New Clues

Sometimes, you just had to push bastards a little harder.

After Li Wei told Starlight about the portable power bank, received several sweet kisses and a round of approving laughter from Vought employees, and took a few photos for publicity, he had barely left Vought Tower when Hughie called again to say they had handled it.

They had learned that Ezekiel was bisexual and enjoyed group sex, which seriously contradicted his public image.

More than once in public, Ezekiel had prayed, in the name of being God's faithful servant, for every gay man in the world to disappear, firmly condemning homosexuality.

Once the truth was exposed, his entire persona would collapse. Not even Vought's PR department could save him.

So Hughie used a mix of coaxing and threats to make Ezekiel reveal part of the truth.

The place where Kimiko had been held was only a temporary laboratory. In truth, they had transported Compound V to multiple hospitals across the country and used critically ill patients there as test subjects.

Without knowing about Compound V, ordinary doctors found it difficult to determine exactly how patients had died. In the end, they often wrapped things up carelessly and blamed it on the recurrence of severe illness. America's thoroughly commercialized doctors did not have much compassion left.

Now they had gone even further and extended their reach to children's hospitals. That was something Butcher and the others could neither understand nor tolerate.

So they decided to investigate it themselves and passed the relevant information on to Li Wei.

Butcher and the others had already made their decision. Since Gambit's objective was now clear, they could at least become temporary allies until Homelander was brought down.

Of course, they definitely would not stop investigating him.

Now all their information had been figured out by the other side, while they only knew that he was a young Asian man.

Their combat strength had never been on the same level to begin with, and now the information gap was enormous. They had absolutely no leverage to bargain with, which made them feel awful.

Li Wei, however, knew very well that Compound V worked best when injected during infancy.

After repeated injections, it could not only strengthen the body to some degree, but could also potentially produce superpowers.

The older someone was, the higher the usual fatality rate and the worse the results.

Only a very small number of exceptionally gifted people, or special existences blessed by fate like the main cast, could be exceptions.

According to what Li Wei knew, there were fewer than ten such people in total.

Butcher, Mother's Milk, Frenchie, Hughie, Hughie's father, Kimiko, and Kimiko's Brother, whom Li Wei was searching for.

See? They were either part of the main cast or relatives connected to them. That was why Li Wei was willing to patiently play house with Butcher and the others.

Lastly, there was Zoe, the underage daughter of Victoria Neuman, the woman who could control blood and was commonly known as Head-popper, who had not yet appeared for the time being.

It was worth mentioning that Neuman was not a registered Vought Superhero. She was a politician, the kind qualified to run for president.

Pretty unbelievable, right? While Vought's Vice President, Madelyn, had been painstakingly trying to get Superheroes into the military without success, someone had already gotten far ahead of her.

Of course, that was not entirely Neuman's own achievement. More importantly, she had another hidden identity: the adopted daughter of Edgar, the true controller of Vought's eighty-second floor and its president.

But that had nothing to do with Li Wei for now. He did not want to deal with her ahead of time.

Neuman's blood-control ability was quite powerful. Even ordinary, weaker Superheroes could have their heads exploded by her, which was why she had earned the title Head-popper.

She was also an enormous threat to front-line Superheroes. She had once silently made Starlight's nose bleed as a warning.

Judging from that, she could threaten Li Wei as well, at least in his current state.

At the same time, based on the usual traits of Vought Superheroes, her defensive power was also extremely strong. Ordinary firearms, sulfuric acid, and the like would be completely ineffective against her.

And even if she did not explode someone's head, exploding other parts was no joke, especially for men.

Men had one more weakness than women. The blood vessels there were extremely dense, so they could be said to be directly countered by Neuman.

Li Wei had yet to obtain Kimiko's Super Healing. If he really took a hit there, it would be no joke. Even if he recovered later, it might still leave psychological trauma.

Fortunately, Li Wei currently had no conflict with Neuman. They might even be able to cooperate in the future. Li Wei was very interested in the ability to control blood.

As everyone knew, that part of a man stood up through blood flow. If he possessed the ability to control blood, could he not make it stand permanently?

Li Wei did not really need that, but he was indeed very curious.

Thinking about it that way, Neuman's husband might be getting squeezed dry on a regular basis.

Maybe he should move up his trip to Godolkin University. There was also a Black woman there with the same ability as Neuman. He just did not know whether she had enrolled yet.

After carefully organizing the relevant information, Li Wei went to a nearby supermarket, bought a pile of snacks, and casually tossed a lollipop into his mouth.

As a Superhero, he consumed a great deal of energy every day. Having a bigger appetite was perfectly normal.

More importantly, if events had not changed too much, there was a Super-powered Baby in the children's hospital Butcher and the others had mentioned who could fire lasers from his eyes.

Li Wei planned to bribe him with these snacks later and see whether he could copy the little baby's superpower.

While he was at it, he could also test another one of his theories.

His system required the other party to give an affirmative response before copying could begin. But what if the target could not understand speech, or was mute? How would it determine whether they agreed?

After buying everything, Li Wei found a place to change into casual clothes. He put on a mask and glasses, dressed himself up like a nerd, then hailed a taxi and prepared to head to that children's hospital.

Even though his strength was already quite good, before Butcher and the others truly drew Homelander's attention, he still decided to keep as low a profile as possible.

After the taxi started moving, Li Wei casually swept his gaze over the surroundings out of habit and suddenly made an unexpected discovery. Someone was following him.

After thinking it over, Li Wei roughly guessed that it definitely was not Vought, because Vought would not be this amateurish.

Vought had registered quite a few security companies under its name to maintain order when Superheroes attended routine events and the like. Even if they casually found some people, they would not be this incompetent, not to mention the large number of Superheroes they could deploy.

The famous A-Train was the best possible tail. With a speed of more than three hundred meters per second, along with reaction speed that matched it perfectly, he was absurdly overpowered.

This had even spawned two particularly unusual online jokes: the "food-snatching style" and the "shit-feeding style."

The first meant that at A-Train's speed, he did not need to fight an enemy head-on at all. He only needed to use his incredible speed to snatch away the enemy's food, and the enemy would starve to death alive.

The shit-feeding style needed little explanation. The enemy's cause of death would be eating until they burst.

Even Li Wei, who considered himself fairly strong already, had no particularly good countermeasures against A-Train using those two tactics.

If he truly became A-Train's enemy, the best method would still be to strike first with an ambush and instantly kill A-Train, or use the Psychic Remote Sensing he had just obtained to briefly control him before finishing him off.

Of course, given A-Train's pride, he would almost certainly never use either method.

And in a frontal battle, A-Train posed no real threat to front-line Superheroes.

The Superheroes in The Boys' World generally had low offense and high defense, and A-Train was a typical example. He basically could not break through the defenses of Superheroes at Li Wei and Starlight's level.

Logically, with his speed and weight, inertia alone should have allowed him to deal astonishing damage. Yet in reality, his attacks were only about as powerful as a sniper rifle at most.

He was the type who was excellent at bullying weak opponents but could barely protect himself against true powerhouses. That was highly unscientific.

He was practically like Flash from next door's DC. Whenever anything major happened, he was the first to be sacrificed and could not display much of his strength at all.

But with something even more unscientific like Compound V already existing, the issue with A-Train was not much of an issue by comparison. This had never been a world that could be completely explained by science!

That had gone a little off track. After casually thinking it over, Li Wei felt that, barring surprises, the person following him was probably Starlight.

But Starlight following him was likely just because she wanted to know whether he had cheated on her.

Li Wei had never intended to truly date her. On top of that, he had a pile of things to handle every day. After copying her superpower, he definitely would not have so much time to play around with her anymore.

From Starlight's perspective, that meant Li Wei had become cold toward her immediately after getting her body, just like a complete scumbag.

After several rounds of probing failed to produce a clear answer, she naturally wanted to try finding out the truth herself.

Women really were born actresses. She had not revealed the slightest hint of it just now.

However, for Li Wei, this might not be a bad opportunity.

A purely naïve Starlight was not much different from an inflatable doll to Li Wei. Perhaps it was time to let her see the dark and cruel reality.

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

If she could not, then he could dump her now and avoid causing himself even bigger trouble in the future.