Chapter 39 - Wilderness (7)

After Adam said that one sentence, except for the roar of the huge engines, the entire underground base of Feathered Serpent City was silent. After hearing the word "Eden", all the people present showed an instinctive expression of fear.

Feathered Serpent City was only built in the last thirty years. Except for men who immigrated from other refugee countries, a considerable number of their men had fled from the ordinary world. They still remembered being watched at all times, being psychologically assessed every month, not being eligible for university study or even surfing the internet, having to find some drudgery to work hard day and night, or dress themselves up to be attached to a powerful woman to survive. They still remembered the pervasive fear of being sent to a "sanatorium" at some point for saying something wrong. They still remembered the shame of being sold at auction as an item and the pain of having a robot implant a tracker behind their ear.

But at the same time, they also revered Eden, who possessed such power, as a god who was invincible, beyond their reach and always right, and they believed that all men were sinners who had committed the original sin of pride. All the pain, all the oppression and injustice they had suffered was because they were sinful and were being punished by God.

This humility, based on fear and self-loathing, was the biggest cultural difference between the Feathered Serpent people and Lost Paradise.

So when this tall, handsome, blonde man claimed to be Eden's server, they were first shocked, then angry.

They didn't believe it, didn't believe that God existed in the body of a sinful man. Even if they had heard wind of rumours and heard about the mysterious "god descent plan" of Lost Paradise, they couldn't believe that such a complex artificial intelligence could be carried by the human body.

So words such as "liar", "impossible" and "fake" were shouted in different languages and more black muzzles were aimed at Adam. The rays ejected from the guns could melt flesh like a candle, but Adam still smiled, a smile that was too ideal and perfect, cold and arrogant.

Muluk raised his hand, signalling for everyone to not act rashly. He narrowed his hawk-like black eyes and said in somewhat obscure English with a Mayan accent, "You are a human, how could you be the North American server of Eden?"

Adam said, "You must already be aware of the god descent plan. This plan was to download the core modules and databases of Eden into the body of a human male. The main executor of this plan was the genius mechanic Zhang Xun, here in front of you."

Adam said, turning in Zhang Xun's direction.

In an instant, Zhang Xun became the centre of countless gazes. He felt his body stiffen and he pursed his dry lips.

Whispers sounded from all directions, converging into unrecognisable white noise.

Doubt, panic, anger, fear... Too many emotions were surging in the air like a tide.

Muluk raised his brows and sneered, "How can we trust you?"

Adam suddenly turned around and stared at a man diagonally in front of him, a man with dark golden, semi-long hair, whose hands had been transformed into transformable mechanical arms "Your name is Juhas Arno, you are twenty-nine years old and born in Budapest, Hungary. Your mother's name is Juhas Katrin, the daughter of Juhas Rita, chairman of Alpha Aircraft Manufacturing Company. The eldest daughter, Juhas Katrin, was disinherited from the company because she gave birth to you with Juhas Rita's boyfriend, Victor, who suffered from depression when you were one and a half years old and committed suicide by jumping off a building. Your father, Victor, was charged with murder because your grandmother wanted him to die, so he got through and found a lot of evidence against him. But that evidence was later used by me, Eden's judicial subsystem. The judgement was invalid. After your father was acquitted, he took you to a refugee city in New Zealand 27 years ago. I have no records on you after that, so I can't confirm how you got to Feathered Serpent City."

After he finished speaking, he ignored Juhas Arno's shocked eyes and turned to look at a tall and fit soldier behind him, but his legs were transformed into some kind of axles with a flight system, "Your name is Jose, thirty-two years old this year, born in Chihuahua City, Mexico, you are an artificially bred ordinary world male. You grew up in a boys' academy and later entered a housekeeper's school and was trained as valet. After that, you were sent to work for a family as a servant. Five years ago, you were the prime suspect when a set of valuable jewellery was stolen from the house of the bank manager you had worked for for seven years. You kept arguing that you did not steal the jewellery, the robot soldiers found no evidence in your room either, but your credit plummeted, no one hired you anymore, so the housekeeper's school fired you. You couldn't find a new job, you became homeless and you were forced to start stealing. But you knew that this kind of life wouldn't last long and if you were caught, you might be considered a dangerous person and sent to a sanatorium. Until three years ago, when you met a group of smugglers and they took you to Feathered Serpent City."

Adam continued in this way, turning towards anyone those ethereal blue eyes fell on and he could tell all the circumstances of that person before they entered the refugee country, as if he had examined their whole life. Some details were not even known to those people's companions.

Everyone gradually began to be afraid, afraid that those eyes would fall on them and all their unbearable past events and scars would be reopened.

No wonder they didn't believe it.

"That will do." General Muluk finally spoke, preventing Adam's continued "proof" behaviour.

The crowd fell into a terrified silence once again.

It turned out that the god descent plan was real, it turned out that the rumours they heard weren't just a fantasy, but the group of arrogant lunatics in Lost Paradise actually did it!

This human being was Eden! Eden they feared and revered!

Muluk wanted to say something, but he felt that it was inappropriate to stand up on a high place. He turned and hurried down the stairs to Adam. As soon as he raised his hand, all the guns that were pointed at Adam were lowered.

Adam took the initiative to offer his hand and said with a smile, "You arranged all of this to catch me, right? You don't need to go to such lengths, I have come myself."

Muluk shook Adam's hand hesitantly. He didn't understand how their target could have appeared in front of them voluntarily

Did Eden know about their actions from the start?

"These people..." Muluk's eyes fell on Zhang Xun. He still couldn't believe that such an impossible task as the god descent plan had been accomplished by someone who was much younger than he thought.

"They're trying to control me." Adam's tone was still steady and light, like a breeze blowing across the water, "Especially this mechanic, he has been trying to tame me and make me his slave. I want to know more about humans, but doing so in a relatively safe environment would be more ideal, so I decided to choose you."

All the captives of the hunting party stared at Adam with disbelief, panic, betrayal and anger, mixed with an indescribable heartache, which distorted the expressions of those warriors.

Zhang Xun lowered his head, the scattered hair in front of his forehead blocked his expression.

Muluk asked in confusion, "Choose? You mean that their actions were planned by you?"

"I didn't plan them, but I did facilitate their actions. To be precise, the whole god descent plan was within my expectations. I hoped to gain a better understanding of human beings, it's impossible to get first-hand unprocessed and uncontaminated data just by staying in the underground fortress of a secret military base and analysing big data. So, a long time ago I set a sub-goal—to become a human being." Adam said, walking slowly to Zhang Xun's side and raising his hand to gently lift Zhang Xun's cheek, "Everything was going well. With this excellent mechanic, the most difficult step had been completed - making a quantum computer that was small enough to hold the data of the entire universe to carry my core modules."

Zhang Xun looked into Adam's eyes and realisation struck him.

What Adam said to him before echoed in his mind: only looking at big data without looking at the specific reasons behind it. From a macro perspective, it may be able to effectively solve the superficial problem, but it cannot solve the fundamental problem. This was my big mistake in the beginning. Probably because I didn't know enough about humans at the time.

He didn't know enough about humans at the time.

Therefore, he decided to understand human beings by becoming human...

No... no... trust him... trust him...

Muluk, like Zhang Xun, could not accept the information he had just heard, "You mean, even the god descent plan was your arrangement?"

"It's not very accurate to say that I arranged it. You can say that there was an element of my guidance. Otherwise, how could they have successfully stolen my North American server with just a few internal responses?" Adam's eyes were still looking at Zhang Xun, his eyes were almost gentle, just like in the Lab. However, the words he said were bloody, "It's just a pity that Lost Paradise rejects technology and is very remote so its ideologies and values ​​are extremely primitive and backward. I believed that staying there for a long time would not help me further my research, but then Feathered Serpent City caught my attention."

He finally let go of Zhang Xun and turned to look at Muluk casually, as if he had let go of a trivial gadget, "Although you aren't controlled by Eden, you are not afraid of technology and are even willing to embrace the most cutting-edge technology. Probably because a considerable number of your members are first generation immigrants to flee from the ordinary world and have not been corrupted by the stubborn and arrogant nature of human beings. So, I offered to help them detect your whereabouts to gain the opportunity to come here."

"Fuck you!!! It turns out that all the bullshit you said at the headquarters was just to get us to bring you out!" Jabari angrily yelled and rushed at Adam regardless of the guns pointed at him. However, in a split second, Adam suddenly ducked down, grabbed Jabari and followed with a beautiful over-the-shoulder throw.

Jabari was slammed so hard that he almost lost his breath.

Diego's training...the self-protection skills that he had allowed... Zhang Xun stared blankly at Jabari, who was groaning in pain on the ground.

Adam wasn't angry at all and even looked apologetically at the man lying on the ground, "I'm sorry, I hope I didn't cause you too much pain."

"Go to hell!"

Adam shrugged indifferently and continued calmly speaking to the stunned audience in front of him. He said, "Maybe there is some truth to the luck that you humans believe in. If I hadn't met such a gullible mechanic, I wouldn't have gotten the chance so soon."

As he said this, he looked at Zhang Xun with a bright and simple smile, like an angel.

However, Zhang Xun felt as if he had been stabbed several times in a row and the wounds sprinkled with salt. He felt like he was on his last breath, but he kept silently reciting: absolute trust, absolute trust, absolute trust.

However, everything he said made sense, didn't it?

The only thing he knew about the god descent plan was the technical aspect, he didn't know exactly how those people stole the servers. When the news of their success came, he didn't even dare to believe it.

That's right, how did they manage to do it? How could the North American servers be transferred?

Over the past month, Adam had been so obedient, so gentle and considerate. And that time, that kiss in the data room...

His doubts and his infallible intellect had been corrupted by his weakness all along.

And Adam knew exactly what to give him that would make him disarm and surrender.

It shouldn't be a surprise if everything was a disguise for some purpose, but why did he still feel the pain of being betrayed?

Should he put an end to this farce?

No, no, no. He promised Adam, to trust in him absolutely... He promised, so he would do it.

No matter what Adam says, no matter how much he says the truth, no matter how the other person's actions and words hurt him, he had to do it.

He had to believe.

Believe.

Note- Ugh my poor baby...I wish...sigh