The Wind in Los Angeles Carried No Taste of Salt
Luke fell asleep quickly, Sing Sing tiptoed out of the ward.
In the doctor's office, Wenxi was still arguing with Old Qiu, but Old Zhou couldn't be bothered to pay them any attention.
Do you know any Mutants with healing abilities?
The Wandering Girl tilted her head and pondered intently for a while.
During her years as a wanderer, she met many strange people like herself, but she had never encountered Mutants who could heal.
"No."
"Okay, let's go back to the Siheyuan first. I need to get something, and then you'll have to take me to Los Angeles."
The Wandering Girl nodded obediently and gently placed her hand on Sing Sing's forearm.
A faint purple light flickered.
Sing Sing went back inside and pulled out his suitcase. "Let's go, it shouldn't be dark yet in Los Angeles at this time."
"I have to rush back after dropping you off; Director Wang has scheduled me for the early shift tomorrow."
"OK."
The Wandering Girl bit her lip and hesitated for a long time before saying, "Brother Zhou."
"What?"
What happened with Luke... wasn't your fault.
Sing Sing reached out his free hand and gently patted the Wandering Girl's shoulder. "Let's get going, I'm in a hurry to get to work overtime."
The two landed in a secluded alley, with the evening sky overhead.
"Alright, you can go back now."
The Wandering Girl stood there staring at him for several seconds, the evening wind blowing her wine-red short hair to one side.
She wanted to say something, but in the end she just raised her chin and disappeared.
Sing Sing adjusted his suit collar and walked out of the alley.
Los Angeles is a city that never sleeps; the colorful neon lights illuminate everyone's faces with a distorted quality.
He stopped at an intersection and looked at the news feed scrolling across the street on an electronic screen.
The footage shows a member of Congress on Capitol Hill giving a speech about Mutants, arguing that in order to protect the safety of ordinary citizens, the authorities must implement necessary controls on this special group.
The scrolling text below indicates that Los Angeles police have arrested three unregistered Mutants this week, including one minor.
Sing Sing looked away.
The three people Charles mentioned live in this city.
Longneck and Gebu, and that guy named Bailey.
Including Storm Ororo, there are four people.
The four targets were thus scattered throughout the vast urban jungle of tens of millions of people.
Sing Sing reached out and pulled his hat brim down a little.
If the Los Angeles Police Department and the Silver Peak Consortium have already cast a wide net, these four individuals would certainly already be on their watch lists or wanted posters.
Going directly to find him isn't realistic; he's wiped out all of Silver Peak's pursuers, but there's no guarantee he won't have other hidden trails trailing behind him.
Even the serious injury to Luke was suspected to be the work of Old Zhou Silver Peak.
Since these capitalists like to play the game of collective punishment, let's first wipe out their branches here completely.
An hour later, at the library.
Sing Sing Chow's fingers flew across the keyboard; those server firewalls were practically useless to him.
They easily hacked into the Los Angeles business registration database and added the name "Silver Peak" to the backend search results.
Public information about the West Coast branch of the Silver Peak Consortium is scarce; it only publicly lists a company called Deep Blue Bioremediation.
Let's follow this lead and investigate further.
This bioremediation company owns three security companies, two cold chain logistics companies, and a special drug research and development center.
Interestingly, all of these companies have warehouses located in the same place: the Vernon Industrial District.
The park is an independent facility, and its area is actually not very large.
However, judging from the fire safety filings and electricity bills over the past six months, the electricity consumption in this dilapidated place is alarmingly high.
Those two-story bungalows on the surface don't normally use this much electricity.
There must be a huge underground space hidden below.
Sing Sing casually clicked on the latest freight declaration for cold chain logistics.
At 11 PM tonight, a shipment of goods labeled as cryogenic medical samples will be escorted by a security company under Silver Peak and transported to another state via heavy-duty refrigerated trucks.
The escorting party openly and blatantly displayed the name "Special Retrieval Group".
"Low-temperature samples?" Sing Sing sneered. "These bastards really treat living people like chilled meat."
He silently memorized the address, closed the webpage, got up, and left the library.
Arriving at the Vernon Industrial District, Old Zhou strolled around the park.
The main entrance is equipped with access control, and four armed security guards with riot dogs are patrolling back and forth.
A wide unloading passage runs along the side of the park, and the drainage ditch to the north is welded shut with steel bars, but this poses no challenge to him at all.
After scouting the area, Old Zhou realized he still had plenty of time, so he decided to do something. He left the industrial zone and hailed a taxi.
"Let's go to Chinatown."
There's an inconspicuous weapons shop on the street corner.
The shop owner was a thin, elderly man in his sixties, wearing reading glasses and sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper.
Sing Sing pushed open the glass door and went inside.
Various swords, spears, and halberds hung on the wall, but he ignored the fancy handicrafts and instead focused his gaze on an old shelf in the corner.
A long, hardwood spear sat on the shelf.
The gun barrel was dark red and looked quite heavy. It had a threaded joint in the middle and could be disassembled into three sections.
The spearhead has been sharpened.
Sing Sing walked over, picked up the gun barrel, and weighed it in his hand.
"Sir, how much is this gun?"
The old man slowly put down his newspaper. "Those are ash wood poles used in actual combat; we don't sell them to tourists casually."
Without wasting words, Sing Sing gripped the middle of the gun barrel with his right hand and flicked his wrist.
The spearhead flickered, leaving a blurry afterimage, and the red tassel snapped open in the air with a sonic boom.
The old man exclaimed in surprise, "A connoisseur, huh?"
"Hey, when you're out and about, you always need to carry a handy self-defense tool." Sing Sing deftly disassembled the gun barrel and neatly put the three wooden sections back together.
"Boss, name your price, how much is this?"
Six hundred US dollars.
Sing Sing pulled out his wallet, counted out six hundred dollars, and slapped it on the counter. "I'll take the gun. Also, could you please give me an invoice?"
"What?"
"The invoice!" Sing Sing pointed to the notepad on the counter.
"The heading should be 'Overseas Special Talent Recruitment Office of China 749 Bureau,' and the product name should be 'Overseas Office Supplies Procurement.'"
"You need an invoice for this kind of murder weapon?"
"How can this be called a murder weapon? This is a prop for promoting traditional culture!"
In the end, the old man still issued an invoice, Sing Sing carefully folded and put into the inside pocket of his suit.
He even gave the gun a resounding name: the Overlord Spear.
Carrying a suitcase and Overlord Spear, Old Zhou walked into a Chinese restaurant on the street.
There weren't many people in the restaurant at that time, so he found an empty seat in the corner and sat down.
"Boss! A large bowl of beef noodles, extra beef, scallions, and cilantro, please!"
The steaming hot noodles were served quickly, topped with large chunks of beef.
Sing Sing picked up his chopsticks, ready to start eating, when a person wearing a red and black bodysuit sat down opposite him.
"You actually have the nerve to eat noodles?! You stole my meager savings and ruined my secure job! And you still have the nerve to eat noodles?!"
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