Night, Queens.
Compared to Manhattan, that sleepless city built with neon and money, the nights here were much more real.
The air, a mix of the greasy aroma from the corner pizza shop and the rusty smell of old apartment pipes, squeezed through the cracks of the half-open window, forming the entire backdrop of Peter Parker's life.
The room was a mess.
Several open textbooks were casually tossed on the floor.
Beside them were a few red and blue 'work uniforms' that needed mending.
Parts of a disassembled web-shooter were scattered across a table, with the nearby desk lamp casting a tired halo of light.
Peter was hunched over the table, locked in a fierce struggle with a complex calculus problem, his eyelids as heavy as if weighted with lead.
Several nights of continuous patrols had severely exhausted the young superhero.
Just as he was about to surrender to sleep, his secondhand phone buzzed in his pocket.
Peter impatiently pulled out his phone, and a familiar name lit up the screen—William Rodriguez.
His friend, the insurance salesman who always wore a suit, spoke in professional jargon, yet somehow felt inexplicably approachable.
A message popped up.
Peter rubbed his eyes, opened the message, and William's words, as if imbued with his tone and expression, instantly filled his entire screen.
"Peter, my friend, I've just stumbled upon something truly appalling, and it has filled me with an unprecedented fear for this city we both love."
Such a heavy opening instantly sobered Peter up a bit.
He sat up straight, frowning as he continued to read.
"There's a man named Wilson Fisk, who on the surface is a respected entrepreneur and philanthropist, but secretly, he is the Kingpin who controls the entire New York underworld! Drugs, weapons, human trafficking... every imaginable evil is connected to him. He's like a giant cancerous tumor, rooted in the heart of New York, sucking the lifeblood out of this city!"
"Wilson Fisk?"
Peter unconsciously uttered the name.
The image of that figure, often seen on news and business magazine covers, immediately came to mind.
A burly, mild-mannered bald man, always presenting himself as a city builder and philanthropist.
Cancerous tumor?
Kingpin?
Peter wondered if William had watched too many gangster movies.
This sounded too outlandish, almost like a fairy tale.
But the next paragraph touched Peter deeply.
"I'm sending you some information I managed to get my hands on. I know this is very dangerous, but I can't think of anyone more trustworthy than you! You once told me, 'With great power comes great responsibility.' And now, a huge responsibility lies before us. Peter, we cannot turn a blind eye to this evil!"
"With great power comes great responsibility..."
Uncle Ben's words, from an unexpected person, in a way he had never imagined, appeared before him once again.
In that instant, Peter felt his breathing grow heavy.
This was no longer a joke, nor a movie script.
When William quoted that line, he was entrusting a trust and responsibility so heavy that he himself couldn't bear it.
With trembling fingers, he opened the heavily encrypted file attached to the message.
As the file unzipped, a deluge of data, like a black tide, instantly flooded his small phone screen.
It wasn't just cold data, but pages upon pages of evidence stained with blood and tears.
There were blurry surveillance videos, recording arms deals taking place at the docks.
There were blood-stained ledgers, each number representing a broken family.
There were victim testimonies, people who had been trafficked and exploited, recounting their hellish experiences in desperate words.
And there were shocking photos, lists of missing persons, overlapping with photos of unidentified victims abandoned in the wilderness... And all this evidence of evil, ultimately, through a complex web of connections, like all rivers flowing into the sea, pointed to the same name—Wilson Fisk.
Peter's face instantly turned pale.
The hand holding his phone trembled uncontrollably, and his stomach churned.
He had seen robbers, thieves, and street thugs.
He had even fought aliens.
But he had never imagined that beneath the city's surface, such a vast, systematic, and repulsive empire of evil lurked.
And the emperor of this empire smiled on television every day, receiving praise and applause.
A wave of anger instantly ignited his blood.
This wasn't the simple sense of justice he felt when facing street criminals.
This was an overwhelming fury, mixed with powerlessness and resolve, in the face of systemic evil.
Why would William send him these things?
The thought flashed through Peter's mind.
The answer was obvious.
Because William was just a slightly stronger ordinary man, a smart, somewhat resourceful insurance salesman.
Facing such a behemoth, he felt fear.
All he could do was entrust this hope to the 'Spider-Man' who could swing through the night.
"We cannot turn a blind eye to this evil..."
William's words echoed in his ears.
Yes, we cannot.
He abruptly stood up from his chair, knocking over the desk lamp, but he didn't care.
He grabbed his damaged suit, the last trace of hesitation in his eyes completely burned away, replaced by an iron-like resolve.
But he knew that this time, the enemy was not a thug who could simply be webbed up and handed over to the Police.
Kingpin was a system, a network.
He alone, even if he could defeat Kingpin himself, could not destroy his criminal empire that ran deep into the city's bones.
He needed help.
He needed those who also walked in the shadows, who understood the heavy darkness.
A blurry figure emerged in his mind—the red figure who appeared and disappeared like a demon in Hell's Kitchen, guarding that land of sin.
Daredevil.
Peter didn't have his contact information.
But he knew that if anyone else in New York would feel the sting of this information as deeply as he did, it would surely be him.
Without the slightest hesitation, Peter quickly changed into his suit, leaped out of the window, and a red and blue figure sliced through the night sky of Queens, swinging rapidly towards Manhattan, towards the district known as "Hell's Kitchen."
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