The March night in 1997 New York was bone-chillingly cold, as if the very air had frozen solid.
Joe Moore opened his eyes amidst the excruciating agony of chemical burns and tearing flesh.
His first thought was to curse out loud: *The difficulty setting of this godforsaken starting zone is absolutely ridiculous.* His next thought crashed down on him like a bucket of ice water—this was no game.
Two separate streams of memory crashed together, churning into a wild torrent inside his mind.
One belonged to a twenty-three-year-old Chinese illegal immigrant: The lingering, rancid stench inside the sealed hold of the freighter cargo ship, the *Golden Mountain*; The yellowing teeth of the snakehead smuggler, Old Charlie; Stealing the identity of a miserable soul named “Martin Li,” who had died of disease during the voyage, just to scrape by; Washing dishes day and night in a Brooklyn Chinese restaurant; Until he was dragged into a back alley by thugs from the Maggia; A syringe plunging into his vein; Unknown chemical agents violently injected into his body; Two opposing energies—light and darkness—viciously warring and tearing at each other within his cells…
The other memory was even more absurd: his name was Joe Moore, and he hailed from the year 2033.
He had just beaten a low-budget online game that was a chaotic mashup of pop culture when his computer suddenly exploded.
The next second, he opened his eyes here.
“A merged transmigration,” Zhou Mo rasped out the words, his throat as dry as if it had been scraped with sandpaper.
He lay sprawled in a puddle of cooled chemical waste, surrounded by the shattered shards of an experimental chamber.
The air was a rancid mix of ozone, scorched flesh, and a sickeningly sweet, nauseating chemical odor.
His body was on the verge of collapsing.
He could clearly feel the light and dark energies like two rabid dogs, savagely tearing and biting at each other inside his meridians.
This was the side effect of the experiment conducted on Martin Li—the embryonic stage of Mister Negative’s powers.
In the original timeline, this man would develop a split personality, living as a philanthropist by day and a ruthless mob boss by night.
“Sorry, Martin,” Zhou Mo grunted as he pushed his broken body upright, his fractured ribs grinding together with a sickening crunch.
“Dealing with a split personality is way too exhausting.
I’ll pass.” No sooner had the words left his mouth than the light and dark energies within him clashed even more violently.
His bones and meridians threatened to shatter entirely at any second.
Hanging on the precipice of life and death, a life-saving golden light suddenly flared in the deepest recesses of his consciousness.
It was the ultimate reward the system had bestowed upon him when he beat the game—the Thirty-Six Heavenly Powers.
What he had assumed were merely useless virtual skills in a video game had actually crossed over with his soul, manifesting as real, tangible ancient divine abilities.
Like a heavy, ancient tome, the Thirty-Six Heavenly Powers slowly unfurled in his mind.
He flipped directly to the twenty-first page—Nine Breaths of Qi Refinement.
He inhaled.
With the first breath, his scattering vital energy began to slowly flow back.
With the second, his fractured ribs snapped back into alignment.
With the third, the chemical burns on his skin rapidly scabbed over and fell away.
From the fourth through the ninth breaths, the wild light and dark energies were forcefully suppressed, locked tightly within a temporary equilibrium point constructed in his dantian.
This wasn’t a cure; it was merely a forced suppression.
It was like tightly wrapping duct tape around a bomb that was ready to detonate.
Zhou Mo pushed himself up from the floor, his naked body covered in slime and dark red blood.
He scanned the makeshift laboratory converted from an abandoned warehouse: shattered glass vats, documents scattered across the floor, and an old generator still spitting sparks.
Footsteps echoed from a distance.
Judging by the sound, at least two people were descending the metal stairs.
Foresight activated instantly.
It didn’t peer into the distant threads of fate, but instead predicted the movements of the next three minutes.
Fragmented images flooded his mind: two armed gang members kicking the door open, cursing at the sight of the empty experimental pod, and then starting to search the corners.
One would slip on the spilled chemical solution, while the other would fire blindly into the shadows.
A bullet would graze a spot exactly fifteen centimeters to the left of where he was currently standing.
“Alright, let’s play.” A grin tugged at the corner of Zhou Mo’s mouth, made all the more sinister by the unhealed gashes on his face.
Shadow Form.
This was Martin Li’s innate ability, not part of the Heavenly Powers, but it was perfect for the moment.
His body slowly melted into the shadows.
He didn’t vanish entirely, but rather became a nearly two-dimensional entity.
His vision warped bizarrely, rendering the world in only black, white, and gray.
The iron door was kicked open.
“Jesus, the whole place blew?” a gruff male voice barked.
It was Tony, one of the guards.
He loved rapping the test subjects over the head with his knuckles.
Zhou Mo’s inherited memory instantly identified him.
“Look for that Chinese kid.” The second voice was younger.
It was Vito, a gang rookie who usually trembled but had an incredibly steady hand when firing a gun.
The two walked in slowly, holding old shotguns.
Tony kicked a piece of the shattered experimental chamber.
“Dr.
Marshall is gonna lose his mind.
This test subject cost him—” Before he could finish his sentence.
Zhou Mo materialized abruptly from the shadow behind Vito.
His left hand clamped over the rookie’s mouth, while his right hand locked onto his neck.
With a swift twist.
The sharp crack of bone echoed loudly through the empty warehouse, sounding like a dry stick of celery snapping in half.
Vito’s body slumped instantly to the floor.
“Vito?” Tony spun around.
Zhou Mo had already slipped back into the shadows.
Emerging from the shadow beneath Tony’s feet, his hand delivered a brutal chop straight to Tony’s Adam’s apple.
Tony’s eyes bulged as he let out a choked, wheezing gasp.
He collapsed, clutching his throat, and stopped breathing within moments.
Zhou Mo emerged fully from the shadows and squatted beside the two corpses.
The monochrome vision faded, and he returned to his physical flesh-and-blood form.
“You guys,” he whispered to Tony’s glazed-over eyes, “running experiments without even installing security cameras.
So unprofessional.” Zhou Mo stripped off Tony’s grease-stained brown leather jacket and threw it over himself.
He rummaged through the guard’s pockets, finding a roll of about three hundred dollars in cash, a squashed pack of Marlboros, a lighter, and a ring of keys.
Vito only had a switchblade and a bit of loose change.
On the key ring hung a Ford emblem.
Zhou Mo reached out to grab one of the shotguns, but after a moment’s thought, he put it down.
“Too conspicuous.” Instead, he took Vito’s switchblade and tucked it into his waistband.
Outside the warehouse lay a deserted parking lot.
In the darkest corner sat a rusty Ford Pinto.
He shoved the key into the ignition.
The engine coughed three times before sputtering to life, sending plumes of black smoke billowing from the tailpipe.
Zhou Mo switched the headlights to low beam and slowly drove out of the parking lot.
In his rearview mirror, the warehouse gradually receded, eventually turning into a dark steel tomb.
He switched on the car radio.
Static crackled as he turned the tuning knob.
A moment later, an enthusiastic advertisement blared: “…Oscorp Industries’ next-generation neural interface.
The future is here!” He changed the station to a classic oldie, then turned the dial again.
“Breaking news: Another gang shootout occurred in Harlem last night.
Police state the incident is suspected to be linked to the rising crime lord, ‘Kingpin’…” Kingpin.
Zhou Mo tapped his fingers against the steering wheel, instantly associating the name with the man behind the curtain—Wilson Fisk.
It seemed the timeline was still in its infancy.
The fat man was still consolidating his power and securing his territory.
A newspaper box flashed by the side of the road.
He pulled over, used one of the coins from Tony’s pocket to pry open the door, and pulled out a copy of the *New York Post*.
The front-page date was clearly printed: March 17, 1997.
The lead story detailed a presidential scandal, but a small headline in the corner caught his eye: “Mutant Extremist Group ‘The Brotherhood’ Attacks Senate Hearing; X-Men Intervene.” “The X-Men are already active, but the Avengers are still more than a decade away.” Zhou Mo crumpled the newspaper into a ball and tossed it into the backseat.
“And all these other overlapping factions—Transformers, Predators, the Umbrella Corporation.
This world is just a chaotic hodgepodge of pop culture.” He restarted the car, his thoughts sinking back into the deepest recesses of Martin Li’s memories.
Not the painful fragments of the experiments, but the earlier days of smuggling.
The *Golden Mountain* freighter, 1995.
More than sixty people were crammed into the bottom hold, the air so foul and thick it felt like soup.
A young man from Fujian had caught pneumonia.
He suffered from an unremitting fever and coughed up blood constantly.
His real name was long forgotten.
He only remembered that before the young man died, he had shoved his ID card into the hands of the boy in the neighboring bunk: “Take it.
When you get to the United States, live on in my place.
My name is Martin Li.” That boy was the original host of this body.
He had accepted the ID, watching helplessly as the man stopped breathing in the swaying cabin.
“So you weren’t Martin Li either.
You were just an illegal immigrant surviving on a dead man’s name,” Zhou Mo whispered, staring at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
The mirror reflected a typical Asian face—twenty-three years old, with black hair singed in places by chemicals and eyes bloodshot, yet possessing a deep-seated coldness and clarity that far exceeded his years.
“That experiment was supposed to split you into two people—the kind Martin Li running shelters, and the evil Mister Negative acting as a gang lord.” “But now, everything has changed.” Now, there was only Joe Moore.
A transmigrator armed with a game cheat, possessing intimate knowledge of the entire plot, and harboring an energy bomb inside his body.
A fork appeared in the road ahead.
A left turn led toward downtown New York, while a right turn headed straight for the interstate.
Bob Dylan’s voice drifted from the radio: *”How many roads must a man walk down…”* Zhou Mo jerked the steering wheel, veering the car to the right.
He couldn’t stay in New York anymore.
The Maggia would search frantically for “Martin Li,” and Kingpin would eventually notice the survivor of the experiment.
Furthermore, SHIELD—or perhaps the Hydra lurking in the dark, who knew who controlled the surveillance networks these days—meant his current identity was already exposed to too many dangerous eyes.
“Farewell, Mr.
Martin Li.” Zhou Mo slammed his foot on the gas.
The old Pinto gave a strained roar and charged headlong into the deep night.
“I have zero interest in your charity work or your criminal empire.” “I’m going to find a place to master these divine powers, and see just how ridiculous this chaotic, patched-up universe can get.” Destination: San Francisco.
Three thousand miles away.
Far enough, and strange enough.
He switched off the radio, leaving only the rumble of the engine and the howling wind outside.
The night was as dark as ink, and the long highway stretched infinitely forward like an endless path of escape.