The Scent of Blood in the Alley

The fifth day of business.

The number of patients at Miracle Clinic stabilized at around ten per day.

They were all residents of Hell's Kitchen—elderly people without health insurance, workers injured on construction sites, and women who had been beaten but were too afraid to go to a major hospital.

Lynn examined everyone very carefully.

It wasn't that he was particularly enthusiastic—it was that the automatic triggering of All-Things Diagnosis made it difficult for him to be anything but thorough.

Every time a patient walked into the clinic, the system automatically popped up a pile of data in his field of vision, precise down to the millimeter and milligram.

He only needed to translate it into language the other person could understand.

An old lady came in with back pain.

Lynn scanned her, and behind her expected diagnosis of "lumbar muscle strain," he discovered something she was completely unaware of—an early-stage 0.8-centimeter tumor in the lower pole of her left kidney.

"Ma'am, your back pain isn't serious; a medicated patch will fix it. But there is a small thing in your left kidney. It's still very small, but you need to go to a major hospital for a detailed examination and surgery. The sooner, the better."

The old lady's daughter was terrified.

Lynn wrote out a detailed diagnostic recommendation and attached the name of a kidney surgery specialist he had screened from across New York City.

"Go see this doctor. Just say Lynn recommended you—he doesn't know me, but if you take this report, he will accept you."

A construction worker came in with dizziness.

The results popped up by All-Things Diagnosis made Lynn take a second look—at the bifurcation of the left middle cerebral artery, there was an unruptured micro-aneurysm with a diameter of 3 millimeters.

"Your dizziness isn't anemia or low blood sugar," Lynn said.

"You have a small bulge in a blood vessel in your brain, and it could burst at any time. Go to New York-Presbyterian Hospital, register for neurosurgery, and get a DSA scan to confirm it."

The worker's face turned green. "Doctor, are you saying I have a... bomb in my brain?"

"Something like that. But it's still small, and surgery can fix it. If you drag your feet and ignore it, there's a one-in-ten chance it will suddenly explode one day."

The worker didn't say another word and went that very afternoon.

After these terrifyingly precise diagnoses spread through the community, the reputation of Miracle Clinic began to grow exponentially.

"That Chinese doctor can look at you from head to toe and know exactly what's wrong with you"—this sentence became a new legend among the residents of Hell's Kitchen.

Lynn's fee structure was also set—ordinary patients paid the market rate, and those with genuine financial difficulties could receive discounts, but there were no free rides.

"You can pay in installments, but you can't welch on the bill," he would say to every patient who asked for a discount. "Nobody takes free things seriously. You'll have the money if you just eat two fewer donuts."

Although this was blunt, no one thought he was stingy—because he was truly good.

A doctor who could see an aneurysm in your brain at a glance charging you two hundred dollars for a consultation wasn't expensive; it was a steal.

He spent his days seeing patients to earn money to keep the clinic running, and his nights behind closed doors studying.

Super Intelligence made his learning efficiency terrifyingly unreasonable.

What the original owner had spent two years chewing on at community college, he finished flipping through in three days.

It wasn't just skimming—every concept on every page was precisely understood, digested, and stored.

Anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, surgery, internal medicine... four years of coursework completed in three days.

His current reserve of medical knowledge already exceeded that of the vast majority of graduates from formal medical schools.

Coupled with the system assistance of All-Things Diagnosis, his diagnostic ability had no rival in the entire New York medical community.

But these were not what he truly cared about.

Ordinary patients were cash flow—used to earn money to keep the clinic running.

The truly valuable guests were those with superpowers.

The S+-level copy of Batman had given him a taste of the benefits, and Super Intelligence had changed the way he saw the world.

He needed more copies, more abilities to survive in this extremely dangerous world.

So he waited.

He waited for special guests to find their way to his door.

At nine o'clock on the fifth night, Lynn closed the clinic door and prepared to go upstairs to rest.

He chose to take the alley behind the clinic as a shortcut—the alley connected to the fire escape of the adjacent building, from which he could go directly to the second floor.

On the third step into the alley, he stopped.

Super Intelligence allowed him to capture three signals that shouldn't have been in a deserted alley in the middle of the night.

First: fresh scratch marks on the wall.

Four parallel fingernail gouges dragged from a height of over two meters down to the ground, the depth gradually increasing—someone had slipped from a height, trying to grab the wall to slow down but failing.

Second: a faint but distinct scent of blood in the air.

Fresh blood, less than ten minutes old.

Third: in the distance—about two blocks away—a very faint vibration remained in the air.

The frequency was very high, beyond the hearing range of ordinary people, but Super Intelligence deduced its existence from the abnormal movement patterns of air molecules.

Some kind of ultra-high-frequency sonic device had been activated not long ago.

Lynn quickened his pace and rounded the corner of the alley.

Daredevil was curled up in the middle of a pile of trash bags.

His red suit was tattered, with multiple tears on his chest and arms.

His hands were clutching his ears tightly, and dark red blood was seeping out between his fingers.

His nostrils were also bleeding.

He was hunched over, lying on his side, his whole body twitching irregularly.

"Ugh, ah..." What came out of his mouth weren't meaningful words, but pure groans of pain, like an animal that had been run over, howling instinctively.

The system panel exploded in Lynn's field of vision—

[Automatic diagnosis initiated—]

[Patient: Matthew Murdock (Codename: Daredevil)]

[Injury assessment:]

[1. Bilateral auditory nerve tearing caused by ultra-high-power sonic weapon, large-scale necrosis of hair cells in the inner ear's Organ of Corti;]

[2. Vestibular system disorder, endolymph pressure in the semicircular canals abnormally elevated to 4.7 times the normal value;]

[3. Tactile/olfactory sensory circuits overloading and burning out, process has reached 62%;]

[4. Multiple abrasions and soft tissue injuries on the body surface (minor);]

[5. Super Senses system facing permanent destruction! Irreversible damage threshold expected to be reached in 3.5 hours!]

[Comprehensive lethality: 41% (If the sensory system is completely burned out, combat ability will be permanently lost)]

[Estimated time to irreversible damage: 3.5 hours.]

Then came the line that made his heart race:

[Healing this target, expected to be able to copy: A+-level talent!]

A+-level.

Lynn stood at the mouth of the alley, looking at the curled-up figure in the trash pile.

Daredevil's Super Senses system was being burned out.

If he didn't receive treatment within three and a half hours, this damage would be irreversible—this man would forever lose the abilities that made him a superhero.

For Daredevil, this was equivalent to a death sentence.

For Lynn, this was a window to copy an A+-level talent.

Super Senses.

If his Super Intelligence was the world's most powerful processor, then Super Senses was the best information input device.