On the rooftop of a building, Bant and Peter jumped down together, Peter carrying Mark with him.
They were already very close to Hell's Kitchen. From a distance, that district looked like a black hole under a starry sky, dim and lightless.
In the time it took to go there and back, Hell's Kitchen had already gone quiet.
Whether it was the Hand or the monster Peter mentioned, both had vanished without a trace.
"So how are we supposed to find him now?" Peter asked.
Now that he'd called in help, he wasn't afraid of the other side anymore.
Peter: My cousin is invincible.
"We can only search," Bant said, glancing at Mark, who still hadn't woken up. Then he rotated the watch.
This time, the icon that appeared looked like a massive canine.
"Wildmutt!"
Wildmutt's species was the Vulpimancer.
Most of the time, they moved on all fours. Like Mark, they had no eyes, and their thick fur made them look more like beasts than aliens.
And because their language system was too complex, even the Little Broken Watch struggled to translate it. To others, it sounded like nothing but snarling.
"Whoa, you turned into a big dog!" Peter said in surprise.
Bant roared and slapped him flat onto the ground.
This brat came begging for help and still showed zero respect.
He didn't even want to call him "Wildmutt."
After teaching Peter a lesson, Bant immediately began searching for traces left behind in Hell's Kitchen.
Without eyes, Wildmutt's other senses were extremely sharp, just like Daredevil's. He had powerful smell, taste, hearing, and thermal sensing.
And he clearly noticed that Peter's spider-sense seemed to get somewhat strengthened after he transformed into Wildmutt.
At this moment, the special organs on both sides of his head opened, gathering all information like a radar.
This dark mire reeked with a nauseating stench of blood everywhere.
To Peter, that movement looked like sniffing.
So you really are a dog, he thought.
While Peter complained in his head, Bant moved.
His powerful forelimbs drove backward, launching his body forward as he leapt again and again between clusters of buildings.
Wildmutt's running ability was terrifying, and he could adapt to any terrain on land. Even sheer cliffs were like flat ground to him, because his claws could dig into rock.
"Wait, Xiao Ban!" Peter shouted instinctively, trying to follow.
But then he looked back at Mark, still unconscious, hesitated, and ultimately stayed behind.
On the other side, Bant felt something was very wrong.
In his perception, all of Hell's Kitchen lay spread out before him like an ultra-precise map.
Buildings, people inside those buildings, everything was laid out in different colors.
Every smell was a clue.
Even in Hell's Kitchen, soaked in blood and gunpowder, he still precisely caught the scent of Peter and Mark's blood.
That blood scent had moved.
But he couldn't tell how the thing had moved.
Here.
Very quickly, Bant followed the blood smell to a broken-down house.
The blood stench here was so heavy that even someone with a dull sense of smell couldn't ignore it.
He slammed through the door and charged inside.
In an instant, the smell of blood hit him head-on.
Bant felt like he was Stephen Chow in Kung Fu Hustle, walking through the Mental Hospital, about to reach the Beast's cell. That terrifying blood odor surged like a flood.
The moment he stepped into the room, Bant felt like something had wrapped around him.
All his senses began to weaken, as if he stood in a world of darkness that stretched endlessly. Even the ground beneath his feet seemed to collapse, dragging him deeper and deeper.
He released every "signal" he could to sense the outside world, yet there was no response. It was like something had swallowed it all.
Like light caught by a black hole.
Fortunately, some smells were simply too strong.
He turned his head to "look."
The source of the blood came from a wall.
On that wall, the blood of at least a hundred different people had mixed together, woven into a twisted mural.
Some of it was still thick, and even radiated heat.
He lowered his head toward the corner. A body lay there.
Just died not long ago.
Other than that, there was nothing else in this room, at least in Wildmutt's perspective. Nothing.
But if Bant had eyes right now, he would have seen a man wearing black suspenders and a full hood staring at him in surprise.
This man had no pupils. From his hollow dark eye sockets ran two streaks of blood, meeting at his chest and forming a black void.
His limbs were entirely covered in a black substance. No doubt, it was blood oxidized into a darkened crust.
It made him look like a black hole, a living abyss.
He reeked of blood, yet Bant acted as if he couldn't detect him at all.
Muse was genuinely shocked.
He hadn't expected a monster to barge into his studio.
Thankfully, that monster had no eyes, he thought.
He didn't want a monster to be the first viewer of his masterpiece. At the very least, it should be someone with artistic taste.
Bant had assumed Wildmutt's senses would find the so-called monster. Instead, it was precisely because he was Wildmutt that he brushed past Muse.
As an Inhuman, Muse's body was like a black hole, swallowing other senses. Only eyesight could precisely lock onto his existence.
Most of the time, that power was useless, but his enemies, Daredevil and Wildmutt, both couldn't see a thing.
Muse glanced at Bant, then looked down at the dagger in his hand, a blade that didn't even look as long as the fangs in Bant's mouth. He gave up on fighting this monster.
Since the other side didn't seem to be destroying his art, Muse wasn't going to look for trouble.
A beast is not my art.
Silently, he slipped away behind Bant.
However, that simple action made Bant sense something wrong.
After Muse left, Bant clearly felt his senses rapidly returning.
Like a phone finally reconnecting to the internet after a signal jammer was turned off.
An enemy I can't perceive?
He let out a low growl.
This ability was the perfect counter to Wildmutt, but Bant immediately thought of a way to break it.
Right then, two figures dropped from above.
Spider-Man and Daredevil had arrived.
Peter could move by web-swinging, and ropes could extend from Daredevil's batons as well.
They landed in front of Bant. Mark, clearly mistaking Bant for another enemy, swung a baton at him before he even hit the ground.
"Wait!" Peter shouted anxiously.
"Don't worry, I'll leave it alive!" Mark declared confidently.
In the next second, a huge yellow paw slammed down on his head, dropping him to the ground.
For some reason, Mark suddenly felt that technique was strangely familiar.
"I'm worried about you," Peter said helplessly.
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