Dilapidated, chaotic.
Lin Mo struggled to open his eyes.
As far as he could see, broken walls and crumbling ruins, giant concrete blocks piled together to form bizarre hills of debris, like a scene from the apocalypse.
Explosions could still be faintly heard not far away.
"What... what's going on..." The voice was so rough that Lin Mo felt unfamiliar with it, and then memories flooded in like a tide.
"I've been transmigrated into KING?" Lin Mo felt like crying.
Good news: KING is The Strongest Man on Earth. Bad news: The Strongest Man on Earth is just a title, in reality, he's an ordinary person without any strength.
Lin Mo shook his still muddled head.
"Hmm... according to my memory, KING... oh no, I was originally planning to buy the xin dong jie mei (heartbeat sisters) game and play it to my heart's content, but a sudden explosion and shockwave must have sent it flying somewhere..."
"Wait... I remember this seems to be when Vaccine Man first appeared..."
Suddenly, the sky abruptly darkened, and an extremely strong sense of crisis surged into Lin Mo's heart.
Turning back, he saw a purely despairing, deep purple energy, imbued with a strong destructive aura, churning and gathering at a low altitude.
The source of that energy floated on the spire of a large building, not yet completely collapsed, a hundred meters away, where a figure stood.
Vaccine Man!
Lin Mo's pupils suddenly constricted, and his heart pounded like a war drum—Emperor Engine!
Lin Mo felt like crying, somewhat understanding KING's feelings in the original work.
Fortunately, Vaccine Man seemed to be admiring his masterpiece and hadn't noticed Lin Mo.
Taking a deep breath, Lin Mo decided to sneak away. As for xin dong jie mei (heartbeat sisters)... sorry! His life was more important!
Suddenly, the explosions stopped, and silence fell all around.
Lin Mo was feeling puzzled and looked back, only to see Vaccine Man walking directly towards a certain spot, and a crying sound also reached Lin Mo's ears.
"Daddy! Mommy!"
The little girl's cries made Lin Mo gradually stop. He saw Vaccine Man slowly walking towards the little girl, as if he had already sentenced her to death.
"It'll be fine... Saitama will arrive and save her..." Lin Mo comforted himself.
At this moment, Vaccine Man had already arrived behind the little girl, his arm, covered in purple horny lumps, gradually grew larger and reached out to grab the little girl.
"Stop right there!" Lin Mo shouted loudly at Vaccine Man.
The Emperor Engine, which had stopped, once again boomed like a war drum. Coupled with the three scars that almost covered half of his face, he looked very intimidating.
Vaccine Man heard the commotion and turned around.
"Who are you?"
His cold gaze swept over the ravaged city, finally precisely locking onto the sole tiny figure in the ruins—Lin Mo, dressed in casual clothes and sporting three scars.
He just needed to stall until Saitama arrived. Thinking this, Lin Mo took a deep breath, looked at Vaccine Man, and said:
"An... ordinary person who is strongest man on earth (title/epithet)..."
"What? What kind of strange setting is this?" The veins on Vaccine Man's face gradually bulged.
"I am Vaccine Man, born from humanity's continuous pollution of the environment! The Earth is a living being, and Earthlings are the pathogens that erode the Earth's life! To eliminate humanity and the harmful civilization you have created, I was born here by the will of the Earth."
Looking at Vaccine Man's gradually ferocious expression and his continuously expanding and growing body, Lin Mo's face was stunned.
No... he just casually blurted out something, how did Vaccine Man immediately go all out?!
"Wait..."
Lin Mo still wanted to salvage the situation, but Vaccine Man, with a ferocious expression, directly interrupted him.
"And you, you actually say strongest man on earth (title/epithet), and an ordinary person? What a joke, what do you take me for! You come to deal with the Earth's messenger like this?! Humans really are..."
Looking at the three-story-tall monster in front of him, Lin Mo was completely stunned by the overwhelming Intimidation.
Run! He had to run!
Lin Mo's soul screamed frantically, but KING's burly body, his limbs, were as if held firmly in place by invisible shackles.
His heavy legs were nailed to the cold concrete ground as if rooted, his muscles so stiff he couldn't even lift a finger.
Time, stretched to its limit in the moment before death.
Just as those two hands, larger than a human, were about to grasp Lin Mo at the critical moment—
A yellow figure, like a lightning bolt tearing through space-time, abruptly and suddenly rescued Lin Mo from Vaccine Man's hands, and turned his back to Lin Mo, facing Vaccine Man.
The bald figure wasn't tall, in fact, he could be described as somewhat ordinary.
There were no energy bursts, no rising aura; he just stood there, completely normal, like any middle-aged man passing by on the street, perhaps rushing to a supermarket sale.
"Who are you again?" Vaccine Man was surprised by Saitama's appearance and didn't attack immediately.
"A... hero for fun." Saitama stared at Vaccine Man with dead fish eyes.
Behind him, Lin Mo let out a long sigh of relief. With Teacher Saitama there, everything would be fine. What a reassuring figure, Lin Mo stared blankly at Saitama's bald head.
Saitama seemed to sense something and slightly turned his body.
"Hmm? Don't stare at people, okay? It's rude."
Before Lin Mo could respond, Vaccine Man had already fallen into a state of rage.
"For fun? Such a casual setting, yet you dare to attack the Earth's messenger, and you're chatting as if no one else is here, you two guys, I'm going to... kill you!"
With that, he condensed a huge ball of light, intending to kill both of them with one blow.
Then, that shiny bald head moved.
An extremely simple movement—retract arm, clench fist, and then, towards Vaccine Man floating in the air, towards that destructive energy ball, towards that Dragon-level Monster radiating terrifying Intimidation, he threw a perfectly ordinary punch.
No wind-up, no shouting, no dazzling special effects.
It was just a straight punch that looked almost lazy, as if merely swatting away an annoying fly.
"Normal Punch."
Time seemed to shatter completely the moment that punch was thrown.
Lin Mo only managed to catch a blurry, translucent trajectory formed purely by force tearing through the air, which slammed violently into the floating orb of light.
The deep purple orb of destructive energy in Vaccine Man's palm didn't even have time to display its intended power before it completely dissipated in the face of this unreasonable, absolute force.
That energy ball, capable of leveling mountains, vanished into thin air without even a ripple, as if it had never existed.
Then, its mountain-like body, radiating terrifying Intimidation, was reduced to a pile of flesh in the blink of an eye.
One punch, an annihilated enemy.