New Clues

Sometimes, you just have to push a bastard a little harder.

After Li Wei briefly mentioned the portable power bank to Starlight, earning a few sweet kisses, a round of approving laughter from Vought employees, and some photos for publicity, he had barely left the Vought building when Hughie called again, saying they'd cracked it. They'd found out Ezekiel was bisexual and into group sex, which completely contradicted his public image. Ezekiel had repeatedly stood in public, in the name of God's faithful servant, praying for all gay men in the world to disappear, firmly saying no to homosexuality. If the truth came out, his persona would collapse entirely—not even Vought's PR department could save him. So Hughie used a mix of coaxing and coercion to get Ezekiel to spill part of the truth.

The place where Kimiko was being held was just a temporary lab. In reality, they were shipping Compound V to multiple hospitals across the country, using critically ill patients there as test subjects. Without knowing about Compound V, ordinary doctors could hardly figure out how the patients actually died, often just writing it off as a terminal flare-up—commercialized American doctors don't have much medical conscience left. Now they'd gone even further, starting to target children's hospitals, which Butcher and the others couldn't understand or tolerate. So they decided to investigate and passed the relevant info to Li Wei.

Butcher's team had already made their decision: now that Gambit's goal was clear, at least until Homelander was taken down, they could become temporary allies. Of course, they wouldn't stop their own investigations. Right now, all their intel had been dug up by the other side, while they only knew he was a young Asian male. Their combat power wasn't even on the same level to begin with, and now the information gap was extreme, leaving them with zero bargaining chips—it was eating at them.

Li Wei, however, knew that injecting Compound V in infancy yielded the best results. Repeated doses after that could not only strengthen the body to some extent but also potentially awaken superpowers. The older the subject, the higher the fatality rate and the worse the effects, unless they were one of the rare gifted individuals or special exceptions like the main crew, blessed by fate. As far as Li Wei knew, there were fewer than ten such people: Butcher, Mother's Milk, Frenchie, Hughie, Hughie's dad, Kimiko, and Kimiko's brother, whom Li Wei was still searching for. See—either the main crew or their close relatives, which was exactly why Li Wei had the patience to play house with Butcher and the others. Finally, there was Victoria Neuman, aka Head-popper, who could control blood and hadn't shown up yet, and her underage daughter, Zoe.

It's worth noting that Neuman wasn't a registered Vought superhero—she was a politician, the kind qualified to run for president. Incredible, right? While Vought's Vice President, Madelyn, was scheming to get superheroes into the military without success, someone had already left her far behind. But of course, that wasn't entirely Neuman's own effort; the main reason was her hidden identity as the adopted daughter of Edgar, the true controller of Vought's 82nd floor and its CEO. That, however, had nothing to do with Li Wei for now—he didn't want to deal with her prematurely.

Neuman's blood-manipulation ability was pretty strong. Even weaker superheroes could get their heads popped by her, which earned her the nickname Head-popper. She was also a major threat to top-tier supers—she once made Starlight's nose bleed silently as a warning. By that logic, she could threaten Li Wei too. And, true to the usual traits of Vought supers, her defense was formidable; ordinary guns or acid did nothing to her. Plus, even if she didn't pop heads, popping other body parts was no joke, especially for men. They had one more weak spot than women, with dense blood vessels there, making them particularly vulnerable to Neuman.

Li Wei hadn't yet gotten Kimiko's Super Healing, so taking a hit like that would be no laughing matter—even if he recovered later, it might leave psychological scars. Luckily, Li Wei had no conflict with Neuman for now, and they might even cooperate down the line. He was very interested in blood-manipulation abilities. As everyone knows, a man's erection relies on blood flow—if you could control blood, couldn't you make it permanent? Li Wei didn't really need that, but he was genuinely curious. Thinking about it, Neuman's husband probably got squeezed pretty hard at home.

Maybe he should move up his trip to Godolkin University. There was a black woman there with the same ability as Neuman, though he didn't know if she'd enrolled yet. After sorting through the intel, Li Wei went to a nearby supermarket, bought a bunch of snacks, and casually tossed a lollipop into his mouth. As a superhero, he burned a lot of energy daily, so a big appetite was normal. More importantly, if things went smoothly, the children's hospital Butcher's team had pointed out housed a Super-powered Baby who could shoot lasers from his eyes. Li Wei planned to bribe the kid with those snacks later and see if he could copy that ability. Along the way, he'd test another theory of his: his system required an affirmative response from the target to start copying—so how did you judge consent from someone who couldn't speak or was mute?

After shopping, Li Wei found a spot to change into casual clothes, put on a mask and glasses, and dressed himself up like a nerd. Then he hailed a taxi, planning to head to the children's hospital. Even though his strength was already considerable, he decided to keep a low profile until Butcher and the others truly drew Homelander's attention. As the taxi pulled away, he habitually scanned his surroundings and suddenly noticed something unexpected—someone was tailing him. After a quick thought, he guessed it wasn't Vought; they wouldn't be this amateur. Vought had plenty of registered security companies for maintaining order at superhero events—they could find someone better than this, let alone the many supers at their disposal. The famous A-Train, for instance, was the perfect tracker: over 300 meters per second, with reaction speed to match—absolutely ridiculous.

This even gave rise to two very specific memes online: the "snatch-the-meal style" and the "force-feed style."

The idea is that with A-Train's speed, he doesn't need to fight his enemies head-on—he just uses his incredible velocity to steal their food, and they'll starve to death.

The force-feed style needs no further explanation; the enemy's death would come from being stuffed to death.

Even though Li Wei felt his own strength was already considerable, he had no good countermeasures against A-Train employing these two tactics.

If he truly had to oppose him, the best approach would be a surprise attack to instantly kill A-Train, or use the newly acquired Psychic Remote Sensing to briefly control him before finishing him off.

Of course, given A-Train's pride, he would almost never resort to these methods.

But in a direct fight, A-Train posed little threat to top-tier superheroes.

In The Boys' World, most supers had low attack power but high defense, and A-Train was a typical example—he basically couldn't break through the defenses of someone at Li Wei or Starlight's level.

Logically, with his speed and mass, even inertia alone should deal devastating damage, but in reality, his attack power was at most on par with a sniper rifle.

He was the type who excelled at bullying the weak but could barely hold his own against true powerhouses—which was highly unscientific.

It was almost like Flash over at DC—whenever something big happened, he was the first to be sacrificed, never able to fully leverage his abilities.

But since even something as unscientific as Compound V existed, A-Train's issues were relatively minor; this was never a world that could be fully explained by science anyway!

That was a bit of a digression. After a quick thought, Li Wei figured that if nothing unexpected happened, the one following him would be Starlight.

However, Starlight was probably just trying to find out if she had been cheated on.

Li Wei had never really intended to have a romantic relationship with her, and with his daily pile of tasks, once he copied her superpowers, he definitely wouldn't have much time to play along with her.

From Starlight's perspective, this would look like Li Wei getting her body and then immediately cooling off toward her, acting like a total player.

After several probing attempts failed to yield clear results, she would naturally want to try uncovering the truth herself.

It had to be said, women were born actors—she hadn't shown a hint of it just now.

But for Li Wei, this wasn't necessarily a bad opportunity.

A purely naive and sweet Starlight wasn't much different from a blow-up doll to Li Wei. Maybe it was time to let her see the dark and cruel reality.

If she could accept it and decide to fight back, then they'd work together from there.

If not, he'd just kick her to the curb, to avoid bigger trouble down the line!