A Hair-Raising Scene

Mike strolled leisurely out of the bar.

The guards were stunned when they saw Mike.

Hadn't this guy just gone in?

The two instinctively sensed something was wrong. They moved closer, intending to question Mike.

Mike did not waste words. He quickened his pace and knocked out the guards with two punches.

The commotion caught the attention of the vampire thugs by the wall. They exchanged looks, spread out, and closed in from different directions.

Mike's gaze sharpened as he pulled the Nichirin Sword from System Space.

Thrust!

Rising Slash!

Full Moon Slash!

Sheathe!

All in one fluid motion!

Before the vampires could figure out what was happening, they felt a scorching pain across their bodies and screamed as they turned to ashes.

After walking a few steps, Mike returned to one of the guards and pulled a small roll of cash from his pocket—the money he had previously "bribed" him with.

According to Macy, Vampire Factory was in the dock district of Hell's Kitchen, on the west bank of the Hudson River.

"Gangs are one thing, but even vampires are joining in? They really aren't leaving ordinary people in Hell's Kitchen any way to survive."

Mike sighed as he turned the key and started the car. The headlights carved a path through the dense darkness, and soon the red taillights vanished at the end of the street.

Natasha glanced at the timer. "Twelve minutes and fifty-six seconds. He didn't just take a lap and do nothing, did he?"

"I don't know." Coulson was not sure either.

"Forget it. I'll go in and take a look."

"I'm the field commander, aren't I?"

"Hmm?" Natasha shot Coulson a sidelong glance, a teasing smile on her lips as her face became even more alluring.

Coulson froze for a moment. "Uh... I meant, be careful. Safety comes first."

"Yes, Commander..." Natasha smiled and swayed away with a waist like a water snake.

A Level Seven agent openly threatened a Level Eight agent with her eyes...

How chilling!

Three minutes later, Natasha hurried out.

"Well?" Coulson's expression remained unchanged.

"All the vampires are dead. The surveillance room was destroyed. The bartender's heart was pierced by a toothpick. A woman is unconscious in one of the private rooms. They were all Vampire Cultists." Natasha frowned. "The bartender was a witness, so he was killed to silence him. That woman was a Vampire Cultist who helped lure Mike in, and she was also a witness. Why did he spare her?"

Coulson asked, "Was she pretty?"

Natasha answered, "Pretty."

Could he have been blinded by beauty?

Coulson and Natasha exchanged a look. Neither was disappointed in Mike; instead, there was a hint of delight in their eyes.

Having a weakness was good!

That was the difference between the thought processes of agents and ordinary people.

Coulson started the car and headed toward Hell's Kitchen.

Natasha suddenly asked, "How can an ordinary toothpick pierce through a person's heart?"

Coulson said, "By perfectly avoiding the bones and muscles?"

The problem was that the human heart itself was dense muscle.

If Mike had been asked, his answer would have been five words: "Armament Haki."

In any case, Natasha's eyes grew brighter and brighter, as though she had found a new toy.

Coulson shivered for no apparent reason.

It was late at night.

The weather had turned cold.

He touched his strategically retreating hairline and sighed inwardly. Middle-aged men can't afford to stay up late.

Vampire Factory was disguised as a meat processing company, and it looked perfectly normal from the outside.

The patrolling security guards were vampires. Mike cut them down one by one, entering the factory grounds without alerting a single vampire.

The sight before him made Mike's scalp crawl.

Thick steel pipes ran parallel overhead across the factory grounds. Chains hung from the pipes, wrapped with power cables and data lines. At the end of each chain was a large hook holding a square instrument and a large transparent bag.

The instruments monitored vital signs.

Inside each bag was a curled-up human. Every person was completely naked, with tubes inserted into their mouths and noses to absorb nutrient fluid from the bags and stay alive. Tubes were inserted into their hands as red blood was slowly drawn out.

That was why vampires called places like this factories or farms.

Here, humans were raw materials for producing blood—livestock to be drained.

As a fellow human, Mike felt a chill shoot from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

The people in the bags had been injected with sedatives. Some had their eyes open, their gazes dead and empty, as though they had lost their souls.

"Phew~"

Mike planted the Nichirin Sword in the ground, took out a cigarette pack, and lit one. The flame of the lighter was conspicuous in the darkness.

"Who goes there!"

The vampire workers in the factory spotted Mike and shouted as they surrounded him.

"Phew~~~"

Mike exhaled a cloud of white smoke and muttered, "Well, I've been discovered. Nothing to be done about it now."

He drew the Nichirin Sword, his gaze as cold as the depths of winter.

Soon, everything returned to silence. Only black ash drifted through the night.

Mike carried the Nichirin Sword deeper inside.

There was something Mike had never expected: the person in charge of the factory was actually a human in a white lab coat. He fell back onto the floor in terror and said, "Don't kill me, don't kill me! I'm human, don't kill me..."

"A human, huh... Don't be afraid. I won't kill you."

Mike took out Lisa's photograph. "Has this girl been here? She was sent here about two weeks ago."

The man in the white coat looked at the photo. "She looks familiar. Let me check."

He tapped a few keys, bringing up several files. Lisa was among them.

Using the identification number, Mike quickly found Lisa.

The girl was curled up inside a bag, unconscious. Mike asked, "Will there be any danger if I take her directly out of the bag?"

The man in the white coat hurriedly replied, "No, no. She was only brought here two weeks ago."

"Oh, then there's nothing else. You can leave now," Mike said flatly. "Actually, forget it. I'll send you on your way."

The Nichirin Sword pierced the white coat's heart.

"A one-way ticket to Hell, free of charge!" Mike sneered. "You're clearly human, yet you did something like this. That makes you even more deserving of death! I lied to you, so what? Crawl out of Hell and bite me if you can, you piece of trash. Ptooey!"

A few minutes later, Mike emerged from the factory grounds bare-chested, carefully carrying Lisa in his arms. His T-shirt covered her body.

Mike did not leave immediately. With a cigarette between his lips, he walked to a car nearby and knocked on its window.

The window rolled down, revealing Coulson's slightly awkward face.

"Mike, fancy seeing you here," Coulson greeted him.

"Yeah, what a coincidence. We ran into each other at Blood Thorn, and now we run into each other here. You people really are everywhere." Mike's tone was mocking as he pointed at the factory. "I'll leave the cleanup to you. No problem, right?"

Coulson said, "No problem."

After giving a few orders into his radio, a team of fully armed agents filed out of the van behind them and advanced toward the factory.

Mike said, "I'm not interested in S.H.I.E.L.D. Stop playing those tracking and surveillance games."

S.H.I.E.L.D.?

More like Snake S.H.I.E.L.D.!

Coulson gave a stiff smile.

Mike drove Lisa back to her home in the Upper East Side. Mr. and Mrs. Banks wept with joy and gratitude toward Mike. Mrs. Banks once again contributed Soul Energy +1.

It was already the middle of the night when he got home.

Staying up late was bad for you... so he might as well stay up all night.

He turned on his phone.

He replied to messages from several female friends first. They had gotten to know each other deeply, so giving them special treatment was not excessive.

Then he saw Fat Jerry's resentful message: [Why didn't you order from me? Did you find another supplier out there?]

Mike patiently replied with one word: [Fuck off!]

Blood Thorn had been wiped out.

Deacon Frost wore a gloomy expression. His entire nest of subordinates had been taken out, including his girlfriend. How could he possibly be happy?

Only Sansa still knew exactly what had happened in the private room. After questioning her and having her make a sketch of Mike, the enraged Deacon grabbed Sansa and bit into her neck, tearing flesh and spraying blood everywhere.

"One after another... How dare a mere inferior race do this!"

Deacon casually tossed Sansa's corpse aside, pointed at Mike's portrait, and told his trusted subordinate Quinn, "You have three days. Find him at any cost."

New York had a population of seven or eight million. Find someone with just a sketch?

How was that any different from looking for a needle in a haystack?

But faced with the enraged Deacon, did Quinn dare say no?