With the fight over, Li Yunlong began looting the bodies-or rather, collecting his spoils of war. As for safety, he could only laugh. It might have looked as though he had merely slapped on a few strips of duct tape with reckless abandon, but unless Pang Bo and his two cronies possessed extraordinary abilities-like superpowers or specialized martial arts training-their current bound state under his watchful eye turned them into fish on a chopping block. Their lives were entirely at his mercy. Though Pang Bo and his men were tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular, breaking free would take a monumental effort even without him standing over them. His method of binding violated the natural leverage mechanics of human anatomy. The tapes structural strength was modest, but when you couldn't bring your physical strength to bear, there was simply no leverage to exploit.
From Pang Bo, Li Yunlong recovered a handgun, a hunting knife, twenty spare rounds of ammunition, and 2,731 dollars in cash. The two lackeys yielded two daggers, a set of brass knuckles, 352 dollars in cash, and roughly 300 grams of gold jewelry. He gathered all three of their cell phones along with his own, smashed them into ruined metal and glass with a claw hammer, and dumped the mixed debris into a public trash bin. As for the rest of their personal trinkets, he left them untouched. Pocketing the haul, he conducted a final sweep of the room to ensure nothing had been overlooked before stepping out alone. He even made a point of carefully locking the deadbolt behind him, a small courtesy that might buy him a little extra time.
Drawing on Tom Riddle's memories, Li Yunlong understood that the moment he moved against Pang Bo and his crew, he had entered a race against the clock with the loan shark syndicate represented by Mr. Goldfinger. The idea of remaining undiscovered was a naive fantasy. The underground bank operating the illegal lending ring wasn't a legitimate institution, but they had their own battle-tested methods for survival. From the crumbs Tom Riddle had picked up over the years, enforcers like Pang Bo usually worked in three-man cells. In the underworld, greed was a given, and Mr. Goldfinger was far too shrewd to trust his men blindly. If the trio weren't set up to monitor one another, those unprincipled thugs would invent the most absurd lies imaginable to pocket the collection money, leaving Mr. Goldfinger empty-handed. On top of that, the syndicate enforced strict operational protocols-schedules, mandatory check-ins, and daily ledger reconciliations. If a team went silent, the system flagged their approximate location immediately. In short, Mr. Goldfingers organization would realize Pang Bos unit had failed by that very evening at the latest.
In the underworld, money was the ultimate stake-something worth risking lives over. Had Tom Riddle been in charge of handling the aftermath, he would have slaughtered Pang Bo and his lackeys without a second thought. Doing so would send a clear, visceral message to any onlookers: «This is what happens when you cross Tom Riddle. Cross me again, and it's a fight to the death.» A statement bought with three human lives was invariably effective. With a bit of luck, the story would spread through the streets, earning him widespread terror and respect among fellow criminals. Of course, bad luck might turn him into a target for someone bigger, ending his life just as quickly. But life in the underworld was a gamble from the start, which was why so many opted for violent spectacle.
Pang Bo had taken such a brutal beating that even if he woke up, he would be little more than a brain-dead vegetable, making him a non-factor. His two lackeys had been struck down by precise palm strikes to the neck and would remain unconscious for at least two hours. Li Yunlong estimated he still had a comfortable margin of time. Since he was already committing the crime, he might as well go all the way. Tom Riddle had been destitute beyond measure-a complete pauper who hadn't left him so much as a single penny. All the capital Li Yunlong possessed was what he had just stripped from Pang Bo's crew, and that paltry sum was far from enough for what he had planned. Before skipping town, he decided to pull off one more major job, and Tom Riddles memories supplied the perfect target.
The apartment building where Tom Riddle rented his room was an ancient, dilapidated structure located in the slums. Unlike typical apartment complexes, almost every tenant here had ties to organized crime. The landlord himself was a retired mob boss-a former high-ranking figure in Los Angeles's largest syndicate who, feeling his age and lacking the stamina for active street warfare, had purchased the building to wash his hands of the business and live out his days as a property manager. The tenants were naturally a chaotic mix: destitute vagrants like Tom Riddle, who rented here merely to keep up appearances, alongside ruthless, notorious underworld figures. According to Tom Riddle's memory, one of the units on the ground floor served as a localized drug distribution hub for a local gang. It was bound to hold a significant stash of untraceable cash-just what he needed to solve his immediate financial crisis.
The operation went off without a hitch. Guided by Tom Riddle's memories, Li Yunlong activated his sensory control capability. The apartment corridor's walls became transparent to his perception, allowing him to easily locate the drug den and verify the existence of a heavily stocked safe inside. Though three armed gang members guarded the unit, their presence was meaningless to him. Using nothing more than a scrap of thin wire, he picked the lock effortlessly. Before the three guards could even reach for their holsters, Li Yunlong dropped them all with a single swift strike each. It couldn't be helped; when his sensory control enhanced his physical awareness, the difference in raw speed and reaction time between them appeared modest on paper, but to his perception, their movements unfolded in slow motion. Every flaw in their stance, every micro-adjustment in their muscles, was exposed down to the grain. They couldn't even predict their own next moves, but to Li Yunlong, the trajectory of their actions was as clear as daylight. A hair's breadth of spatial miscalculation on their part resulted in an insurmountable advantage for him. They were no different from wooden puppets waiting to be manipulated at his whim, and the sensation of absolute, elevated control was utterly intoxicating.
A purely mechanical safe offered no real security against Li Yunlong's heightened senses. Inside lay a fortune, the most valuable items being a stack of confidential documents. However, those were precisely the items most likely to trace back to him, along with a supply of narcotics, raw gold bullion, and loose bills. Taking only the cash-roughly 150,000 dollars in total-Li Yunlong left everything else untouched. He had no intention of relying on a single heist to fund the rest of his life; he only needed to relieve his immediate liquidity problems. With his sensory control ability, he had no reason to worry about his future earning potential. On his way out, he thoughtfully locked the apartment door behind him. Inside lay three unconscious men before an open safe filled with remaining valuables. During the confrontation, Li Yunlong had intentionally held back his strength; they would regain consciousness in about half an hour.
Li Yunlong knew that no one in the underworld was immune to greed-or rather, their environment dictated that greed was a survival mechanism. His deliberate choices left the three gang members with an impossible dilemma: either guard the open safe and await their boss's return, knowing that losing 150,000 dollars in cash was more than enough reason for him to execute all three of them, or help themselves to the remaining valuables and flee before the boss returned. If luck wasn't on their side, they might even turn their guns on one another over the loot. In Li Yunlong's estimation, unless their boss caught them dead in the act, they would never sit idly by and wait for execution. Once street thugs of their caliber got their hands on that kind of money, escaping their boss's reach became a viable gamble. Regardless of how many managed to escape, they were destined to take the fall for his intrusion. Even if the mob boss eventually captured all three and tortured the truth out of them, the window of time gained would allow Li Yunlong to clean up all his tracks and cut ties with the syndicate entirely.
With a clear plan in mind, Li Yunlong remained entirely unruffled. He walked out of the apartment complex at a leisurely pace, even taking the time to nod politely to the building security guard on his way out. He boarded a nearby public bus, transferred twice, and made his way to a subway station. After a few more line changes, he emerged on the outer perimeter of Los Angeles. Finding a low-end motel nearby that didn't bother checking identification, he registered under an assumed name, paid a full month's rent in cash, and used local delivery flyers to locate a few restaurants offering room service. From then on, he holed himself up inside the room, settling into a comfortable routine of eating his fill and sleeping the days away.
As for concerns regarding his personal safety, Li Yunlong felt almost none. Less than a full day had passed since he transmigrated into this world, and he had accumulated only two major points of friction: the outstanding debt to the loan sharks and the cash he had stolen from the drug den. The gang had those three unfortunate guards to act as his scapegoats. As for the high-interest loan owed to Mr. Goldfinger, that was strictly a legacy problem left behind by this body's previous owner, Tom Riddle. For a low-level street hoodlum, leaving behind a mess of this magnitude was already the absolute limit of his capabilities; beyond that, there were no other complications to worry about.
Although Pang Bo and his two lackeys had arrived with aggressive bravado and refused to back down even after being captured, any rational analysis revealed how much of their posture was simple posturing. The underground bank represented by Mr. Goldfinger operated at the upper-middle tiers of the criminal ecosystem. To protect its capital and ensure its survival, such an organization naturally possessed significant muscle and resources. When dealing with a bottom-rung thug like Tom Riddle, they were obligated to act with brutal finality simply to preserve their street reputation and prestige. If Li Yunlong's current individual strength was compared to an ant, then the collective power of Mr. Goldfinger and his organization was an elephant. A direct, head-on confrontation would mean certain death for Li Yunlong-and he would have to be an idiot to choose a direct clash.
Faced with the reality that Li Yunlong had already vanished, Mr. Goldfinger possessed no easy recourse. Mr. Goldfinger was an elephant, certainly, but a city as vast as Los Angeles was hardly a domain where his word was absolute law. Even an elephant faced rival predators and its own operational pressures. Tom Riddle had borrowed a mere 10,000 dollars in total. Even if Pang Bo and his two missing enforcers were written off as dead, how substantial was the actual financial loss? Even taking into account Mr. Goldfinger's pride and street reputation, the resources he could justify deploying to hunt down a minor debtor were strictly limited. The evasive methods Li Yunlong had used were conventional and simple, yet highly effective; even the official police force would have to expend immense time, labor, and tracking assets to locate him, so how many men could Mr. Goldfinger realistically spare? How many resources could he burn? Even if the absolute worst occurred and those enforcers somehow managed to track him down, did they expect Li Yunlong to be a defenseless lamb waiting for the slaughter? Was his sensory control superpower supposed to be a mere ornament? By any calculation, anyone sent after him would simply be walking to their deaths. Consequently, Li Yunlong felt entirely secure in his physical safety. He was convinced that once their searches yielded no results, the syndicate would abandon the effort within a few days rather than drag out an indefinite hunt. Even Mr. Goldfinger wouldn't make a loud public scene; at most, he would circulate a modest underworld bounty on his head. So long as Li Yunlong didn't foolishly cross paths with Mr. Goldfinger's inner circle again, even the loan shark himself would eventually let the matter drop.