Chinese Kung Fu

Chen Mo bit into the thoroughly cold sandwich, its cheese congealed like cheap rubber, and trudged back along the familiar path.

A drunken brute had smashed the streetlight in this alley with one punch half a month ago, and nobody had repaired it yet.

In the eyes of those big shots at City Hall, letting the slums have electricity as far as the utility poles already counted as a tremendous act of grace.

Chen Mo could count with his eyes closed which bricks underfoot were loose and which cracks were stuffed with trash three years past its expiration date.

Halfway down the alley, a sense that something was wrong shot straight from his tailbone to the top of his skull.

Five people stood in the middle of the alley.

Chen Mo stopped and swallowed the last bite of sandwich in his mouth.

Their leader was a tall, skinny fellow whose face looked as though it had been caught in a door, with half an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth.

He held a crumpled slip of paper. Four burly men stood behind him, all wearing black tank tops and baggy shorts, their arms thicker than Chen Mo's thighs.

With the four of them standing there, the entire narrow alley had turned into an escape room.

The skinny man spat the cigarette butt onto the ground and ground it hard beneath his sole. He raised the slip of paper and shook it, producing a crisp rustle.

"Kid, you've been a real pain to find."

Chen Mo swallowed the last bite of sandwich and asked indistinctly, "What do you want me for? I don't have any spare change, and I'm not planning to join your black tank top fan club. Your uniforms have absolutely no taste. Seriously, black tank tops and baggy shorts? Who styled you? Fire him already."

The skinny man sneered and held the paper a little closer. "Your dad, that Ma guy, borrowed ten thousand dollars from us last year."

"I don't have the money to pay you back right now." Chen Mo sighed. "Ten thousand... I could probably pay you back in six months."

He paused, a greedy look in his eyes as though he were eyeing a fat mark. "No, no, no, not ten thousand. With compound interest, it's exactly a hundred thousand now. You're his only offspring. This debt is yours to accept."

Chen Mo glanced at the paper. The signature was crooked and scrawled, indeed in the wild cursive style Old Ma had used when drunk during his lifetime.

He had been planning to pay back ten thousand. A hundred thousand? Like hell.

"Ma's dead. He died at the docks, caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout. If you want him, you'll have to go down there to find him."

The skinny man shrugged as though it were perfectly reasonable. "That's why we came to you. A son pays his father's debts. That's only right, and that's the rule in Gotham. Your dad didn't clear his account before he died, so naturally the debt passed to you. If you think that's unreasonable, you can take us to court."

The burly men behind him let out low chuckles.

Chen Mo put his hands in his pockets and smiled brightly.

"What if I don't pay?"

All four burly men stepped forward at once.

Their heavy footsteps echoed through the narrow alley, and the tension instantly reached a breaking point. The bald brute at the front flexed his fists, his knuckles cracking sharply.

Chen Mo gently set the plastic bag containing his trash on the lid of the garbage can beside his feet.

He rolled up his sleeves unhurriedly, revealing arms that did not look particularly strong.

Watching him, the skinny man gave a mocking smile.

"Kid, you're going to fight us? With those scrawny arms and legs? Any one of my men could snap you in half."

Chen Mo ignored him and rolled his sleeves up another turn.

"Let me ask you something. When you loan sharks set interest rates this high, do you actually expect anyone to pay, or are you just trying to drive people to their deaths so you can take something else as payment? Organs, for example."

"No, no, no, baby. You've got to be sold whole. You're not worth as much in pieces." The skinny man smiled happily too.

"You hear me? Watch where you hit him! Don't touch his face!"

A faint notification suddenly sounded in Chen Mo's mind.

Chen Mo rolled his eyes inwardly. The system must have had a programming glitch, trying to persuade him to be a saint and take a beating at a time like this.

But he soon discovered that the warning stopped on its own after two beeps.

Apparently, the system also felt that physically "reforming" social cancers like these loan sharks counted as a form of justice.

The first brute charged with a roar. An enormous fist whistled toward Chen Mo's head.

Chen Mo did not even blink.

He nimbly leaned to the left. The fist brushed past his hair and struck the red brick wall with a dull, teeth-grating thud.

The brute howled in pain, his entire arm going numb.

While his opponent was off balance, Chen Mo lightly hooked the man's ankle with the tip of his foot. The brute instantly lost his balance and slammed facedown at the foot of the wall like a large sack stuffed with cement.

The bridge of his nose struck the brick wall with a crisp crack.

"One."

Chen Mo lightly tapped the back of his head. "You're out. Stay down."

Seeing this, the other three brutes exchanged glances and rushed him together.

Chen Mo crouched, bracing his fingertips against the ground for balance, and swept his leg precisely into the ankles of the two men in front.

They crashed down too, landing in a heap like two overturned rhinos.

Chen Mo patted each of them on the back.

"Two, three. You're out too."

The last brute stopped short, no longer daring to charge.

Chen Mo stood and thrust his palm into the man's chest.

It felt less like being shoved by a person and more like being hit head-on by a Wuling Hongguang at full speed.

The brute's eyes widened as he flew backward five or six paces, struck the alley's red brick wall, and slowly slid into a sitting position.

Chen Mo shook out his wrist. Of his eight tons of strength, he had only used about a tenth. "Four."

The skinny man was utterly dumbfounded.

The slip of paper in his hand trembled like an autumn leaf. His back pressed against the wall, and rattling sounds came from his throat.

"How is that possible? You've trained in combat? Impossible!"

Chen Mo dusted off his hands, his tone relaxed. "No, this is called Chinese Kung Fu. The cure for anyone who won't submit. If you're interested, I can start a training course. First lesson's free. I'll teach you the proper way to fall when you're getting beaten up. Those students of yours just tried it. Their feedback should be pretty good."

The skinny man still tried to put up a tough front, pointing at his men on the ground and shouting.

"You have to pay what your dad owed! Those are Lord Black Mask's rules! You think beating up a few of my men settles this? Lord Black Mask has hundreds of men in the East End. You can't get away!"

Chen Mo's gaze turned cold, and he darted in front of him. He grabbed the skinny man by the collar, lifted him off his feet, and pinned him against the wall.

The skinny man's toes barely reached the ground. He looked like a gecko nailed to the wall.

"Then go down there and find him. When you do, give him a good beating for me. If it weren't for that dumbass, I'd be getting into Tsinghua and Peking University on an athletic admission right now, and life would be fucking wonderful."

Chen Mo's voice was very low, his gaze so cold that sweat broke out down the skinny man's back.

The subject genuinely made him furious.

If he wanted to flee abroad, he should've gone alone. Why the hell did he have to take a kid with him!

My social benefits!

The skinny man's lips trembled, but he could not utter a word.

Chen Mo released his collar and took the IOU from his trembling fingers.

He held it up to the moonlight and examined it carefully. The handwriting was indeed Old Ma's, and the date was from last year.

This was probably the last document Old Ma had signed in Gotham.

He slowly tore the IOU into four pieces and neatly tucked them back into the skinny man's shirt pocket.

Chen Mo patted his collar, his movements as gentle as though he were straightening an old friend's tie.

"How much did you say it was, principal and interest?"

Without a gun to back him up, the skinny man shook his head frantically, his voice trembling so badly it was almost inaudible.

"No need... you don't have to pay! We got the accounts wrong. Mr. Ma never owed us anything! He was a good man when he was alive. He never touched loan sharks! We made a mistake! A mistake!"

He repeated "a mistake" several times, as though trying to convince himself.

Chen Mo nodded in satisfaction.

"All right. Thanks for being so generous. By my calculations, I didn't owe anything either."

The skinny man nodded desperately, whether he understood or not.

All four brutes were stacked inside the large garbage can at the alley entrance, four pairs of hairy legs kicking wildly over the rim.

Chen Mo slammed the lid down hard, and muffled groans and pleas for mercy came from inside.

He patted the garbage can's lid and told them to reflect on their actions in there, and to remember to bring a calculator next time they collected a debt, so they could at least get the interest right first.

The sour stench of fermenting garbage filled the alley, and moonlight shone on the garbage can, which had been stuffed out of shape.

Chen Mo walked out of the alley whistling. The light, casual tune contrasted sharply with the groans coming from the garbage can behind him.

When he returned to the leaky attic, the room was pitch-black. Before he could turn on the light, a sound came from the cardboard box in the corner.

Bruce poked out his little furry head, his ears standing straight up. As soon as he recognized Chen Mo, he began wagging his tail furiously, its tip pattering rapidly against the sides of the box.

Chen Mo tossed the plastic bag onto the arm of the battered sofa, crouched, and vigorously rubbed the dog's head.

"Enough, stop wagging. Keep that up and your tail's going to fall off. Your dad just took down four brutes, and my arms are too sore to lift. Now you're adding to the noise."

Bruce licked his fingers and rumbled contentedly in his throat, clearly uninterested in his battle record and concerned only with whether he had brought back food.

Just then, a line of translucent golden text suddenly appeared on Chen Mo's retina.

The system interface glowed quietly, as though waiting for him to finish reading every word.

Strength limit increased: four tons to eight tons.

Web strength increased: two hundred percent. Adhesive property added.

Chen Mo looked down at his palms, slowly closing and opening his fingers, his joints giving faint cracks.

He could feel the difference. His muscles had not grown bigger; something deeper had been activated, like a spring that had been held down suddenly being released.

He tried triggering the Silk Launcher. A thicker, stickier strand of web shot from his wrist and stuck precisely to the opposite wall.

Chen Mo gripped the new strand and gave it an experimental tug.

A few flakes of plaster fell from the wall, but the web did not budge.

With this strength, never mind hanging from a tower crane-he could probably swing beneath the Batplane without a problem.

Chen Mo let go and gazed for a moment at the faintly gleaming strand.

Eight tons. I can lift a truck now.

Yep, I can stop the vehicles Superman can stop now too. Yay.

But right now...

Chen Mo went over to the broken sofa, sat down, and pulled the half-finished comic page from his bag.

Bruce jumped out of his little cardboard box, gave a long yawn, then limped over to his feet on his still-not-quite-healed hind leg. He turned in a circle and curled up, rested his chin on Chen Mo's foot, and soon began snoring.

Chen Mo looked down at the dog, then at his hands that could lift a truck, and picked up his drawing pen.

Snap.

The pen broke.

"..."