CLANG!
The sound of the metal crowbar hitting the alley pavement was unnaturally loud, a sharp, metallic shriek that echoed off the brick walls.
The wiry thug who had dropped it didn't even notice.
He was frozen, his arms still half-raised, his hands open and trembling, stuck in the very posture they'd been in when his weapon slipped from his nerveless grasp.
His breathing was gone. He was trying to suck in air, but his lungs had locked up.
A high-pitched, wheezing sound, like a dying whistle, was all that came out.
Beside him, the heavy-set brute, the one who had cracked his knuckles, so full of animal confidence, was in even worse shape.
His jaw was hanging open, slack.
A thin line of drool trickled from the corner of his mouth.
His eyes, wide and unblinking, were fixed on the crumpled, unmoving heap that was their boss, ten meters away.
He was staring at the dark, wet spray of blood on the brick wall, his brain completely unable to process the physics of what he had just witnessed.
Their leader, Scar-face, a man who had won a dozen jail-yard brawls, a man who had killed people... had been swatted like a fly.
The kid hadn't even tried. One... push.
The heavy-set man's entire body began to shake.
It started in his hands, a fine tremor, and then spread to his arms, his shoulders, and then his legs.
His knees, which had been locked in a predator's stance, began to knock together.
The sound was audible in the silence, a fast, rattling thk-thk-thk-thk.
He tried to say something. A word. A curse. A plea.
All that came out was a whimper.
It was a pathetic, high-pitched, animal sound, the sound of a beaten dog.
The whimper broke the spell of his paralysis.
His body, gripped by a primal terror that was deeper and more absolute than anything his conscious mind could handle, simply... surrendered.
A sudden, sharp, acrid smell of ammonia and fear cut through the alley's normal stench of garbage.
A dark, spreading stain bloomed across the front of the thug's baggy jeans.
He had wet himself, a hot, shameful flood of pure, abject terror.
He wasn't even aware of it. He just knew he was going to die.
The wiry thug saw it.
He smelled it. And that final, pathetic indignity was what shattered his own frozen terror into a thousand pieces.
His legs gave out. He didn't just kneel; he collapsed.
THUD.
His knees hit the hard pavement, and he fell forward onto his hands, his forehead scraping the ground.
He was in a full, prostrating kowtow, bowing to the college kid in the flickering yellow light.
"Monster!" he shrieked, his voice a torn, bubbling scream. "Demon! Awakened!"
He was babbling, hysterical, using the new words the world had learned just yesterday. He had seen the news.
He had seen Elder Chen crush the cinder block.
This... this was that. But it wasn't a "protector." It was a god of death, standing in an alley.
"Please!" he sobbed, his voice muffled by the ground. "Please, God, no! We didn't see anything! We saw nothing! We're stupid! We're trash! We didn't see you! Please, please, please, don't kill us! We'll go! We'll never come back!"
Lin Hao looked down at the two men. The one sobbing and bowing in a puddle of his friend's urine.
The other, still standing, mute and paralyzed, his legs shaking so hard he looked like he was vibrating.
He felt... nothing.
There was no triumph. No satisfaction. No anger. No adrenaline.
He was surprised at his own lack of emotion. This wasn't a fight. This wasn't a victory. This was pest control.
It was a problem that had been solved quickly and efficiently.
He felt the same mild annoyance he had felt when he started, mixed with the sharp, demanding pang of his hunger.
He had a 15-million-dollar fortune on his phone and 210 UP in his System. He had a world to upgrade.
He had no more time for this.
He stepped over the bent, useless switchblade lying on the ground.
He calmly walked toward the two remaining thugs, his footsteps echoing, unhurried.
The wiry man shrieked again, pressing his face so hard into the pavement it scraped his skin.
The heavy-set man just whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut, bracing for the same sledgehammer push that had ended their boss.
Lin Hao stopped, standing over the kneeling, sobbing man. He looked down at him with cold, clinical detachment.
Then he turned his gaze to the unconscious heap of Scar-face, slumped against the brick wall.
"Get him to a hospital," Lin Hao said.
His voice was cold, flat, and quiet, but in the terrified silence, it boomed like a judgment.
The wiry man flinched, not daring to look up. "Yes! Yes! A hospital! Right now! Thank you, God! Thank you!"
Lin Hao's gaze turned back to the two of them. "Forget you ever saw me. Forget this alley. Forget the money."
He let his voice drop, infusing it with the barest wisp of the cold, inhuman authority he now possessed.
"Or I'll find you. And next time... I won't just push."
He didn't wait for a reply. He didn't need one.
He turned his back on them, a final, absolute gesture of dominance.
He put his hands in his pockets and calmly walked out of the alley, back onto the moonlit street, leaving the two men, one sobbing and one frozen, alone with the consequences of their old-world choices.