The sun was setting, and its fading rays shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the top-floor office in Fisk Tower, falling upon a figure like a mountain of flesh seated in a custom-made luxury office chair.
In the faint golden light reflected from his skin, the figure's imposing face came into view.
He looked angry without trying, and that face alone could frighten plenty of children into tears.
He was bald, dressed in a white suit, over two meters tall, and weighed more than two hundred kilograms.
But he didn't look like the kind of fat man whose bulk was all flab.
Beneath the custom-made white suit, an astonishing mass of muscle seemed to coil across his body like a great dragon, holding immense, unmatched power.
He was Kingpin, Wilson Grant Fisk, the emperor of New York's underworld and even the entire North American underworld!
Fisk Tower was Kingpin's stronghold, located on the edge of Hell's Kitchen, bordering Brooklyn.
Even Kingpin didn't like having his residence situated entirely within the chaos of Hell's Kitchen.
At that moment, Kingpin was sitting there, looking down at a video playing on the computer in front of him.
The video showed a blond young man giving some thugs a vicious beating. His golden hair was medium-long, a white Hokage cloak fluttered around him, and he held a strange weapon called a Kunai.
Though the thugs getting beaten were nowhere near a match for the blond young man, they were still exceedingly arrogant. As they took their beating, they shouted, "Brat, we work for Boss Kingpin! Don't get too cocky!"
The blond young man ignored them, however. His expression didn't change in the slightest.
Without a word, he turned into a flash of golden light and instantly knocked the thugs down, leaving them bruised and unconscious on the ground.
Without a doubt, this was Minato Namikaze, played by Wu Chen!
The video had been filmed two days earlier, when Wu Chen was still working hard to increase his Minato Namikaze role-playing progress. To that end, he had accepted a mission from S.H.I.E.L.D. and was hard at work.
He had run into those thugs after completing the mission and parting ways with Natasha.
Wu Chen hadn't provoked them or done anything else. He had simply walked past them, intending to buy an ice cream cone.
But unexpectedly, they took a dislike to Minato Namikaze, stopped him outright, and taunted him.
So Wu Chen wasted no words and promptly beat them up. Even when they invoked Kingpin's name, he had no intention of stopping.
After all, Wu Chen had originally planned to clean up all of Hell's Kitchen, and Kingpin and his forces were included in that plan.
It was like this: would you be scared if one of your own chicks invoked the name of another rooster?
The others, however, didn't know about that and saw things differently.
There were several other people in the top-floor office of Fisk Tower, but without exception, none of them dared to interrupt Kingpin at that moment.
The long silence brought no peace. Instead, it was like a deeper darkness swallowing the sunlight and enveloping everyone in the office.
"I wonder, have I lain dormant in the dark for so long that people have forgotten what the name 'Kingpin' means?"
After a long while, Kingpin's enormous figure finally uttered those words in a deep voice.
"No! Your name has always been spoken in the dark, and everyone submits beneath your shadow!" a man in a black bodysuit hastily replied.
"Then why is there someone like this, disregarding and challenging my fearsome reputation!" Kingpin's voice turned vicious.
Although videos of Minato Namikaze beating up the Hulk and Hulk had long since been uploaded to YouTube, some videos of that kind had been taken down through S.H.I.E.L.D.'s intervention.
When Wu Chen learned of this, he had called S.H.I.E.L.D. to account, but after they explained, he let the matter drop.
There was no other reason: S.H.I.E.L.D. had paid far too much.
It was a trivial matter that didn't affect Wu Chen at all, yet S.H.I.E.L.D. had handed him a check for five hundred thousand when they apologized. They really had money to burn!
However, the check had to be cashed before it could be used, so the system shop didn't recognize it.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had done this not because they didn't want Minato Namikaze to become famous, but because they thought it was too conspicuous. It would be more effective to keep him as a secret trump card.
They had also brought in a special-effects company to say the footage circulating online was made with movie effects, and to tell everyone to look forward to the special-effects blockbuster "Ninja vs. Giant," which might be released the following year.
As a result, many people who didn't know the truth believed the explanation. After all, the officials had come forward to confirm it.
Kingpin and his people were among them. Although Kingpin was close to becoming mayor, he still couldn't access genuine classified information.
As he spoke, Kingpin stood up, his massive body casting an enormous shadow. His size, far beyond that of an ordinary man, and the distinct lines of muscle beneath his white suit made him look both dark and destructive.
The man who had just been talking to Kingpin immediately stood up and said, "Although I don't know how that guy manages to flash around like that, I think he's just an insignificant small fry."