Chapter 30: The Plan to "Crash" A-Train
"So what if you're fast? Hitting me is no different than hitting a wall."
The next day at noon, the alarm went off.
Ryan sprang out of bed, washing his face, brushing his teeth, and changing his clothes in one fluid motion.
He wouldn't be wearing the long gray coat today—at 3 PM in Times Square, in broad daylight, the disguise of a scarf and sunglasses was meaningless in front of that density of surveillance cameras.
He dug a dark blue hoodie out of the closet, pulled the hood up, and zipped it up to his chin.
He paired it with black sweatpants and a pair of old sneakers.
He looked no different from any young person out on the street shopping.
He opened his phone; there were three messages.
The first, from Blackie: "Brother Walker! I've arrived at Times Square! There are so many people! They've set up a huge stage for A-Train's fan meet-and-greet!"
The second, from Hughie: "Butcher came again this morning. I agreed, just like you said. He told me to report to an address tomorrow."
The third, from Ashley: "A-Train's medical check-up data this morning is very abnormal. His resting heart rate is 160, and his blood pressure is high enough to trigger the equipment alarms. The medical team recommended canceling today's event, but the marketing department vetoed it."
Ryan replied to them one by one.
To Blackie: "I'll be there at 2:30. Grab a good spot first, close to the stage, but don't stand in a path where A-Trainmight run."
To Hughie: "Well done. Go report tomorrow, listen more and talk less."
To Ashley: "Heart rate of 160? He's going to have an incident this afternoon. I'll be there."
Ashley instantly replied with a question mark.
"What do you mean you'll be there? Aren't you a Janitor? Aren't you working today?"
"I took the day off."
"You took a day off to go to Times Square? What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to camp out for A-Train at the meet-and-greet. Don't worry, I'm not there to cause trouble."
"Then what are you going for?"
"To save someone."
Ashley was silent for a dozen seconds.
"…Can't you just rest for one day?"
"I can't. Check A-Train's Compound V injection dosage; it's over twice the limit, isn't it?"
"How would I know the injection dosage? That's confidential data from the medical department."
"Aren't you able to find out anything?"
"It depends on what it is. Compound V data is top-secret; I can't touch it."
"Fine, don't touch it then. Just remember one thing—3 PM this afternoon, Times Square."
"If A-Train loses control on stage, people among those hundreds of thousands will die."
"I'm going there to ensure that doesn't happen."
Ashley didn't reply again.
Ryan put his phone away and left.
It took about forty minutes to get from Brooklyn to Times Square by subway.
The subway car was filled with discussions about the "Preservation Walker vs. Translucent" battle.
Two boys who looked like high schoolers were sitting opposite him, playing a replay of Blackie's livestream on their phone.
"Look at this slap! Even Carbon Metamaterial couldn't stop it!"
"Where the hell did this Preservation Walker come from? He's even fiercer than The Seven?"
"I don't know, but he's more reliable than The Seven. Look at Translucent from The Seven, peeping at women changing while naked—it's disgusting."
Ryan sat in the corner, his hat pulled down low, not saying a word while listening to all this.
The corners of his mouth curled up, then pressed back down.
1:47 PM. Times Square.
When Ryan emerged from the subway station, he was taken aback by the scene before him.
The entire Times Square was packed wall-to-wall with people.
A huge stage had been built for A-Train's fan meet-and-greet, and an LED screen was looping a highlight reel of A-Train's high-speed running.
A fan zone had been cordoned off in front of the stage with metal barricades, with at least five thousand people squeezed inside, holding up banners and posters.
Outside the barricades, tens of thousands of passersby and tourists were watching.
Vought's security team, wearing matching black uniforms, was maintaining order among the crowd.
Several Vought promotional trucks were parked at the edge of the square, with giant posters of A-Train sprinting printed on their sides, accompanied by a line of text: The Fastest Man in America!
"The fastest man." Ryan looked at the text and muttered, "If no one stops you today, you'll be the most dangerous man in America."
He pushed through the crowd, moving toward the left side of the stage.
A message from Blackie popped up.
"Brother Walker! I'm in the third row, front right of the stage! This spot is awesome!"
"Stay put. Wait until I find my spot before you start the stream."
"Got it! But what time do you want me to start the stream?"
"2:55."
"The meet-and-greet doesn't start until 3:00, you want to start five minutes early?"
"Yes. If something happens, it will be within those five minutes."
Ryan found a spot about eighty meters away from the stage.
There was a strategy to this position.
The stage was north-center of the square. If A-Train went berserk after taking the stage, there were three most likely directions for him to sprint—
South, charging straight into the fan zone and the crowd outside the barricades. This was the most dangerous direction, as the population density was too high.
East or West, charging onto the streets. With traffic and buildings to block him, casualties would be lower but still unavoidable.
North, charging toward the backstage area. There were fewer people, but Vought's promotional trucks and several broadcasting devices were parked there.
The position Ryan chose was eighty meters south of the stage.
It was perfectly positioned in the path where A-Train was likely to charge into the crowd.
If A-Train went berserk to the south, he would be the first wall.
If A-Train ran in another direction, he could fly over and intercept within two or three seconds—while his flight speed couldn't keep up with a full-speed sprint of Mach 1.1, it was enough for a short distance.
"Position OK." He confirmed in his mind.
His phone vibrated again. Ashley.
"I just found out something."
"What?"
"A-Train snuck in an extra vial of Compound V this morning. It wasn't given by the medical team; he took it from the storage cabinet himself."
"What dosage?"
"1.5 times the standard injection dosage. Plus the accumulated amount that was already over the limit…"
"The concentration of Compound V in his system now is nearly four times the normal level."
Four times. Ryan's fingers gripping the phone tightened slightly.
Four times the Compound V concentration. A-Train's heart was already barely holding on, and with this extra vial—
The probability of him going berserk today wasn't eighty percent. It was one hundred percent.
"Can you find a reason to postpone the event now?"
"Postpone? You think I didn't try? The people in the marketing department said Stillwell personally approved the event; who dares to touch it?"
"Then there's no other way."
"What exactly do you want to do?"
"I told you, stand there and wait for him."
"Do you know how much kinetic energy he has at full sprint? That's not a question of whether your shoulder shatters or not; that's a supersonic cannonball!"
"I know."
"Can your force field really handle it?"
"It handled it last time."
"Last time he accidentally ran into you! If he's in a full-speed berserk state this time—"
"Then I have to stand there even more." Ryan interrupted her, "Because if I don't stand there, he won't be hitting me."
"He'll be hitting those tens of thousands of ordinary people behind me who are taking pictures with their phones."
Ashley didn't speak. Five seconds later, she sent a message.
"You really are a lunatic."
"Thanks for the compliment."
"I'm not complimenting you."
Ryan put his phone away.
2:45 PM. The speakers on stage began playing A-Train's entrance BGM.
The crowd erupted. Fans holding banners began screaming, jumping, and shouting A-Train's name.
The countdown numbers on the LED screen were ticking. 15 minutes. 14 minutes.
Ryan stood in the middle of the crowd, his hat pulled down low, his hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie.
His Super Hearing pierced through the clamor of the crowd, through the roar of the speakers, and extended all the way to the backstage area behind the stage.
There were seven or eight heartbeats backstage. Staff, makeup artists, Vought security.
And one other heartbeat. Extremely fast. Fast to the point of being abnormal.
Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump—at least 180 beats per minute.
The heart rate level of a normal person during strenuous exercise. But that person should be sitting down right now.
A-Train's heart was already running at 180 while idling. Four times the Compound V. This heart could explode at any moment.
Ryan took a deep breath. "Blackie."
He sent the message. "Start the stream."
"Received! Three, two, one—"
Blackie's livestream went live. The number of online viewers surged past 500,000 within three seconds.
The title read: "Preservation Walker · Times Square Live."
The chat feed was flooded.
"He's here, he's here! Preservation Walker is at Times Square?"
"A-Train's fan meet-and-greet? What is he doing there?"
"He's not going to fight A-Train, is he?"
Ryan didn't look at the chat. His attention was entirely focused on that heart beating at 180 times per minute backstage.
2:55 PM. Five-minute countdown. The heart rate jumped to 190.
On stage, a Vought host walked up to start warming up the crowd. The crowd's screaming grew even louder.
Ryan stood still. Beneath the brim of his hat, his lips parted slightly, and he said a sentence only he could hear.
"A-Train."
"Your brain can't control your legs anymore."
"But I can."
Chapter 31: A-Train Goes Rogue
"A-Train. Your brain can't control your legs. But I can."
Less than three hours after those words were spoken, things changed.
6:17 PM, Brooklyn Main Street.
Ryan's phone rang.
A call from Hughie.
"Hello?"
"Ryan! A-Train has gone rogue!" Hughie's voice cracked. "He didn't go to Times Square! The meet-and-greet is canceled! Vought pulled him back at the last minute, but he injected God knows how many vials of Compound V backstage, and then he just bolted straight out of Vought Tower!"
"Where is he now?"
"Brooklyn! He's running toward Brooklyn! He's heading for Main Street!"
Ryan stopped dead in his tracks.
He had just returned from Times Square by subway, hadn't even changed his hoodie, and was walking three blocks away from his rental apartment.
Brooklyn Main Street.
At the end of that road—
"Hughie, where are you and Robin right now?"
"At home! Right here in the shop!"
"Your place is at the end of Main Street."
There was a second of silence on the other end of the line.
Then, Hughie's breathing changed.
"He... he's going to run this way?"
"Listen to me." Ryan spoke twice as fast. "Take Robinupstairs, stay away from the windows, and hide in the innermost room. Go now."
"Okay... okay!"
The call ended.
Ryan looked up toward the direction of Main Street.
His Super Hearing had already picked it up.
Far away. About three kilometers out.
But that sound was approaching at an extreme speed.
It was a Sonic Boom.
Continuous, dense Sonic Booms that tore through the air.
One after another, like someone cracking a whip in the sky, each one numbing the eardrums.
Then came other sounds.
Shattering glass.
Twisting metal.
The screech of tires rubbing against the ground after being flipped by the shockwave.
And people screaming.
A lot of people screaming.
Ryan started to run.
The moment his feet pushed off the ground, his Bio-fieldformed a thrust beneath his soles, launching him into the air like a cannonball, shooting toward Main Street.
The wind rushed into his hoodie, blowing the hood back.
He didn't care.
Pushing his speed to the limit.
Mach 0.85.
The buildings and streets on the ground retreated rapidly beneath his feet, the streetlights turning into streaks of light.
His Super Hearing continuously tracked A-Train's position during the flight.
Two kilometers.
1.5 kilometers.
One kilometer.
The sound of the Sonic Booms grew louder and denser.
Ryan looked down from the sky.
He saw him.
On Main Street, a blur was sprinting forward at an incredible speed.
It was out of control.
A-Train's body was no longer under control during the supersonic sprint; his legs were moving at a frequency far exceeding the body's limits, each step exploding into a shallow crater on the ground, the asphalt shattering beneath his feet, sending debris flying to both sides.
A long trail of destruction dragged behind him.
A crooked trench split the road.
Vehicles parked along the way were flipped over by the shockwave he generated as he passed—a silver sedan flipped two and a half times, smashing into a roadside fire hydrant, sending a column of water into the sky. A yellow taxi was pushed over a dozen meters by the air blast, its door ripped off and embedded into the display window of a bakery.
Pedestrians on the side of the road were knocked to the ground by the shockwave; some curled up against the walls with their heads in their hands, others were pushed off the sidewalk and onto the lawn.
A woman pushing a stroller was knocked over by the shockwave, the stroller rolling three meters away.
Someone rushed over to catch the stroller.
But A-Train was still running.
He couldn't stop.
Ryan saw A-Train's face from the sky.
Distorted.
It was fear.
A-Train himself knew he couldn't stop.
His legs weren't listening to his brain's commands. The Compound V had hijacked his nervous system, his muscles operating automatically under the drive of chemical signals, like a runaway engine.
His mouth was open, unable to make a sound under the supersonic wind pressure, but Ryan's Super Hearingcaught the fragments of sound squeezed from deep in his throat.
"Stop... can't... stop... help..."
He was asking for help.
But no one could help him.
At this speed, anyone attempting to intercept him would be smashed to pieces.
Except for one person.
Ryan adjusted his flight angle, carving an arc through the air, and flew toward the area ahead of Main Street.
He wasn't chasing A-Train.
He couldn't catch him.
What he had to do was—get ahead of A-Train and land on his path.
Main Street was a straight road.
In his out-of-control state, A-Train could only sprint in a straight line; his ability to turn was almost zero.
Ryan needed to land at least two hundred meters in front of him, giving himself enough time to steady his stance.
His flight speed was Mach 0.85.
A-Train's running speed was Mach 1.1.
The speed difference meant he had to take a diagonal path—cutting from the air diagonally in front of A-Train, using the advantage of a shorter straight-line distance to arrive first.
The calculation in his mind took only 0.3 seconds.
His body had already moved.
He dove down at a forty-five-degree angle, the wind pressure making his clothes snap and flutter.
The ground was rapidly enlarging.
Three hundred meters ahead on Main Street was an intersection.
The traffic lights at the intersection were changing, and a few cars were passing through.
If A-Train rushed through that intersection at this speed—
Ryan stopped thinking.
He leveled his body at an altitude of five meters above the ground, feet facing down, his Bio-field condensing into a thick buffer cushion under his soles.
Landing.
Bang!
The asphalt road exploded into a spiderweb-like crack beneath his feet, but he stood firmly.
Right in the center of Main Street.
Facing the direction A-Train was rushing from.
Two hundred meters behind him was that intersection, and behind the intersection was a residential area.
Three blocks further back was Hughie and Robin's appliance repair shop.
"This is it."
Ryan pulled the zipper of his hoodie down two inches and loosened his neck.
Then he stood still.
His feet shoulder-width apart.
He pulled his hands out of his pockets and let them hang at his sides.
Bio-field at full power.
He could feel that invisible shield covering every inch of his skin, its density fifteen percent thicker than when he first blocked A-Train.
In the distance, the sound of the Sonic Booms grew closer.
The ground began to shake.
Slight, but with an increasingly higher frequency.
The rearview mirrors of the parked vehicles on the side of the road were trembling, and dust on the car windows was falling off in rustles.
Someone poked their head out of a roadside shop and saw Ryan standing in the middle of the road.
"What is that guy doing? Move out of the way!"
"It's the Preservation Walker! That's the Preservation Walker!"
"Is he going to stop A-Train? With his body?"
Ryan didn't look back.
His gaze was locked on the end of Main Street.
There, a blurry afterimage was approaching at a speed of 375 meters per second.
Three hundred meters.
Two hundred meters.
One hundred meters.
A-Train's figure gradually solidified from the blur—a man in a blue combat suit, his legs moving at an incredible frequency, the expression on his face one of pure fear and pain.
He saw Ryan.
He recognized Ryan.
His mouth moved.
Under the supersonic wind pressure, those words were torn to shreds, but Ryan's Super Hearing pieced them back together.
"Get... out... of... the... way..."
Ryan didn't move.
He stood where he was, one corner of his mouth curling up.
Fifty meters.
Thirty meters.
Ten meters.
"Bring it on."
Chapter 32: The Man Standing in the Middle of the Road
Come on."
These two words had barely left his mouth when A-Trainarrived.
The distance of ten meters, for a supersonic runner moving at Mach 1.1, was less than 0.03 seconds.
0.03 seconds.
A human eye wouldn't even have time to blink.
Ryan's eyes did not blink.
He saw it very clearly.
Within the final three meters, A-Train's face filled his entire field of vision.
His features were twisted together, the veins on his forehead bulging like earthworms, his eyeballs protruding, and his irises contracted into almost invisible thin rings.
His mouth was open, and saliva was stretched into a thin thread by the supersonic airflow, flung to the side of his face.
Ryan could even see the fabric texture on the lightning bolt emblem on the chest of his blue combat suit.
That texture was trembling slightly due to the immense kinetic energy of his body.
Then.
Contact.
A-Train's right shoulder slammed into Ryan's chest.
Mach 1.1.
Approximately 1,350 kilometers per hour.
The kinetic energy generated by an adult male's weight multiplied by this speed, if converted into tonnage, would be enough to knock down a three-story brick house.
At the moment of impact, the sound vanished.
Sound didn't have time to travel.
The world was hit with a mute button.
The shockwave expanded outward from the point of contact, faster than the speed of sound.
The asphalt road beneath Ryan's feet began to shatter radially from the point of contact.
A silent shattering.
Cracks spread wildly across the road—three meters, five meters, eight meters, ten meters—continuing until they reached the sidewalks on both sides of the street, where square paving stones were arched up and overturned by an invisible force.
Two cars parked on the side of the road were lifted by the shockwave.
A white SUV flipped over in the air, its body twisted and deformed, crashing heavily into the opposite lane with its roof facing down.
Another gray van was pushed seven or eight meters away, slamming its side into a utility pole.
The utility pole snapped in the middle, and the heavy upper section, along with the cables, crashed down, with dazzling sparks shooting out from the break and falling with a crackling sound.
The glass door and display window of a bakery on the roadside buckled inward the moment the shockwave arrived, then shattered into a sky full of crystalline shards.
Glass shards scattered all over the ground.
Twenty meters away, the bolt of a fire hydrant was instantly shaken loose, and a column of water gushed out, stretching into a white curtain of water under the streetlights.
All of this happened in less than 0.1 seconds.
Then the sound returned.
"Boom!"
A muffled thud rose from the ground—heavy, oppressive—making everyone's heart skip a beat.
The sound wave propagated outward from the impact point, shattering all the remaining glass within a fifty-meter radius into powder.
Pedestrians on the side of the road were pushed staggering backward by the sound wave; some had their legs give way, sitting straight down on the ground.
Countless car alarms screamed simultaneously at this moment, the piercing wails echoing throughout the entire block.
Dust rose from the shattered road, a gray haze mixed with water mist that obscured everyone's vision.
Three seconds later, the dust began to clear.
The streetlights were still on.
The dim, yellow light passed through the drifting dust, shining on the middle of the road.
Ryan was standing there.
In the same spot.
The exact same position.
His feet hadn't moved a single millimeter.
The zipper of his hoodie was still pulled up to his chin, and the hood had been blown back by the shockwave, revealing his entire face.
He wore no expression.
He raised his hand and flicked his chest with two fingers.
There wasn't even a speck of dust there.
His Bio-field had absorbed all of A-Train's kinetic energy, and along with it, kept the dust generated by the impact at bay.
An impact at 1,350 kilometers per hour, when hitting him, was about the same as someone poking him with a finger.
He looked down at his chest.
The fabric of his hoodie didn't have a single wrinkle.
"Hmm." He nodded. "Not bad."
Then he raised his head and looked to the other side of the impact point.
A-Train was no longer in front of him.
He was behind him.
Twenty-three meters away.
A-Train's body lay slumped on the shattered road in an extremely unnatural posture.
He had been bounced back.
Hitting Ryan's Bio-field at Mach 1.1, all the kinetic energy was completely rebounded at the point of contact.
A-Train's body was bounced back at almost the same speed.
But the human body is not rubber.
The human body is bones, muscles, blood vessels, and internal organs.
A series of composite sounds of bones breaking one after another could be heard.
"Snap! Snap, snap!"
A-Train's right arm, the part that first made contact with Ryan's body during the impact, showed a 180-degree reverse bend at the shoulder joint.
The shoulder blade was shattered.
The collarbone was shattered.
The humerus of his right arm had snapped in half, the ghastly white bone fragments pushing up the sleeve of his combat suit, forming a sharp protrusion.
His ribs—the third through seventh on the right side—were all fractured, and the shape of his chest cavity was visibly caved in when viewed from the side.
Both kneecaps were bent backward under the recoil force of the impact, ligaments completely torn, and his lower legs were twisted to the side at an angle that made one's stomach churn.
He lay on the ground, mouth open, but no sound came out.
After two seconds, a scream finally squeezed out of his throat.
"Ah..."
Then he couldn't scream anymore.
Because the broken ribs had punctured his lungs.
He started to cough.
With every cough, his body convulsed violently.
What he coughed up was red, mixed with fragments of internal organs.
The crowd on the roadside saw this scene after the dust cleared.
First, there was complete silence.
A man in a suit dropped his briefcase, papers scattering everywhere, but he was completely unaware.
An ice cream cone in a young girl's hand dropped to the ground with a "splat."
A silence lasting five seconds.
Then someone started shouting.
"He stopped him! That guy stopped A-Train!"
"My God! He stood there and didn't even move!"
"A-Train... A-Train hit him and shattered himself!"
Cell phones were raised.
One, two, ten, dozens.
Dense clusters of phone screens lit up, connecting into a sheet of light on the dark street.
Someone was crying.
The woman pushing the stroller who had been knocked over by the shockwave earlier was sitting on the ground, holding her child, tears streaming down her face, repeatedly muttering the same sentence.
"He stopped him... He stopped him..."
Ryan turned around, facing the direction of A-Train.
He walked over slowly.
His footsteps crunched on the shattered asphalt road.
When he reached A-Train's side, he stopped.
He looked down at the man lying on the ground, twisted all over.
A-Train's eyeballs rolled wildly in their sockets, his focus scattering and gathering, scattering and gathering again.
He saw Ryan.
Recognized him.
"You..." A-Train's lips moved, his voice so faint it was almost inaudible, mixed with the gurgling sound of coughing up blood. "How are you... still standing..."
"Why shouldn't I be standing?"
"I... Mach 1.1... full speed..."
"Hmm, I know."
Ryan squatted down, his line of sight level with his.
"You hit me at full speed."
"And then what?"
A-Train's eyeballs stopped rolling.
He stared at Ryan's face, his mouth opening and closing, foam of blood spilling from the corners of his lips, unable to say anything.
"Then you shattered." Ryan's voice had no fluctuation. "I didn't."
"It's that simple."
The sound of sirens came from afar, approaching from a distance, becoming increasingly dense.
More lights from phone screens gathered, and camera flashes began to flicker incessantly.
Ryan squatted beside A-Train, looking at this member of The Seven, who was covered in fractures, and the corners of his mouth twitched.
"A-Train."
"Last time you hit me, you shattered a shoulder."
"This time, you hit me and shattered two arms, two legs, and half a chest cavity."
He pointed to the lightning bolt emblem on the other man's chest, which was soaked in blood and cracked into several pieces.
"Look, your emblem is shattered too."
"If you want to try a third time."
He stood up and brushed the non-existent dust off his knees.
"I suggest you write your will first."
Chapter 33: Bones Broken, Tendons Torn
"I suggest you write your will first."
A-Train lay on the shattered pavement, the corner of his mouth twitching.
It was the pain.
The kind of pain that drilled out from the bone marrow, biting its way up his spine, vertebra by vertebra, making his molars grind together.
His right arm had completely lost all sensation; from shoulder to fingertip, it was numb, hanging uselessly by his side like a slab of dead meat.
His left arm still had a shred of feeling, but every time he tried to lift it an inch, a broken rib would dig into his lung, the pain so intense his eyes nearly rolled back in his head.
"You... you can't do this to me..."
A-Train's throat was filled with blood; every word had to be forced out, interrupted by mouthfuls of the metallic tang rising up.
"I am... The Seven..."
"You're in The Seven, so what?"
Ryan's lips barely moved, his tone so flat it made one's teeth ache.
"So Vought International will cover your medical bills?"
He took half a step forward.
"So your PR team will write off tonight's incident as a hero training exercise gone wrong?"
A-Train's pupils constricted.
"You're in The Seven, so it's fine for you to go on a drug-fueled rampage, tearing through the city center and killing people?"
"I didn't... I didn't mean to hit anyone... I couldn't control it..."
"Couldn't control it?"
Ryan crouched back down, bringing his face within a fist's distance of A-Train's, his shoe grinding against the gravel with a crunch.
"You injected yourself with four times the dose of Compound V, and you're telling me you couldn't control it?"
A-Train's left eyelid twitched three times, rapidly and intensely.
"How... how do you know about the four times..."
"I know much more than you think."
The crowd around them grew thicker.
At first it was just a circle around the accident, but now the entire street was blocked; people further away climbed onto car roofs, standing on tiptoe, necks stretched long.
The white glow of phone screens merged into one, illuminating the entire street brighter than the streetlights.
Some were recording, some were on the phone, some were crying, some were cursing.
Ryan's Super Hearing pulled those sounds out one by one.
"...Yes, 911? The intersection of Central Avenue and Maple Road, A-Train from The Seven has gone out of control! Someone is injured!"
"My shop! My glass is all shattered! That bastard!"
"Someone's hurt! An old lady over there was knocked down by the shockwave, her head is bleeding! Someone help!"
"Preservation Walker stopped him! He blocked him with his own body!"
The old lady's head was bleeding.
Ryan's mouth quirked downward.
"A-Train."
His voice dropped a notch when he spoke, carrying a grating quality like metal rubbing against metal.
"Did you hear that?"
"What..."
"An old lady fell because of your shockwave, and her head is bleeding."
A-Train's mouth moved, but blood foam choked off the rest of his words.
Ryan leaned down.
"Do you know who you almost killed when you ran past the convenience store at full speed last time?"
A-Train's Adam's apple bobbed.
"A girl named Robin, and her boyfriend named Hughie. Two ordinary people who had just come out of the store, holding hands."
"You were moving too fast when you ran by; they couldn't even see your face, only a bolt of blue lightning."
"You didn't even glance at them."
"If I hadn't stood in front, Robin would be nothing but a smear of blood mist and shredded meat spread evenly across the sidewalk right now."
On A-Train's face, all expression froze, then simultaneously dissolved.
He was trembling all over; the person in front of him knew everything.
The things Vought International's PR had long since scrubbed clean, the things he had spent half a year convincing himself were just an accident—this person knew it all.
"I... that wasn't intentional... The V made me..."
"The V made you?"
Ryan stood up, looking down at him with lowered eyelids, his mouth unmoving.
"Compound V doesn't have legs. You opened the safe yourself, took out the syringe, and injected it into your own arm."
"You gave yourself every single shot."
"When you run someone to death, you blame the drug."
"When you overdose and lose control, you blame the drug."
"Now that you're lying on the ground with broken bones, you still blame the drug."
The voice paused for a beat.
The chaotic noise of the entire street died down for that one beat.
"A-Train, when will you ever blame yourself for once?"
A-Train didn't speak again.
His eyes began to roll upward, showing more and more of the whites, as the intense pain and blood loss pushed his consciousness to the edge of a cliff, where it hung precariously.
Ryan watched him for two seconds.
Then he raised his right foot.
The sole of his black tactical boot, caked with asphalt and gravel, rested on A-Train's left leg.
Ten centimeters below the knee.
That section of the lower leg bone was already covered in spiderweb-like cracks, on the verge of snapping but still holding together.
He stepped down.
Not much force.
About five tons.
For a lower leg bone that was already cracked, five tons was enough.
Snap.
Crisp and loud.
Everyone on the street heard it.
A-Train's roar tore through the night sky, his throat filled with the taste of blood rising from ruptured alveoli.
"Arghhhhh!"
This scream was different from before.
The pain from the impact had been too sudden and fast; his nerves had gone numb before they could even react.
This time was different; this was continuous, precise, starting from a clear break point, spreading like madness up, down, and in every direction along the periosteum.
A collective gasp went through the crowd; a girl covered her mouth, turned away, and bent over, vomiting everything in her stomach.
A middle-aged man covered his child's eyes.
Ryan moved his foot off the left leg.
That lower leg was already bent at an unnatural angle, the toes pointing in the wrong direction.
He raised his right foot again.
He stepped onto the right leg, ten centimeters below the knee, the same spot.
The movement was steady, so steady it made one's stomach turn cold.
"You like to hit people with your legs."
He looked down at A-Train's face, his tone devoid of any rise or fall.
"Then today, I'll let you know what it feels like to have your legs broken."
Snap.
The second sound was crisper than the first.
A-Train's second scream cut off after only half a syllable.
The muscles in his throat spasmed into a knot under the extreme pain, his vocal cords twisted, leaving only silent gasping and twitching.
His entire body bounced a few times on the shattered pavement, both legs destroyed from the knees down, bent into shapes no human body should have.
Ryan stepped back.
The fastest man in America lay at his feet, unable to even crawl.
The street was silent for two seconds.
"Preservation Walker!"
A young person's voice in the crowd reached a crescendo.
One person became ten, ten became a hundred.
"Preservation Walker! Preservation Walker! Preservation Walker!"
The chanting overlapped, drowning out the distant sirens, the light from phone screens merging into a solid sheet of white.
Ryan didn't look back.
He looked down at A-Train; all that was left on that face were the whites of his eyes and the blood foam constantly spilling from the corners of his mouth, his lips opening and closing without sound.
His Super Hearing caught the words.
"Don't... don't kill me..."
"Kill you?"
Ryan crouched down, his voice soft enough that only the two of them could hear.
"Killing you would be letting you off too easy."
"You need to live."
"Live so Vought International's best doctors can piece you back together, and you can lie in that hospital bed every day, watching a new speedster hero take your place on TV."
His voice paused.
"Live and see what the fastest man in America without legs really amounts to."
He stood up and turned to the crowd.
Blackie had somehow squeezed to the front, holding his phone steady, the little red light on the camera lens glowing continuously.
Viewers in the livestream: 2.34 million.
Ryan held up two fingers to the camera.
"The Seven."
"Translucent, finished."
He retracted one finger.
"A-Train, finished."
He retracted the second finger, curling his hand into a fist.
"Five left."
He lowered his fist, his gaze piercing through the camera lens.
"Vought International, do you have enough heroes left?"
The livestream comments flooded the screen in the same second, scrolling three times faster than the eye could follow, a solid white wall of text.
Red and blue flashing police lights pierced through from the end of the street.
"Blackie, wrap it up."
"Okay... okay!"
Blackie's voice was shaking, his hands were shaking, and adrenaline had soaked through his entire being.
Ryan patted him on the shoulder and turned to walk toward the edge of the crowd.
The crowd automatically parted to both sides, clearing a path for him.
After three steps, the phone in his pocket buzzed softly.
The system panel popped up on its own, a line of golden text floating in the center of his vision.
He looked down and scanned it.
His mouth twitched, the curve very slight.
"Enough."
Chapter 34: Breaking the Legs He Was So Proud Of
Enough.
The golden notification box of the system panel expanded in his consciousness, the font size a notch bolder than usual.
[Major Event Completed!]
[Defeated member of The Seven: A-Train!]
[Event Rating: S-Class (Intercepted rampage in public + saved a large number of civilians + broadcast live online)]
[Reason for Rating: S-Class events will have an irreversible and major impact on the global landscape.]
[Calculating Emotion Points...]
As Ryan walked away from the crowd, he stared at the string of numbers jumping up in his mind, unable to stop them.
[Direct Witness Positive Worship (On-site crowd): +1460]
[Direct Witness Negative Fear (A-Train fan base): +380]
[Live Online Emotion Harvesting (2.34 million online, after multi-level attenuation): +720]
[One-time Reward for Defeating a member of The Seven: +1500]
[Additional Reward for Saving Civilians (Prevented rampage casualties): +600]
[Additional Reward for S-Class Event Rating: +1000]
[Total Increase: +5660]
[Historical Accumulation + Current Increase = Current Total Emotion Points: 14421 / 10000]
Fourteen thousand four hundred and twenty-one.
The threshold for the second Bloodline Purification, he had cleared it with plenty to spare.
Ryan turned into an empty alley, the walls covered in graffiti, his feet stepping on takeout boxes thrown by who knows whom; the air reeked of the sour smell of overnight trash soaked in rainwater.
He leaned his back against the brick wall, the heat in his chest not yet fully subsided.
His phone vibrated.
Hughie.
"Are you okay? I saw it from the second-floor window! The whole street was shaking!"
"I'm fine. A-Train is done for."
"Done for? What do you mean, done for?"
"His legs are broken. He won't be running anymore."
There was no movement on the other end, for exactly five seconds.
The line "Other party is typing..." at the top of the screen flickered a few times, went out, flickered again, then went out again.
"...Did you break them?"
"Yeah."
Three seconds.
"He deserved it."
Ryan stared at those two words twice.
He hadn't expected those words to come from Hughie.
After thinking for a moment, he replied.
"You've changed."
"After being hit by a speedster once, who wouldn't change?"
"Do you want me to have not changed? Want me to still be squatting at the cemetery every day leaving flowers, squatting there crying?"
Ryan's thumb hovered over the screen, pausing for a beat.
"No."
"Then that's that."
He put his phone back in his pocket.
He knew that some doors, once opened, have no turning back.
His pocket vibrated again.
Ashley.
"You're crazy, do you know that?"
"Yeah."
"Broadcast live to the whole network, breaking the legs of a member of The Seven."
"Yeah."
"The Vought legal department is in chaos right now. The light in Stillwell's office has been on all night; I watched her down her third espresso myself."
"Her lightbulb is quite durable."
"Can you be serious?"
"I am being serious." Ryan's typing speed increased, "If A-Train had gone on a rampage today without anyone stopping him, how many people would have died on the main street? Have you seen the on-site simulation map?"
There was no sound from Ashley's side.
She had certainly seen it; that was her job, after all.
Ten seconds.
"...I know."
"Then that's that."
"But breaking his legs was unnecessary. Stopping him was enough; you didn't have to..."
"I did."
"Why?"
"Stopping him only takes care of today. Breaking his legs takes care of the future."
"Without legs, he can't run. If he can't run, he can't kill people by running into them."
"What do you call this?"
"Physical detox."
Ashley sent over a facepalm emoji.
A few seconds later, she sent another message.
"Do you know what Vought's biggest headache is right now?"
"The stock price?"
"Homelander."
Ryan's thumb rested on the screen and didn't move again.
"What about Homelander?"
"He saw it."
"Saw what?"
"The live stream of you breaking A-Train's legs. The whole thing, not a single frame missed."
"And then?"
"Then he didn't say a word. When Stillwell pushed the door open, he was using his laser eyes to melt the 85-inch Sony in the lounge into a puddle of molten iron."
"Just ruined a TV?"
"And he punched a hole through the lounge wall. A wall reinforced with titanium alloy."
"What shape?"
"A fist."
The corners of Ryan's mouth curled up less than half a millimeter.
"He asked Stillwell one question."
"What?"
"'Who is this guy?'"
Ryan leaned the back of his head against the brick wall and looked up. The sky above the alley had been scorched into a turbid, orange-yellow color by the city lights.
Homelander saw it.
He saw someone standing in the middle of the road, taking a full-speed impact at 1.1 Mach without moving his feet even half an inch.
And then snapping A-Train's lower legs in two like breaking tree branches.
Ryan understood perfectly well what this meant in Homelander's mind.
It meant that someone had popped up on Earth whose defensive capabilities might match or even surpass his own.
The thing Homelander couldn't stand most in his life—someone catching up to him.
The entire reason he was allowed to act recklessly was nailed to the three words: "I am the strongest."
Once that nail loosened, he would unravel completely.
What would happen after that, no one could say for sure.
"Ashley."
"Yeah?"
"Where is he now?"
"The top floor of Vought Tower. Stillwell is holding him down for now; she hasn't let him out."
"How long can she hold him?"
"A day, a week, it's all possible."
She paused.
"Or maybe he'll fly out to find you tonight."
"Yeah."
Ryan stuffed his phone back into his pocket.
He stood in the alley for a while. The wind poured in from the alley entrance, carrying the smell of fried food, exhaust fumes, and laundry detergent from some unknown balcony.
He had to finish the second Bloodline Purification before Homelander tracked him down.
He closed his eyes and pulled up the system panel in his consciousness.
[Current Total Emotion Points: 14421 / 10000]
[Required for second DNA purification: 10000 points, conditions met.]
[Execute second Bloodline Purification?]
He couldn't do it here.
The last time he purified, his bones exploded with sound from the inside out, muscle fibers tore and re-knitted, and his body temperature spiked significantly within seconds.
No energy leaked out, but if a satellite was watching from overhead, or if someone with super senses was scanning nearby, it would be no different than lighting a fire in the dark.
He needed a place completely off the grid.
A signal dead zone, a blind spot for surveillance, the kind of place even stray cats couldn't be bothered to go.
East Brooklyn.
He had passed an abandoned industrial area while clearing out a gang hideout before. A few old factories that had been shut down for over a decade, their steel frames rusted like paper, asbestos tiles shattered all over the ground; homeless people would take one look and walk the other way.
He stepped out of the alley and scanned left and right. The street was empty; there wasn't even a dog.
He looked up, locked onto a direction, bent his knees slightly, and planted his feet firmly.
Two hair-thin cracks appeared on the ground.
His whole body lifted off the ground silently; the corners of his clothes curled in the airflow. No Sonic Boom, no sound.
0.85 Mach.
The city lights beneath his feet spread backward, stretching into lines of light one by one.
Three minutes.
He hovered directly above East Brooklyn.
Below was a vast expanse of darkness, with only the outlines of a few old steel mills casting shadows under the moonlight.
He activated his Super Hearing.
The sound of the wind.
Rusted iron creaked as the wind pushed it.
A few hundred meters away, a stray cat let out a raspy cry.
No heartbeat, no breathing, no buzzing of electric currents.
Clean.
He descended, landing on the roof of one of the factories, suppressing the sound of his boot hitting the sheet metal to the absolute minimum.
The factory was quite large, its steel frame still standing, but the sheet metal roof had several holes. Moonlight leaked in through the openings, stabbing into the dust-covered concrete floor with patches of ghastly white light.
He jumped in through the largest hole, landing on both feet simultaneously; dust swirled up and then dissipated.
He didn't rush to act.
Like a creature sneaking back into its den, he first patrolled the territory.
Stepping over gravel and glass shards step by step, his boots grinding out faint noises, he didn't miss a single corner.
No hidden cameras, no traps laid in advance.
Finally, he returned to the center of the factory, stood still, closed his eyes, and stopped his breathing.
The world was pried open in his ears for a second.
Five seconds.
Ten seconds.
Except for the wind, it was empty.
He found a relatively clear patch of floor and sat down cross-legged.
He closed his eyes.
The panel spread out in his consciousness.
[Host: Ryan]
[Current Panel: Tighten (dandruff slightly flawed version)]
[DNA Purity: 3%]
[Current Emotion Points: 14421 / 10000]
[Required for second DNA purification: 10000 points, conditions met.]
[Execute second Bloodline Purification?]
His consciousness hovered over the word "Yes."
Homelander's face flashed before him—handsome, clean, a smile that couldn't be faulted, but the thing burning in his pupils had nothing in common with a normal person.
Time was running out.
Execute.
Chapter 35: 10,000 Points Bloodline Evolution Initiated
"Execute." The moment this word was transmitted from his consciousness, the numbers on the system panel began to jump.
[Second Bloodline Purification initiated!]
[Consuming 10,000 Emotion Points...]
[Remaining Emotion Points: 3,421]
[Purification in progress...]
[Warning: The intensity of the second purification far exceeds the first. Host, please prepare yourself.]
Ryan had just wanted to ask "Prepare for what?" when the answer arrived.
Pain.
It was a pain on a completely different level from the first time.
During the first purification, the feeling was "heat." It was like warm water flowing through his veins, his bones creaking slightly, and his muscles slowly adjusting. It ended in three minutes, much like taking a hot bath.
This time was different.
This time, it started from the bone marrow.
Every one of his 206 bones emitted a "crack, crack, crack" sound at the same time. The sound of bone density violently reconstructing was like someone hammering steel bars inside his body.
The bones were hardening.
Becoming denser.
Becoming heavier.
Then, the muscles.
Muscle fibers were tearing, then recombining, then tearing again, and recombining again. After each round of recombination, the density and elasticity of the fibers were higher than the last.
This process repeated I don't know how many times.
Ryan's teeth were clenched together, his jaw muscles tensed like two stones.
He did not scream.
Because his throat had gone into spasm by the third second, and his vocal cords couldn't produce a sound.
Inside the abandoned factory, moonlight shone down from a hole in the roof, illuminating Ryan's body as he sat cross-legged.
Changes began to appear on the surface of his skin.
The Bio-field—that passive protective shield usually invisible to the naked eye—was activated to a visible level during the purification process.
A layer of pale golden light film floated up from the surface of his skin, like a thin layer of amber glass, encasing his entire body.
The light film was trembling.
As the DNA recombination progressed, the color of the light film deepened. It changed from pale gold to amber, and then from amber to deep gold.
The thickness was also increasing.
From a thin film clinging to his skin, it slowly expanded outward to a position three centimeters away from his skin.
Then five centimeters.
Then ten centimeters.
A golden sphere of light with a diameter of about half a meter formed around Ryan's body.
The energy fluctuations inside the sphere of light began to affect the surrounding environment.
The dust on the factory floor was pushed away by the invisible force field, spreading outward with Ryan as the center.
The concrete on the ground began to crack.
The vibration frequency generated by the force field resonated with the natural frequency of the concrete.
Cracks spread from under Ryan's feet: one meter, two meters, three meters—
A rusted steel column began to sway in the vibrations, emitting a "creak, creak" sound.
The numbers on the system panel were jumping.
[DNA Purity: 3%... 5%... 8%... 12%...]
[Basic strength reconstructing...]
[88 tons... 120 tons... 180 tons... 250 tons...]
The numbers were jumping faster and faster.
[300 tons... 350 tons... 400 tons...]
Ryan's body trembled slightly inside the golden sphere of light.
The pain disappeared after the thirtieth second because the reconstructed nervous system had already adapted to the new signal intensity.
It was because of the power.
Too much power was flooding into every muscle fiber, every bone, and every cell at the same time.
It was like a container that could only hold a cup of water suddenly being flooded with an entire river.
But the container was also expanding simultaneously.
DNA purification didn't just raise the strength ceiling—it was reshaping the entire underlying architecture of the body, allowing this physical form to carry higher-dimensional energy.
[450 tons... 480 tons... 500 tons!]
[Basic strength reconstruction complete: 500 tons!]
Five hundred tons.
From eighty-eight tons to five hundred tons.
It had increased nearly sixfold.
But the purification wasn't over yet.
[Speed reconstructing...]
[Current flight speed limit: 0.85 Mach...]
[Reconstructing... 1.2 Mach... 2 Mach... 3.5 Mach... 5 Mach...]
[6 Mach... 7 Mach... 8 Mach!]
[Flight speed limit reconstruction complete: 8 Mach!]
Eight Mach.
About 9,800 kilometers per hour.
It was 0.85 Mach before, unable to catch up to A-Train's 1.1.
Now it was 8 Mach.
More than seven times that of A-Train.
Homelander's known flight speed limit was—somewhere between three and five Mach, with no precise data.
Eight Mach.
He had already surpassed him.
[Bio-field reconstructing...]
[Original intensity baseline × 300%... Reconstruction complete.]
[New force field intensity: increased by 300% over the original baseline.]
[Current defense rating: Conventional weapons completely immune / Armor-piercing rounds completely immune / Explosives completely immune / Energy weapons highly resistant / Physical attacks below nuclear radiation safe.]
Ryan felt the changes in the force field inside the golden sphere of light.
It was thicker.
Much thicker.
The previous force field was like wearing a bulletproof vest.
The current force field was like being wrapped in a layer of reinforced concrete.
[New ability unlock judgment in progress...]
[Judgment 1: Microscopic Vision... Success!]
[Unlocked: Microscopic Vision. Can observe microscopic structures at the naked-eye level, with a maximum precision reaching the molecular level.]
[Judgment 2: Super Freezing Breath... Success!]
[Unlocked: Super Freezing Breath. The temperature of the exhaled airflow can drop to -196 degrees Celsius, with an effective radius of ten meters.]
[Judgment 3: Heat Vision immunity... Success!]
[Unlocked: Complete immunity to Heat Vision. Heat Vision attacks at the level of Homelander cause zero damage to the host.]
Ryan's heartbeat accelerated.
Complete immunity to Heat Vision.
Homelander's most powerful attack method—Heat Vision.
Those eyes that could cut through steel, melt concrete, and sweep a line across a battlefield.
Now, they were ineffective against him.
[Second Bloodline Purification complete!]
[Tighten DNA Purity: 3% → 30%]
[Comprehensive panel update—]
[Host: Ryan]
[Panel: Tighten (First Generation Awakened Version)]
[DNA Purity: 30%]
[Basic strength: 500 tons]
[Flight speed limit: 8 Mach]
[Bio-field: Original × 4 (Includes initial +15% and this time's × 300% stacking)]
[Defense rating: Safe below nuclear radiation]
[Special abilities: Super Hearing / Flight / Bio-field / Microscopic Vision / Super Freezing Breath / Complete immunity to Heat Vision]
[Remaining Emotion Points: 3,421]
The golden sphere of light retracted back into Ryan's body the moment the panel update was complete.
The light vanished.
The factory returned to darkness, with only the moonlight leaking in from the roof.
Ryan opened his eyes.
He looked down at his hands.
He clenched his fist.
Released it.
Clenched it again.
Five hundred tons.
He could feel that every ounce of power in his fingertips was different from before.
The previous eighty-eight tons had already allowed him to crush the fist of a strength-type Superhuman with one hand.
Now, at five hundred tons—he could crush the load-bearing pillar of a building into a metal pancake.
He stood up.
The concrete floor beneath his feet cracked in two more places the moment he stood up—he hadn't fully adapted to the new power yet, and the output of his normal movements was several times greater than before.
"Need to control this," he muttered to himself. "Otherwise, I could collapse the floor just by walking."
He tried taking a few steps.
The first step left a footprint.
The second step was lighter, leaving only a shallow mark.
By the third step, it was normal.
The adaptation speed was fast.
The Tighten genes themselves contained the instinct for power control—in the original work, City Superman could handle things delicately and wouldn't crush everything just because his strength was too great.
This instinct was activated along with the DNA purification.
Ryan walked to a wall in the factory.
He raised his right hand, extended his index finger, and lightly traced it against the wall.
Where his finger passed, a groove two centimeters deep and one centimeter wide appeared on the concrete wall.
It was like carving into tofu with a knife.
"Hmm." He nodded. "That's about right."
Then he looked up at the hole in the roof.
The moonlight shone down from there.
He bent his legs and jumped.
His body catapulted from the ground to the hole in the roof fifteen meters high, passed through the hole, traced an arc in the night sky, and landed steadily on the factory roof.
Standing on the roof, he looked at the distant New Yorkskyline.
The V-shaped logo of Vought Tower was glowing with a blue-white light in the night sky.
"Thirty percentage points," Ryan's mouth twisted slightly. "From dandruff to First Generation Awakened."
"Five hundred tons. Eight Mach. Immunity to Heat Vision."
"A-Zu, your good days are over."
Chapter 36: From Dandruff to First-Generation Awakening
"A-Zu, your good days are over."
After saying this, Ryan stood on the roof of the abandoned steel mill for a while.
The night wind was strong, whipping his hoodie's hood with a snapping sound.
He needed to test his new abilities.
First, speed.
He pushed off the roof with both feet, the Bio-field forming a thrust beneath his soles, and his body soared into the air.
The feeling this time was completely different from before.
Previously, when flying, Mach 0.85 had been the limit; any faster and he would feel the field's thrust failing to keep up, like trying to accelerate a car even with the gas pedal floored.
Now—
He only used thirty percent of his strength.
The speedometer flickered in his consciousness: Mach 1... Mach 2... Mach 3...
At Mach 3, he just felt, "Hmm, a bit windy."
Keep going.
Mach 5.
The city lights below him turned into elongated streaks of light, and buildings flashed past his vision.
Mach 7.
The air in front of his body was compressed into a visible conical shockwave, and the moonlight refracted off the shockwave surface, forming a rainbow-colored halo.
Mach 8.
The limit.
Nine thousand eight hundred kilometers per hour.
The straight-line distance from Brooklyn to Manhattan is about ten kilometers.
At a speed of Mach 8, this distance only requires—
Three point six seven seconds.
Ryan braked three hundred meters above Manhattan.
He reversed the Bio-field output, decelerating his body from Mach 8 to zero in zero point two seconds.
There was no inertial impact.
The Bio-field absorbed all the deceleration G-force.
He hovered in mid-air, looking down at Manhattan below.
The brightly lit city looked like a glowing circuit board.
"Three point six seven seconds," he calculated silently in his mind, "from Brooklyn to Manhattan, less than four seconds."
"How long does it take for Homelander to fly from Vought Tower to Brooklyn?"
"Based on his speed of Mach 3 to 5—about six to ten seconds."
"I'm twice as fast as him."
Speed test complete.
Next, test Freezing Breath.
He flew over the East River.
The river surface shimmered in the moonlight.
Ryan opened his mouth and exhaled toward the river surface.
An ultra-low temperature airflow, squeezed from the depths of his lungs and modified by some kind of Bio-field.
A white mist sprayed from his mouth, moving extremely fast, like a white laser.
The moment the mist touched the river surface—
The river water froze.
Starting from the point of contact, the ice layer spread outwards at a speed visible to the naked eye.
One meter. Two meters. Five meters.
Eventually forming a circular patch of ice about twenty meters in diameter.
The thickness of the ice—Ryan scanned it with Microscopic Vision—was about fifteen centimeters.
"Minus one hundred ninety-six degrees," he licked his lips, "liquid nitrogen temperature."
"If this stuff hit someone's face..."
He thought about it and decided not to continue that line of thought.
Finally, test Microscopic Vision.
He stared at the ice surface and switched his visual mode in his consciousness.
His field of vision changed.
The texture of the ice surface was magnified in his eyes. He could see the hexagonal structure of the ice crystals and the arrangement of the water molecules.
Magnify further.
Molecular level.
Hydrogen bonds were clearly visible.
"That's enough." He switched back to normal vision, "This ability is good for analyzing material structures."
All new ability tests complete.
Conclusion—
Reborn.
Literally reborn.
He had gone from a "dandruff-level knockoff Superman" to a "first-generation awakened version of a city-level Superman."
Strength of five hundred tons, speed of Mach 8, defense safe against anything below a nuclear bomb, complete immunity to Heat Vision, plus Freezing Breath and Microscopic Vision.
With this configuration in the world of The Boys—
Except for Homelander, no one could beat him.
And Homelander—
"His strength is greater than mine," Ryan calculated in his mind, "his one-handed output is said to be between twelve hundred and fifteen hundred tons, I'm at five hundred tons, a difference of about three times."
"I've surpassed him in speed. Mach 8 versus Mach 3 to 5."
"Defense, he's safe below a nuke, I'm also safe below a nuke. It's a draw."
"Heat Vision, his strongest attack method, is ineffective against me."
"Overall—"
"In a direct confrontation, I can't beat him. The strength gap is too big; if he throws a punch, I'll go flying."
"But he can't kill me either. Heat Vision is useless, and physical attacks can't break my defense."
"And I'm faster than him. He can't hit me, but I can hit him."
"Although a punch from me might just be tickling him—"
"But if I tickle him ten thousand times, he'll get annoyed."
Ryan curled the corner of his mouth.
"Now, I'm qualified to arm-wrestle A-Zu."
"Even if I can't win."
"But at least he can't break my hand."
He flew back to Brooklyn from the East River.
Landing on the roof of his rental apartment building.
He climbed down the fire escape, pushed open the window, and climbed into his room.
He lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
His phone vibrated.
A message from Blackie.
"Brother Preservation Walker!!! The playback views for tonight's livestream have already broken five hundred million!!! Five hundred million!!!"
"You're in the top three of the global trending searches again!!!"
"CNN says you are the 'most dangerous unregistered Superhuman of the 21st century'!!!"
"BBC says you are the 'greatest threat to the Vought monopoly system'!!!"
"There's a poll on Twitter asking 'Do you support Preservation Walker or The Seven', 780,000 people voted, and 630,000 voted for you!!!"
Ryan replied with three words.
"Go to sleep."
"Brother, aren't you excited???"
"I am. But there's something to do tomorrow."
"What is it?"
Ryan thought for a moment.
"Going to New Jersey."
"New Jersey? What for?"
"Demolishing a factory."
Blackie sent a string of question marks.
Ryan didn't reply again.
He threw his phone next to his pillow and closed his eyes.
His mind was on something else.
Hughie had mentioned before—Butcher had dirt on Vought.
And in the information he had eavesdropped on at Vought Tower, there was also a crucial clue: the source of the compound v leak was inside Vought.
compound v.
The foundation of the Vought empire.
Without compound v, there would be no Superhumans. Without Superhumans, Vought would just be an ordinary military-industrial corporation.
compound v is Vought's lifeline.
And Vought had a secret compound v production base in New Jersey—this intelligence was intercepted when he was eavesdropping on Stillwell's meeting on the 72nd floor.
At that time, Stillwell mentioned that "the production capacity of the New Jersey facility needs to increase by thirty percent," and also mentioned a fragment of an address—"the northern section of the Newark industrial zone."
Combined with his memories of the original work, Ryan could be certain—that place was one of Vought's largest secret compound v production bases.
"Burn it down."
This thought circled in his mind.
Burning down Vought's compound v factory was equivalent to cutting off Vought's ability to create new Superhumans.
It was equivalent to shaking the foundation of Vought's power from the roots.
Vought wouldn't sit idly by.
Edgar wouldn't sit idly by.
Homelander—even more so, wouldn't sit idly by.
"But that's exactly what I want."
Ryan turned over.
"If I push them hard enough, they'll make mistakes."
"Once they make mistakes, there will be flaws."
"Once there are flaws—"
He clenched his fist.
The five-hundred-ton grip strength crinkled the blanket.
"I can punch right through them."
He set his alarm for 3:00 AM.
The compound v factory in New Jersey, going there tonight.
Chapter 37: Qualified to Wrestle with A-Zu
The alarm clock rang at 3:00 AM.
Ryan sat up in bed without turning on the lights.
Moonlight seeped in through the window crack, dragging a white streak across the floor.
He changed into dark clothes: a black long-sleeved shirt with black trousers, and a pair of black sneakers on his feet.
Going to burn down someone's factory at 3:00 AM in bright colors wouldn't be appropriate.
Before leaving, he sent a message to Hughie.
"I'm going to take care of something tonight that might make the news. You and Robin stay home and don't go out."
Hughie replied instantly.
He was still awake at 3:00 AM.
"Where are you going?"
"New Jersey."
"What's in New Jersey?"
"Vought's compound v factory."
The message box on the other end remained empty for ten seconds.
"Are you going to blow up Vought's factory?"
"Not blow up, burn."
Ryan typed another line.
"Explosions make too much noise; burning is more eco-friendly."
"Are you serious?"
"Never been more serious."
"Then be careful."
"Rest assured, right now, no one can stop me except Homelander."
"Then what about Homelander?"
"He can't stop me either, it's just a hassle to fight him."
Another five seconds of silence.
"What exactly have you become?"
"Someone who can wrestle with A-Zu."
"Can you win?"
"I can't win, but he can't break my arm either."
"What kind of level is that?"
"A sufficient level."
Ryan put his phone away, pushed open the window, and climbed onto the roof.
Brooklyn at 3:00 AM was very quiet; the sparse sound of traffic in the distance was diluted by the night wind into a low-frequency hum.
He stood at the edge of the roof, facing southwest.
New Jersey, the northern section of the Newark industrial zone, about 25 kilometers away in a straight line.
At Mach 8, it would take less than ten seconds.
But he didn't intend to use full speed.
Flying at full speed would create a Sonic Boom. Creating a loud bang over New York at 3:00 AM would make half the city jump out of bed.
Mach 3 was enough; it would take thirty seconds.
He bent his legs, and his Bio-field condensed under his feet.
He jumped.
His body rose silently into the night sky, carving an arc toward the southwest.
Flying at Mach 3 at high altitude was almost silent; the air density was low, and sound waves dissipated quickly.
The lights on the ground retreated rapidly beneath his feet; the residential area of Brooklyn turned into a patch of orange-yellow light spots, the black water of the East River flashed by, the lights of Manhattan filled his vision, and then came the Hudson River.
New Jersey had arrived.
Looking down from the sky, the Newark industrial zone was just a large patch of gray, sandwiched between city lights and marshland. Factories connected to warehouses, chimneys stood next to railway spurs, and most facilities were dark.
But one spot was wrong.
One building in the northern section of the industrial zone was brightly lit; blindingly white shadowless lamps shone from inside the building, illuminating the surrounding open ground.
The building was surrounded by a two-meter-high barbed wire fence with "No Entry" signs hanging on it.
Inside the fence, there were patrolling security guards. Ryan's Super Hearing caught four sets of footsteps, two people per group, walking back and forth along fixed routes.
There were also surveillance cameras, one every twenty meters on the fence, and some on the building's exterior walls too.
Did a regular industrial warehouse need this level of security?
He switched to Microscopic Vision and scanned the building's exterior wall.
A standard steel-structure factory, with corrugated steel exterior walls.
But inside the steel plates, his Microscopic Vision passed through the molecular gaps, revealing an extra layer.
A laboratory-grade thermal insulation layer, used to maintain precise internal temperature control.
compound v production required a constant temperature environment.
This was the place.
He withdrew his gaze and dove straight down from an altitude of three hundred meters at Mach 2, headfirst.
A muffled thud.
The factory roof was smashed through; the corrugated steel, along with the insulation and support beams, shattered, and debris splattered in all directions.
Ryan landed inside the factory through the hole, his feet hitting the white tiled floor. The Bio-field cushioned the impact of the landing, but the tiles beneath his feet still cracked.
He stood up straight and looked around.
The scene inside the factory was a completely different world from the dilapidated industrial zone outside.
White walls, white floors, and shadowless lamps illuminated every corner, leaving no shadows.
Rows of stainless steel workbenches were filled with centrifuges and constant-temperature incubators. Automated conveyor belts ran through the aisles between the workbenches, carrying rows of small, transparent bottles.
The bottles contained a pale blue liquid.
compound v.
compound v.
Ryan walked to the conveyor belt and picked up a small bottle, holding it up to the light. The pale blue liquid sloshed gently in the bottle, slightly more viscous than water.
"This little thing is what turned so many ordinary people into monsters."
He put the bottle back on the conveyor belt.
Rapid footsteps came from the other end of the factory.
"Intruder! Someone broke in through the roof!"
"All personnel evacuate! Security, get into position!"
Ryan ignored them.
He walked to the large bioreactor in the center of the factory, a stainless steel shell three meters high and two meters wide, covered with pipes and valves, currently in operation.
He raised his right hand and pressed his five fingers against the shell.
He squeezed.
Five hundred tons of grip strength.
The stainless steel shell crumpled and deformed in his palm; pipes burst, and pale blue compound v mixed with coolant sprayed out.
He let go and walked to the next one.
The same action.
He crushed them one by one.
Within three minutes, all six bioreactors in the factory had been crushed into scrap iron by his bare hands. The compound v bottles on the conveyor belt scattered everywhere, and the blue liquid pooled on the white floor.
Security guards rushed in—eight of them, wearing black uniforms with the Vought logo, holding assault rifles.
"Don't move! Put your hands up!"
Ryan turned around and looked at them.
"Are you sure?"
The leader hesitated for a second; his gaze fell on the pile of scrap iron at Ryan's feet—industrial-grade stainless steel equipment with two-centimeter-thick walls, crushed by bare hands.
"Fire!"
Eight rifles fired simultaneously.
The bullets hit his Bio-field and ricocheted off, clattering to the ground. The sound of the shell casings rolling was even crisper than the gunfire.
Ryan stood in place, waiting for them to finish a magazine.
"Are you done?"
The gun barrels were shaking.
"Then it's my turn."
He opened his mouth, and a white stream of air sprayed out. His Freezing Breath, at minus 196 degrees, swept across the floor in front of the security guards.
The compound v liquid froze within 0.5 seconds, and the ice spread from the floor to the soles of the eight men's shoes.
"Don't struggle. Your soles are frozen; if you pull hard, you'll rip your socks off too."
Ryan turned his head to look at them.
"You can leave once the ice melts, probably in twenty minutes."
He walked to the storage area in the corner of the factory, where crates of finished compound v were stacked—twenty bottles per crate, about three hundred crates.
Six thousand bottles of compound v.
If they flowed onto the market, they could create six thousand Superhumans.
He pulled out a lighter, threw it into the middle of the storage area, and then sprayed a breath of Freezing Breathin the same direction.
Minus 196 degrees.
Ordinary glass becomes brittle at this temperature.
The glass bottles of the six thousand units of compound vshattered simultaneously under the coverage of the Freezing Breath, and the pale blue liquid flowed out of the broken bottles, pooling into a blue puddle on the floor.
Ryan walked to the factory's power control cabinet and pulled the main switch.
The lights all went out.
In the darkness, he felt for a cable in the distribution box, tore off the outer sheath with his bare hands to expose the copper core, and pushed the main switch back up.
Current passed through the broken cable, and an electric arc jumped from the exposed copper core.
The arc ignited the compound v liquid on the floor.
compound v is an organic compound; it is flammable.
Blue flames rose from the floor, engulfing the entire storage area within thirty seconds.
Ryan flew out through the hole in the roof, hovered in mid-air, and looked down at the burning factory below.
The fire illuminated the night sky over the northern section of the industrial zone, and the orange-red glow reflected off the low-hanging clouds.
Almost forgot one thing.
He flew to the open space at the factory gate and landed, finding an iron pipe he had torn off the fence—two meters long and as thick as an arm.
With five hundred tons of strength and precise control, he bent the iron pipe into the shape of letters, bending them one by one. After finishing, he used his fingers to poke the two ends into the concrete wall to secure it.
The content spelled out: "A-Zu, this is just the beginning."
He stepped back two paces to look at his work; it was crooked, and the curves of a few letters were clearly off.
"My craftsmanship isn't great; I'll have to practice next time."
The fire in the factory behind him was growing larger, explosions were coming from inside the building, and the sirens of distant fire trucks were sounding.
Ryan brushed the rust off his hands, bent his legs, and jumped.
Mach 3.
Ten seconds later, he had flown back over Brooklyn. Behind him, in the direction of New Jersey, a ball of orange-red fire danced on the skyline.
Vought's compound v production line was gone.
He landed back on the roof of his rental apartment, climbed through the window into the room, and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
His phone buzzed.
Blackie's message.
"Brother Xingqi! There's a huge fire in New Jersey! The news says a factory in an industrial zone exploded! Did you do it?"
"Yeah."
"What did you burn?"
"Vought's compound v factory."
Blackie sent a long string of exclamation marks, interspersed with several trembling emoticons.
"Brother, you're trying to uproot Vought entirely!"
"Pretty much."
"Won't Vought go crazy?"
"They will."
"Won't Homelander go crazy?"
"He will too."
"Aren't you afraid?"
Ryan looked at the message, his thumb hovering over the screen for two seconds.
"Afraid."
"Afraid that after he goes crazy, he won't come looking for me."
"I'm still waiting to trade blows with him."
Chapter 38: Vought International's Secret Warehouse Burned Down
"I'm still waiting to trade a few blows with him."
After sending this message, Ryan threw his phone next to his pillow and rolled over to sleep.
He slept soundly.
Five hundred tons of strength, Mach 8 speed, and defense below a nuclear bomb—these things gave him an unprecedented sense of security.
In this world where Superhumans casually kill pedestrians in car accidents, he could finally sleep without worrying about someone ripping his roof off in the middle of the night.
At nine the next morning, he was woken up by the vibration of his phone.
It wasn't Blackie.
It wasn't Hughie.
It was Ashley.
Seventeen messages in a row.
"What did you do???"
"Did you burn down the factory in New Jersey???"
"Do you have any idea how much that factory is worth???"
"Vought International's stock price crashed immediately this morning!!!"
"Stillwell has been in meetings since four in the morning, and they haven't stopped yet!"
"Edgar flew back from Washington!!!"
"The Legal Department, Security Department, and Public Relations Department have all entered wartime status!"
"What did you leave at the factory entrance?"
"Words bent from iron pipes?"
"'A-Zu, this is just the beginning'???"
"Are you out of your mind???"
"You are provoking Homelander!!!"
"He saw it!!!"
"He has already seen it!!!"
"Do you know you're finished!"
"You are truly finished!"
"Reply to me! Are you still alive!"
"?????"
Ryan rubbed his eyes and yawned.
He replied with one message.
"Alive. Just woke up. (￣▽￣)"
Ashley immediately replied with an angry emoji.
Then came a voice message.
Ryan tapped it to listen.
Ashley's voice was kept very low, as if she were hiding somewhere to record it secretly.
"Listen to me. Homelander saw the news about the New Jersey factory this morning. He saw the line of text you left on the wall. And then he—"
She paused.
"He laughed."
"Not angry. He laughed."
"The kind where he was very happy."
"Then he said something to Stillwell."
"He said—'Finally, something interesting.'"
After listening to the voice message, Ryan sat on the edge of the bed and was stunned for two seconds.
Finally, something interesting.
Homelander thought he was "interesting."
This was a hundred times more dangerous than Homelander thinking he was "detestable."
Because when Homelander finds something "detestable," he gets angry and wants to destroy it.
But when Homelander finds something "interesting"—
He wants to play with it.
He wants to take it apart slowly, piece by piece, to see what's inside.
And then, after he gets bored, he destroys it.
"What a psychopath." Ryan muttered.
He sent a text message back to Ashley.
"Did he say he was coming to find me?"
"No. Stillwell stopped him. She said now is not the time; Vought International's stock price has already collapsed. If Homelander fights you now and causes large-scale destruction, the stock price will fall until it gets delisted."
"Does A-Zu listen to her?"
"For now. But I can tell, he might stop listening at any moment."
"How is his state?"
"Not good." Ashley replied quickly, "He smashed the second TV in the break room this morning. He also scared an intern who was passing by—he just stood in the hallway and stared at the person for ten seconds without saying anything, and the intern's legs went weak."
"He's holding it in."
"Yes. He's holding it in. But someone like that can't hold it in for too long."
Ryan stood up and walked to the window.
The sunlight shone in from outside the window, landing on his face.
He squinted.
"Ashley, help me keep an eye on him. If he has any unusual behavior, tell me immediately."
"I'll try. But my authority is limited; Stillwell has already blocked a lot of information from me."
"Then use whatever channels you can."
"What exactly are you planning?"
"Let him come find me."
"What?"
"I said, let him come find me."
"Are you crazy? Do you know how strong he is? He can lift an aircraft carrier with one hand!"
"I know."
"Then why—"
"I can't beat him. But he can't kill me either."
"Are you sure?"
"Heat Vision is ineffective against me. Physical attacks can't break my force field. He can knock me flying, but he can't kill me."
"Besides—I'm faster than him."
Ashley was silent for ten seconds.
"You've changed."
"Hm?"
"You used to be a little timid when you spoke. Now you sound just like Homelander."
"Do I?"
"Yes. You both think you're unkillable."
"The difference is—" Ryan's fingers paused while typing, "I really am unkillable. He just hasn't met anyone who can kill him yet."
Ashley did not reply again.
Ryan put his phone away and started tidying up the room.
He didn't have to go to work at Vought International today—he had been absent from his job as a Janitor for two days in a row; he was probably fired already.
But it didn't matter.
That job was originally meant for gathering intelligence. Now that he had Ashley and Hughie as lines of inquiry, the Janitor identity was useless.
He turned on the TV.
Every channel was broadcasting news about the New Jersey factory.
"...A facility belonging to Vought International located in the Newark industrial zone suffered a serious fire early this morning, and the entire building was completely burned down. Vought International officially claims the facility was a 'general storage center,' but our reporters found a large amount of laboratory-grade equipment wreckage at the scene, as well as residues of suspected biological agents..."
"...Even more shocking is that the arsonist left a line of text bent from iron pipes on the wall next to the factory gate—'A-Zu, this is just the beginning.' 'A-Zu' is widely believed to be a reference to the leader of The Seven, Homelander. This is the first time Preservation Walker has openly and directly challenged Homelander..."
"...Vought International's stock price plummeted 12% after opening this morning, marking the largest single-day drop since the company went public. Many investment institutions have downgraded Vought Internationalto'sell'..."
Ryan turned off the TV.
Twelve percentage points.
Adding the three-plus points dropped during the Translucent incident and the five-plus points dropped during the A-Train incident—
Vought International's stock price had fallen by more than twenty percent in a week.
The market value had evaporated by nearly one hundred billion dollars.
"One hundred billion." Ryan whistled, "I took down one hundred billion by myself."
The phone vibrated again.
This time it was Hughie.
"Ryan, Butcher saw the news about New Jersey."
"What was his reaction?"
"He laughed. He laughed for a long time. Then he said something."
"What did he say?"
"He said—'This kid is even crazier than I imagined. I like it.'"
"And then?"
"Then he asked me if I could arrange for him to meet you."
Ryan thought for a moment.
"Not yet. The timing isn't right."
"Why?"
"Because Butcher wants to see me now only because he thinks I have utility. If I go to see him now, I'm putting myself in a passive position."
"Wait. Wait for Vought International's reaction to come out, wait for Homelander's moves, and by then, Butcherwill need me even more."
"When we meet at that time, the initiative will be in my hands."
Hughie sent a thumbs-up emoji.
"You're learning quite fast." Ryan replied.
"Learned it from you."
"Stop with the flattery. Keep an eye on Butcher's side, and tell me immediately if there is any new intelligence."
"Received."
Ryan put down his phone.
He walked to the window and pushed it open.
The air of Brooklyn poured in, carrying the coldness unique to the morning and the scent of baked bread from a bakery in the distance.
He took a deep breath.
"A-Zu."
"You saw the words I left."
"You think I'm 'interesting.'"
"That's good."
He closed the window.
"Because what comes next will be getting more and more interesting."