Luo Xia grabbed the hexagonal crystal, which looked like a work of art, and immediately received a notification.
[Obtained Energy Activation Device 1: AllSpark energy capacity increased by 1000; energy recovery speed increased by 1 point/second.]
[AllSpark Energy (Stage One): 4/000, energy recovery speed/second.]
Watching the AllSpark energy recover faster, Luo Xia eagerly began checking the Sensor Glove's effects.
[Sensor Glove: Consumes 00 points of AllSpark energy. Made from magnetic metal. Provides heat resistance and bulletproofing. Equipped with a retractable dagger and moderately increases arm strength.]
The Sensor Glove consumed less energy than the Pulse Pistol. It looked like a support tool, but Luo Xia couldn't see what its functions had to do with the word "sensor."
"Could it be that the so-called system is just clickbait?" Luo Xia gave a wry smile.
Although he had enough AllSpark energy, and magnetic metal wasn't hard to find—the most basic magnetic metal was iron—there was still a problem.
The Sensor Glove didn't require much AllSpark energy, but it needed a lot of materials. Luo Xia gathered all the iron items he could find in the house, but there still wasn't enough to make even one Sensor Glove.
With no other choice, Luo Xia suppressed his excitement and got down to cleaning. After all, this was where he'd be living for quite some time. He wasn't a neat freak, but the habits he'd picked up in the army meant he always wanted everything in order.
After several hours of cleaning through clouds of dust, Luo Xia finally got the place tidied up. But it was bare: apart from a sofa and a wooden bed frame, there was nothing else.
There wasn't even a wardrobe.
A terrifying thought suddenly occurred to Luo Xia. "Am I going to have to do my own laundry, sweep the floor, cook, and wash the dishes?"
Luo Xia liked things neat, but he didn't want to be stuck handling all of that himself forever.
Well, those were all problems. Luo Xia figured he'd find a way to solve them.
It was nearly dinnertime. Luo Xia took a shower, changed his clothes, and headed upstairs. When he knocked on Mrs. Cardenas's door, he found Foggy had already arrived.
"Sorry I'm a little late," Luo Xia said to everyone.
"No problem. Dinner isn't ready yet, and I'm still waiting for another friend," Foggy told Luo Xia.
Mrs. Cardenas's voice came from the kitchen. "Oh, sorry, but could one of you go buy some baking soda? We've run out."
Foggy was about to get up, but Luo Xia said to him, "I'll go. It'll be a good chance to get familiar with Hell's Kitchen."
Foggy looked a little worried. "But it's not very safe around here at night. Maybe I should go instead."
Luo Xia had decided Foggy was a genuinely good person. Still, he said, "You can't be my babysitter forever, can you? Besides, I'm probably better at protecting myself than you are."
Foggy understood what Luo Xia meant and could only warn him, "Then you'd better be careful."
Luo Xia answered and left. Buying baking soda was a secondary concern; what he really wanted was to find enough iron items to make the Sensor Glove.
But Luo Xia hadn't expected Hell's Kitchen to be this chaotic.
It was only seven in the evening, and the sun had just gone down. Luo Xia hadn't even walked a block before he saw a drug addict collapsed by the roadside, two streetwalkers beating each other bloody over customers, and a gang fight involving machetes and baseball bats.
Luo Xia didn't want trouble, so he tried to steer clear of it. After winding through several streets, he entered an alley—and ran into a thug flipping a butterfly knife.
"Hey, yellow monkey, hand over all your money," the thug said to Luo Xia.
"I've always wondered, can you people come up with a different name for Asians? Have you really been this uneducated and uncreative for centuries?" Luo Xia said, exasperated.
"Huh? What are you talking about, yellow monkey?" The thug began waving his knife as he advanced on Luo Xia.
"I'm saying you can get on your knees and beg for mercy," Luo Xia said with a perfectly straight face.
The thug didn't understand what it meant to beg for mercy, but he understood "get on your knees." His face twisted into a snarl as he stabbed at Luo Xia's waist, aiming straight for his kidney. If the knife landed, Luo Xia might not die, but he'd be crippled for life.
But before the blade had even made it halfway, a shadow dropped from above and stomped the thug to the ground. It was a tall man dressed all in black, with a half-mask covering his face.
The man rained blows down on the thug's face, left and right, punching him seven or eight times until he was knocked unconscious. He was brutal. Luo Xia winced just watching; if it were him, he wouldn't have hit so hard. He'd have put a bullet in the thug and ended it quickly.
Once he was sure the thug couldn't fight back, the masked man said to Luo Xia, "You'd better stay inside at night. This place isn't just dangerous—it's full of racial discrimination, too."
His voice was hoarse and low, as if he'd deliberately changed it so no one would recognize him.
"It's fine. I've got this." Luo Xia pulled out a Colt 1911 from behind his back. He'd picked it up at random from Tony's lab. Tony had stocked several sets of all the standard weapons used by the U.S. military so he could study them while designing his Iron Armor.
Luo Xia knew his Pulse Pistol was too conspicuous, so he'd switched to a Colt.
He couldn't see the masked man's expression, but Luo Xia could still sense a hint of hostility from him—or rather, hostility toward the gun in Luo Xia's hand.
"No one has the right to take another person's life, even in self-defense," the masked man said to Luo Xia.
"Oh, are you against the death penalty?" Luo Xia said, bemused.
In his previous life, he'd been a native of China and a special forces soldier who'd killed countless people. He found this sort of thinking hard to understand. Well, maybe you had to be a great sage—or a comfortably full, out-of-touch liberal—to think that way.
But this man had actually gone out of his way to help someone. He was probably a saint in the making—far better than those who just ranted online that murderers shouldn't be executed.
Seeing that Luo Xia wasn't swayed, the masked man seemed about to say something more, but Luo Xia interrupted him. "I think we can agree to disagree, but before that, I think we should deal with another problem."
As soon as Luo Xia finished speaking, the rumble of an engine drew closer. A dozen ill-intentioned thugs emerged from both ends of the alley. They glanced at the man lying on the ground, his face covered in blood, then charged forward without a word, waving machetes and baseball bats.
They were obviously all in the same gang.
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