4: Chapter 4 Hound

The baseball bat swung down—Marcus reached out and grabbed the middle of the bat in one firm grip.

The thug tried to pull it back. It wouldn't budge.

He pulled with all his might. It still wouldn't budge.

Marcus's wrist gave a slight twist. It was a very small movement.

The baseball bat snapped.

Several splinters of wood went flying.

What happened next occurred so quickly that Chen Feng only managed to capture a few frames of the action.

The first frame—Marcus's right elbow slammed into Eddie's chest, and the three-hundred-pound fat man flew backward, overturning a treatment bed.

The second frame—two thugs lunged at him simultaneously. Marcus sidestepped, his left hand seizing one man's wrist and twisting it outward with a crisp crack as the man collapsed to his knees screaming. Simultaneously, Marcus's right palm struck the other man's Adam's apple, sending him crouching to the floor, clutching his throat and unable to make a sound.

The third frame—the remaining two thugs turned to run. Before they could take two steps, Marcus caught up in three strides, delivering a palm strike to the back of each man's head, sending them both face-down onto the floor.

The entire exchange took less than ten seconds.

All six men were on the ground.

The clinic fell deathly silent, save for Eddie, who was prone on the floor making pig-like grunts.

Marcus turned around and retreated to Chen Feng's side. Throughout the entire process, he hadn't said a single word.

Cole's cigar fell from his mouth.

His hand reached into his leather jacket—he pulled out a gun, the pitch-black muzzle pointing straight at Marcus.

"Don't move!"

Marcus stopped.

Everyone stopped.

A gun changed everything. No matter how well one could fight, they couldn't outrun a bullet.

A dead silence filled the room. Cole's hand was shaking—not from fear, but from rage. To be humiliated like this on his own turf was something he hadn't experienced in at least ten years.

"You're all go—"

The sound of a police siren wafted in from the distance.

It drew closer and closer, growing louder by the second.

Cole's expression shifted.

A police car pulled up at the clinic entrance. The sirens stayed on, and red and blue lights flashed rhythmically into the clinic.

Cole shoved the gun back into his waistband and cursed at his subordinates. "Go!"

He escaped through the window. The three thugs who could still move hauled the other three out through the back window. Eddie, being dragged by two men, was so fat he got stuck in the window frame before being shoved through by force.

The entire process took no more than fifteen seconds.

The clinic's front door was pushed open.

Sarah Mitchell walked in.

Twenty-eight years old, her blonde hair tied in a high ponytail, she wore a deep blue police uniform with a silver badge reflecting the light on her collar. The buckle on her holster was undone—she had readied her weapon before entering.

She scanned the mess on the floor—the overturned treatment bed, the shattered coffee cup, the broken baseball bat.

Then she looked at Chen Feng.

"Chen, are you in trouble again?"

"I didn't go looking for trouble; trouble found me."

"How many times have I told you? Don't go head-to-head with Cole's people," Sarah said, walking over to him and lowering her voice. "I can't always happen to be patrolling nearby."

"Thank you, Sarah."

"Don't thank me. Next time, I might not make it in time." Her gaze shifted to Marcus, sizing him up from head to toe. "Who's this?"

"My new employee."

Sarah looked at the signs of the brawl all over the floor, then at Marcus's expressionless face. Her lips moved, but in the end, she said nothing more.

"Be careful," she said, turning to leave. She paused at the door and looked back. "Cole won't let this go."

Then she left.

The police car drove off, the sound of the siren gradually fading at the end of the street.

The clinic returned to silence.

Old Tom crawled out from a corner, coffee stains on his white coat and his reading glasses crooked on the bridge of his nose.

He walked up to Chen Feng and, without a word, pulled open a drawer and took out a checkbook.

"Fifty thousand," he began to write, his hand still trembling, his handwriting jagged. "Exclusive distribution for the South District."

After signing, he handed the check over.

Chen Feng took the check and glanced at the figure.

"Dr. White, weren't you hesitating just now?"

Old Tom took off his reading glasses to wipe them, then put them back on.

"I was hesitating because I wasn't sure if your medicine worked," he said, pointing to the construction worker poking his head out from behind the medicine cabinet. "Now I'm sure."

He pointed again to the shattered coffee cup and the broken baseball bat on the floor.

"Besides, I think you're an interesting guy—on the verge of bankruptcy, with a gang at your door, yet you can still negotiate business with me so calmly. Either you're a lunatic, or you've truly got the skills."

"Can't I be both?"

Old Tom gave a huff and a rare smile. "Get out of here before I change my mind."

That night, Chen Feng sat in his laboratory, carefully examining the check three times.

Fifty thousand dollars.

It wasn't much, but it was enough.

Enough for him to buy raw materials, replace a few critical equipment parts, and raise the purity of ruisu from 87% to a level suitable for mass use.

The system interface expanded before his eyes.

The progress bar for Task One jumped forward one notch. Countdown—27 days.

Then, a new notification popped up.

[Detected that the host has obtained initial funding. New side quest unlocked—]

["The First Hound": Use the T-Virus basic blueprint to complete the first biological modification experiment. Requirement: Non-human target.]

[Reward: T-Virus Human Modification Plan unlocked.]

Chen Feng read the notification twice.

T-Virus. Human Modification Plan.

He thought of Marcus. He thought of the number the system had given—92.3% compatibility.

But that was for later. Right now, he needed a non-human target.

He stood up and walked to the window.

Downstairs by the trash can, a stray dog was rummaging for food. It was a large dog of an unknown breed, mostly bald with its ribs clearly visible.

It looked up at the window upstairs, then lowered its head to continue scavenging.

Chen Feng turned around.

"Tony."

Tony was in the next room eating instant noodles—since his char siu rice had been snatched away, noodles were all he had left. Hearing his name, he ran over, slurping a noodle.

"What's up?"

"Go buy some dog food."

A noodle slipped from the corner of Tony's mouth and fell to the floor.

"...What?"

"Dog food. For that stray dog downstairs."

Tony looked at Chen Feng, then out the window, then back at Chen Feng.

"Boss, we can barely afford our own food, and you want to keep a dog?"

"Yes."

"...Is the company a shelter now? First we take in a hobo, and now a stray dog?"

Chen Feng didn't answer.

His gaze fell back on the system interface, specifically on the line that read "T-Virus Basic Blueprint."

The mangy dog had no idea its fate was being decided by a transmigrator and a system of unknown origin.

At the same moment.

In Tom White's clinic on 7th Street in the South District, the construction worker who had been cured by ruisu was calling a coworker.

"I'm telling you, seriously, three minutes! The pain was gone in three minutes! The swelling too! I can walk perfectly fine now!"

"What did you take? Get some for me too."

"I didn't 'take' anything! It was medicine given by that Chinese kid, green stuff... My god, I've never seen anything so powerful in my life..."

After hanging up, the worker called another friend.

Then a third. Then a fourth.

That was how the news spread.

No ads were needed, no promotion. In the South District, a miracle itself was the best advertisement.