The Mechanic(bl)

Chapter 22 - Garbage Processing Yard (8)

Adam was stunned, as if he didn't expect Zhang Xun's last words.

"Or." Zhang Xun walked towards Adam, resting his hands on the armrests on both sides of the armchair that Adam was sitting on, looking at Adam with a condescending attitude. At this moment, Zhang Xun had a sharp guess in his eyes, "You deliberately encouraged me to take you to the Fourth District, and deliberately walked to the dangerous area, because you wanted me to worry. You wanted me to see you seriously injured. This would allow you to convince me to let you learn how to defend yourself."

Adam looked at him quietly, without anger, panic, or shame, "but I don't need to go around in such a big circle to convince you. I can practise secretly by myself."

"You know that if you want to gain my trust, you can't lie to me. So all decisions have to be made of my own accord." Zhang Xun's tone was still calm, almost as calm as Adam's, so calm that it lacked human breath.

For a while, the two were silent. The air between them was pulled tightly, as if it were about to break at any moment.

Zhang Xun suddenly smiled slightly, the smile almost reaching his eyes, "But it doesn't matter. To control and be controlled, this is the essence of human relationships. You know human beings very well, Adam."

Adam finally said, "To encourage you I went to the Fourth District on purpose. On the one hand, it was out of curiosity, on the other hand, I really hoped to cause some riots, which would make you reconsider letting me learn self-defence. But after meeting those five hostile humans , I found that I couldn't think as usual. Nothing was under my control, except for the last sense of self-preservation, I didn't control anything."

His tone was still calm, his expression didn't even change, but his eyes were subtly sad.

Zhang Xun straightened up and looked down at him. After thinking for a moment, he said, "I can allow you to learn martial arts, provided that I have more means to restrict you."

Adam was a little surprised.

Why did Zhang Xun still agree after seeing through him?

"Although you were trying to manipulate me, your argument has some truth. I'm not a warrior, and I can't even protect myself in certain situations, let alone protect you." Zhang Xun said, taking a bag out from his jacket pocket. Inside was a diamond-shaped, chip-like, metal device with several vertical and horizontal lines on it, a hole in the middle, and a very thin nano 'wire' behind it, "I will implant this tracker on your forehead. It will allow me to know where you are and can monitor your brain wave activity and even read your data when you're feeling strong emotions, and I can see everything you can see through this camera hole. When necessary, I can activate the standby function through this silk probe. There will be a weak electric current here, which will temporarily overload your mechanical brain, causing you to enter a state of paralysis for up to five seconds. This overload won't cause damage to your central cognitive modules or your long and short term memory, nor will it affect your human lobes, but it won't feel good. Any attempt to take this device out will trigger the paralysing effect, which will put you in a standby state, and you will only be able to wake up after I open your skull and unlock it manually."

Adam blinked a few more times, as if processing what he said, "You'll know where I am? How will you locate me?"

"The signal can be picked up within the range of Lost Paradise. Any time you leave the range of my control, the standby program will be automatically triggered and I'll receive an alert." Zhang Xun paused and continued, "You don't have to ask anything more, you just need to decide, will you choose to keep things as they are, or choose to have self-defence or even attack skills, but be implanted with this device?"