There was an old saying in his homeland: «The minor hermit hides in the wild; the medium hermit hides in the city; the great hermit hides in the court.» Li Yunlong felt the adage applied remarkably well to his current situation. After holing up in a motel for a month, not a soul had managed to track him down. His height had shot up from five-foot-ten to nearly six feet tall. Looking in the mirror, there wasn't a trace of Tom Riddle left in his reflection-it was more drastic than full-body plastic surgery. Why worry about Mr. Cheat Engine anymore? The man could stand right in front of him and wouldn't recognize who he was. It was finally time to step out with peace of mind and do whatever he pleased.
Li Yunlong checked out of the motel and caught a ride straight for the Mexican border. Security in the area was notoriously poor, with multiple factions intersecting and working through a tangled web of rivalries. Drawing on Tom Riddle's memories, he effortlessly located a local forgery broker. For five thousand dollars and three days' time, he successfully acquired a brand-new identity-Brook Lee.
National identity cards weren't a thing in the States. Whenever someone asked for identification, pulling out a driver's license was all it took, whether checking into a hotel or boarding a flight. There was no household registration system either; wherever you lived, you were considered a local resident. Even if you were just renting, stay long enough, and you'd automatically be treated as a voter for local elections. Naturally, after spending that much cash, Li Yunlong hadn't just settled for a fake driver's license; the package included a complete set of forged records-a Social Security number, background history, tax files, and more. Better yet, the broker had ways of slipping those documents into the U.S. Government's databases. Even if the police ran a digital check, the records would show up as legitimate. The broker guaranteed that unless the authorities sent officers in person to conduct an on-the-ground investigation at every single location, it was impossible to prove his identity was fake. Li Yunlong took those assurances with a grain of salt. He never expected a forged identity to be entirely bulletproof anyway-so long as it held up on the surface, that was more than enough.
Returning smoothly to Los Angeles, the newly solvent Li Yunlong began to spend with an open hand. First, he hired a third-rate private attorney. He didn't expect the lawyer to be a legal genius, only to handle minor legal matters on his behalf; the main draw was the price, a mere six thousand dollars a year. Next, he rented a house in the northern suburbs of Burbank-a two-story brick-and-stone residence with a private yard and a basement. The interior was fully renovated and well-furnished, the sort of place where one could move in with nothing more than a suitcase. Originally listed at two thousand dollars a month, Li Yunlong negotiated the rate down to ten thousand a year by signing a three-year lease on the spot. He bought an eighty percent fresh second-hand Ford pickup for getting around, then headed to the DMV and the Social Security Administration to handle the paperwork; local rules dictated that staying anywhere longer than fifteen days required updating one's records. Finally, he went to a bank and opened an account, depositing one hundred thousand dollars into it. Through these careful maneuvers, Li Yunlong shed the identity of Tom Riddle entirely, transforming himself into a successful member of society-Brook Lee, a man with a car, a house, no debts, and money in the bank.
After spending half a day giving the house a quick cleanup, he ordered takeout for dinner. Dressed in loose, comfortable pajamas, Li Yunlong stepped into the study. Most of the bookshelves stood empty, save for a dozen-odd books and magazines left behind by either the landlord or a previous tenant, scattered across the shelves. He flipped through them casually. Finding nothing of interest, he left them where they were; if he accumulated more books of his own later and ran out of room, he could deal with them then. Flicking on the desk lamp, he pulled out paper and pen, intending to draft a short-term plan for himself. He still had a bit of money on hand, but living off his savings was hardly a sustainable habit. He needed to find something to do-even if the initial returns were modest, it had to leave enough room for future growth.
For the first option, Li Yunlong wrote down: Loaf around and wait to die. Shaking his head, he picked up his pen and drew a big cross after it. As a transmigrator, he couldn't even bring himself to accept the idea of loafing around until his dying breath, let alone actually choose it.
Pondering for a moment, he penned a second option on the paper: Superhero. A soul transmigration paired with superpowers as a cheat-on paper, it certainly gave off the air of a main character. A hero! What young man had never dreamed of being a hero?
Yet what truly made a hero? Dictionaries defined it clearly: «Selfless and unmindful of oneself, undaunted by hardship.» Chairman Mao had written in his poem Winter Clouds: «Only heroes can quell tigers and leopards, and more brave men despise bears and grizzlies.» Yang Xiuqing of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had written in Truly Loyal and Brave: «Uprising through a thousand passes, straight to the Heavenly Capital, most heroic of all.» Dong Biwu had written at the Handan Martyrs' Tower: «Blood stains the battlefield, its spirit turning to a rainbow; sacrificing one's life for the country makes a hero.»
How had the ancients viewed heroes? Exceptional intelligence made one elite; courage and strength beyond the ordinary made one formidable. A hero possessed lofty ambitions, a grandeur that could swallow the mountains and rivers, a heart that held the nine provinces, and a mind that encompassed the four seas! Bearing justice upon their shoulders, saving the people from fire and water, delivering the masses from dire peril. Of course, the ancients had also understood that such standards were far too idealized-hardly anyone in reality could live up to them. Thus, in Zai Jing Tang Ji: On the People, it was explicitly recorded: «When the nation rises, thieves and bandits achieve merits alongside heroes; when the nation falls, officials defy the law hand-in-hand with rogues.» It was a different perspective that illustrated the dialectical truth that «heroes make the times, and the times make heroes.»
Li Yunlong let out a melancholy sigh. He was well aware of his own shortcomings; his practical nature would never allow him to become a superhero. More importantly, he picked up his pen and added a line behind the superhero option: «With great power comes great responsibility.» The phrase seemed unremarkable at a glance, yet it served as a core premise for almost every hero in Marvel Comics. To Li Yunlong, however, the statement was logically flawed-or at the very least, logically imprecise. Suppose there was a chef whose cooking abilities were number one in the entire nation; were people supposed to demand that he use his culinary skills to fight criminals and protect civilians? If anyone took that idea seriously rather than as a joke, they were either insane or actively trying to get the chef killed.
In Li Yunlong's view, a far more logically sound formulation would be: «With great authority comes great responsibility.» Since one enjoyed authority in ordinary times, one ought to take responsibility and resolve the situation when trouble arose. Otherwise, if you were there to enjoy the privileges but expected the common folk to step up when things went wrong, what use was there for you in the first place?
He picked up his pen and drew a cross through that option as well. Aside from those reasons, there was another critical problem: how did the people in this world-the environment and the nation where he now resided-actually view heroes? Captain America was universally recognized as a hero. When Li Yunlong had first learned that fact, he had been left standing bewildered in the wind. That he hadn't gone mad on the spot felt like proof of his own mental resilience. He had gone out of his way to gather related information. During World War II, Captain America had fought actively on the front lines against the Nazis, the Red Skull, and Hydra; even now, the Americans maintained a museum dedicated specifically to him. The elder Osborn was still fighting on the front lines of Oscorp, Stark Industries was a famous weapons manufacturer, and Tony Stark had not yet become Iron Man, though his reputation as a playboy had already spread across the nation. Damn it all! This was the Marvel universe. Whether it was the cinematic version or the comic version, either Marvel world was a nightmare to live in. Villains were as common as dogs, heroes walked every street, and even the Avengers might not be able to make a splash-that was the Marvel world in a nutshell.
Not only was the living environment perilous, but more importantly, the Marvel universe was extraordinarily hostile toward transmigrators. The information advantage that transmigrators typically relied upon was entirely useless here. Marvel's chaos was infamous-chaotic characters, chaotic timelines, chaotic events. Take Li Yunlong himself as an example: he had originally taken notice of Marvel because of the Iron Man film. The storyline had been ordinary enough, but the visual effects had struck him as magnificent. Influenced by that, he had gone out of his way to read a portion of the Marvel comics, only to be utterly disappointed. It was so chaotic that no one could possibly make heads or tails of it. A male character turning female was considered an ordinary Tuesday, a good guy turning evil was a standard trope, and a human turning into a dog was hailed as the writer broadening their horizons. A powerhouse like Iron Man had several different backstories in the comics; among the versions Li Yunlong was vaguely familiar with, there were at least three variations. In one, the character was female; in another, he turned out to be the ultimate mastermind behind the scenes, casting aside his heroic persona to become the main villain. Doctor Strange had studied under the previous Sorcerer Supreme, the Ancient One, in the comics-where the Ancient One was depicted as an elderly man. Yet in the Doctor Strange movie, a single stroke of adaptation transformed the Sorcerer Supreme into a middle-aged woman. Deadpool was merely a chatterbox in the films, but in one comic run, he was literally turned into a dog! When character concepts alone underwent such drastic shifts, minor changes-like white characters becoming Black, two-eyed characters becoming one-eyed, or turning into blind men, losing limbs, undergoing cybernetic modifications, and so forth-were hardly worth mentioning. Add to that the fact that time and space in the Marvel universe were completely unreliable, with spatial jumps, parallel worlds, seers playing around with prophecies, and people leaping across time whenever they got desperate. In Li Yunlong's eyes, the comic writers involved in Marvel had long since broken the world's internal logic. In a desperate attempt to patch together the Marvel Universe, they had cooked up a multiverse, simply because there were too many logical contradictions for ordinary retcons to fix.
Li Yunlong had no love for such an environment, but having already jumped into the fire pit, escaping was easier said than done. He had no choice but to swallow his annoyance for the time being. Yet as for becoming a superhero? That was a career he would never choose to pursue.
Li Yunlong wrote down a third line: Build high walls, store abundant grain, and delay claiming kingship. The strategy sounded promising enough, and left to his own inclinations, it was the option he wanted to pick most. Regrettably, in his current environment, it was practically impossible to execute. Information moved rapidly in modern society, where the smallest trifle could become public knowledge overnight. Wanting to keep one's head down and develop quietly wasn't a crime, but if someone tried to build a massive enterprise-especially one backed by formidable armed power-the U.S. Government would send the military to wipe them out in a heartbeat. They would never allow anyone the time for peaceful development. Thus, he could only draw another cross behind this line as well.
In the end, Li Yunlong realized that with limited information and limited personal abilities, setting long-term goals was impossible. Anything beyond his immediate reach would be nothing more than an unrealistic fantasy, carrying risks so great that he was better off not setting any goals at all. The best approach for now was to take things one step at a time: establish a firm foothold, survive day by day, and only then focus on making each passing day better than the last.