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This was a convenience store. Half the roll-up shutter had been torn off, and broken glass littered the floor.

Three men were trashing the place. A mass of black material writhed around one man's palm.

He seemed to be a superhuman who could control some kind of substance.

And the sound of the mass writhing was eerily similar to the crackle of electricity.

His two companions were ordinary people, each holding a gun.

Behind the counter, a middle-aged couple huddled together.

A dozen or so bystanders had gathered outside, phones held high, but not one of them stepped in to help.

They all seemed to be the sort who loved watching a spectacle.

Lu Heng dropped out of the sky.

His biological force field automatically cushioned his landing.

Everyone nearby saw a tall man descend from the heavens.

The commotion inside the store stopped for a moment.

The gun-toting thug reacted fastest. He swung the muzzle toward Lu Heng and pulled the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

After several sharp reports,

the bullets struck Lu Heng in the chest. The projectiles hit the invisible biological force field surrounding his body and shattered, their brass casings flying off to either side.

They hadn't even wrinkled Lu Heng's shirt.

Lu Heng glanced down at his chest.

"Come on, you're weak! Give me a couple more shots and see if they leave a mark!"

The thug's hand trembled, and he nearly dropped his gun.

Only then did the superhuman react. Black material shot from his palm like a snake, darting straight for Lu Heng's face.

Lu Heng raised a hand and grabbed it.

His five fingers clenched around the mass of black material as though it were a lump of mud.

Then he squeezed hard.

Eight tons of grip strength.

The black material crumbled in his palm and disintegrated, leaking between his fingers before turning to ash on the floor.

That level of material manipulation was child's play to him.

The superhuman froze. "You motherf—"

Lu Heng couldn't be bothered to let him finish.

He stepped right up to the man. He might have been just an office worker, but Viltrumite blood ran through his veins, and he was every bit as capable in a fight.

At short range, his ability to fly at supersonic speeds was indistinguishable from teleportation.

Lu Heng raised his hand and slapped the man right across the face.

He'd held back, using only about... five percent of his full strength?

A dull thud.

The superhuman flew sideways, crashed through three rows of shelves, rolled his eyes back, and promptly went to sleep.

Seeing their boss knocked out, the two armed thugs immediately turned their guns on Lu Heng.

Lu Heng reached out and grabbed one barrel in each hand.

He applied a little pressure.

The barrels of both pistols twisted like pretzels, leaving them as useless scrap metal.

The two thugs nearly pissed themselves.

One of them even burst into tears on the spot.

"Don't kill us... Please, don't kill us..."

"My grandma's getting married soon... I still need to go to the wedding..."

"Look at you two. You didn't think this day would come when you decided to rob the place?" Lu Heng tossed the scrap metal to the ground, brushed the dust from his hands, then turned to the store owners. "Call the police. I'll leave them here for you."

The shopkeeper pushed himself up against the counter. He trembled for a long moment before managing to say, "Th-thank you."

His wife was already out of it. She just kept nodding.

The crowd outside fell silent for two seconds.

Then someone started clapping.

Every phone camera turned toward him.

"Holy shit, that's awesome!"

"He bent a gun barrel with his bare hands... Why'd my crotch just tighten up?"

"His muscles are so firm. Wonder if he's into guys?"

A Black kid of about fifteen or sixteen pushed his way to the front, livestreaming on his phone, his voice shaking with excitement...

"Hey, bro, did you all see that? This dude flew down from the sky! He smacked a superhuman flying with one slap! Who is he? Does anyone know him?"

The livestream's viewer count shot from single digits to several hundred, then even surpassed a thousand.

The numbers on the system panel began to jump.

[Collecting positive emotions from the crowd...]

+42 +67 +38 +91 +55 +83 +44 +76 +51 +89 +62 +48 +96...

Total this time: +847

Current Ability Points: 847 / 10,000

Over eight hundred.

A dozen or so bystanders could contribute that much?

Just as Lu Heng was about to take a few questions and expand his influence a little further,

the system issued a notification.

[Traces of a key character's activity detected nearby (unclear)]

[Suggestion: Seek out the key character to gain a large number of Ability Points]

A key character?

Twenty minutes later, in the monitoring center on the seventy-second floor of Vought International headquarters, an analyst stared at a data stream highlighted in red. After hesitating for just two seconds, he picked up the internal phone.

"Ms. Madelyn, there's something you may want to take a look at."

"...An unidentified superhuman has appeared in Brooklyn."

"Based on video analysis, his abilities... may be close to Homelander's!"

Lu Heng stood outside the convenience store, looking at the notification on his panel.

[Traces of a key character's activity detected nearby (unclear)]

Unclear.

It meant the person was nearby, but the system couldn't pinpoint their location.

That wasn't much of a problem for Lu Heng.

His hearing was far beyond that of an ordinary person. He could clearly pick up sounds from within a two-kilometer radius.

He closed his eyes, filtering out the noise of the onlookers, the city's traffic, and the rumble of the subway tracks...

There!

About a kilometer to the northeast.

Someone was talking.

A man and a woman.

The woman sounded a little teasing. "Hughie, are you really going to work at that electronics store for the rest of your life?"

The man pretended to sound annoyed. "It's called stability, Robin. Stability. Get it?"

"You call making twenty-three hundred a month stable?"

"...At least I get paid rain or shine!"

Hughie. Robin.

Lu Heng opened his eyes.

Found them.

At the start of the first season, Robin would be smashed into a cloud of gore by A-Train.

That was the scene that had made Lu Chen binge all three seasons overnight, only for Starlight to get weirder and weirder as it went on.

Should he save her?

The question lingered in Lu Heng's mind for just half a second.

Of course he should.

It wasn't that Lord Lu was especially kindhearted. Saving Robin would simply bring plenty of benefits.

As a key character, Hughie's fate would be changed as a result, which would surely earn him quite a few Ability Points.

Lu Heng was about to set off when rapid footsteps sounded behind him.

"Hey! Hey, hey, hey! Wait up!"

The Black kid who'd been livestreaming ran over, thrusting his phone in Lu Heng's face. Comments scrolled wildly across the screen.

"Bro! What's your name? What company are you with? Vought, or...?"

"I'm not affiliated with any company. I'm just a superhuman who does this for fun."

"An independent hero? Man, do you know how cool you were just now? You slapped a superhuman flying! My livestream blew up!"

The kid turned his phone around to show him. The number of viewers had already topped three thousand and was still climbing.

The comments were all along the lines of:

[Who the hell is this damn Asian guy???]

[Bullets bounced right off him! He flew in! New hero?]

[What a body. I'd let him do me. I think I could take it.]

[Take it down a notch, buddy.]

[Never seen this gimmick before. Did Vought hire new writers?]

[Name, name, name!]

Three thousand people.

Lu Heng glanced at the system panel. His Ability Points were creeping up at an extremely slow pace. The online audience's emotional feedback was much weaker than the crowd's in person, but the internet's enormous reach meant every little bit added up.

+3 +2 +5 +2 +3 +4...

Even a little was better than nothing.

"My codename is... Guardian, I guess!" Lu Heng said offhandedly.

"Guardian! You hear that, guys? His name's Guardian!" The kid bounced on the spot, excited. "Guardian, can you do something for the guys in the livestream? Fly around or something? Please!"

Lu Heng glanced at him.

More than three thousand people were watching. If he flew around, the video could spread, and tonight's buzz could at least multiply several times over.

He was still more than nine thousand points away from leveling up.

Life was tough. Superhumans had to perform for a living!

"All right, watch this."

Lu Heng pushed off the ground with his toes.

Boom—

A blur shot straight into the night sky, moving almost too fast for the naked eye to follow. The gust of wind sent nearby bystanders stumbling backward, and nearly ripped their phones from their hands.

By the time they looked up, Lu Heng was already hovering about thirty stories above the ground.

The night wind roared past his ears. Brooklyn spread out beneath him like a densely packed circuit board.

Manhattan's skyline blazed with light, and he could just make out the pointed top of Vought Tower.

He looked down. The people below were tiny as ants.

But he could clearly hear the Black kid hollering, "You see that? He's flying! He really flew!!!"

The livestream's comments went completely wild.

The viewer count jumped from three thousand to five thousand, then from five thousand to eight thousand.

The system panel...

+7 +12 +9 +15 +8 +11 +6 +14...

Still not fast enough. The online audience's emotional feedback was too weak, and there weren't enough viewers yet.

A real explosion in popularity would have to wait until those videos spread across mainstream social media. That wouldn't happen until at least tomorrow.

Lu Heng wasn't in a hurry.

He spun around in midair. Robin was still alive, so A-Train apparently wouldn't hit her today.

He memorized the general direction and decided to look for her tomorrow.

Tonight... he'd patrol Brooklyn.

The density of superhuman crime in this place was remarkably high. He couldn't go two steps without running into some criminal. It was like being in Gotham.

Lu Heng picked a direction in the air. There was a crime in progress over there.

But he suddenly stopped in midair.

He glanced down. The crowd outside the convenience store still hadn't dispersed, and the Black kid was still holding up his phone, yelling at the sky.

There were twelve thousand people watching the livestream.

And the number was still rising.

A blur streaked across Brooklyn's night sky and vanished between the buildings.

On the ground, the Black kid finally lowered his phone and drew a deep breath. He grinned excitedly into the camera.

"Guys, that dude's so down-to-earth! His name's Guardian—remember it! From now on, this account's gonna post videos about Guardian. Make sure you follow!"

"I'll bet you a pack of spicy strips that guy's gonna be more famous than Homelander one day."