109: Chapter 109 Daredevil's Formal Warning

"Within fourteen days, I need to make my trump cards thick enough that no one dares to easily flip them over to see."

The trump cards hadn't been thickened yet, but someone came to check them that very same night.

November 15th, 11:40 PM, Antique Shop rooftop.

Yan Zheng went up to the rooftop to catch some air. He had spent four hours in the Underground Room. Since Quicksilver left, he had been constantly adjusting the legion's alert protocols, running two rounds of new formation simulations with the Mental Link fully open on both lines. A dull ache in his temples spread from the left side to the right.

The rooftop was very small, a three-by-five-meter concrete surface. There were no railings at the edges, only a twenty-centimeter-high parapet. Three rusty TV antenna poles leaned in the northwest corner, wrapped with scraps of plastic bags that had been hanging there since who knows when.

The mid-November New York night wind carried a damp chill, blowing in from the direction of the Hudson River, pressing the collar of Yan Zheng's open shirt against his collarbones.

He stood at the edge of the east side of the rooftop. He wasn't holding tea; instead, a pencil was twirling between his fingers, a habitual movement just like twirling a scalpel.

In the Mental Link, the Skeleton Soldier No. 8 was performing its daily lurking on a fire escape three streets away, its pulse stable, its green light dimmed to the lowest setting.

Yan Zheng's pencil stopped on its seventh rotation.

It wasn't because he stopped it himself.

It was because three meters behind him, the air now contained the body heat and breathing rhythm of another person.

There was no pulse jumping in the Mental Link; No. 8's alert range couldn't cover this blind spot on the rooftop.

Yan Zheng's shoulder muscles tensed for 0.3 seconds, then relaxed.

He did not turn around.

"You could have taken the stairs when you came, sir. The fire escape is too rusted to support any weight."

The breathing behind him didn't change—steady, deep, and long, a professionally trained breathing rhythm.

After three seconds of silence, a man's voice came from the darkness, low-pitched, with a suppressed, raspy quality.

"Your heartbeat didn't accelerate."

Yan Zheng turned around.

There were no lights on the rooftop, only the faint light leaking from surrounding buildings, painting a grayish background on the concrete floor.

Standing three meters away was a man wearing a deep red tight-fitting combat suit. His face was covered by a deep red mask that obscured the upper half, revealing only his jaw and tightly closed lips.

There were no eye holes under the mask.

In his hands, he held two short batons connected together, metallic in texture, giving off a dull, matte sheen in the faint light.

Daredevil.

Matt Murdock.

The pencil stopped between his fingers, tip pointing downward.

"Mr. Murdock." Yan Zheng's tone was calm, like he was greeting a customer at the counter coming to appraise an antique. "Or would you prefer I call you Matt?"

The body behind the mask tensed.

The angle of his shoulders shifted by two degrees, his center of gravity shifting slightly forward from an even distribution on both feet to the balls of his feet, and his grip on the batons adjusted from hanging at his sides to a diagonal hold at his waist.

"You know who I am." It wasn't a question.

"The nighttime vigilante of Hells Kitchen, a blind lawyer, a partner at the Nelson and Murdock law firm." Yan Zheng put the pencil into his shirt pocket, his hands hanging naturally at his sides. "Your reputation in this community is very good."

Daredevil didn't flinch at having his identity revealed; his breathing rhythm even slowed down further, like a cheetah adjusting its breath before an attack.

"You can hear my heartbeat." Yan Zheng picked up the topic again. "I've done my homework too."

"Four months." Daredevil's voice squeezed out from the rasp, each word clipped short. "Four months ago, the ground beneath this street started emitting a scent. Not the smell of a sewer, not the smell of chemicals. It was the smell of rotting bones soaking in preservative fluid. It was coming up from beneath your shop."

Yan Zheng didn't speak.

"The Hand's stronghold on East 43rd Street was emptied overnight." Daredevil took a half-step forward, shortening the distance to two and a half meters. "The next day, I went to the scene and listened for two hours. There were bone fragments embedded in the walls, not human bone density. There were scratch marks on the floor, in sets of five, evenly spaced, not something any weapon I've ever seen could leave behind."

"Boxing rings, gang shootouts, nameless corpses under bridge arches." Daredevil's speaking speed didn't increase, but the pauses between his sentences grew shorter. "I've been to every crime scene to listen. Do you know what I heard?"

"Please, tell me."

"Nothing." Daredevil's mouth pulled down slightly. "No heartbeat, no breathing, no sound of blood flowing. But there was something moving. The sound of bones rubbing, the sound of joints interlocking, and something else..." He tilted his head slightly, as if recalling. "It sounded like fire burning in a vacuum."

Phosphorous fire.

Yan Zheng's expression didn't change, the curve of his mouth maintained at a standard polite smile.

"Mr. Murdock, did you come tonight just to tell me what you heard?"

"I came to tell you my bottom line."

Daredevil moved another half-step forward, a distance of two meters.

"I don't know what you are. Your heartbeat tells me you aren't afraid, your body temperature tells me you are a living person, but those things beneath your shop aren't alive."

"Those purges happening in Hells Kitchen." His voice dropped half an octave. "The missing corpses, the criminal organizations that have been wiped out, those... bones patrolling in the dark alleys. They all have to do with you."

Yan Zheng rolled his shirt cuffs up by an inch, his clean skin on his wrists shimmering with a pale color in the faint light.

"Do you think there is a problem with what I am doing?"

"Kingpin has disappeared." Daredevil's baton spun half a circle in his hand, the tip pointing toward the ground. "The result I couldn't achieve after chasing him for three years, you accomplished in four months."

"That doesn't sound like a compliment."

"It isn't." Daredevil's jaw muscles tensed. "Because I heard the sounds from Fisk Tower that night. From six blocks away, I heard the sound of bones being ripped apart while still alive. It lasted for nine minutes."

Silence.

The wind blew from the direction of the Hudson River, and the plastic bag scraps in the corner of the rooftop slapped against the antenna pole.

"Mr. Murdock." Yan Zheng spoke, the temperature of his voice unchanged, still that softness that reminded one of a librarian. "None of the targets I've cleared were innocent people."

"That is not for you to decide."

"The law couldn't decide Kingpin's fate either, could it?"

Daredevil's body swayed, a minute movement; if Yan Zheng hadn't been staring at his center of gravity, he would have barely noticed.

This sentence stung him.

Yan Zheng didn't press the attack; he moved his hand away from his cuff and placed it on the concrete surface of the parapet, his fingers feeling the cold, rough texture dampened by the night dew.

"I have never harmed any innocent person."

"What is your definition of innocent?"

"People who haven't actively harmed others."

Daredevil was silent for four seconds.

His baton retracted from the diagonal hold to his side, the intensity of his grip reducing by twenty percent.

Yan Zheng saw this detail.

"If you want to stop me, you can do it now."

The air froze for a moment.

In Yan Zheng's Mental Link, Skeleton Soldier No. 8's pulse jumped on the fire escape three streets away. It wasn't an order from Yan Zheng, but No. 8's automatic response to the fluctuations in its Master's vital signs.

"But I suggest you think clearly about one thing." Yan Zheng tapped his index finger lightly on the parapet. "Those things beneath Hells Kitchen, if I don't deal with them, even more terrifying people will come to handle them. The people from Project Purity, do you know them?"

Daredevil tilted his head by two degrees.

"Black uniforms, masks, pneumatic injection guns." Yan Zheng's tone was like reading a shopping list. "Every week they catch three to five Mutants in The Bronx, and they never appear again after being taken. Your super senses should be able to hear the sound of their boots in the sewers."

The silence extended to seven seconds.

Daredevil took a step back.

"This is the last warning."

His voice came over as he retreated, carrying the damp chill of the night wind.

"If you harm an innocent person, even one."

His figure became blurry in the shadows at the edge of the rooftop.

"I will come back."

The wind circled the corner of the rooftop, and the sound of the plastic bag scraps whipping against the antenna pole stopped for two seconds before starting up again.

Yan Zheng was the only one left on the rooftop.

He withdrew his hand from the parapet, rubbed the moisture off his fingertips, and walked toward the iron door leading downstairs.

"Mr. Murdock's super senses cover half of Hells Kitchen."

"He listened for four months without taking action."

"He came today, and still didn't take action."

The iron door opened, and the warmth from the stairwell surged up, colliding with the cold air of the rooftop to create a layer of mist at the doorway.

"His bottom line is innocent people."

"There are currently no innocent people on my acquisition list."

Yan Zheng walked down the stairs, the sound of his soles hitting the iron plates echoing in the narrow space.

"But what Mr. Murdock doesn't know is that the act of him coming to talk to me tonight is, in itself, a transaction."

"He chose to warn rather than attack."

"Which means he acknowledges that my existence has positive value for the current situation in Hells Kitchen."

"As long as I don't cross the line, he will continue to be that neighbor who turns a blind eye."

Yan Zheng returned to the Underground Room, sat down at the workbench, took the scalpel out of his pocket, and twirled it once between his fingers.

"Within two hours, The Brotherhood and Daredevil have both come to visit."

"One wants to recruit me, the other wants to restrain me."

"Opposite directions, same timing."

"This means the external situation is heating up three days faster than my schedule."

The scalpel stopped between his thumb and index finger, the blade facing the ceiling light, the light tracing a white line along the edge.

"The fourteen-day buffer period—the actual usable days might be less than ten."

He put the scalpel away, pulled open the drawer on the right side of the workbench, and took out the countdown plan on the grid paper.

He wrote a new addition on the paper with a pencil.

External threat escalation: The Brotherhood has completed location tracking, Daredevil has intervened with surveillance. Action window shortened to ten days.

"Ten days."

"Is it enough?"

Yan Zheng put the pencil down; there was one last mouthful of cold tea left in the enamel cup. He finished it, the astringent, numbing bitterness dissolving at the bottom of his throat.

"It has to be."