren" and "yi" carried special meanings.

"I... You already know why."

Liu Shouyi seemed to be rather unsure of how to reply to this question, or simply reluctant to offer a response.

"I know what you're thinking." Liu Shouyi took a quick glance at their surroundings as he spoke, then placed his communicator somewhere far away before raising the music to the highest volume, seemingly worried about their conversation being monitored. "You're worried about all those dead people, right?"

"That's right. Their data is already incomplete, if that data is compressed even further, even their most basic memories will have been compressed into the smallest of data packs. Even if someone pays the money to have their date 'resurrected' later on, the extracted data will be filled in by artificial intelligence based on previous memories. Essentially, those compressed people are dead!"

"Listen to me!" Liu Shouyi took a deep breath, then declared, "They're already dead to begin with!"

"But their memories still exist..."

"That's not something we should be worrying about, do you understand? Why did we come all the way here from the east? So we could enjoy better lives! We studied harder than anyone else as kids, enduring more hardships than anyone around us. Have you forgotten what we did all of that for?" Liu Shouyi picked up the bottle of champagne on the table as he spoke. "How much did this bottle of champagne cost? 17,000! Does it taste good? Who knows?

“Perhaps hillbillies like us don't have the refined taste to truly appreciate things like this, but at the very least, we can drink it whenever we want! How much did this bag of chocolate cost? 450! The average person can't afford this bag of chocolate even after putting in an entire day of manual labor! And those women outside, look at how sexy they are! With our shitty looks, if we didn't have money, they wouldn't even look at us, do you understand?"

"But... But... We're killing people! We're killing tens of thousands of people every month! We're butchers!"

1. In Chinese, the character for "ren" (仁) means benevolence, while the character for "yi" (义) means righteousness. These two characters are often used together (仁义) to describe someone as both benevolent and righteous.