Two Years Ago

Marvel Universe, New York, Chinatown.

On the rooftop of a slightly old five-story residential building facing the street, a Chinese young man of about twenty stood in front of a barbecue grill bought during a supermarket sale. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt, blue-and-white jeans, and flip-flops.

A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth as his right hand occasionally turned the T-bone steak on the grill. But the steak, charred black on one side while still bloody on the other, made it clear that his attention was not on the meat.

The young man stared blankly at the beer bottle in his left hand. Of course, he was not looking at the cheap beer, but at the strange ring on his index and middle fingers—a strip of brass-colored metal connecting two circular bands.

The ring was strange, but he knew it had a famous name in this world—the Sling Ring.

After a long while, the smell of burning pulled his attention back to the steak. He curled his lip and casually set down the fork he had been using to turn it. "It's burnt. What's there left to eat?"

Beer in hand, he squatted in the corner by the wall, rubbing his Little Belly as a bitter smile tugged at his lips. "Two years. I've been in this world for two years. My soul has finally fused perfectly with this body. Even if the people from the Masters of the Mystic Arts caught me now, they probably wouldn't find anything strange about my Astral Body..."

Thinking back to when he had first come to this world two years ago, he had been completely dumbfounded. He had not been struck by lightning or fallen into a sewer. He had merely gone to sleep. When he thought it was morning and prepared to get up, wash up, and go to work, he discovered that he was lying in a hospital bed, with a Black nurse beside him busy changing the dressing on the patient in the next bed.

He thought something had gone wrong with his body and did not think much of it. He simply assumed the hospital had hired a Black nurse. That was all.

The young man said weakly, "Wha... is... dis place?"

The moment the words left his mouth, he immediately realized something was wrong. He had spoken Mandarin his entire life, so how had the perfectly ordinary phrase "Where is this?" suddenly turned into the ridiculous sound of a foreigner stiffly trying to speak Chinese?

Hearing him, the Black nurse instinctively turned toward him and exclaimed, "Oh my God!" Then she rattled off a string of English he could not understand.

Li Feng listened in a daze. Black nurse sister, aside from the first sentence, what the hell were you saying after that? Don't you know I never scored above twenty on an English exam? And you're working abroad, so could you stop speaking your native language? Say Chinese if you've got the guts.

Watching the nurse continue speaking English, an urge inexplicably rose in his heart. He really wanted to teach this Black nurse a tongue twister, something like Red Carp Green Carp, to avenge the suffering he had endured while learning twenty-nine letters of the alphabet.

Something seemed wrong. There were only twenty-five letters... Wait, that did not seem right either.

Blinking his confused little eyes, he agonized over it. How many English letters are there in the alphabet again?

Li Feng finally gave up thinking and muttered in his strange accent, "Doesn't matter how many. Anyway, I already gave all that knowledge back to my PE teacher."

Seeing his blank expression and garbled speech, the nurse stopped what she was doing in shock and hurried out of the ward to find a doctor. She felt that the young man brought in from the car accident scene could still be saved. At the very least, she did not think he had regained consciousness—hadn't he even failed to recover his ability to speak?

Watching the flustered Black nurse push open the door and leave, Li Feng instinctively tried to raise his right hand to touch his dizzy forehead. But although his brain sent the command, his right hand did not reach his forehead until two seconds later.

What's going on? Can a body lag like a bad internet connection? Or is this my illness? Don't tell me my procrastination evolved into delayed-action syndrome?

Can this kind of illness be treated? As long as it can be cured, I swear to the hospital lights that I'll never procrastinate again.

Still immersed in regret with a bewildered look on his face, Li Feng saw the ward door pushed open again. A white doctor in a lab coat strode to his bedside, pulled open one of his eyelids with one hand, and wildly shone a small flashlight into his eyes with the other.

His eyes dazzled by the light, Li Feng tried to push the doctor's hand away. Unfortunately, his hand only slowly grabbed the doctor's wrist two seconds later. "My eyes... dizzy."

Fine. That slurred "My eyes are dizzy," combined with his normal pupillary response, was enough for the doctor to confirm that the young man before him had regained consciousness. As for his unclear speech, that was not the doctor's concern. That was a neurologist's responsibility.

The doctor spoke in fluent English. "Mr. Li Feng, do you feel discomfort anywhere else?"

Li Feng froze. That is indeed my name, but bro, what hospital is this? Why is everyone speaking English? Other than my name, I didn't understand a single word!

When the doctor saw that Li Feng did not react at all, he turned to the Black nurse behind him. "Has his brain CT been done?"

The nurse nodded. "It's already on the neurologist's desk." After hesitating, she glanced at Li Feng and continued, "The police are still waiting to question Li Feng. Should we let them in?"

The doctor pondered for a moment, then looked at the bewildered Li Feng and shrugged. "Although it appears the police won't get much out of him, give them five minutes. Remember to remind them that the patient needs rest."

With that, the doctor turned and left. The patient was awake, so what reason did he have to remain in the ward? He was very busy, after all. Li Feng was not the only casualty from the accident.

Not long after, Li Feng stared in confusion as two plump white police officers followed the Black nurse into his ward. What the hell is going on? Did my family send me abroad for treatment after I got sick? Why is everyone a foreigner?

One officer pulled over a chair and set it in front of Li Feng. After sitting down, he took a folder from a document bag and said, "Li Feng, English name Austin, second-generation Chinese, born in New York. Your parents died in an accident last year. There are no mistakes in this information, correct?"

The other officer standing at the foot of the bed wore an apologetic expression. He drew circles in front of his own face with his right hand and said, "Sorry, Mr. Li Feng. My colleague has face blindness when it comes to Asians, so we need to ask for your basic information to confirm that you are the right person."

Li Feng did not care what the two were asking. He only knew that apart from the words "Li Feng," he had not understood a single sentence.

Realizing that he was abroad, Li Feng awkwardly said in broken Chinese, "Sorry, I can't understand what you're saying."

The two officers froze. They could tell that Li Feng was speaking Chinese, but they had no idea what he meant.

The officer holding Li Feng's file flipped through the papers, gave his colleague a baffled look, and said, "There's no record of Li Feng leaving the country, and there's nothing indicating that his previous school offered Chinese courses. His deceased Chinese parents probably taught him."

After saying that, the officer flipping through the documents gave Li Feng an unfriendly look. Why are you babbling Chinese in front of me? Showing off how cultured you are?

At that moment, the patient in the bed next to Li Feng poked his head out and said to the officers, "He said he can't understand what you're saying."

The two officers exchanged glances. Can't understand? You're a second-generation Chinese who has never left the country, and you listen to, read, and write English every day. Now you're telling me you can't understand it? Are you kidding me?

The nurse beside them also froze, seeming to understand something. She hesitantly said to the officers, "Li Feng suffered brain trauma in the car accident. Could that have caused amnesia?"

Amnesia made him forget English but remember Chinese?

Faced with the officers' confusion, the nurse said she could not explain it. Who could really explain amnesia?

With his roommate translating, Li Feng learned that he was lying in the hospital bed because he had been in a car accident two hours earlier.

But Li Feng was deeply confused. He did not remember getting into a car accident, and besides, what do you mean my parents died in an accident last year? My parents are doing just fine!

When his roommate translated that Li Feng was only eighteen and a second-generation Chinese, Li Feng suddenly began to understand what had happened to him.

Li Feng looked calm on the surface, but inwardly he screamed, My soul crossed the ocean to New York, then possessed a corpse? Wait, souls really exist in this world? Does that mean Zombies really exist too? And what about some hidden inner world? I seem to have discovered something incredible.

But amnesia really is a good excuse for dealing with the police. I even have a doctor proving that I injured my brain, so there's nothing the police can do to me. As long as I leave the hospital and go back home, does it matter whether I have amnesia or not? Not really, right? So what if I can't speak English? I can still buy groceries.

There was no need to continue the questioning. Forget getting Li Feng to state his home address—he had amnesia so severe that he could not even speak English. What else could the two officers do? Crack open Li Feng's skull to see whether there were any memories of the accident inside?

Before the two officers left, considering the severity of Li Feng's amnesia, they specially made a copy of his information for him and left behind a business card. Through his roommate's translation, they said, "If you remember anything, call us. This car accident was quite serious, so the more witness testimony we have, the better."

A few days later, the doctor said Li Feng could be discharged. As for when his lost memories might return, the doctor said he had no idea. Maybe tomorrow, or maybe they would never return.

But Li Feng said he did not care about his lost memories in the slightest. He had no intention of continuing to live in New York anyway.

Not wanting to stay in the hospital another moment, Li Feng immediately changed out of his hospital gown and walked straight out.

Outside the hospital, Li Feng hailed a taxi and showed the driver the home address the police had given him, indicating where he wanted to go.

Along the way, the driver kept saying something. At first, Li Feng smiled and indicated that he could not understand. Then he saw a photo of Stark Industries on a newspaper left behind by the previous passenger.

Li Feng realized something was wrong. He had seen that photo before.

He remembered it clearly. In Iron Man 2, Tony had taken that blueprint of the industrial park home from Pepper Potts's office, then discovered and created a new element from it, completely curing his palladium poisoning.

Swallowing hard, Li Feng smiled and pointed at the photo as he asked the driver, "Tony Stark?"

The driver glanced at the photo and assumed Li Feng was asking when the expo would open. He nodded cheerfully. "Yes, Stark Industries' Stark Expo opens on Tuesday, right on schedule. Are you attending, sir?"