(Rest assured, this book won't have any power-scaling breakdowns, and the characters' personalities will match the original show perfectly.)
"Good night, Homelander."
Lu Zhao stared at the ending of The Boys, speechless for a long time.
The superpowered man-child, desperately starved of love, had died on May 20, a day celebrating love. How ironic.
Faced with this slapdash ending, Lu Zhao glanced at the Soldier Boy figurine on his desk.
"If you'd been there, would things have ended differently?" Lu Zhao murmured, his thoughts drifting.
[Suitable host detected. Kidnapping in progress...]
An ethereal female voice abruptly rang out in Lu Zhao's mind.
"Huh?"
Lu Zhao looked around in confusion but found no source for the voice.
Just as he thought he had imagined it, a dull pain struck the back of his head. Then his vision went black, and he lost consciousness.
Russia, a secret military base
"Hiss."
After an unknown amount of time, Lu Zhao slowly opened his eyes. The first thing he felt was the pain in the back of his head.
His brain had not fully woken up yet. Instinctively, he tried to touch the sore spot, but his arm struck the wall of the cryogenic chamber as soon as he raised it.
The icy touch brought Lu Zhao fully awake.
As his consciousness returned, his senses gradually recovered as well.
First came the cold. Frigid air from every direction relentlessly scoured his body, burrowing into his pores like countless needles of ice.
Next, his vision returned to normal, but his eyelids felt as heavy as steel plates, allowing him to see only a faint light.
Several unfamiliar figures in combat uniforms, weapons in hand, watched warily in his direction, their mouths opening and closing.
Hearing came last. The piercing noise of running machinery intruded into his muddled mind.
Only then could he finally hear what those unfamiliar figures were saying.
It was Russian.
He could not understand exactly what they meant.
"What's going on?"
Lu Zhao struggled to force his stiff eyelids open. He tried to speak, only to spit out a mouthful of ice.
[Host awakening detected. The Old Popsicle System is at your service.]
The ethereal female voice rang out again. Hearing that familiar voice, Lu Zhao finally remembered everything.
He had finished watching The Boys and was about to launch into a tirade against the writers when someone inexplicably clubbed him from behind.
Before he passed out, an ethereal female voice calling itself a system had said it was going to kidnap him.
That was right. Not bind itself to him-kidnap him.
Was this a legitimate system? Of all the books on Tomato, which system sneaked up and clubbed the protagonist?
"You goddamn bastard, where am I?"
Having figured it all out, Lu Zhao could not help asking.
[Host, this is the world of The Boys. Your current identity is Soldier Boy.]
This son-of-a-bitch system had kidnapped him into The Boys?
Lu Zhao was stunned.
Soldier Boy, Vought International's first ace, possessed exceptionally high offensive and defensive capabilities. His individual combat strength stood near the very pinnacle of this world.
More importantly, Homelander was his son now?
Lu Zhao had a bellyful of questions, but the self-proclaimed Old Popsicle System interrupted him.
[Host, please fire your chest blast and leave the cryogenic chamber. Completing this task will earn you generous rewards.]
"Complete your fucking ass! Send me back!" Lu Zhao swore.
Outside the cryogenic chamber, the soldiers saw the monster inside suddenly go berserk and scrambled in a nervous panic.
[Host, please note: if you do not leave the cryogenic chamber promptly, you will be knocked unconscious by Novichok nerve agent again.] [You don't want to be frozen, do you?]
The Old Popsicle System replied airily.
Lu Zhao was dumbfounded. He had watched all of The Boys, and he was clearly being held inside Russia's secret base.
If he did not get out in time, he really would become an old popsicle.
"Son of a bitch," Lu Zhao cursed through gritted teeth.
He could distinctly hear the system stifling its laughter, as though it had him cornered. Lu Zhao had no desire to face those inhumane experiments.
At that thought, fragments of memories surfaced.
Scenes of Soldier Boy being tortured flashed rapidly through his mind like a movie.
As a young man of the modern age, Lu Zhao had never seen so many horrifying sights. Worst of all, his body was trembling uncontrollably.
Rage filled his entire body.
Surging heat gathered in his chest.
His chest lit up, literally, its golden glow growing brighter and brighter.
Affected by the powerful energy, the military base's alarm lights all sounded the alarm at once.
A senior officer in a colonel's uniform looked terrified. His subordinates had already informed him that Soldier Boy had awakened.
With access to all the classified files, he naturally knew what kind of monster was inside that cryogenic chamber.
"Quick, inject the toxin into the stasis chamber!" The colonel issued the final order of his life.
Before the last syllable faded, intense heat tore through the door to the colonel's office, and blazing light engulfed everything...
Before the colonel could even scream, temperatures high enough to melt steel swallowed him whole.
Like a ragged burlap sack, he flew dozens of meters before losing momentum and landing on the ground, reduced to a small, charcoal-like lump with no trace of human form.
If someone posted it on social media, it could even pass moderation instantly.
The same scene played out across almost the entire secret base.
Smoke and flames were everywhere, and waves of heat dispersed the clouds high above.
Lu Zhao stood amid the devastated ruins, breathing hard. As his ragged breaths flowed in and out, the lingering glow in his chest faded.
The fragments of the cryogenic chamber had long since flown out of sight.
Recovering his senses, Lu Zhao straightened up. He had fired that chest blast in a half-conscious state.
It was partly this body's stress response to decades of torture, and partly because those memory fragments had frightened Lu Zhao.
"So it really is this powerful," Lu Zhao marveled from the heart.
He looked forward to witnessing Homelander's strength firsthand. He just wondered how the current Homelander would react if he suddenly learned he had a dad.
After firing that blast, Lu Zhao distinctly felt drained, like the aftereffects of staying up late jerking off.
Still, the powerful vitality flowing through his body and the almost tangible sense of strength were enough to handle the trouble ahead.
The sounds of dense, synchronized footsteps, roaring vehicle engines, and spinning aircraft propellers reached him one after another.
He had caused such a commotion that the entire military base's armed forces had assembled to deal with this veteran.
Without warning, every firearm and explosive weapon they could bring to bear opened fire on Lu Zhao at once.
Before you continue