Huang Wen remained blissfully unaware of the intense, telepathic drama unfolding between Charles Xavier, Jean Grey, and the newly energized Magneto. His focus, sharp and singular, was on the threat that could turn his kwoon into a smoking crater: the Hulk.
To mitigate the possibility of being caught completely flat-footed, Huang Wen had taken a page from the playbook of modern surveillance. He was relying on technology, specifically the custom-built watch, to be his early warning system. He'd ordered a non-stop, 24-hour video sweep of all local feeds and street cameras, hoping to spot a giant green silhouette before it got within spitting distance of Chinatown.
But days turned into a full week, and a strange, unnerving silence settled over the entire Eastern Seaboard. The Hulk had vanished completely. No news, no military activity, no blurry phone footage. It was as if the green menace had been nothing more than mass hysteria.
"That's completely wrong…" Huang Wen muttered, pacing the wooden floor of his kwoon. Doubt pricked at his strategic mind. "The timeline is off. From the first gamma burst to the ultimate appearance of someone like Abomination, the action should be constant, relentless. It shouldn't go quiet for over ten days. Where in the world did a seven-foot-tall rage monster go?"
He forced himself to push the thought aside. He couldn't find the Hulk, so he needed to focus on the one thing he could control: his own power progression.
"Forget the monster for a moment. Let's try to push past this damn 99 wall again," he resolved, taking a stance in the center of the room. "Bai Zhantang's memories were clear: the Extraordinary is the peak of the Acquired—the limits of human potential. The Legendary realm must be the threshold of the Innate. It's a qualitative jump, not just hitting a higher number."
Just as he inhaled, settling his mind to cycle the painfully slow internal energy, his watch flashed violently, buzzing against his wrist.
"Ding! An anomaly has been detected in the surveillance!"
Huang Wen's eyes narrowed instantly, snapping him out of his meditative state. "Huh? He's here?" He lunged for the watch.
"The surveillance feed for an area nearby has been frozen for over ten minutes," the watch's AI reported rapidly, its voice clinical and urgent. "We detect sophisticated modification attempts on the live feed—someone is layering a static image over the real-time data to create a perfect illusion of normality. The source cannot be traced!"
"The surveillance has been modified?" A chilling suspicion crept into Huang Wen's mind. "Is the Hulk causing trouble now? Did the military try to cover it up? No, that's impossible. If the Hulk is causing the ruckus, the explosion and noise would be too massive to conceal, regardless of the video feed."
"The scope of the modified surveillance footage appears to be two blocks near Chinatown!" the watch updated with a cold, hard fact.
"Chinatown? They're targeting here?" Huang Wen's blood went cold. He didn't hesitate. He discarded his simple clothing, donned the sleek, armored tuxedo in a practiced motion, strapped on the slow-motion glasses, and vaulted toward the window.
Simultaneously, Logan, who had been curled up like a massive, furry hound in the next room, twitched. His keen, enhanced nose flared.
"Sniff! Sniff!" Logan's eyes snapped open, a low growl rumbling in his chest. "Hmph! That familiar, weak, yet incredibly annoying scent!" He thought immediately of only one person who smelled faintly of gunpowder, stale anger, and an obsessive need for violent justice. Logan climbed out of his bed, his muscles coiled, and without a word to anyone, he threw open the window and dropped to the street below.
"Huh? Why's Uncle Wolf running out? Did he smell something?" Huang Wen realized that Logan's primitive, razor-sharp senses were acting as a superior, organic detection system. The sense of a wild animal is not to be underestimated. "Activate stealth mode."
Huang Wen hit the button on his watch, the tuxedo shimmered into invisibility, and he silently followed Logan, moving like a shadow across the rooftops. He knew that if anyone could sniff out the source of the anomaly in this maze of alleys and low buildings, it was Wolverine.
"Hmm?" Logan, moving with the deceptive silence of a big cat, suddenly froze and glanced over his shoulder. He sensed a faint disturbance—a pressure change, a sound too quiet to be heard—but he quickly dismissed it. He'd been in the Wing Chun Kwoon for weeks; he was probably just jumpy. He continued walking, his focus fixed on the source of the irritating scent.
Logan didn't go far. Just a few hundred meters from the kwoon, he stopped dead, his feral eyes fixed on a pitch-black alleyway ahead.
"Come out. I smell you, damn it. And I'm already annoyed," Logan snarled, his voice a low, gravelly threat.
"It's you, old wolf? What in the hell are you doing here?" A voice, surprised and equally rough, echoed out of the darkness. A large, heavily muscled man dressed in black tactical gear, emblazoned with a massive white skull, stepped into the faint street light.
"Frank? The Punisher," Logan said, shaking his head and eyeing the arsenal strapped to the man. "I wondered why the air suddenly tasted of gun oil and bad decisions. What, did your jurisdiction expand to Chinatown? I've lived here for months, and I haven't seen a single serious crime—everyone here is too friendly. Except maybe the local grocer, who overcharges a bit…"
"My affairs are none of your goddamn business," Frank Castle—the Punisher—replied, his eyes narrowed to slits, his tone devoid of warmth. "I'm on a job right now. You'd better go back to your weird little kung-fu dojo and don't get in my way."
"Hmph!" Logan snorted, the accumulated peace of the last few weeks shattering instantly against Frank's raw arrogance. Both men were volatile; both were veterans of endless war. It was inevitable they'd clash.
Snikt!
Logan's sharp, steel claws erupted from his knuckles with a sound like tearing silk. He glared fiercely at Frank, the feral rage building.
"Frank, speak your purpose plainly. This Chinatown is under my protection now. If you think you're going to start your brand of reckless, messy justice here, you'll have to go through me first!" Logan roared, his patience at an end.
BAM!
Before Logan could finish his sentence, a single, suppressed bullet struck him directly in the forehead. The round deformed instantly against the adamantium skull and clattered harmlessly to the ground. The small, smoking hole in Logan's brow vanished in a puff of steam as his healing factor did its instant work.
"This is truly the most irritating thing about you," Frank muttered, frowning with professional annoyance. Logan's immortality wasn't impossible to counter—Frank knew that prolonged dismemberment or deep entombment could slow him down—but the sheer difficulty was overwhelming. Logan was a walking skeleton of indestructible metal, meaning conventional weapons could only damage his flesh, which healed faster than the eye could track.
"ROAR!" Logan exploded into motion, a furious blur charging toward Frank.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Frank fired multiple rounds, aiming for center mass, but the momentum didn't slow the Wolverine. Seeing the inevitable closing distance, Frank instantly dropped the pistol and switched to melee weapons—a fighting knife and a razor-sharp ballistic knife appearing in his hands.
Frank dodged Logan's wild, sweeping claws with the exaggerated grace of a trained close-combat expert, while simultaneously slashing the knives across Logan's torso. It was a pointless effort, but it bought him time. Logan's eyes flashed with pure, unadulterated rage. His right arm suddenly accelerated, a blur of motion as the adamantium claw stabbed straight for Frank's abdomen.
CRACK!
Frank managed to pivot and block with the fighting knife, but the high-quality steel was instantly severed by the unstoppable alloy, the blade snapping in two pieces. However, Frank's expression didn't change at all.
With the same movement, the ballistic knife in his other hand was triggered, the blade shooting out and piercing deep into Logan's body. Then, Frank threw a fragmentation grenade at Logan's feet and retreated instantly, disappearing back into the darkness.
BOOM!
The explosion ripped through the narrow alley. If the previous gunshots, suppressed by silencers, hadn't been noticed, the concussive sound and shockwave certainly woke up everyone in the quiet corner of Chinatown.
Logan, singed and disheveled, his tattered clothes ripped further, was hurled backward, landing in a heap of trash cans. He was, of course, completely unharmed, having once survived a nuclear blast.
The moment Huang Wen, watching from his invisible perch, saw the flash of the grenade, he knew exactly who he was dealing with—a completely ordinary, non-superpowered man who was nonetheless a force of nature. A perfect, high-value target.
"Issue the mission: Capture Frank!" Huang Wen commanded, using the concussion of the explosion as cover. He instantly engaged his Snow-Treading Without a Trace technique, rushing toward the alley's entrance while simultaneously activating the system.
"Task being generated: Capture Punisher Frank, reward: one draw for a Superhuman prize. Accept the task?"
"Accept!" Huang Wen's eyes flashed with triumph. A Superhuman draw! That could finally give him the skill set he needed to break the 99 barrier.
Frank, already sprinting for his escape, suddenly froze mid-stride, his arms locked, his body rigid.
Huang Wen had arrived at the alley's edge, his invisible finger pointing casually at the Punisher's back.
Acupressure points can be applied remotely! The simple, almost instantaneous power of Bai Zhantang's Biu Jee was now enhanced by Huang Wen's own peak Extraordinary level of internal strength, allowing him to bypass physical contact and strike the most vital pressure points from a distance.
Frank Castle, the deadliest human on Earth, was now completely paralyzed, a statue frozen by a single, invisible finger.