After Kingpin left, Anqiluo returned to the church.
He didn't deal with the broken door right away. He planned to have a new one custom-made the next day, preferably with an automatic sliding mechanism.
After all, Tony Stark had mocked his old wooden door last time.
Among the twenty-five gang bosses, there had been one who dealt in smuggled lumber. Hopefully, that guy wouldn't get caught up in Kingpin's cleanup and would still be alive tomorrow to take the order.
"…Does violence really work?" Matt's voice came from nearby, hesitant.
Anqiluo glanced at him and shook his head.
From the moment Matt first stepped into the church, Anqiluo had watched his mindset shift. At first, Matt firmly believed in fighting violence with violence. Then he started questioning it. And now, he was hesitating.
In just a few days, his beliefs had been shaken.
"I don't know," Anqiluo said, sounding a bit irritated. "That's something you need to figure out yourself. The only thing I can do is point you toward some old philosophy. The rest is on you."
Before Matt could respond, he continued,
"Don't ask me questions like this again. You decide what you want to do, and whether you're willing to accept the consequences."
He gestured toward Bullseye's corpse.
"Take him, for example. I could've killed him right away. Instead, I made him suffer first. Why? Because he needed to pay for what he did."
Anqiluo's tone stayed calm.
"I'm not a hero. I'm a bad person. No one gets to tell a bad person how to act."
With that, he waved to Number One and the others, signaling them to head upstairs and get some rest.
Number One hesitated, then walked up to him, biting her lip.
"Sorry, boss. We couldn't help… we just got in your way…"
"It's fine. Go to sleep."
Anqiluo cut her off with a casual wave.
The fact that they had stepped forward at all had surprised him. If anything, he appreciated it. There was nothing for them to feel guilty about.
Once they were gone, Anqiluo stood up, ready to head upstairs as well, leaving Matt sitting alone in the drafty hall.
"Oh, right," Anqiluo added, glancing back. "When you leave tomorrow, take care of Bullseye's body by the door. I'll waive the cost of tonight's beer."
Compared to Matt, Anqiluo actually respected Kingpin more.
Like Matt, Kingpin was trying to shape Hell's Kitchen in his own way. At the very least, he kept things from getting worse.
He knew exactly what he was doing—and he was willing to deal with the consequences.
That was clear from the way he handled things today.
Not to mention, he had even offered to pay those "confession fees" monthly.
At some point, it stopped being about principle.
It became about the money.
Anqiluo lay in bed, closed his eyes, and decided not to think about it anymore.
Better to focus on something simpler.
Like what kind of door to order tomorrow.
Kingpin was generous.
…
Washington, late at night.
In the basement of a luxury mansion, Tony Stark worked with intense focus, manipulating a holographic display as he analyzed the gold coin he had taken from Anqiluo.
He had discovered something new.
The coin carried an energy field unlike anything modern science could explain.
A completely unknown form of energy.
A completely unknown material.
For someone like Tony Stark, this was the kind of thing that kept him awake.
If he could understand it, Stark Industries could leap forward technologically.
"JARVIS, record the fluctuations of this energy field," Tony said. "I'm close to figuring out how that trick works."
The display filled with data—and then unreadable symbols.
"…Apologies, sir," JARVIS replied. "This energy field cannot be properly recorded."
Tony wasn't surprised.
He rubbed his eyes, dark circles visible from days without sleep. He had canceled multiple dates just to focus on this coin.
And the more he studied it, the more unusual it became.
It wasn't just the energy.
The material itself was different from normal gold.
It carried… information.
After repeated tests, he confirmed that the energy field could conduct power with near-perfect efficiency—close to ninety-nine percent.
And it was incredibly durable.
As for the data encoded within it…
All he had managed to extract was a string of incomprehensible characters.
"#￥%￥%@#￥…"
Meaningless.
"There's more to this," Tony said. "Keep running tests. Send those symbols to a linguistics team."
He stood up, finally deciding to rest.
"I'll check the results when I wake up."
For now, brute-force analysis would have to do. JARVIS could handle that.
…
At the same time, inside the Triskelion, Nick Fury stared at a recovered video on his tablet.
His expression revealed nothing.
"Hill. Where's Coulson?"
Maria Hill stood nearby. "Agent Coulson is currently on assignment in the UK."
"Have him wrap it up and return immediately. I have a new task for him."
"Yes, sir."
Hill left the office.
Fury remained where he was, looking out over the Washington skyline in silence.
…
Anqiluo had no idea that events were already in motion elsewhere.
A storm was forming.
But even if he knew, he wouldn't care.
He didn't like trouble.
He just wasn't afraid of it.
If he couldn't solve the problem—
He'd remove whoever caused it.
Simple as that.
The next morning, Matt was already gone.
The broken door, along with Bullseye's body, had disappeared.
Whether Matt had taken care of it or Number One and the others had cleaned up, Anqiluo didn't know.
As he ate breakfast prepared by Number Six, his thoughts drifted elsewhere.
Specifically, to Chinatown.
He still hadn't found a proper chef.
Number Six only knew a handful of dishes—
Spicy hot pot, mapo tofu, boiled fish in chili oil, spicy fried chicken…
Everything was spicy.
If his body hadn't been unusually resilient, he'd probably be a regular patient at a proctology clinic by now.
As for Number One and the others—
They had enough self-awareness to stick to steak and bread.