An unexpected assist

Morning came to Queens, and the sky still looked as drab and lifeless as ever, like a faded rag tossed carelessly over the city.

Zhao Fan woke early-or rather, he had barely slept at all last night.

In fact, ever since that incredible scene a few hours earlier, he had remained in a state of excitement.

Outside, the noise of the city's reconstruction played like an endless, low-frequency backing track. Inside, Zhao Fan stared at a coin in his hand.

It was an ordinary quarter, its edges worn and George Washington's profile blurred.

"Whew..."

Zhao Fan took a deep breath and steadied his breathing. His gaze locked onto the corner of the room-an empty beer bottle about four meters away, with an opening less than three centimeters across. It was trash left by the previous tenant, tossed onto the wardrobe to gather dust.

There was no system notification, no dazzling special effects.

But the instant Zhao Fan raised the coin and focused, the world changed before his eyes.

The dim, cluttered space seemed to be deconstructed by some invisible algorithm. Air currents, gravity's pull, muscle tension... all those complex physical parameters became simple in that instant, converging on his retinas-or, more accurately, in his consciousness-into a pale blue dotted trajectory that only he could see.

That trajectory extended from his fingertips, traced an elegant parabola through the air, and ended precisely inside the narrow bottle opening.

It was a strange feeling, like a student who had spent decades solving math problems suddenly gaining the intuition to see straight through to the answer. No calculations, no hesitation. His body instinctively knew how much force to use and how far to turn his wrist.

Zhao Fan stood and walked to the window. Dawn was just breaking outside, and a stray cat crouched beside a water tank on the opposite rooftop.

The distance was about forty-five meters.

Zhao Fan narrowed his eyes, lightly rubbing the coin's edge with his fingers.

As long as I throw at a thirty-five-degree elevation, apply about 12.5 newtons of force, and rotate my wrist slightly right to compensate for the wind...

It felt like an old carpenter who had worked for decades knowing a plank's dimensions at a glance without a ruler, or an oil seller pouring oil through the square hole in a copper coin without wetting it at all. It was an instinct that had internalized complex physical calculations as muscle memory.

He raised his hand, feinted a throw, then slowly lowered it again.

Not here. The coin hitting the water tank would make a noise. In this tightly wound neighborhood, any unusual sound could bring unnecessary trouble.

"Use it sparingly," Zhao Fan told himself, slipping the coin back into his pocket.

He washed his face. In the mirror, he had heavy dark circles, untidy stubble, and a complexion made somewhat pale by malnutrition. But the look in the eyes beneath that exterior had changed. Yesterday's deadness and despair, the look of someone crushed by life, were gone. In their place was ambition, like the sun rising outside the window-faint, but carrying a searing heat.

Amid that suffocating feeling of being driven into a hopeless corner, he had finally grasped a knife. Though it was still short and dull, at least he was no longer empty-handed.

When he reached the gathering point, the atmosphere was even more oppressive than yesterday.

Word of yesterday's "punitive labor" in Zone C-2 had clearly spread among the cleaners. People looked at Zhao Fan and Old Dog differently, with sympathy and fear, but mostly with a self-protective distance. Nobody wanted anything to do with the unlucky bastards targeted by both Foreman Mike and Rattlesnake Rick.

Old Dog was doing a little better today, but he still dragged his injured leg along the ground, limping as he walked. He still carried that crowbar like a walking stick, with an unlit cigarette butt between his lips for comfort.

"Morning." Old Dog glanced at Zhao Fan, a glint flashing through his cloudy old eyes. "You look... pretty lively?"

"You could say that." Zhao Fan offered no further explanation, simply taking Old Dog's heavy tool bag from him. "What does that bastard Mike have planned today?"

"Hmph, that stupid pig." Old Dog spat on the ground. "Thanks to you, we don't have to go into the radiation zone today. Zone C-2's cleared, and the higher-ups transferred us to Zone A-6. Used to be a commercial plaza. No high radiation, but the structure's very unstable. It's classified as a 'high physical hazard zone.'"

Zhao Fan nodded. Physical danger? As long as it wasn't radiation he couldn't see or touch, he was confident he could handle most situations now.

Just then, a harsh commotion shattered the morning gloom.

"Watch where you're going, you fat fuck!"

Zhao Fan looked toward the voice, frowning slightly.

Not far away, at the equipment pickup point, a tall, burly figure was backing someone in an ill-fitting protective suit into a corner.

It was Rick.

After yesterday's setback, the man clearly had a bellyful of anger with nowhere to vent it. He couldn't crack tough nuts like Zhao Fan and Old Dog for now-or perhaps he planned to take his time playing with them-so he urgently needed a new punching bag to establish his authority and prove his "dominance" over the cleanup crew.

And that unlucky "punching bag" was a new face.

He was a slightly chubby young Asian man wearing thick black-framed glasses, with fair skin that marked him at a glance as the sort who spent his days in air-conditioned rooms and had never done heavy labor. His work clothes were clearly a size too large, and his helmet sat crookedly on his head, making him look comical and clumsy. Holding a jumble of tools, he hung his head meekly, his face flushed red and his body trembling slightly with fear.

"S-sorry, I... I didn't see..." The fat young man's voice was as faint as a mosquito's whine, with an unmistakable quaver of tears.

"Didn't see?" Rick laughed theatrically, but the chill in his eyes didn't diminish at all. He extended a callused hand and slapped the young man's face hard, producing a crisp smack. "Are those glasses just for show? Huh? Or are your little eyes squeezed shut by all that fat on your face?"

Laughter rose around them. It came from Rick's two lackeys and a few of the foreman's dogs joining in to curry favor with him.

"I'm... I'm really sorry..." Frightened, the young man kept backing away until he tripped, spilling the tools in his arms across the ground with a clatter.

The fall left him looking even more wretched.

"Fucking useless." Rick gave him a disgusted look, then his eyes shifted and a cruel smile spread across his face. He raised a foot and planted it on a lunch box the young man had just dropped.

It was the lunch he had brought himself.

With a crack, the cheap plastic lunch box shattered beneath the work boot, and the sandwich inside instantly became a flattened mess.

"Oops, sorry." Rick withdrew his foot in mock surprise, then scraped it against the ground. "I 'didn't see' either. Since you like throwing things on the ground so much, you don't get to eat. Or..." He bent down, leaned close to the young man's ear, and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, "You can get down on the ground and lick it clean like a dog."

The young man's face turned purplish red. Tears swam in his eyes, but he bit his lip hard, afraid to resist or even pick up the lunch box.

Such naked humiliation quieted even much of the crowd that had been watching for entertainment. They were all people at the bottom, none better than the others. Watching someone's dignity trampled like this left them with the discomfort of knowing they could be next.

But nobody stepped forward.

Those were the rules here.

Zhao Fan watched the scene coldly. His hand was in his pocket, his fingers lightly rubbing a rusty hex nut he had picked up from the ground.

"Don't do anything rash, kid," Old Dog said quietly beside him, a note of warning in his voice. "That fat kid's called Benjamin. Just got here yesterday. An easy target like him won't last a week here. You can't save everyone, especially people who can't stand up for themselves."

Zhao Fan said nothing. Of course he knew Old Dog was right. In this slaughterhouse, indiscriminate compassion was both the cheapest and deadliest thing there was.

But...

As Zhao Fan watched Rick's face twist with excitement at bullying someone weaker, something inside him stirred.

Yesterday, Rick had looked at him and Old Dog the same way.

That superior attitude, that arrogance that treated people like ants.

Unless someone taught this bastard a real lesson, he would be like a rabid dog that had tasted blood, forever sinking his teeth into you. Besides, survival alone wasn't enough for Zhao Fan now. He needed to test his blade.

He needed to know just how far his ability could go in actual combat.

"Relax, Jose," Zhao Fan said evenly. "I just don't like the look of that guy."

By now, cleanup work in Zone A-6 had begun. These ruins were the atrium of a half-collapsed mall, with many decorative structures and pieces of construction debris hanging overhead, shaken loose during the great battle but still barely attached.

Rick didn't keep watching the young man. After enjoying his bullying, he swaggered over to the rest area-a relatively safe patch of open ground-with a can of cola he had gotten from somewhere, tipping his head back to gulp it down.

Meanwhile, the chubby young man named Benjamin was wiping his tears while laboriously clearing a pile of heavy rubble in a nearby corner. Directly above him, about seven or eight meters up, hung a huge sheet-metal bucket used to hold renovation waste.

The blast had wedged the bucket between two steel beams, leaving it teetering precariously. It wasn't filled with stones. Judging by the color seeping over its edge, it was likely some kind of expired, fermented industrial paint or a mixture of renovation adhesives.

Rick finished his cola and casually threw the can at the young man. It struck his hard hat with a crisp clang.

"Work faster! You fat pig!" Rick cursed.

The young man shrank back in fright, his movements growing even more flustered.

Zhao Fan narrowed his eyes.

Distance: approximately 35 meters.

Wind speed: a light breeze.

Target: the metal fastener suspending the bucket, already half broken and barely keeping its balance with a single corroded steel cable clip.

Projectile: the rusty hex nut in his hand, weighing approximately 15 grams.

To an ordinary person, this was almost impossible. Hitting a heavily stressed fastener no bigger than a coin from this distance, while avoiding a tangled maze of reinforcing bars-even an Olympic shooting champion would shake their head.

But in Zhao Fan's eyes, the world changed.

As he stared at the fastener, a pale blue, translucent ballistic trajectory quietly extended from his fingertips like an illusory thread.

The line wound through the air, avoided a steel pipe crossing its path, and passed through a gap in a broken billboard. At its end, the red impact point locked steadily onto the fragile metal clasp.

Zhao Fan took a deep breath and steadied his breathing.

He had to do this without anyone noticing.

He turned around, pretending to clean dirt off his shovel while angling his body slightly in that direction. His movement was natural, as though he were casually flicking something dirty off his hand.

Whoosh!

In that instant, Zhao Fan's arm muscles tensed, and the nut flew from his hand.

The nut spun rapidly through the air, following the pale blue trajectory exactly. It traced a strange curve, almost appearing to drift erratically in the air currents.

Clink!

An extremely faint metallic impact sounded overhead.

Like a precisely aimed bullet, the nut struck hard against the latch of the metal fastener that had already been on the verge of giving way.

It was a perfect strike on a weak point.

The taut steel cable instantly broke free, snapping loose with a twang.

Deprived of its last support, the huge sheet-metal bucket tipped over instantly under gravity's pull.

Splash-

At that moment, Rick stood about two meters diagonally behind the young man, still pointing at him and swearing. He had no idea of the danger overhead.

Benjamin, who had been working with his head down, heard the strange noise above and instinctively rolled to the side-purely out of a human instinct to survive.

Rick wasn't so lucky. Or rather, he was too confident, so confident that he had let his guard down in these danger-ridden ruins.

When he heard the sound and looked up, all he saw was an overwhelming, viscous, multicolored "waterfall."

It was a bucketful of paint, glue, and rainwater that had fermented and separated through heat and time. Like a giant carpet of slime, it descended squarely over his head, holding nothing back.

Splat-

Rick didn't even have time to scream before the foul-smelling torrent engulfed him completely.

Red, blue, yellow... thick liquids of every color instantly transformed the bully, who had been so insufferably arrogant moments before, into a ridiculous multicolored sculpture.

Worse still, the sheet-metal bucket hit the ground beside Rick's feet with a crash, splashing the sludge around him and turning everything within two meters into a no-go zone.

All of Zone A-6 instantly fell deathly silent.

Then someone-no one knew who-failed to hold back and let out a snort of laughter.

That laugh was like a lit fuse. Stifled laughter quickly spread across the worksite. Workers covered their mouths, their shoulders shaking violently. Though nobody dared laugh at him out loud, their satisfaction was impossible to hide.

Rick wiped paint from his face, revealing a pair of blazing eyes, and spat a mouthful of blue foam. He was a complete mess.

"Who?! Who did that?!" he roared hysterically, like a wounded beast.

But he couldn't find the culprit. The bucket's fall looked entirely accidental. Old fasteners like that broke dozens of times a day in these ruins.

Benjamin sat blankly on the ground, staring at the scene beside him, his eyes round behind his lenses. He looked at the snapped steel cable above, then at the paint-covered Rick, his mind completely blank.

Meanwhile, the culprit, Zhao Fan, had long since turned around and lowered his head to continue clearing the rubble before him, as though everything that had just happened had nothing to do with him.

Only Old Dog noticed.

The experienced old cleaner didn't look at Rick. Instead, he turned thoughtfully and glanced at Zhao Fan beside him.

He had been closest to Zhao Fan just then. Though Zhao Fan's movements had been extremely discreet, he seemed to have sensed something.

"An accident?" Old Dog asked quietly, his tone complicated.

Zhao Fan shrugged and took his hand out of his pocket. It was empty.

"Who knows?" Zhao Fan watched Rick's bedraggled figure retreat, his gaze clear. "Maybe even God couldn't stand watching anymore."

In a voice only the two of them could hear, Old Dog muttered, "If that was luck, then you've got some fucking incredible luck, kid. If someone did it on purpose... heh, then this rattlesnake just hit a steel plate."

Zhao Fan didn't respond. He simply worked his shovel harder. His heart was still pounding, driven by the thrill of an unprecedented sense of control.

He had done it.

In this world overrun by gods and monsters, he had used a rusty nut to defend his own rules for the first time.