The van sped along, blending into New York's evening traffic like a drop of dirty water disappearing down a drain.
Chen Mo followed at a distance, his face expressionless but his pace never slowing.
His golden finger had gained a new ability: running fast. It was more useful than talking to fish, and he could use it to kite Soldier Boy, too.
"I started with a bottle of water and a bag of crackers. My equipment slots are emptier than a slime's. At least I don't need to rent a shared bike to kite Soldier Boy anymore."
Muttering under his breath, Chen Mo continued jogging after the van.
The van turned again, pulling onto a side road.
The tall buildings along the road gradually gave way to shorter ones, and the signs grew much older. Expired promotional posters covered the convenience store windows, and a few homeless people huddled by the entrance. Nobody cared whether someone was being kidnapped inside the van.
A giant screen overhead was still playing a Vought commercial.
Homelander stood in the sunlight, his smile as perfect as if it had been copied from a template.
"Don't be afraid. We're always here."
Chen Mo glanced up, his lips twitching.
"With that kind of advertising budget, it'd be hard not to be."
He looked away and kept walking.
The smell was growing clearer.
It wasn't blood or ordinary sweat, but a strange temptation. It drifted from the direction of the van, so faint it was almost impossible to catch, yet tugging at his stomach again and again like a hook.
Chen Mo hated the feeling.
Because it wasn't him wanting to eat.
It was his stomach tugging at him, telling him it was time to dig in.
He pressed a hand to his abdomen and gave it a gentle pat through his sweatshirt.
"Behave. We're civilized people. We should at least check the hygiene standards first."
A middle-aged man carrying a beer heard him and turned to look at him.
Chen Mo immediately smiled.
"I mean pizza. New York pizza, you know?"
The middle-aged man gave him an even more complicated look.
Chen Mo didn't explain further.
He turned into the alley where the van had disappeared and soon spotted an old warehouse district. Rusty signs hung from the wire fencing, graffiti covered the walls, and several security cameras were mounted high up, though their lights were clearly off.
The van was parked outside the third warehouse.
The fat man got out first, looked around, and slapped the van door.
"Hurry up and get her inside. The boss is getting impatient."
The man in the baseball cap cursed, pulled open the back door, and dragged a woman out.
Her hands were bound with tape, and her mouth was taped shut. One of her light-colored high heels had fallen off, and her ankle left a streak in the dust as it scraped along the ground.
The warehouse door slid open, and men's laughter and conversation drifted out, along with the sound of bottles knocking against a table.
Chen Mo didn't rush in immediately.
He circled along the wall, first checking for other exits.
There was a small door at the back of the warehouse, with old wooden crates piled beside it. The windows were barred, and an old outdoor air-conditioning unit nearby hummed away.
He crouched behind the crates and listened for a while.
There were at least six people inside.
Two were by the door, three were in the middle of the warehouse, and one had a rougher voice and a more domineering tone. He was probably the boss they had mentioned.
The woman was shoved into a chair.
As soon as the tape was ripped off, she gasped and said, "I already gave you the money. What more do you want?"
The fat man laughed.
"What good is that little bit of money? All you paid was the interest on the debt, understand?"
The woman's voice trembled. "He's not my boyfriend. We already broke up."
Another man whistled.
"Fine by us. He ran off, but you're still here."
A burst of laughter came from the warehouse.
Outside, Chen Mo leaned against the wall and rubbed the space between his brows.
"Got it. The local gang doesn't have many manners. Their lending business is all about making friends and family pay for each other."
He looked down at his hand.
It looked utterly ordinary, its knuckles even a little thin.
Then he slowly curled his fingers.
A broken brick by the wall cracked in his grip, tiny fragments falling through his fingers.
"Hmm, my stats aren't bad. Just don't know if I'm bulletproof."
This was America.
These guys were likely armed. If he charged in now pretending to be a war god, the best outcome would be winning. A worse one would be getting riddled with bullets, then praying his golden finger gave him an extra life.
The problem was, he still hadn't figured out what his golden finger could do.
"Don't get carried away, Chen Mo. Homelander's still up in the sky acting like a security camera, and you haven't even figured out how to farm the beginner village's wild boars yet."
He crouched down, picked up a piece of broken brick, and looked at the old air-conditioning unit.
A few seconds later, he went around to the back door and knocked on the metal surface.
Thud.
The laughter and conversation inside paused.
Someone by the door cursed. "Who is it?"
Chen Mo didn't answer. He raised his hand and knocked twice more.
Thud, thud.
Footsteps approached.
"Fuck, who's out there?"
The back door was pulled halfway open from inside, and a tall, thin man poked his head out, clutching a baseball bat.
The next second, the piece of brick smashed into the air-conditioning unit.
The sheet metal let out a piercing clang.
The tall, thin man instinctively turned to look. Chen Mo reached out from behind the door, grabbed his collar, and yanked him outside.
The man crashed down beside the crates. He had just opened his mouth when Chen Mo punched him in the side of the neck.
His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed limply to the ground.
Chen Mo took the bat from him and tested its weight.
"Not bad. Better than nothing."
He crouched and felt around the man's waist. There was no gun, only a small knife and half a pack of cigarettes.
"So they don't all have guns. Looks like this gang isn't very professional."
He finished the man off with the knife, dragged the body behind the crates, then picked up the bat and peered inside from the back door.
The warehouse was dimly lit.
An old table stood in the middle, covered with liquor, cash, and several bags of white powder. The bound woman sat in a chair, her hair disheveled and her eyes full of panic.
The fat man was rummaging through her bag.
The man in the baseball cap stood beside him, smoking.
At the far end, a bald man in a leather jacket sat on a sofa, toying with a small vial.
It contained a pale blue liquid.
The moment Chen Mo saw it, the back of his tongue went numb.
Saliva began flowing uncontrollably.
The warehouse, the gangsters, the woman, the guns-everything in his field of vision seemed to recede half an inch, leaving only the vial highlighted.
His instincts were screaming: Eat that thing, and I can level up.
Chen Mo patted his stomach and swallowed his saliva.
"A strange liquid potion. Could that be compound V? Is that what I want to eat?"
The bald man shook the vial and said to the fat man, "Nothing can go wrong with tonight's shipment. The buyer's pushing hard."
The fat man didn't look up.
"Boss, what about the woman?"
The bald man looked at the woman in the chair and smiled.
"Didn't she say she had no money? Then have her call her family and tell them to bring some. If nobody brings the money, send her to the backstreet. There are people there who'll take her."
The woman's face went pale in an instant, and she shook her head, crying.
"Please, my younger sister is still in school. Don't drag her into this."
The man in the baseball cap ground his cigarette out on the corner of the table. "Then behave yourself," he said irritably. "Don't make things difficult for us."
Listening outside the door, Chen Mo drew a quiet breath.
He had only intended to save someone and find out what the smell was.
Now it seemed this was much bigger than a street robbery.
Compound V, an underground buyer, someone on the backstreet to take her.
It looked like he had stumbled into the black market from the story.
Chen Mo didn't want to get involved with the black market.
At least, not now. After all, both A-Train and Homelander might notice him because of this.
But the smell of compound V kept wafting out, making him drool uncontrollably.
"All right, then."
Chen Mo spoke under his breath.
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained. No going into the warehouse, no takeout."
He picked up a screw from the ground and tossed it toward the other side of the warehouse.
Clatter.
The sound came from behind a shelf.
The two underlings by the door immediately turned around.
"Who's there?"
The fat man frowned.
"Huh? Didn't Jack just go check the back door?"
The man in the baseball cap's expression changed, and he reached for his waist.
Chen Mo moved.
He slipped in through the back door and swept the bat sideways, smashing it into the back of the nearest man's knee.
The man screamed and dropped to his knees.
Chen Mo pressed a hand against the back of his head and slammed his face into the edge of the shelf.
Bang.
The shelf jolted violently, and several empty liquor bottles rolled off, smashing across the floor.
The man's scream caught in his throat, and he died on the spot.
The second man had just turned around when Chen Mo swung the bat at him.
It struck his wrist, and his gun fell to the floor.
"Kids shouldn't play with guns. You might accidentally shoot your dad."
The man flew backward, his back slamming into the wall hard enough to make the liquor bottles and cash on the table tremble.
The warehouse descended into chaos.
The fat man cursed and reached for his gun.
The woman shrank back in her chair, broken sobs escaping her throat.
The bald man stood up.
"Who the fuck are you?"
The man in the baseball cap also recognized Chen Mo, surprise and anger flashing across his face.
"You Asian brat, you actually dared to follow us here!!!"
Chen Mo picked up the pistol from the floor and held it like he'd seen in the movies, its muzzle pointed down.
"Don't get me wrong. I don't hold grudges."
He looked at the woman, then at the compound V in the bald man's hand.
The vial of pale blue liquid swayed in the light.
Chen Mo's Adam's apple bobbed with it.
"I'm mainly here for the takeout."