[Surprise—!]
These were the English words Clock Maker had handwritten on the note. The script was elegant and clean, yet the paper had been placed right next to a dead man's head.
Not only that, a pocket watch rested inside the parcel.
"Tick... tock..."
The hands of the pocket watch turned slowly, emitting a heart-stopping tick that shattered the dead silence shrouding the floor.
After making out the contents of the express parcel, Ke Mingqing's pupils contracted. He knew this was an item created by Clock Maker's superhuman ability; once a specific condition was triggered, it would cause a massive explosion!
The number of superheroes who had died to this seemingly ordinary pocket watch probably couldn't be counted on one hand.
If they let their guard down, only one ending awaited them:
—to meet a catastrophic death with no remains left to bury.
Electrical currents surged through his veins, flooding every corner of his body and stimulating the cellular activity of every part.
His bones cracked, and a fierce, deep blue light spilled from the corners of his eyes.
The next moment, with a sharp crack, the pocket watch suddenly splintered, fractures spreading across its surface.
As its exterior heated up rapidly, its color shifted to red.
In a flash, Ke Mingqing ducked down. He supported the parcel with his right hand, abruptly twisted his arm, and hurled it toward the window with all his might.
He knew very well that every window on the third floor was shut; to get the parcel outside, he had to destroy the glass.
An instant later, Ke Mingqing thrust his left arm out flat, aimed his index finger at the window, and shot a bolt of lightning from his fingertip to blast the closed glass open!
Bang—!
Accompanied by a deafening roar that tore through the wind, the deep blue lightning streaked violently forward, blasting a gaping hole in the glass.
With a sharp crash, glass shards flew everywhere. Arcs of electricity danced and vanished, tearing through the air with a sizzling hiss. The electric glow illuminated the young man's face. His heart hammered furiously, the heavy thumps almost audible.
Within this fleeting, split-second window.
Train Hero's severed head, the pocket watch, and the note simultaneously spilled out of the parcel, tumbling through midair.
Ke Mingqing tilted his head back, his eyes locked dead on the pocket watch, praying the damn thing would smoothly sail outside.
He wouldn't die, of course.
After all, he still had Superman Philosophy and Allegory of the Cave as his two life-saving trump cards. To him, death seemed close, but it was actually far out of reach.
But if Clock Maker's pocket watch exploded inside the building, the boy Invisible Giant and Shadow Girl would very likely die on the spot—and that was the fucking problem.
These two are still useful to me, so it's best they don't die so early, Ke Mingqing thought.
However... in the very next second.
His worst fear came true—the pocket watch did not make it through the broken window. The moment it neared the opening, an extreme heat expanded from its surface!
Immediately after, the bloody head and the note with the English writing were incinerated into ash.
Crack—!
The pocket watch shattered entirely and burst. A dazzling, blinding blaze of fire shot skyward, sweeping over everything with an overwhelming force.
The curtain of flames took on the intertwined colors of mercury and dark red, looking exceptionally bewitching and beautiful as it surged forward like an incoming tidal wave.
Staring at this scene, Ke Mingqing spun around. He grabbed Shadow Girl with his left arm and Invisible Giant with his right, instantly tackling both of them backward and out of the way.
Realizing what was happening, the boy Invisible Giant didn't just sit there waiting to die; his reaction was equally lightning-fast.
A strange light flashed in his eyes, and the Invisible Giant immediately materialized behind the three of them.
The Invisible Giant roared and crouched down against the floor, clutching the three of them tightly in its arms as it towered in front of them like a small mountain.
Boom!!! The deafening roar of the explosion echoed in all directions.
Because the giant's body was transparent, the three of them were able to peek at what was happening outside, almost as if they had been sealed inside a clear glass dome.
In practically a single instant, the roaring flames burned the entire floor to a crisp with an overwhelming force.
Amid the rumbling sounds, the pillars were destroyed one after another, and the ceiling crashed down. A moment later, clouds of dust shrouded their entire world.
Fortunately, Ke Mingqing was protected in the giant's embrace and avoided being caught in the blast, but he could still feel the scorching heat in the air.
It felt as though he had been thrust into a massive furnace.
The raging flames lingered in the air, drifting for a short while before quietly fading away. Amidst the pungent black smoke, the Invisible Giant slowly loosened its arms and dropped to its knees with a heavy thud.
The group looked up. The giant had been burned down to a mere skeleton, and its torso was no longer transparent.
The next moment, sunlight spilled through the shattered windows into the gray, dusty building, shining through the giant's mangled body to cast rays of light upon their faces.
It took them a while to recover their senses. The first to break the silence was the boy, Invisible Giant.
He struggled to his feet and asked in a hoarse voice, "Hey, hey... are you guys still alive?"
A trail of blood trickled from the boy's nose. His head spun; whenever the giant created by his superhuman ability was damaged, his own body suffered minor blowback.
Right now, Invisible Giant felt his internal organs churning. He really wanted to throw up, but he forced himself to hold it in, because that would look way too lame.
"I'm fine," Shadow Girl said.
Ke Mingqing remained silent for a long moment before he spoke in a low voice:
"Clock Maker probably held back. He didn't intend to kill me from the start."
He paused. "Otherwise... we'd be dead already."
Invisible Giant was struck dumb. "Clock Maker"—how many superheroes didn't even dare to mention that name? He was like a dark cloud looming over the Leijing Hero Company.
Yet, whenever everyone assumed this oppressive dark cloud was out of reach, it would unleash a torrential storm, using world-shaking lightning to remind everyone that it was still right there.
To superheroes, Clock Maker was precisely the kind of existence they avoided like the plague.
"The building is about to collapse. We need to leave, now," Shadow Girl reminded them coldly. "Plus, there are a lot of criminals nearby. Once they hear the commotion, they'll come to surround us. If we don't go, we won't get another chance."
It doesn't matter, we just have to slaughter them all... Ke Mingqing initially planned to say, but considering Clock Maker might still be nearby, he abandoned the thought.
"Let's go."
As the captain, he gave the order, and the other two naturally raised no objections.
Shadow Girl pressed the palm of her right hand flat against the floor, and a black silhouette slowly rose up.
Looking closely, it was a massive shadow bird of prey. It raised its inky black eyes, staring intently at Ke Mingqing and Invisible Giant.
While the two were still stunned, Shadow Girl had already leaped onto the bird's back and reached out her hand to them.
"Get on," she said.
Ke Mingqing grabbed the back of Invisible Giant's neck, hoisting the boy up like a cat and tossing him upward. Then, with a light push off the ground, he leapt up and landed on the bird's back.
"Holy shit, does this thing really work?" Invisible Giant had been thrown onto the bird's back and couldn't find his footing for a moment, wobbling around like a roly-poly toy.
He originally wanted to fold his arms and look cool, but after thinking it over, he laid flat and wrapped his arms tightly around the bird's back, saying:
"Sis, we're really not gonna crash?"
"Relax."
Shadow Girl's tone was flat and confident.
Soon, the black bird of prey spread its wings and screeched, soaring upward and carrying the three of them straight toward the sky. Its tail vibrated fiercely in the wind, continuously shedding falling feathers like splattered ink.
The criminals in the blocks below noticed this scene and immediately raised their guns, firing wildly at them.
But the bird blocked the bullets with its wings and then spiraled away into the scorching sunlight, leaving only a single drifting feather in its wake.
........
........
Not long after, the bird of prey soared across the sky over Leijing's central district, weaving between power cables and billboards before landing in an alleyway directly behind the Hero Company.
This alley had been cleaned out by Hero Company personnel, so there wasn't much trash on the ground.
After landing, Ke Mingqing hopped off the bird's back first, his sneakers stepping onto the clean ground. He checked his mask, straightened the brim of his baseball cap, and then turned to look at Shadow Girl.
"What is it?"
She turned her head to meet his gaze.
"I didn't expect you to have a trick like this up your sleeve. Why didn't you use it before?" Ke Mingqing glanced at the bird of prey.
"I just learned it," Shadow Girl said calmly. "Earlier at the port, when I saw that magician from Death Crow create a dove, I wondered if I could do the same."
She cast her lowered eyes toward the bird. "So I practiced for two days. I never expected it to actually work."
As her voice faded, the shadow bird of prey dissolved into an ethereal wisp of darkness and scattered away.
Jiang Qingzi, you sure are happy to help others. Not only did you let me go, but you even gave my teammate a free skill.
Ke Mingqing chuckled, silently mocking the irony.
"Come on, I always thought Clock Maker had retired. He hasn't shown up in years, after all." Invisible Giant was still shaken with lingering fear. "I can't believe the guy is actually still alive."
"Are we sure it's him?" Shadow Girl asked.
"Who else could it be?"
"A copycat, maybe?" Shadow Girl rested a hand on her chin, thinking for a moment.
Ke Mingqing shook his head, instantly shooting down her theory:
"Impossible. Even if someone could mimic the method of dismembering Train Hero and hanging his pieces from the ceiling, only the real Clock Maker could pull off the exploding pocket watch."
Shadow Girl thought about it. "But couldn't it be a fake pocket watch?"
"You're saying that turning a bomb into a pocket watch wouldn't be hard for high-level criminals, so the culprit this time might not be Clock Maker?"
"Yeah."
Shadow Girl nodded.
"Then let me ask you: who else but Clock Maker would do something this twisted?" Ke Mingqing asked in a deep voice. "From the express parcel to Train Hero's body, he meticulously designed every step. He could have killed us much more easily, but he didn't... he just wanted to play a joke on us."
He paused there for a moment, suddenly dropping his voice:
"That's right. To him, it was just a joke. But we almost died in there..."
Shadow Girl fell silent, lowering her head without another word.
Meanwhile, Invisible Giant still hadn't fully recovered from the shock. He wiped a streak of nosebleed with the back of his hand and asked:
"So it's just like the internet said—Clock Maker's got his eyes set on you, kid?"
Ke Mingqing didn't deny it.
After a long silence, he finally spoke, his tone casual and light:
"You guys can report this to the Commander and ask to be transferred out of my squad. Normally, the company wouldn't refuse."
He glanced up at the two of them, shrugged, and added:
"Don't worry, I won't drag you down into the grave with me... If you want to leave, don't force yourselves to stay."
Shadow Girl stared at him quietly, while Invisible Giant wrapped his arms around his head.
A heavy silence hung over the cramped alleyway. Above them, a billboard was broadcasting a chocolate candy commercial endorsed by Team Blue Pigeon.
After a long moment, someone finally spoke.
"If you hadn't picked me out, I'd still be rotting in prison right now."
Invisible Giant paused, mimicking Top Hero's flippant tone. "How could I run away over something this small? Bro."
"Me too..." Shadow Girl said. "Same as him."
Ke Mingqing froze for a second, then tilted his head and smirked. "If you lose your lives over a little bit of loyalty, don't regret it later."
"Shoo, shoo, since when do dead people feel regret?" Invisible Giant waved his hand. "When the time comes, I can even ask Top Hero for you if he regrets it."
"Don't joke about the dead," Shadow Girl scolded coldly.
Invisible Giant sighed. "Can't a guy miss him?"
"Let's go. The Commander is still waiting for our report." Leaving those words behind, Ke Mingqing silently turned around and walked toward the Hero Company's back door.
Right then, Shadow Girl suddenly called out to his back:
"Wait..."
Ke Mingqing raised his eyebrows and turned to look at her. To his surprise, Shadow Girl reached out her right hand and gently pressed her leather-gloved fingers against his cheek.
Her fingertips were coated with a layer of shadow as they moved softly across his face, slowly wiping away the bloodstain near the corner of his eye and cleaning the bright red smears off his mask.
Taken aback, Ke Mingqing reached up and touched his face.
This was the blood that had splashed onto him when Train Hero's internal organs were swaying in midair. He had almost forgotten about it entirely. If he walked into the company wearing a blood-soaked mask, the staff would probably trigger the Alarm immediately—and pull an AK-47 from behind the counter to blow his head off while they were at it.
Oh, wait... given the technological level of this world, the security personnel at the Hero Company probably used something much better than an everyday rifle.
Ke Mingqing glanced up at her:
"Thanks."
"You're welcome." Shadow Girl hesitated, as if struggling with her words. "...Did you know?"
"Know what?"
"I used to think you were older than me, so I subconsciously relied on you a bit. But thinking about it now, I feel a little ashamed... you're actually just a kid."
Even though Ke Mingqing was wearing a mask and a baseball cap, Shadow Girl could tell he was seventeen at most.
In the past, whenever Blue Pigeon wore his helmet, everyone assumed he was a man in his twenties or thirties.
Shadow Girl never imagined their squad captain could actually be a high schooler. Looking back, Blue Pigeon's calm composure and decisiveness in every crisis far exceeded what she would expect from someone that age.
For a moment, she felt a subtle, complicated mix of emotions.
It was as absurdly funny as teaming up online to play games for years, only to find out the hardest carry on the team—the big bro who constantly hopped on the mic to shotcall—was actually an elementary schooler using a voice changer.
Ke Mingqing pointed at his own face and joked:
"Uh... actually, I'm already fifty years old. I just have a baby face. Besides, don't they have those hyper-realistic human masks nowadays?"
He spread his hands. "Anyway, don't obsess over my appearance. Once the mask goes on, everyone's the same."
"Come on, so what if he's young?" Invisible Giant curled his lip. "Do you guys really need to be so dramatic? Can't you be a little more open-minded like me? I may be twelve, but I feel like I'm more badass than anyone else."
Ke Mingqing shrugged, too lazy to indulge him. But Invisible Giant kept pushing his luck: "To put it bluntly, I should be the captain of this squad."
"Being simple-minded is a merit in its own right."
Shadow Girl spoke indifferently, stepping through the company's back door first.
After the three flashed their hero ID cards, they stepped into a hidden elevator at the rear of the building.
Unlike the glass-walled elevators up front, this one was completely invisible from the outside.
Blue Pigeon, Invisible Giant, and Shadow Girl changed into their combat outfits in the 12th-floor break room, then rode the elevator up to the 15th floor.
They entered the Commander's office. Lin Yin was currently sitting behind his desk, waiting for them to deliver their report.
"What's the situation?" Lin Yin looked at them with a strange expression. "Why don't I see Train Hero? Could it be that he's already..."
Shadow Girl stayed silent, quietly eating chocolate candies.
"It'll scare you to death if we tell you," Invisible Giant said faintly.
"Commander, we... ran into Clock Maker," Blue Pigeon said, his arms crossed, emphasizing nearly every word.
The instant that name left his mouth, Lin Yin's face changed.
After a short pause, Blue Pigeon lowered his head and continued. "Train Hero is dead. He died brutally, and his body was butchered into dozens of pieces. The usual MO—his organs were strung up in the air with iron chains."
He scratched his head. "Then, I found his head inside an express parcel, along with a pocket watch. That thing blew up."
Lin Yin froze. He stared at him in utter shock, clutching his head as the memory of that scene from so many years ago violently resurfaced.
His son's mutilated body, torn to pieces and hung beneath the Super Hero Company's high-altitude construction platform... Whenever the wind blew, those suspended organs bumped against one another, making a sound he would never forget for the rest of his life.
"Take your time. I know it's hard to accept right away."
Blue Pigeon said, raising his eyes to meet Lin Yin's face. "Right, Commander Lin Yin... father of Grey Owl."
Grey Owl—the successor Rain Crow had personally trained back in the day, and also Lin Yin's son.
Train Hero's death was exactly the same as his.
This could only be the work of the same person.
Ke Mingqing knew the truth very well: the reason Lin Yin had taken such good care of him lately, indulging him in every way, was partly because he saw his own son's shadow in Ke Mingqing, and partly because he wanted to use him to lure out Clock Maker.
And now... Rain Crow and Lin Yin's goal had been achieved. Clock Maker had indeed come to this city, issuing them another deranged invitation after so many years.
Lin Yin clasped his hands together and bowed his head in silence. The eyes behind his glasses flickered with a faint light. He remained silent for a long time before he finally spoke:
"Take your time... tell me exactly what happened."
......
......
After giving the Commander a rough account of what went down in that office building, Blue Pigeon left the Super Hero Company without looking back.
No one stopped Blue Pigeon as he walked out. Even if he walked away right now and never came back, no one would go looking for him either.
Everyone knew how terrifying the consequences of crossing Clock Maker could be. Running away was nothing to be ashamed of.
The moment he stepped out of the Hero Company, Blue Pigeon brushed past a pitch-black figure.
Rain Crow turned his head, looking as if he wanted to call out and stop Blue Pigeon, but he held his tongue. He simply walked silently into the building, his figure dissolving into a flurry of crow feathers.
Ke Mingqing wondered how he was going to get home.
There was no magical girl sister to pick him up today.
Fortunately, times had changed. He was no longer the weakling who would pass out from exhaustion after running a few miles in his lightning form.
The "Strength" attribute determined a player's stamina. With his current stamina, running home was more than easy. That meant he didn't have to take the bus, nor did he have to endure people aggressively snapping photos in his face on the ride.
This was a good thing; it put him in a cheerful mood.
Half an hour later, Ke Mingqing roughly shoved his combat suit and helmet into his locker and slammed the door shut. He changed into a T-shirt and shorts, then sat down on a public bench to catch his breath.
He stared blankly up at the eaves of the train station, let out a long sigh, and opened the Quest Panel.
[Detected that Weekly Quest 1 is complete: Run 3,000 meters (Reward acquired: One Attribute Point)]
[Detected that Weekly Quest 2 is complete: Kill a super-human species of any level (Quest Reward: 1 chance to spin the Item Roulette)]
Ke Mingqing opened his personal profile and quickly allocated the Attribute Point he had just obtained. A notification box popped up before his eyes.
[Congratulations, you have consumed "1" Attribute Point and successfully upgraded your "Spirit" attribute from C Rank to C+ Rank.]
[Player "Ke Mingqing": current attributes are as follows: Strength: C++; Agility: B; Spirit: C+]
Immediately after, he claimed the reward for Weekly Quest 2 and pulled up the roulette interface.
Ke Mingqing glanced at the six sections on the wheel.
The prizes were "2,000 superhuman coins," "3,000 Experience Points," "Dragon Egg," "Crocodile Tank," "Skill Card: Macho Tears Punch," and "Single-Use Summon Card: Refrigerator Demon."
"What the hell is a Refrigerator Demon?"
Ke Mingqing muttered softly, reaching out his index finger to tap the center of the wheel.
The next moment, the blood-red needle moved. It spun at high speed across the wheel, blurring into a phantom circle. A short while later, the needle slowly ground to a halt.
The needle pointed to the prize in section three.
[Congratulations, you have successfully drawn the C Rank item—"Dragon Egg" (After using this item, a Dragon Egg can be placed beside you. It will hatch into a formidable blue dragon after 60 seconds).]
"So I'm actually a master dragon tamer..."
After finishing his draws, Ke Mingqing got up from the public bench, dusted off his shorts, and strolled toward home with a casual swagger.
The chirping of cicadas drifted into his ears. The road home was bathed in the midday sun, and the maple trees lining the streets swayed lazily in the heat waves. Everything was so bright and beautiful that it made him feel slightly dazed.
Ke Mingqing walked up the slope with his head lowered, his sneakers crunching over the golden fallen leaves.
It felt as if a lifetime had passed.
He found it hard to imagine that just an hour ago, he had been in a startlingly perilous environment: human organs swinging overhead, the blood from a mangled kidney splattering right onto his mask.
Not long after, he arrived at his front door, only to see Xia Ningzhi shielding her eyes from the sun as she peered in every direction.
"A-Qing, you're finally back!" Seeing Ke Mingqing, her mouth fell wide open. "Weren't you supposed to bring your girlfriends over to play? Where are they?"
Ke Mingqing was stunned.
Oh right, I was supposed to go pick up Kuroki Hitomi and Little Red Riding Hood.
Just as the young man was thinking this, a car horn suddenly honked in the distance. He turned his head and saw a black Maybach slowly rolling down the street before parking directly behind him.
The car door opened. First, a pale white calf stepped out, followed by a girl in a white short-sleeved jacket popping her head out, her fair, beautiful face illuminated in the sunlight.
Kuroki Hitomi turned her head slightly to look at him, and their eyes met.
Ke Mingqing pulled up the Chat Panel and silently sent her a message.
[Ke Mingqing: Are you ready to brave the Boss room?]