75: Chapter 75 Leaving Hell's Kitchen

"To go from eleven to twenty, I need massive, continuous, high-intensity multi-threaded control practice."

After this sentence echoed in the Underground Room for two days, Yan Zheng made a decision.

August 7th, 10:00 AM.

Yan Zheng stood on the platform of the Hell's Kitchen subway station, wearing a dark gray casual suit, his gold-rimmed glasses wiped spotless, carrying a black canvas bag in his hand containing binoculars, a notebook, two energy bars, and a folding scalpel.

He looked like a real estate agent out scouting properties.

The subway arrived, the D line, heading towards The Bronx.

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ˘ ͈ ꒳ ˘ ͈ ˵ )

There were a few people scattered in the carriage: construction workers dozing off, a young girl wearing headphones staring at her phone, and a drunken homeless man lying across the last row of seats.

Yan Zheng sat by the door, opened his notebook, and turned to the page for today's plan.

"The Bronx, the worst in terms of public safety among the five boroughs of New York."

"The gang density is three times that of Hell's Kitchen, but the organization level is only one-fifth."

"More importantly, according to the intelligence I've gathered sporadically over the past two months, the South and East districts of The Bronx are the most concentrated areas for New York's underground Mutant community."

He closed the notebook, leaned back against the seat, and closed his eyes to rest.

In the Mental Link, the signals of the Knight and the Brute were stable as usual; they remained in the Underground Room on standby, as Yan Zheng was traveling alone today.

"Reconnaissance mission, no need to bring heavy firepower."

"It's somewhat impolite to take the subway with two tons of petrified meat."

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ˘ ᗜ ˘ )

Forty minutes later, the subway stopped at 149th Street Station.

The moment Yan Zheng stepped out of the subway exit, the smell in the air changed.

The nights in Hell's Kitchen smelled of a sour, rotten mixture of trash and humidity; the days in The Bronx smelled of diesel exhaust, the charred scent of roasted corn stalls, and some indescribable industrial solvent.

The streets were wider than in Hell's Kitchen, but there were more potholes on the road, and the exterior walls of the buildings on both sides were covered in brightly colored graffiti; some were art, others were gang territory markers.

Yan Zheng walked south along Grand Concourse, the canvas bag hanging on his left shoulder, his pace steady and unhurried.

After walking less than three blocks, the Material Perception icon in the bottom right corner of the system panel, which was usually quiet as a mouse, lit up.

"Hmm?"

Yan Zheng's footsteps paused for a beat, and his gaze swept toward the direction of the perception signal.

On the steps of a residential building across the street, a young man wearing a torn hoodie was eating a sandwich; on the back of his left hand was a layer of gray, scale-like skin that extended from his wrist to the crook of his forearm.

The Material Perception icon flashed and then went out; quality prompt: Common.

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ≖ ω ≖ ˵ )

"It triggered after walking only three blocks."

"In Hell's Kitchen, it took me a month to encounter the first Mutant signal."

"The density in The Bronx is indeed different."

He did not stop and continued walking south.

Over the next four hours, Yan Zheng walked and took buses to cover most of the main streets in the South District of The Bronx.

The Material Perception icon lit up seven times in total.

Seven times.

In the same time frame in Hell's Kitchen, his highest record was twice.

"Seven Mutant signals, all low-level, with quality ranging from Common to Good."

"Four of them were visually identifiable on the street, with obvious Mutant physical characteristics and extremely low social integration."

"The other three appeared normal on the outside, but the system could still sense the activity of the Mutant genes within them."

Yan Zheng sat down in a Puerto Rican restaurant on a street corner, ordered a cup of coffee and a meat pie, and organized his morning observations into entries.

"Regarding gangs, I passed through the territory of at least four different organizations."

"The graffiti markers were different, the people standing guard at the street corners were dressed differently, and there were no signs of coordination between them."

"Each acting on its own, a loose sand."

"No Kingpin, no unified order, only the most primitive law of the jungle."

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ˘ ͈ ꈊ ˘ ͈ )

"What does this mean for me?"

"It means there is less interference when acting here."

"Hell's Kitchen has Kingpin's surveillance network and Daredevil patrolling; if you move, someone is watching."

"The Bronx? Nobody cares."

"The Police don't want to come, superheroes can't be bothered to come, and gangs only care about their own little patch of land."

"A perfect hunting ground."

He shoved the last bite of the meat pie into his mouth, finished his coffee, and glanced at his watch.

4:15 PM, a few hours left before sunset.

"Let's walk further south and check out the abandoned industrial area near Hunts Point."

The industrial area in Hunts Point was more desolate than he had expected.

Large swathes of abandoned factories, the locks on the chain-link fences had long rusted away, and weeds grew wildly from the cracks in the concrete ground.

When Yan Zheng walked along a gravel road to the edge of an abandoned parking lot, he stopped.

Not because of the scenery, but because of the sound.

The buzzing of stun guns, the clicking of metal colliding, and a short, sharp female scream.

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ⌓ ꐦ )

He crouched behind a scrapped van and took the binoculars out of his canvas bag.

At the other end of the parking lot, about 120 meters away.

Six people.

Uniform dark blue tactical armor, semi-enclosed helmets, stun batons and handcuffs hanging at their waists, holding some kind of short-barreled rifle-type equipment in their hands.

They formed a semicircle, with a young woman in the center.

Around twenty years old, short black hair, skin presenting an unnatural light blue color, as if diluted ink was showing through from under the skin.

Her hands were wrapped in a silver, web-like object, with blue-white electric arcs flowing over the net; every time it sparked, her body convulsed.

On the ground, a circle of white frost extended from the soles of her feet, with a radius of about two meters.

Frost ability.

The system panel popped up in the corner of Yan Zheng's vision.

[Material Perception triggered. Target Quality: Good. Mutation Type: Cryo-constitution, Frost Generation and Control.]

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ✧ ᴗ ✧ ˵ )

"Good quality, Frost-type Mutant."

"More than two tiers better than those with scaly skin on the street."

He adjusted the focus of the binoculars, aiming at the armored vehicle parked behind the six people.

Dark gray paint, widened tires, a communication antenna on the roof, the side sliding door was half-open, and one could vaguely see a fixed stretcher and restraint straps inside.

Three large white capital letters were printed on the side of the vehicle body.

MSR.

Yan Zheng moved the binoculars to the license plate of the armored vehicle and noted the number.

"MSR."

"Not E.S.S., not The Hand, not Kingpin's people, and not a street gang."

"Uniform equipment, standardized operational procedures, six-person team structure."

"The capture method was clean and efficient, using an electric net specifically designed for super-powered individuals."

"This is a professional hunter team."

Yan Zheng: ( ꐦ ˘ ͈ ‸ ˘ ͈ )

In the lens, the blue-skinned woman's struggling movements grew weaker, and the white mist exhaled from her mouth became thinner.

The electric net was continuously draining her stamina.

An armed personnel pulled a syringe from his waist, walked up to the woman, knelt on one knee, and injected it into the side of her neck.

Three seconds later, the woman stopped moving completely.

Two personnel stepped forward, unfastened the electric net, lifted her onto the stretcher inside the armored vehicle, and secured her limbs with restraint straps.

The movements were smooth and fluid, coordinated as if they had rehearsed a hundred times.

The entire process, from the scream to the armored vehicle's side door closing, took no more than four minutes.

The armored vehicle's engine started, drove out from another exit of the parking lot, and disappeared at the end of the industrial area road.

Yan Zheng lowered the binoculars.

"Four minutes, and a Good-quality Frost-type Mutant was packed up and transported away just like that."

"MSR, an armed organization specializing in hunting Mutants."

"What is their relationship with the E.S.S. that Liu Kun mentioned? Competitors? Upstream and downstream? Or different departments of the same company?"

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ≖ ꒳ ≖ ˵ )

He put the binoculars back into the canvas bag, stood up from behind the scrapped van, and brushed the dust off his knees.

"Today is for scouting, not the time to act."

"My current Mental Power limit is eleven, my control slots are full, and I have no redundant combat power at hand."

"Even if I rushed out, I might not be able to snatch the person back from six fully armed people, not to mention that there might be backup inside the armored vehicle."

"But this lead is too fat; I can't let it go."

He took out his notebook, turned to a new page, wrote the three letters MSR at the very top, and recorded the time, location, number of personnel, equipment characteristics, and license plate number below.

"E.S.S., MSR."

"New York's underground Mutant trafficking chain, there is more than one."

"This is a web."

Yan Zheng closed the notebook, turned around, and walked back along the gravel road he had come from.

The sunset in The Bronx stretched the shadows of the abandoned factories long; he stepped on his own shadow, his mind running at high speed.

"Hell's Kitchen is a well."

"I stayed in the well for over two months, thinking I had seen the whole sky."

"Now that I've crawled out and looked, outside the well is a vast wilderness, with hunters larger than The Hand running around, and interest chains more covert than Kingpin's."

Yan Zheng: ( ˵ ꐦ ˘ ͈ ω ˘ ͈ ˵ )

When he arrived at the subway station entrance, the sky had already darkened, streetlights lit up one by one, and in the distance, Police sirens and bass heavy beats could be heard.

"The Bronx."

"My new hunting ground."

"But before officially opening for business, the MSR lead must be investigated clearly first."

"I've noted the license plate number; I'll go back and check the registration information for this armored vehicle."

"If I can't find any public registration, that would be even more interesting."

"Military background, intelligence agency background, or a private Military contractor?"

"Regardless of which one it is, the Mutants in their hands are all my food."

Yan Zheng swiped his card to enter the station, and while waiting for the train, he took out his phone to check the time.

7:40 PM.

There was an unread text message on the phone screen from an unknown source, and the timestamp showed it was sent at 2:00 PM today.

He tapped to open the text message.

The content was only one line:

"Mr. Yan, Director Fury would like to meet with you. You decide the time and place."

"Burns awaits your reply."

Yan Zheng stared at the screen for five seconds, and the corners of his mouth curved.

"What a busy day."