Wisps of cigar smoke drifted upward.
Luke Hyena covered his mouth, stifling his laughter, and waved at the enforcer in the corner. "Fuck, that's hilarious. Quick, quick, kill him... I can't take it, haha!"
Hiss!
A pneumatic hiss sounded, and scalding steam billowed from the chief enforcer's mechanical arms.
With a vicious grin, he spread his arms behind Cheng Qi and clamped them toward his neck. Those arms held enough force to crush Cheng Qi's neck bones in an instant.
At that very moment, a flash of ferocity crossed Cheng Qi's eyes.
He sprang to his feet, activating the XXX-01 Extreme Warrior Armor. Memory metal surged from his sleeves, coating his hands in dark silver armor.
Creak!
Cheng Qi spun around in an instant and shot out both hands, seizing the two mechanical arms of Bar Street's chief enforcer. His immense strength twisted them out of shape.
Crack!
The XXX-01 Extreme Warrior Armor unleashed its power, and Cheng Qi tore both mechanical arms off the enforcer, sending fragments flying.
As the chief enforcer stared in utter disbelief.
Cheng Qi kicked him in the chest. With a thunderous crash, the enforcer went flying, smashing through layer after layer of the bar's rotten wooden walls. He flew over a dozen meters before landing in a twisted heap embedded in a garbage mound outside.
"Fuck..."
Luke Hyena stood dumbfounded, his mouth opening and closing slightly.
Hyena's other men rushed over at the noise, their heavy footsteps echoing in the corridor outside.
Cheng Qi glanced around and spotted a heavy safe from the old era in Hyena's office. With only a slight bend of his body, he lifted the alloy safe, which weighed nearly two tons.
Diamond-shaped ripples spread across the XXX-01 Extreme Warrior Armor beneath Cheng Qi's clothes. Power traveled from its core to his hands. Using only thirty percent of its kinetic output, Cheng Qi hurled the safe, accelerating it like a cannonball!
Boom!
Luke Hyena's office door shattered. A string of muffled groans came from the corridor, followed by another tremendous crash into a garbage mound on the street over a dozen meters away. After that, the whole world fell silent.
"F-fuck..."
Hyena froze.
As far as he could tell, Cheng Qi must have installed some sort of cybernetic augmentation. But in the rotten garbage dump that was Earth, decent equipment was impossible to scavenge. Even if someone managed to cobble a set together, it could never perform like that. It could never lift a two-ton safe!
Thud, thud, thud.
Footsteps sounded at the back door. Hyena had ordered every exit sealed earlier, and the enforcer stationed there had also realized something was wrong.
A matte, dark silver glint flashed. Cheng Qi straightened his arm, releasing a metal shaft from his wrist, a full three meters long and as thick as a thumb. It shot straight across the desk and pierced the back door.
Thump...
The sound of a body hitting the floor came from outside.
This time, the world truly fell silent.
"F-f-fuck..."
Hyena swallowed. The silver shaft had passed right beside his ear, and every hair on his body stood on end.
He could not begin to understand why such a long piece of metal had appeared out of nowhere from the little trash worm's sleeve!
What the hell kind of equipment was that?!
Then.
Cheng Qi withdrew the XXX-01 Extreme Warrior Armor and leaned forward slightly. "Luke Hyena, now I have a few questions for you."
"Ask your fucking mother!"
The vicious Hyena suddenly raised his beam pistol, aimed straight at Cheng Qi's head, and pulled the trigger!
Bang!
Smoke curled upward.
But Cheng Qi had gripped the muzzle with his armored right hand. His palm felt hot, numb, and sore, as though a high-speed baseball had struck it. Beyond that, he suffered no injury.
Crunch!
Cheng Qi closed his fingers. That beam pistol, a top-tier luxury in this world of garbage, crumpled into fragments.
"Go ahead, boss. Ask away."
Hyena's lips twitched. Shock flashed across his face before swiftly giving way to an exceptionally strained smile. His reaction speed truly was unmatched.
"Judging by your reaction earlier, you know this stuff very well."
Cheng Qi glanced at the amorphous alloy on the desk. "Exactly how much is it worth?"
"That piece... about a thousand credit points."
Luke Hyena swallowed as he spoke.
Bang!
Cheng Qi grabbed Luke Hyena's head and slammed it into the metal desk in front of him. Hyena's black alloy teeth snapped and scattered.
"I did lie to you. That piece can sell for two thousand..."
Hyena's mouth was full of blood, his eyes pleading.
Bang!
Cheng Qi slammed Luke Hyena's head into the metal desk again.
"Four thousand!"
"It can sell for four thousand!"
Bang!
Even the metal desk dented under the impact!
"Don't kill me!"
"I'll talk!"
"Amorphous alloy, four thousand!"
"Four thousand per gram!"
This time.
It was Cheng Qi's turn to be stunned. "How much?!"
"Amorphous alloy, four thousand per gram!"
"Boss, spare me! That's the highest price I can sell it for!"
Cheng Qi went a little rigid.
He had guessed Hyena would lie about its value, but he had never imagined the lie would be this outrageous!
That piece of amorphous alloy weighed about fifty grams, and he had twenty-three pieces.
Four thousand credit points per gram?!
How much money was that?
Faced with a revelation far beyond anything he had imagined, Cheng Qi struggled to stay composed.
He had never seen so many credit points in his life. He had never even imagined a number like that!
Steady your breathing!
Cheng Qi hauled Luke Hyena's head up. "When I showed you those six pieces of amorphous alloy earlier, you grew more ecstatic with every piece. That means you weren't worried about attracting unwanted attention, because you have a reliable, steady buyer. So who exactly is he?"
Luke Hyena panted heavily.
He knew very well that this little trash worm possessed equipment beyond his imagination, and that he was nowhere near as timid as Hyena had assumed!
And the kid was cunning. He had been watching Hyena's reactions all along, deducing his secrets!
After letting out a heavy sigh.
Hyena finally admitted defeat and pulled a relatively refined communicator from his desk. "He isn't some lowly scavenger. He doesn't even live on Earth. And this communicator is the only way to contact him."
Cheng Qi picked up the communicator, studying it with narrowed eyes, and chuckled softly. "Thank you for your cooperation."
Buildings catching fire was perfectly normal.
Scavengers were always collecting unstable chemicals or old batteries prone to thermal runaway.
Hyena's bar was on fire.
Supporting the badly injured Old Lin, Cheng Qi slowly walked out through the collapsed doorway.
And at the very instant he stepped out of the bar.
Boom!
An even larger blaze erupted inside the decrepit bar, and the main structure collapsed.
Many of the surrounding scavengers exchanged glances, but they all pretended to be stunned, standing motionless where they were.
-Hyena was dead. Their debts no longer needed paying.
Cheng Qi glanced back.
Firelight reflected in his pupils.
While Hyena lived, he seemed to offer loans to help scavengers through their immediate crises. In reality, those loans were merely the beginning of another hell.
While Hyena lived, he would avenge every slight. Even if he lacked the ability to take revenge himself, he would use the amorphous alloy as bait to recruit more powerful fighters.
So...
He died.
People cast awed looks at him. That kid was always hanging around this area. What was his name again? Oh, Cheng Qi, apparently.
Even if the fire had been an accident, couldn't the people inside have put it out?
Even if they couldn't extinguish it, why hadn't they escaped?
But no one intended to discuss the truth. They chose to thank Cheng Qi by playing dumb despite knowing exactly what had happened.
Hana, dressed in red, glanced over the moment Cheng Qi stepped through the bar's doorway.
Then Hana turned away again. With bewilderment and a longing for the unknown in her beautiful eyes, she quietly gazed at the gray sky.
Cheng Qi's figure disappeared down Bar Street.
Hana had a very unusual set of values.
She seemed to have been waiting for someone all along.
Before you continue