Lois Lane

The blaze shot into the sky.

The massive amount of gunpowder exploded, making the ground rumble.

In an instant, the air filled with the pungent stench of saltpeter and gunpowder. Even the slightest twitch of the nose brought a burning sting that made the eyes water.

The humanoid cricket flying through the air was hit hardest by the violent blast, tumbling a great distance away.

The explosion was like an ancient god stomping down upon the earth. When the gunpowder smoke and dust dispersed, only a gigantic abyssal crater remained.

The tremendous blast had pierced through two nearby subway lines, excavating a hidden corner of the city from beneath the soil and laying it bare.

The woman with snow-white wings, the woman like a female leopard, and the heavily armored female warriors had all been charred into blackened corpses, fallen together in the pit and impossible to distinguish from one another.

The sight made the fleeing Resistance breathe a huge sigh of relief.

"Where's Penny Black?"

Liar, the leader of the Resistance, asked Li Zu, "They only sent you?"

Although the man in the green suit before them behaved strangely, his abilities could not be underestimated. That explosion had just resolved their crisis.

Li Zu slowly walked forward. Blood dripped from the tip of his nose, and his legs swayed, but that did not stop him from descending into the enormous crater.

Under the Resistance's watchful eyes, he crouched before the winged woman, gently stroked her forehead, and said tenderly, "Sweet dreams~"

"What a gentle man."

The woman whose blonde hair drifted through the air as though alive sighed. But the next moment, the peculiar emotion vanished from her face. Her expression twisted, overtaken by fear.

Under Li Zu's palm, the barely breathing Hawkgirl turned into a toy!

A toy no larger than a little finger.

A question arose in everyone's mind.

If a living person was turned into a toy, would their soul be freed? Or would it be sealed inside the toy forever?

The wooden crate that had appeared out of nowhere was like the bizarre treasure of the legendary Elder Gods. Whatever it held was surely enough to drive one mad. In truth, merely watching Li Zu turn a person into a toy had already dealt these people a devastating mental blow.

"So terrifying~" Monster Hyde said in a muffled voice, patting his thick chest.

The others nodded.

No one wanted to be turned into a fragile plastic toy forever.

"Let's get out of here first!"

As the leader, Liar said, "Before even more danger appears, those mad Amazon women definitely won't stop pursuing us."

When facing the Amazons and the Atlanteans, even the most terrifying power could become their aid.

Humans were far too fragile before Atlantis and the Amazons.

"Hey!" Liar waved at Li Zu in the crater. "We're preparing to retreat! Let's go!"

"There's a mole feeding information to our enemies. It's too dangerous to keep moving now!"

Li Zu stood up. This time, he did not continue acting on his own. Instead, he broke into a run and sprinted all the way to the front of the group.

"He really is a strange guy!"

The cricket beat the wings on his back and closely followed Li Zu.

The others exchanged glances, shrugged, and followed after them.

It was time to retreat.

The Resistance moved through London.

To avoid running into troublesome Amazons, they continued traveling through underground passageways.

Subway tunnels leading who knew where, bats clinging to the darkest corners overhead, and dull footsteps blended together, lending the place an eerie air.

It felt as though ambushers could leap out from any corner.

This was a desperate flight for survival. None of them spoke... and the silence had created this strange atmosphere only because Liar had tried to speak with Li Zu and been rebuffed.

Li Zu clearly showed no respect for the Resistance leader. His mind seemed to be occupied with something else, and he kept drifting off.

After an unknown amount of time,

Li Zu went from being the first to run to being the last. Then he fell farther and farther behind, nearly fifty meters, sixty meters, seventy meters behind...

Light shone ahead, guiding them as they ran toward the exit.

"We finally made it out!"

Monster Hyde let out a huge sigh of relief. Escaping the Amazons' layers of encirclement had not been easy.

"Wait, I think we're missing someone." The cricket flew high above them and looked down. "Where's that weird guy in the green suit?"

"Did he get left behind?"

"Cough, cough~"

Li Zu waved the air in front of him with some disgust.

Only after leaving the subway and entering the sewers did he truly reach a blind spot in the Amazons' surveillance. Those people who were so strong they hardly seemed like women still possessed women's particular obsession with cleanliness, after all.

"Help, help..."

A voice came from deep within the sewers.

A bedraggled woman, her lower body submerged in sewage, reached toward Li Zu for help.

Li Zu did not begrudge her a helping hand. He walked over and helped the woman to her feet.

"I'm Lois Lane. Are you with the Resistance?" She looked at the ribbon around Li Zu's arm.

"The group I'm with calls themselves that~" Li Zu opened his eyes wide, pinched his chin, and examined the woman before him as though she were an interesting toy.

Lois shifted uneasily.

Her entire body was soaked in sewage, and her underwear clung tightly to her skin. The eyes of the man in green before her seemed capable of seeing through her clothes.

The feeling was deeply uncomfortable.

"That's great. Until today, I was in a training camp in Britain. Cyborg was responsible for contacting me, but he hasn't contacted me for several weeks." Lois forced herself to stay composed. "Before we lost contact, he told me that if I was in danger, I could seek out the Resistance. I brought information from the training camp!"

Lois Lane took out a device from her person. It looked like some sort of high-tech data storage device, complete with holographic projection.

"This information will definitely be useful. Fury is hunting me down. She'll soon rule out every escape route, then find this place!"

After saying that, she stared at Li Zu, waiting for his reaction.

Li Zu did not care about the information at all.

"Not soon. They're already here~" Li Zu pointed behind Lois.

Splash~

Footsteps sounded through the filthy water behind her.

More than a dozen armored women moved through the sewage, slowly drawing closer.

They finally stopped over ten meters away.

"There's actually a man here?" The leader was presumably the Fury Lois Lane had mentioned. She looked at Li Zu with disdain.

The Amazons' matriarchal society made them dismissive of men.

"It's over..."

Lois despaired.

Among the crowd, she even saw several "friends" she had once known. She had not expected them to take part in this pursuit.

Or rather, she would be captured precisely because of them.

This chase had ended before it had even begun.

Facing the dozen fully armed women before him, Li Zu calmly took the Plastic Meat Saw from his pocket.

With a light flick, the Meat Saw changed from plastic into steel.

Its heavy weight pulled his body slightly to one side.

"Can you scream?" he asked Lois.

(End of chapter)