136: Chapter 136 Saving Two Hundred People in One Day, Who Says Ah Zu is a Bad Guy?

In the living room, Gugu Gaga squatted on the sofa, her eyes fixed on the television screen, seemingly waiting for A-Zu to appear again.

"Stop watching," Thompson said. "He won't appear again today."

"Guga!" The little penguin stuffed a cookie into her mouth, jumped off the sofa, and ran to the guest room to rummage for her detective props.

Thompson sat alone in the living room, took out his phone, and searched the internet for news about A-Zu.

Soon, he found a large number of trending search terms about A-Zu saving people. From Queens to Brooklyn, news about A-Zu appeared almost every few minutes.

Robberies, car accidents, child abductions, suicides, fires... Whether it was a natural disaster or a man-made calamity, nothing could stop the speed at which A-Zu saved people.

Thompson spent the entire day sitting on the sofa scrolling through news. He had been a police officer for twenty-two years and had seen countless acts of heroism.

He had seen citizens jump into water to save people, bystanders rush into burning buildings, and colleagues subdue knife-wielding criminals with their bare hands on their way home from work.

But he had never seen a "person" perform good deeds so efficiently, almost like an industrialized assembly line.

From nine in the morning to six in the evening, in less than ten hours, he had saved nearly two hundred lives—more than the number of people he had killed initially.

Thompson understood that if this situation continued, humanity would not even be able to morally criticize A-Zu.

After all, what moral criticism could you level against someone who had saved nearly two hundred people in less than ten hours? Criticize him for killing people in the past? Then how should the people he saved today be accounted for?

Those people he saved today also had parents, children, and friends.

Each of them was a real person with a name, a face, and social connections, not an abstract number.

Yesterday, they might have been A-Zu's opponents; today, they might become A-Zu's base.

Someone on Twitter had already created a real-time counter. Every time a person was saved, a green dot would light up on the map. At this moment, the map of Manhattan was covered in green dots.

That counter had a very deliberate title: "A-Zu's Record of Saving Lives."

Every time the number increased, hundreds of new comments would flood into the comment section.

["I take back what I said about him earlier. We might have really misunderstood him."]

["No matter what he did in the past, he saved so many people today. Isn't that enough?"]

["I used to think he was an alien invader. But today, I saw him stop to staunch the bleeding for a delivery rider on the asphalt, and I'm wavering. An invader wouldn't stop to save someone."]

[New York City Fire Department: "This morning, in that burning apartment building in Queens, I saw with my own eyes A-Zu fly into a third-floor window, wrap his cape around an elderly person in a wheelchair, and burst out through the thick smoke."]

["As a firefighter, I have nothing but respect for anyone who can do this, whether they are an alien or a New Yorker."]

["My five-year-old son got lost in Times Square today. I searched for fifteen minutes and was going crazy. Thanks to A-Zu, he was rescued. I don't know what A-Zu did in the past, but he returned my son to me. That's enough."]

["Yesterday he was demanding humanity's surrender, and today he's draped in the Stars and Stripes saving people everywhere. Do you think he's changed? Wait until he sells all of you to his fellow Planet Wuhu folks, and you'll still be helping him count the money, you bunch of idiots!"]

["He saved nearly two hundred people today. How many have you saved from behind your keyboard?"]

——————

On the second floor of the Wuhu Ability Shop, the curtains were drawn tightly.

Sima Bei was half-reclined on the sofa in the lounge area, scrolling through his phone with one hand while holding a glass of bourbon whiskey with three ice cubes in the other.

On the phone screen, the Twitter timeline was refreshing at a waterfall-like speed. The grateful comments in the section were growing wildly like weeds—one crop cut down, another would sprout up.

Every few minutes, he would switch to another window and send a voice command to the internet army command group: "The popularity of that Brooklyn Bridge video is dropping. Add two hundred more accounts to retweet it. Change the copy, and see if we can push it into the top five trending searches."

"Also, some people are starting to dig up old debts regarding Fifth Avenue. Address it head-on, don't avoid it. Take the initiative to bring up A-Zu's historical issues. First, admit 'he made mistakes,' then use the child trafficking and bank hostage cases to argue that 'he is changing.'"

"Remember, you must emphasize that 'change' is more valuable than 'perfection.'"

Hundreds of accounts in the group began to respond simultaneously, with an efficiency like a well-oiled machine.

A-Zu stood at the other end of the room with his back to him. He had just taken off the custom-made Stars and Stripes cape and tossed it casually onto the back of a chair.

The hem of the cape was still stained with gray soot picked up in the Queens fire today, and the gold-embroidered "A" had been dulled by smoke.

He kept his head down, washing his hands repeatedly with disgust: "Sima Bei, how much longer do I have to save those lowly Blue Star people? Do you know that when I said those things, I almost threw up from disgust?"

Sima Bei placed his phone screen-down on the sofa armrest and said fawningly: "Lord A-Zu, please calm down."

"Humans are actually a very forgetful species. Look at those politicians in the United States, whether it's the President or the Secretary of State—the number of people they have harmed for their own interests is far greater than the one hundred and thirty-seven you killed, Lord A-Zu."

"But this does not stop them from continuing to rule the United States, nor does it stop them from posing as moral leaders on the international stage, or from writing memoirs after retirement, collecting exorbitant speaking fees, and commenting on current events on television as senior politicians."

He stood up from the sofa and walked behind A-Zu: "Therefore, Lord A-Zu, if you want to rule humanity, acting skills are also an essential requirement."

"You can certainly think they are lowly, stupid, and not worth saving; you can keep all those thoughts."

"As long as you show that you like them in front of the camera, that's all that matters. Acting is something you get used to with practice."

A-Zu looked up and pulled out a tissue to wipe his hands vigorously. He wiped so hard that bits of the tissue stuck between his fingers.

"When do I start running for mayor? I'm sick of flying around in the sky every day saving those inferior races."

"No rush. Lord A-Zu, please bear with it and save more people these next few days." He took out his fan and tapped it lightly against his palm, "However, don't save everyone every time."

"Occasionally, you also need to let a few of them die."

A-Zu turned around and looked at Sima Bei with confusion once again.