2: Chapter 2 Twenty-Four Hour Countdown

The "Echoes of the Past" Antique Shop was located at the end of 10th Avenue, sandwiched between a 24-hour laundromat and a massage parlor that was always closed.

Its storefront was as narrow as a crack, and a faded "OPEN" sign was stuck to the glass door, but the thickness of the dust on the door handle indicated that no one had touched it for at least three days.

Yan Zheng used the copper key to unlock the door. The door hinge let out a dry creak, as if complaining that the Master had waited three days after dying to remember to come home.

The air inside the shop was stuffy and musty.

The space of about twenty square meters was packed full with two rows of wooden shelves.

On the shelves sat various so-called "antiques"—bronze Buddha statues, imitation blue and white porcelain vases, artificially aged wood carvings, snuff bottles with suspicious patina—all of them mass-produced crafts.

Yan Zheng casually picked up a "Qing Dynasty" snuff bottle, flipped it over to take a look, and sure enough, there was an unpolished injection molding mark on the bottom.

The cost was about three U.S. dollars, and it was marked at one hundred and twenty.

The original owner relied on this to make a living, and truly, it was only enough to scrape by.

He didn't waste any time on these fake antiques.

Behind the cash register was an old, small television, and next to it lay a few copies of this week's "New York Gazette."

Yan Zheng turned on the television and then picked up the newspaper.

The television needed time to warm up, and the screen crackled as it slowly lit up.

The newspaper gave him the answer first.

The front-page headline, in big bold letters: [Stark Industries Announces Withdrawal from Weapons Market, Wall Street Shaken, Stock Price Evaporates by 17 Billion U.S. Dollars in Three Days]

The accompanying photo showed a man with a goatee standing on the conference stage, the light of an arc reactor faintly visible on his chest.

Tony Stark.

Yan Zheng's fingers tightened slightly, crumpling the corner of the newspaper.

The television had also warmed up.

On the screen, a blonde news anchor was speaking to the camera, and news headlines were scrolling at the bottom—

[Senator Kelly once again calls for the implementation of the Mutant Registration Act: "They are not the evolution of humanity; they are a threat to humanity!"]

The scene cut to the congressional hearing site, where a middle-aged politician with a fleshy face was slamming the table.

On the big screen behind him, several segments of blurry surveillance footage were playing: someone bending a fire hydrant with their bare hands, someone shooting red beams from their eyes.

Mutant.

Yan Zheng slowly put down the newspaper and leaned against the cash register, his gaze passing through the worthless fake antiques in the shop and landing on the gray-black system panel that had been following him in the void.

Marvel.

Stark had just returned not long ago, and Iron Man was just getting started.

The Mutant Registration Act was still being debated, and there were no major moves from the X-Men for the time being.

The Battle of New York—the Chitauri invasion—that was something for later.

The window of time left for him was large enough.

But the prerequisite was still that one thing—

He had to survive tonight first.

Yan Zheng refocused his attention on the system panel.

This time, he didn't just look at the countdown, but studied every line of information word by word.

The panel displayed a total of three core functions:

[Corpse Collection]—Automatically extracts biological materials (bones, muscles, organs, genetic sequences) after touching a corpse and stores them in the system warehouse.

[Assembly]—Uses the biological materials in the warehouse to assemble Undead Creations (Skeleton Soldiers, stitched monsters, undead behemoths, etc.); the quality depends on the quality of the materials.

[Command]—Consumes Mental Power to control the actions and combat of the Undead Creations.

Below the three functions, there was another line of small text:

[Host Current Level: LV0]

[Mental Power: 7/7 (Extremely Low)]

[Maximum Number of Simultaneous Controls: 1]

Yan Zheng looked at that "1," neither disappointed nor anxious.

One is one.

Everything has to have a beginning.

There is no point in empty talk; to know what this system can actually do, he has to try it with his own hands.

And the prerequisite for trying is—

He needs a corpse.

Yan Zheng looked up and scanned the shop, finding a folding knife hidden by the original owner in the cash register drawer and a slightly cleaner black jacket.

He changed out of the blood-stained suit, put on the jacket, and tucked the folding knife into his pocket.

The repair progress jumped to 11%.

The pain in his ribs downgraded from "chewing sandpaper" to a "dull ache."

He could barely walk normally; he couldn't run, but at least he wouldn't be panting after taking two steps.

It's enough.

Even if it's not enough, it has to be enough.

He glanced at the countdown—

[21:32:08]

Twenty-one and a half hours.

Yan Zheng pulled open the door of the Antique Shop and walked into the night of Hells Kitchen.

The cold December wind cut across his face like a knife.

Half of the streetlights on the street were broken, and their dim yellow light revealed sewage and cigarette butts all over the ground.

Noisy music and the roars of drunks spilled out from the bar across the street, and two homeless people huddled in a cardboard box next to a fire hydrant, not even lifting their heads.

In the distance—about three or four blocks away—gunshots rang out.

It wasn't one or two sporadic, crisp sounds, but dense, continuous gunfire like popping beans.

A brief interval, and then another burst.

Yan Zheng stood at the shop entrance, tilting his head to listen for a few seconds.

The gunshots suddenly stopped.

Replacing them was a roar that absolutely did not belong to a human.

Deep, violent, like the roar of metal and a Beast mixed together.

The sound was so heavy that the ground beneath his feet was trembling slightly, and the alarms of several cars parked on the street screamed simultaneously.

Then—

Silence.

The gunshots were gone.

The roaring was gone, too.

Even the car alarms stopped, as if they had been frightened into silence.

This kind of silence was more chilling than the gunshots.

In Hells Kitchen, what this combination of dense gunfire, inhuman roars, and sudden deathly silence meant—didn't need anyone to teach.

People had just died over there.

A lot of people.

And the way they died was probably not very decent.

Yan Zheng wrapped his coat tighter around himself, put his hands in his pockets, and his fingertips touched the cold metal casing of the folding knife.

Then he walked towards the direction where the gunshots had disappeared.

Not fast.

Every step was steady.

There was no fear on his face, not even nervousness.

Only a calm focus, similar to a hunter smelling the scent of blood.

Seven minutes later, he turned into that street.

He saw the scene.

Deep in a wide alley, three black SUVs were parked crookedly.

Their bodies were covered in bullet holes.

One had its entire front windshield shattered, and the hood was dented in, as if something had punched it.

Seven or eight corpses were lying scattered on the ground.

They were all burly men.

Black suits, short hair, submachine guns and pistols scattered by their hands—judging by their attire, they looked like people from some gang or private armed force.

And in the deepest part of the alley, leaning against the wall, there was another corpse.

This one was different.

It was a young man.

In his early twenties, tall and thin, wearing a tattered gray hoodie.

There were three bullet holes in his chest, and blood had already flowed all over the ground; he was clearly dead.

But his hands—

His hands were not right.

Yan Zheng squatted down and squinted at the young man's right hand.

On the five fingers of that hand, there were sharp, white, keratinous protrusions like bone spurs.

It wasn't deformed fingernails, but rather something growing directly out of the knuckle bones, like the claws of some reptile.

Mutant.

The very second he noticed this detail, the system panel that had been quietly floating in the corner of his vision suddenly lit up.

Cold text jumped frantically—

[High-Value Biological Material Detected!]

[Target Individual: Unknown Mutant (Deceased).]

[Genetic Marker: Healing Factor (Defective Type). Quality Rating: D+. Immediate extraction recommended.]

[Hint: This gene can be used as core assembly material for "Elite-level Undead Creation."]

Yan Zheng stared at that line of text on the panel, his pupils contracting suddenly.

Healing Factor.

Defective type, the quality wasn't high.

But those three words—Healing Factor—in the Marvel World, represented a near-cheating supernatural ability.

Wolverine, Deadpool, Sabretooth—the core genetic talent behind these names was exactly this thing.

Even if it was just the defective type.

Even if it only had a D+ rating.

It was still a Mutant gene.

It was the key to opening a brand-new door.

Yan Zheng slowly reached out his hand, his fingertips less than ten centimeters from the Mutant's corpse.

The countdown was still ticking.

[21:24:51]

But at this moment, his attention was no longer on the countdown at all.

His gaze fell on the corpse, focused and fervent, like an archaeologist who had discovered an unrecorded oracle bone in the yellow sand.

"Sir."

Yan Zheng spoke softly, his tone so polite it didn't sound like he was talking to a corpse.

"Please allow me to add you to my collection."

His fingers landed on the corpse's cold skin.

The system panel instantly erupted with a blinding gray light—

[Extracting...]