Splattered with Paint

The position and angle of the bullet, the three-dimensional structure of the surrounding tissue—everything hovered in his field of vision, marked in translucent colors.

He first used a local anesthetic to clean the surface of the wound.

Then, using an elongated hemostat, he followed the optimal path marked by the system, bypassed the radial nerve, and precisely gripped the bullet head embedded in the bone.

"This is going to sting."

"Cut the crap—hiss!"

The bullet was removed.

The 9mm Parabellum Bullet landed on the stainless steel tray with a crisp, clear sound.

Next came three bone fragments—each only the size of a grain of rice, but if left in the body, any one of them would have been enough to trigger a severe infection.

Hemostasis, debridement, suturing.

The entire process took eighteen minutes.

"All done." Lynn removed his gloves.

Murphy sat up from the operating table and hesitantly moved his left arm.

His eyes widened.

The pain was gone.

Not "reduced"—it was completely gone.

And the flexibility of his arm—he clenched his fist and rotated his wrist—was actually better than it had been before the injury.

"Your technique..." Murphy looked at his arm, unable to find the right words, and finally blurted out, "is fucking insane."

He pulled a stack of cash from his pants pocket—all hundred-dollar bills, bound with a rubber band.

He counted out five bundles, ten thousand each, and placed them neatly in front of Lynn.

Lynn put the money into the safe under the desk.

His movements were natural; he neither declined nor offered thanks.

Murphy got dressed and prepared to leave.

He paused at the door and looked back at Lynn.

"Is this place safe? Hell's Kitchen isn't exactly peaceful. You fixed me up, and if the other side finds out, they might come looking for trouble."

"Don't worry about it." Lynn smiled.

Murphy grunted, shook his head, and left with his three bodyguards.

The clinic returned to silence.

Lynn sat back in his chair.

A system notification flashed in his mind—

[Healed ordinary human, no special talent detected. Saintly Hands Copy not triggered.]

[Reputation points change: +10. Current reputation points: 340.]

Ten points.

Lynn looked at the number, clearing the ledger in his mind once more.

Ordinary people—cash flow.

Ten or twenty reputation points were just scraps.

Superpowered individuals—core resources.

A single treatment meant hundreds of reputation points, plus a copy ability that could potentially change the entire situation.

He had to pursue both paths simultaneously.

But the focus was clear.

He needed more "special guests."

Lynn turned his head to look out the clinic window—the New York skyline shimmered under the afternoon sun.

Countless heroes and villains were hidden in this city.

They would get hurt, they would bleed, and they would need a doctor who could perform miracles.

He only needed to wait.

Or, make his reputation spread further and higher—high enough to reach those who flew in the sky.

Lynn looked down at the news on his phone about Tony Stark's "slight cold."

That fish would take the bait sooner or later.

But before that, he needed to handle something more immediate—the remark Murphy made before leaving.

"The other side."

Healing a gang distributor was equivalent to picking a side in the gray ecosystem of Hell's Kitchen.

Whether Lynn liked it or not, those "opponents" now knew of the existence of the Miracle Clinic.

Super Intelligence calculated several possible threat patterns and response plans in the background.

Super Senses continuously monitored every sound within a two-hundred-meter radius of the clinic.

Everything was quiet.

But Lynn knew—the quiet wouldn't last long.

The quiet did not last long.

Three days after Murphy left, Lynn went out at seven in the morning to buy coffee.

He stopped when he reached the clinic door.

The sign was shattered.

The four deep blue characters for Miracle Clinic had been smashed into two pieces, the fragments scattered across the steps.

A line of text had been sprayed onto the floor-to-ceiling window in red V-Spray paint.

The handwriting was sloppy, but the meaning was clear—"Dog doctor, get out of Hell's Kitchen if you don't want to die."

Lynn stood at the door, holding his freshly bought black coffee, looking at the debris on the ground and the graffiti on the window.

He felt no anger.

He completed his analysis the very first second his eyes swept over the graffiti.

V-Spray paint, bright red number 612; there were four hardware stores in Hell's Kitchen, but only "Jack Hardware" on the corner of 49th Street sold this color code.

The angle of the spray slanted from the bottom left to the top right, at a height between one point five and one point seven meters—the person who sprayed it was about five-foot-eight.

But the graffiti wasn't done by one person; the handwriting for the words "Dog doctor" differed from the sentence that followed.

The first half was sprayed with the right hand, with even pressure;

The second half showed clear characteristics of being held in the left hand, with the thumb's force direction on the nozzle being reversed.

Three people.

One of them was left-handed.

The sign was smashed with a blunt object, not kicked—the fracture patterns were radial, with the point of impact concentrated in one spot, likely using a baseball bat or an iron pipe.

Super Senses provided more details.

Three sets of different footprint odors remained on the steps—chemical residues from two types of cheap sneaker rubber soles, and one from leather boots.

The leather boot footprints were deeper, suggesting a weight of over two hundred pounds.

The final piece of information: a small cigarette butt was wedged in the crack of the floor tiles next to the sign fragments.

Camel brand, non-filtered.

The saliva odor on the butt contained a large amount of methamphetamine metabolites—a meth user.

Three people, one left-handed, one over two hundred pounds, one meth addict.

They came from a gang that had a grudge against Murphy.

Lynn took a sip of his coffee.

Red Ghost.

This was a name Murphy had hinted at before he left.

Another drug distributor in Hell's Kitchen, whose turf war with Murphy had been going on for over half a year.

Once news spread that Murphy had come to the Miracle Clinic for treatment, Red Ghost would naturally assume that Lynn had sided with Murphy.

Lynn hadn't sided with anyone.

He had simply treated a patient and collected fifty thousand dollars.

But in the jungle law of Hell's Kitchen, "you helped my enemy" was equivalent to "you are my enemy."

This logic was as crude as a schoolyard fight, but knives and bullets didn't care about logic.

He cleaned up the shattered sign and used alcohol to wipe the paint off the glass.

Then he sat back in the chair behind the front desk and opened his phone.

He wouldn't call the police.

Calling the police was useless; the police in Hell's Kitchen wouldn't care about such petty vandalism.

Even if they did, Red Ghost would be out in twenty-four hours, and the retaliation would only escalate.

He wouldn't ask Murphy for help either.

Asking Murphy would mean truly picking a side, and he wouldn't be able to extricate himself later.

Lynn needed a clean solution.

One that left no traces, didn't expose his abilities, and left Red Ghost too preoccupied to cause him any more trouble.