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Chapter 287: Conscience and Temptation

"What is it?"

Ryan was initially rather taken aback by Adam's serious tone, following which he noticed that there seemed to be something wrong with Sima Kai. He was seated in his chair in a completely limp fashion, and it was clear that he had lost consciousness.

"What happened to him?"

"We had a little... accident while we were investigating his psychic world, and he's already lost all consciousness."

"What does that mean?"

The average person didn't know much about adapters, so they had no idea what implications could arise from psychic mishaps.

"To put it in simpler terms, he's suffered psychic death."

"Psychic death?" Ryan had heard this term in the past, and his brows immediately furrowed tightly in response. "This is a major incident then!"

Everyone was selfish to a certain extent, and the first thing that Ryan thought of was what this incident entailed for him.

"I'm partially responsible for this, so I'm definitely going to lose my job!"

"Not necessarily," Adam said. "If you can get him back to his cell, I can take care of the rest, and no one has to know what happened."

"I'm not sure..."

Ryan was only a young and unseasoned warden, but he was still a warden nonetheless, and he was well aware of the things that happened in prison.

There was no shortage of inmates who passed away in Darvaza Prison each year. Some of them died during scuffles with other inmates, but most of them were killed under request from those on the outside in order to silence certain criminals before they could give up any sensitive information.

This wasn't a rare occurrence, but he had never gotten involved in something like this. He was just a warden, and he feared both legal repercussions and losing his job, so he had stayed far away from such dealings up to this point.

Hence, his initial reaction to Adam's proposal was one of fear, and that led to an automatic rejection.

"No, I can't do this! If I get exposed, it's over for me!"

Ryan was shaking his head frantically with a fearful look in his eyes.

"How could anyone possibly find out? He's an old man, and he doesn't appear to be in the best health. It's no surprise that he would suffer some type of heart condition from being tazed. It's just an accident!"

Adam was trying to think from Ryan's perspective, and he could see that Ryan's primary fear was potential legal repercussions, while his secondary fear was losing his job.

Hence, the key was to find a way for Ryan to be made exempt from all culpability.

"You're just a normal person, not an adapter. If you see someone laying slumped over in a chair, your first reaction should be that they've fallen unconscious, not that they've suffered psychic death, right?"

"Yes, but the judge won't believe that."

"This incident most likely won't go to court. As long as you can get him back to his cell, we'll have someone take care of the rest. Even if something goes wrong, you can just avoid all culpability by claiming that you had no idea what was happening."

"Then you shouldn't have told me so much in the first place."

"I'm afraid I had to. If you actually had no idea what was happening, there could be even more trouble. Perhaps you'll get one of your colleagues to help you, or you'll call for some doctor, and more people would get involved. In any case, the incident has already happened. If you want to keep your job, then you have to be in the know."

"Was this really just an accident?" Ryan asked.

Adam faltered slightly upon hearing this.

Ryan was clearly asking this out of a sense of conscience and responsibility, and Adam wasn't accustomed to dealing with someone with a conscience.

With that in mind, Adam decided to appeal to Ryan's sense of conscience and justice. He led Ryan over to the psychic projection recorder, then showed him some parts of the process in which the anomaly was killed, explaining the sequence of events without exposing any of his own secrets.

"We didn't think that killing the anomaly would result in the death of the host as well. It turns out that Sima Kai and his anomaly were already one and the same," Adam sighed. "This is the first time I've encountered a situation like this."

"So he was just an anomaly in human skin." Ryan said as a hint of contempt appeared in his eyes. "I get it now."

It was an accident, and Sima Kai was a terrible human being anyway, so Ryan didn't feel so terrible about assisting in the coverup.

However, Adam still didn't think that this was enough.

Regardless of whether someone was a good person or a bad person, everyone was short on money in this world. Even though Ryan had a stable job, he could definitely do with more money in such a materialistic world, particularly one in which even one's lifespan could be extended with money.

In Adam's eyes, he needed more incentive.

"Ryan, I'm sure you're aware of what I've been doing recently. In this line of work, accidents are unavoidable. If there aren't people like me, those deranged criminals hiding in society will only become even more rampant. Given Mechguard's rigid method of law enforcement, law and order can only be maintained on the surface.

“There are so many putrid individuals like Shaun out there that we have no idea about. Perhaps it's not correct to say this, but in my eyes, people like Shaun and Sima Kai deserve to die! If this incident gets exposed, my team and I will definitely be at least suspended, if not fired outright. Seeing as it was just an accident, why not just let it slide?"

Ryan had no counterargument to this. It was exactly because of his sense of justice that he held Adam in such high esteem.

"I understand that you're taking a massive risk, and it doesn't make sense for you to go so far without just reward. As I'm sure you're aware, I managed to earn some money back in Shadow City. If you can help me with this, I'll give you some compensation in the form of cryptocurrency, what do you think?"

"But..."

"I'll give you 5,000,000 dollars, and I'll help you launder the money if required. I know many company owners, and we just so happen to be getting into a new video game venture. Exchanges are regularly taking place between money and virtual currencies in games, so it's very easy to launder money."

That was the final piece that was required to convince Ryan.

"Alright, I'll help you."

After convincing Ryan to help him with the coverup, Adam made a call to Cowboy to confirm some things and inform Cowboy of Ryan's cooperation in the matter.

After that, Ryan picked up Sima Kai on his back and prepared to leave.

However, he had only just opened the door when he ran into Li Xiang, and cold sweat instantly began to bead up on his forehead.

"What's up?"

"I just so happened to be nearby, and you've been in there for a while, so I decided to come and check up on you. What happened to him?"

"Don't worry about it. He was touching himself again while looking at other people's heads, so I tazed him, and he fell unconscious."

"What a piece of work. Let me give you a hand."

"It's fine. This guy's not Dwight, I can carry him on my own. You can show our guests the way out in the meantime."

Li Xiang seemed to be even younger than Ryan, and he didn't think much about the situation before escorting Adam and his group out of the interrogation room.

Adam and the others pretended as if nothing had happened, packing up their recording equipment before departing while making small talk with Li Xiang.