Chen Mo munched on a long-cooled sandwich--its cheese congealed into something resembling cheap rubber--as he shuffled back along a familiar alleyway.
The streetlamp halfway down the alley had been smashed by a drunk, hulking brute two weeks ago, and no one had bothered to fix it yet. In the eyes of the big shots over at City Hall, simply having electrical wires reach the telephone poles in the slums was already considered a grand act of charity. Chen Mo could close his eyes and still count exactly which bricks underfoot were loose and which cracks were stuffed with garbage that had expired three years ago.
When he reached the middle of the alley, a sudden sense of unease shot straight up his spine to the crown of his head.
Five men were standing right in the middle of the path.
Chen Mo stopped in his tracks and swallowed the last bite of his sandwich.
The leader was a tall, scrawny guy whose face looked like it had been squeezed by a door. An unlit cigarette dangled from his mouth. He was clutching a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. Positioned behind him were four massive brutes, all uniformly dressed in black tank tops and large shorts, with arms thicker than Chen Mo's thighs. The four of them stood there, completely blocking the narrow alley and turning it into a live-action escape room.
The scrawny leader spat his cigarette butt onto the ground and ground it hard beneath the sole of his shoe. He held up the piece of paper, shaking it until it made a crisp rustling sound.
"Kid, finding you was a real pain in the ass."
Chen Mo swallowed the last bite of his sandwich and asked indistinctly, "What do you want with me? I don't have any spare change, and I'm not planning on joining your black tank top fan club. Your uniforms are seriously lacking in taste. Really, black tank tops with big shorts? Who did your styling? Fire them immediately."
The scrawny guy sneered and thrust the paper forward. "Your old man, that guy named Ma. He borrowed ten thousand US dollars from us last year."
"I don't have any money to pay you back right now," Chen Mo sighed. "If it's ten thousand dollars... I can probably pay you back in about half a year."
The man paused, a greedy look gleaming in his eyes as if he were staring at a fat sheep. "No, no, no, it's not ten thousand. With compound interest, it's exactly one hundred thousand by now. You're his only flesh and blood. You have to own up to this debt."
Chen Mo glanced at the piece of paper. The signature on it was crooked and messy, definitely matching Old Ma's wild, drunken handwriting style from when he was alive.
He had actually intended to pay back ten thousand, but a hundred thousand? No way in hell.
"Old Ma is dead. He died at the docks, caught in the crossfire of a gang war. If you want to find him, you'll have to go downstairs to the afterlife."
The scrawny guy shrugged, treating it as a matter of course. "That's exactly why we came looking for you. A son pays his father's debts. It's only natural, and it's the rule of Gotham. Your dad didn't clear the account before he died, so this debt naturally transfers to your head. If you think it's unfair, you can go sue us in court."
The brutes behind him let out low rumbles of laughter.
Chen Mo thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled very brightly.
"And what if I don't pay?"
The four brutes took a step forward in unison.
Their heavy footsteps echoed through the narrow alley, instantly filling the air with tension. The bald brute at the very front cracked his knuckles, making a sharp popping sound.
Chen Mo gently placed the plastic bag containing his trash onto the lid of a nearby garbage can. He systematically rolled up his sleeves, revealing arms that didn't look particularly muscular.
Watching his movements, a mocking smile played on the scrawny leader's lips.
"Kid, you planning to throw down with us? With those skinny arms and legs of yours, any one of my men could snap you in two."
Chen Mo ignored him, merely rolling his sleeve up one more turn.
"Let me ask you a question. You loan sharks usually set the interest so high. Do you actually expect anyone to pay it back, or do you just want to drive people to their deaths so you can take something else as collateral? Like organs, for instance."
"No, no, no, beautiful. You have to sell it as a whole unit. If you take it apart, it's not worth as much," the scrawny guy laughed gleefully. "Did you hear that, boys? Be careful when you strike. Don't touch his face!"
Suddenly, a faint notification chime rang in Chen Mo's mind.
In his mind, Chen Mo rolled his eyes. The system's programming must be malfunctioning to actually try to persuade him to be a turn-the-other-cheek saint at a time like this.
However, he quickly noticed that the warning chime fell silent after ringing twice. It seemed even the system agreed that when dealing with social parasites like loan sharks, "influencing them through peace" via physical means could be considered a form of vigilante justice.
The first brute charged forward with a roar. A massive fist tore through the air, aiming straight for Chen Mo's head.
Chen Mo didn't even blink.
He lightly shifted his body to the left. The fist brushed past the tips of his hair and slammed into the red brick wall, emitting a sickening, muffled thud. The brute howled in pain, his entire arm going numb.
Taking advantage of his opponent's unstable center of gravity, Chen Mo extended his toe and lightly hooked the man's ankle. The brute instantly lost his balance and, like a large sack filled with cement, slammed face-first right into the base of the wall.
His nasal bone collided with the brick wall, producing a crisp cracking sound.
"One."
Chen Mo tapped him lightly on the back of his head. "You're out. Lay low and don't move."
Seeing this, the remaining three brutes exchanged glances and swarmed forward all at once.
Chen Mo crouched down, propping himself up with his fingers to maintain balance, and executed a sweeping kick that precisely struck the ankles of the front two men. They fell with a thunderous crash, tangling together like two overturned rhinos.
Chen Mo patted each of them on their backs.
"Two, three. You guys are out too."
The last brute slammed on the brakes, not daring to charge forward any further.
Chen Mo stood up and pushed a palm against the man's chest.
It didn't feel like a simple push; it felt more like being hit head-on by a Wuling Hongguang van driving at full speed. The brute's eyes widened, and he flew backward five or six paces before crashing into the red brick wall of the alley, slowly sliding down into a sitting position.
Chen Mo shook his wrist. With his eight tons of strength, he had only used about a tenth of it. "Four."
The scrawny leader was completely dumbfounded.
The piece of paper in his hand shook like a falling autumn leaf. Backed against the wall, a choking, rattling sound came from his throat.
"How is this possible? Have you studied martial arts? Impossible!"
Chen Mo clapped the dust off his hands, his tone relaxed. "No, this is called Chinese Kung Fu. It's a specialized cure for all kinds of defiance. If you guys are interested, I can open a training class. The first lesson is free, teaching you how to maintain the correct falling posture when being beaten. Your fellow students just now have already experienced it, and the feedback should be pretty good."
The scrawny guy still tried to hold his ground, pointing at his brothers on the ground and shouting.
"The money your dad owed must be paid back! This is the rule of Lord Black Mask! You think it's over just because you beat up a few of my men? Lord Black Mask has hundreds of brothers in the East End. You can't run!"
Chen Mo's gaze turned cold, and he lunged forward in a flash. Grabbing the scrawny guy by the collar, he hoisted him off the ground and pinned him against the wall.
The scrawny guy's toes could barely touch the ground, making him look like a gecko pinned to a wall.
"Then why don't you go downstairs to the afterlife and find him? If you find him, give him a good beating for me. If it weren't for that idiot, I would have been admitted to Tsinghua or Peking University by now on a sports scholarship, and my life would be fantastic."
Chen Mo's voice was dropping very low, his eyes so cold that a cold sweat broke out down the scrawny guy's spine.
Speaking of this really made him furious. If Old Ma wanted to run away, he should have run away by himself; why did he have to drag a kid along to flee the country? His social security!
The scrawny guy's lips trembled, unable to utter a single word.
Chen Mo released his grip on the collar and snatched the IOU from the man's trembling fingers. He held the IOU up under the moonlight to examine it carefully. The handwriting was indeed Old Ma's, and the date was written as last year. This was probably the last document Old Ma had ever signed in Gotham.
He slowly tore the IOU into four pieces and neatly stuffed them back into the scrawny guy's shirt pocket.
Chen Mo patted his collar, his movements gentle as if he were helping an old friend adjust a tie.
"What did you say the total amount was, including principal and interest?"
The scrawny guy, now lacking any leverage of truth, shook his head frantically, his voice trembling so much it was almost inaudible.
"No need... no need to pay it back! We got the books wrong! Mr. Ma never owed any money! He was a good man when he was alive, he never touched loan sharks! We made a mistake! A mistake!"
He repeated "made a mistake" several times, as if trying to convince himself.
Chen Mo nodded in satisfaction.
"Alright, thank you for your generosity. By my own calculations, there's no need to pay it back either."
The scrawny guy nodded frantically, though it was unclear if he actually understood.
The four brutes were all piled into the oversized garbage can at the mouth of the alley, their four pairs of hairy legs kicking wildly against the rim of the bin.
Chen Mo slammed the lid down with force, and a series of muffled groans and pleas for mercy echoed from inside. He patted the lid of the garbage can and told them to reflect well inside, reminding them to bring a calculator the next time they went collecting so they could at least calculate the interest clearly first.
The alleyway was filled with the sour stench of fermenting garbage, with the moonlight shining down on the deformed garbage can stretched out of shape.
Chen Mo whistled as he walked out of the alley. The whistling sounded lighthearted and casual, forming a sharp contrast with the groans emitting from the garbage can behind him.
When he returned to the leaky attic, the room was pitch black. Before he could even turn on the light, a commotion came from the cardboard box in the corner.
Bruce poked his furry little head out, his ears standing completely erect. Recognizing him, the puppy immediately began wagging his tail frantically, the tip of his tail slapping against the wall of the cardboard box with a rapid pitter-patter.
Chen Mo tossed the plastic bag onto the armrest of the tattered sofa, crouched down, and vigorously rubbed the dog's head.
"Alright, stop wagging. If you wag any more, your tail is going to snap off. Your dad just took down four brutes and my arms are too sore to lift, yet here you are adding to the noise."
Bruce licked his fingers, letting out a contented purr from his throat. He was clearly completely uninterested in his owner's battle achievements and only cared about whether he had brought back food.
Right at that moment, a row of golden, translucent text suddenly popped up across Chen Mo's retina.
The system interface glowed quietly, as if waiting for him to read every single word.
Strength limit increased: From four tons to eight tons.
Webbing strength increased: By two hundred percent, with a new adhesive property added.
Chen Mo looked down at his palms, slowly clenching his fingers into fists before opening them again, his joints making a slight cracking sound. He could feel the difference. It wasn't that his muscles had grown larger, but rather that something deeper had been activated, like a spring that had been compressed for a long time suddenly being released.
He tried to trigger his web-shooter, and a strand of webbing--thicker and stickier than before--shot out from his wrist, precisely adhering to the opposite wall.
Chen Mo gripped the new strand with his hand and gave it a test pull. A few chunks of plaster peeled off the wall, but the webbing remained completely unmoved.
With this kind of strength, let alone hanging from a tower crane in the future, even swinging while hanging beneath the Batwing probably wouldn't be an issue.
Chen Mo let go of his hand, staring at the slightly reflective webbing for a moment.
Eight tons. That was enough to lift a truck.
Well, a vehicle that Superman could stop, he could stop now too. Great.
But for now...
Chen Mo walked over to the broken sofa and sat down, pulling out the half-drawn comic manuscript from his bag.
Bruce hopped out of the small cardboard box, let out a long yawn, and then limped over to his feet with his not-yet-fully-healed hind leg. After circling around, the puppy curled up, rested his chin on Chen Mo's foot, and quickly began snoring.
Chen Mo looked down at the dog, then looked at his own pair of hands capable of lifting a truck, and picked up his drawing pen.
Snap.
The pen broke.
"..."