here's johnny!

Morning, Gotham.

Ma Zhaodi woke from his dream and instinctively offered the city his first greeting.

It was mainly because he had just had a nightmare. In it, he had been hung from a gargoyle statue atop Gotham City's tallest clock tower by a freak in a skin-tight bat suit, who then proceeded to tickle the soles of his feet.

The tickling had lasted all night. It had been terrifying as hell, brother—torture on a whole other level.

They said what occupied your thoughts by day would appear in your dreams at night, but he barely ever saw that guy. At most, he had watched him hang a few people tonight and last night. Why the hell did he have to be tortured in his dreams?

It had to be Gotham City's fault. So, morning, Gotham.

Ma Zhaodi got dressed on instinct, then glanced at the daylight outside the window. The next second, he lay back down.

Gotham City was still shrouded in darkness. He pulled out his phone and checked the time. It was 11:22.

He had only slept for ten minutes.

Yet his mind was already so overcharged that he was practically hyperactive. He couldn't fall asleep at all now, and he couldn't help sighing.

"The aftereffects are pretty intense. The system's stuff is way too pure."

He opened the system shop and carefully looked through it, checking how long his current state would last.

Blue Petal Flower Tea

Price: $30 per serving

Note: I can keep this up all day!

Great. He had been a little traumatized after being put through the wringer that morning and wanted something to perk him up in the afternoon, so he had bought this flower tea at two in the afternoon. He hadn't expected the effects to last until two the next afternoon.

"I didn't expect this stuff to override sleep too. The original didn't say it had this effect. Steve still had to sleep after taking the drug. This is even more badass than Steve's."

Ma Zhaodi, who secretly swore not to buy things recklessly again, opened the shop and looked through it carefully. Sure enough, he also found Pink Flower Tea.

Heh.

His mind was far too energetic to fall asleep, so he browsed the shop again and bought a five-dollar beginner driving textbook to read.

He might still be able to earn Asset Points later, but he should save them where he could. There was no rush to drive anyway, and learning by himself would save him the Asset Points needed for Beginner Car Driving Mastery.

The system's shop was very generous. He could pay the difference to upgrade skills he had already bought to higher levels. Since Ma Zhaodi already had Intermediate Wheelchair Driving Mastery, he only needed to spend another two hundred points to master Advanced Wheelchair Driving Mastery. Likewise, if he reached the level of Beginner Car Driving Mastery through practice, he wouldn't need to spend five hundred Asset Points to buy Beginner Driving Mastery.

Just then, he spotted another interesting service option.

"Hm? Simulated Driving Training?"

Ma Zhaodi clicked on it with great interest. Simulated driving cost five Asset Points per session, and each session lasted two hours.

"Freely change the setting, terrain, road conditions, and vehicle type? That's pretty generous. You can only choose cars? Makes sense."

Speaking of which, did an F1 race car count as a car?

Ma Zhaodi skimmed through the textbook but found nothing about race cars.

That made sense too. It was a beginner driving tutorial, and teaching F1 driving would be a little ridiculous.

There were, of course, race cars in Simulated Driving Training, but he had no idea how to drive one, so he obviously couldn't try it. Since that was the case, he would first learn the basic driving skills from the textbook normally.

He first read the beginner textbook carefully, only to find that it contained a few too many fancy terms. So he opened the textbook's video section as well. After spending half an hour getting somewhat familiar with things, he entered the mental simulation training.

Two hours later, Ma Zhaodi returned to reality from the simulation, thoroughly enjoying himself after crashing into everything in sight.

You couldn't die in the simulation, and you could freely alter the terrain. As a beginner, of course he had to go all out and speed through the skies first.

Who wouldn't want to drive a car across the Grand Canyon, then ram straight into DC's film department and crush the executives who loved producing garbage, all in the name of serving justice?

The only thing limiting him this time was that the driving simulation didn't allow airplanes.

After exiting, Ma Zhaodi didn't even look at the shop's skill section. His driving was obviously nowhere near Beginner Driving Mastery. Two hours of practice had only taught him to accelerate, decelerate, brake, and stop. He was still far behind when it came to the finer details.

Two hours of practice had been a little boring, so he spent one Asset Point in the system shop on a show he had never finished watching. Then he spent three more Asset Points on a pile of grilled skewers and a cup of soda, and slowly settled in to watch.

He decided to enjoy an all-nighter today. It was a little wasteful, but eating skewers, drinking soda, and binge-watching shows late into the night without having to worry about lacking energy for work the next day was simply heaven for a wage worker.

At three in the morning, a gunshot suddenly rang out outside the window. It was so close to Drake's house that Ma Zhaodi instinctively tensed.

Ma Zhaodi instinctively reached for his waist and rubbed the Beretta he had never dared take off.

Should he go downstairs and take a look? But he had no idea what was happening down there. Besides, he had only learned a little about using guns from Drake. At best, he could fire one, but he wasn't too sure where the bullet would go.

But if he didn't go downstairs, what would happen to the person who had been shot?

He was beginning to understand, just a little, what made those superheroes and supervillains different.

Whether they were made of steel or flesh, whether they possessed overwhelming strength and intelligence, and whether one bullet would send them straight to the grave, at the very least, they all dared to face the barrel of a gun.

"But I'm just an ordinary person. The smaller my abilities, the smaller my responsibility." He thought it over, then took another bite of grilled meat. Without the ability to save the whole world, protecting oneself was always the most important thing.

"Bang!"

The gunshot rang out again.

"Tsk." He thought about it. The person who had taken two bullets was probably already dead, and it was too late for him to do anything now.

"Bang!"

"Damn it, are you ever going to stop?"

Ma Zhaodi opened the shop again and began browsing.

In the pitch-black night sky, the loud voice of a West Coast Black Woman suddenly rang out from somewhere unknown, cursing up a storm.

"**I'll f*** your ******, which hole is making noise in the middle of the night instead of sleeping?! You like disturbing the neighbors, huh?! Son of the Beach, you'd better stand there and not run! I'll shove the bullet from your a all the way into your mouth!"

In a dark alley at night, a woman groaned softly in pain as she was pinned against a wall. A gunshot wound on each of her hands was steadily spilling blood.

A man holding a gun was tearing at her clothes, his bloodshot eyes glittering with greed and madness. But then he suddenly heard the cursing and stopped what he was doing in bewilderment.

Immediately afterward, he seemed to hear footsteps coming from a nearby alley.

Boom!

The thunderous blast of a shotgun echoed through the East End.

"Bastard! Where are you?!"