The torrential rain in Gotham City continued to rage.
In the alley at 22 Lake Street, the heavy scent of blood was washed away by the rain, pouring madly down the sewer grates.
William stood in the mud.
Confirming there were no survivors left from the Rat Gang, he raised his right hand.
At the base of his index finger, the patternless, dark silver ring shimmered with a faint, eerie light under the flash of lightning.
His fingertip touched a corpse with a severed carotid artery.
“Swish.”
There was no sound, no visual effects.
The two-hundred-pound body of the burly man vanished into thin air.
William stepped forward with a blank expression.
His leather shoes splashed through puddles as his fingertips tapped repeatedly.
The second body.
The fifth.
The twelfth.
Along with the scattered thompson submachine guns, Remington shotguns, and severed limbs shattered by shotgun blasts, everything was swept precisely into that 100-cubic-meter sub-space.
For a black-market surgeon, these were not unlucky corpses.
They were excellent anatomical teaching aids, and even better, hard currency to use for negotiating or blackmailing the Falcone Family in the future.
The alley was completely empty.
Except for the faint red water stains diluted by the rain, no one knew that a one-sided vivisection had just taken place here.
William turned around, pulled up the rolling shutter, and slipped into the clinic.
Inside the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, Maggie was sleeping soundly.
Selina was leaning against the glass cover, breathing steadily.
William did not make a sound, walking straight to the iron door at the back of the clinic marked “Medical Supply Warehouse.” He pressed down the handle, and a deep blue vortex rotated silently.
He stepped through.
A sense of weightlessness instantly swept over his semicircular canals.
The uniquely cold and damp air of Gotham City was replaced by the sour stench of Hells Kitchen, a mix of stale sour beer and rotting garbage.
“Bang!”
Just as William exited the passage, a piece of rotten pork, stitched up densely like an ugly centipede, was slammed heavily onto a stainless steel tray.
Jessica Jones was slumped in the swivel chair behind the triage desk.
She had dark circles under her eyes even heavier than William’s, and her hair was as messy as a bird’s nest.
On the tiles by her feet lay seven or eight high-carbon steel surgical needles that had been snapped in half.
“Boss.” Jessica gritted her teeth, her voice as raspy as if she had swallowed sandpaper.
“I’m done stitching.
If you make me touch this thing again, I’ll shove this piece of meat into your mouth.”
William took off his trench coat and casually put on a white lab coat.
He put on sterile gloves, walked over to the tray, and picked up the tweezers to poke at the pork.
The stitches were crooked and hideous.
But when the tweezers probed the incision, the underlying muscle tissue and fat layers had indeed been pulled together in layers, leaving no dead space.
At the edge of his retina, deep blue characters flickered. This story is hosted at g.com.
[Long-term Teaching Quest: The Healer’s Legacy.]
[Current Progress: 15%]
A subtle curve appeared at the corner of William’s mouth.
This humanoid tyrannosaur, despite her explosive temper, was truly a good candidate for surgery.
Once her strength control became precise to the millimeter, the needle holder in her hand would be steadier than any precision instrument.
“Barely passing.” William dropped the tweezers and took off his gloves.
“However, dead pork has no blood pressure and no muscle spasms; it’s only good for practicing your touch.”
Jessica froze, a sense of foreboding creeping into her heart.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve prepared more realistic teaching materials for you.”
As soon as he finished speaking, William waved his right hand forward casually.
The dark silver ring flashed with a faint light.
“Bang!
Bang!”
Two heavy bodies slammed onto the cold concrete floor out of thin air.
Water splashed everywhere.
The cold rain of Gotham City, mixed with the pungent smell of gunpowder and the thick scent of blood, instantly rushed into Jessica’s nasal cavity.
Jessica sprang up from her chair.
Her superhuman strength erupted instantly, and the heavy triage desk was lifted half a foot off the ground by her thigh, emitting a harsh metallic screech.
She stared fixedly at the two burly men on the ground, their faces deathly pale and dark red blood seeping from their necks, her pupils trembling violently.
“You—are you fucking doing magic?!” Jessica pointed at the corpses on the ground, her voice rising an octave, and she retreated two steps until she was pressed against the medicine cabinet.
“Or did you go out and kill people in the middle of the night?!
These are still fucking warm!”
William pulled over a swivel chair and sat down, picked up the cold coffee on the table, and took a sip, his eyes as calm as if he were looking at two blocks of wood.
“Unlucky victims of an Eastern European gang shootout.
I picked them up.” William casually told a lie and pointed to one of the corpses.
“Go, put on your gloves.
Open his chest cavity.
Within one minute, find the subclavian artery and complete the ligation.”
Jessica swallowed hard, staring at the man with dark circles under his eyes.
She suddenly felt that her five-thousand-dollar monthly salary was essentially life-threatening.
At the same time.
On the edge of Hells Kitchen in New York, at Container Terminal 47, owned by Kingpin.
The sea fog in the early morning was extremely thick, with visibility less than ten meters.
The air was so heavy it felt like it could be wrung out.
At the edge of the dock, dozens of gangsters in black trench coats were nervously unloading cargo.
The crane emitted a dull roar, hoisting huge wooden crates down from the cargo ship one by one.
When the wooden crates landed, several leaders stepped forward to pry open the lids.
Half were high-purity drugs from Mexico, wrapped in layers of waterproof foil.
Heavy weaponry leaked secretly from Stark Industries.
High-explosive grenades, armor-piercing rounds, and even several portable man-portable missile launchers.
“Move it!
We have to get the cargo into the warehouse before dawn!” the bald leader hissed.
At the highest point of the dock, in the shadow of a hundred-meter-tall gantry crane.
Frank Castle was like a God of Death blending into the darkness.
He lay on the cold steel beam, his eyes as cold as ice.
Beneath his large tactical gloves, his hands assembled a disassembled Remington M24 heavy sniper rifle with terrifying proficiency.
“Click.”
A very faint sound of metal engaging.
A bullet was chambered.
Frank’s breathing rate dropped to four times per minute.
The crosshairs pierced through the sea fog, locking firmly onto the green crate below filled with high-explosive ammunition.
Just one armor-piercing incendiary round.
The entire dock would turn into a sea of fire.
The drugs, the weapons, along with the dozens of scum below, would all be blown into shredded meat.
Sin does not need judgment; it only needs eradication.
Frank rested his index finger on the trigger and slowly applied pressure.
Meanwhile.
On the other side of the dock, in the gap between mountains of stacked containers.
Matt Murdock wore a dark red cowl, gripping the alloy billy clubs in his hands tightly.
Although his eyes were covered, his super-hearing constructed a 3D radar map in his mind that was clearer than the naked eye.
The sound of waves crashing against the rocks.
The flapping of seagulls’ wings.
The heartbeats, footsteps, and rustling of clothing of the dozens of gangsters below.
Matt’s brow was tightly furrowed.
His goal for the night was to sneak in silently, subdue a few leaders, obtain the ledger of Kingpin’s arms smuggling, and hand it over to the police.
Procedural justice.
This was his bottom line as a lawyer.
Suddenly, Matt’s ears twitched ever so slightly.
He filtered out the noisy clamor below and caught that extremely faint yet lethal sound of metal friction from the top of the crane a hundred meters away.
A bullet chambering.
Accompanying it was an extremely steady, cold, and emotionless heartbeat.
“That lunatic—” Matt gritted his teeth.
He instantly deduced who the person hiding in the dark was.
The “The Punisher,” who had recently been causing a bloodbath in Hells Kitchen and never left any survivors.
If he let that guy fire, this place would become a slaughterhouse.
The explosion might even reach the civilian areas on the outskirts of the dock.
He must not let him fire!
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