American comics: I am full of martial virtues and I love to be kind to others.

The minibus stopped in front of the community service center in the central district. Twenty-two people got off the bus and went into the building.

MX-031 was the sixteenth person to get off. He completed the registration process at the reception desk of the community service center—which took about twenty minutes—and then walked out through the main entrance of the building.

Jane opened her eyes. "He's out. Heading east."

Lynn saw him in the Accord's rearview mirror—light blue jeans, a gray hoodie, white sneakers—walking along the 53rd Street sidewalk toward Sixth Avenue. His pace was neither fast nor slow, his hands in his hoodie pockets, occasionally glancing down at his phone.

"Does he have a cell phone?"

“The community service center provides each released victim with a prepaid cell phone and fifty dollars in emergency cash upon registration. Standard procedure,” Jason said.

“He’s on his phone.” Jane squinted. “But he’s not making calls—he’s looking at a map. He’s searching for the subway station.”

"Don't follow him. Let him go."

MX-031 turned at the intersection of 53rd Street and Sixth Avenue and headed towards the subway station entrance. He paused for two seconds at the entrance, glanced up at the subway line signs—the orange B and D lines—and then went down the stairs.

Jason pulled over temporarily on the side of Sixth Avenue. Lynn and Jane got out of the car.

“I’m on the ground,” Jason said. “He signals me for the next possible subway exit, and I drive over and wait.”

Lynn and Jane hurried into the subway station. The stairwell at the entrance was filled with the distinctive smell of the New York subway—a signature underground urban odor, a mixture of rust, engine oil, urine, and the aroma of tortillas wafting from a Mexican fast-food stand. Several tiles on the walls were broken, revealing the gray cement beneath. A homeless man in a tattered coat sat at the corner of the stairs playing the harmonica—his tunes were sharp, but his rhythm was surprisingly steady.

Jane's steps were unwavering. "He's on the descending escalator. He's about to reach the downtown B line platform."

As they arrived at the platform, a Line B train pulled into the station—its silver body whistling out of the tunnel entrance, accompanied by a gust of hot air mixed with diesel and ozone, its brakes emitting a sharp metallic screeching sound. The doors opened, and the flow of passengers getting on and off merged into a chaotic mass on the platform.

“He got into the fourth carriage,” Jane said.

Lynn and Jane boarded the train in the sixth carriage. The distance between them, two carriages apart, was enough to avoid being seen.

The train rumbled through the tunnel. The lights in the carriage flickered—a faulty old circuit had made a poor connection—and with each flicker, the passengers' faces became a series of rapidly changing still images. A teenager wearing headphones closed his eyes and swayed his head; an elderly couple sat hand in hand on orange plastic seats; a middle-aged man in a standard dark suit from the Financial District stared at the stock charts on his phone screen—a typical scene in New York.

The train stopped briefly at 42nd Street Times Square station, where a large group of people boarded.

Then there's Herald Square on 34th Street.

“He didn’t get out of the car,” Jane whispered.

Fourteenth Street. West Fourth Street.

He didn't change seats in any of the four carriages. His heart rate started to rise slightly—not from nervousness, but more from anticipation. He was waiting for the station to arrive.

Grand Street.

He stood up and moved towards the car door.

Lynn and Jane stood up at the same time and walked to the door of their respective carriages.

The train entered the next station. Lynn saw the station sign through the train window—the station name was written in black lettering on a white tiled wall.

Main Street Station. The edge of Chinatown.

The car door opened.

MX-031 emerged from the door of the fourth carriage and blended into the crowd on the platform. He walked towards the exit, his pace slightly faster than before—not running, but with a more purposeful rhythm.

Lynn and Jane followed him about thirty meters behind. The density of people on the platform was just right—not too sparse to expose the trackers, nor too crowded to lose sight of their target.

They followed MX-031 out of the subway station.

The light on the ground, switching from the darkness of the underground passage to sunlight, made Lynn squint.

Chinatown.

The air here is completely different from that in Midtown. The fishy smell of the fish stalls, the aroma of garlic stir-fry emanating from the kitchens of Chinese restaurants, the sweet fruity fragrance of oranges and longans stacked in pyramid shapes on the fruit stands, and the hot air exhaled from the outdoor units of the floor-standing air conditioners along the street—all these smells mix together on the narrow streets to create an olfactory impact so intense that it's almost tangible.

The streets were lined with densely packed bilingual signs in Chinese and English, some red with gold lettering, others green with white lettering, and still others illuminated by blue LED lights—pharmacies, jewelry stores, travel agencies, accounting firms, massage parlors—crowded together so tightly that one wondered if there were any gaps between the buildings. The sidewalks were packed with people—elderly women pulling wheeled shopping carts, schoolchildren in uniforms running past with heavy backpacks, and several middle-aged men in chef's aprons squatting by the back door of a restaurant smoking—everyone walked quickly, everyone knew where they were going.

MX-031 navigated the chaotic street. He didn't hesitate, didn't look at the map, and didn't stop at any intersection to determine his direction. He turned left directly into a narrower side street—Mott Street—and then stopped in the middle of the side street in front of a four-story brick building.

On the ground floor was a tea shop with a signboard that had mostly faded. Several simply packaged tins of Tieguanyin and Pu'er tea were displayed in the window, and a note written in calligraphy read "Wholesale and Retail" on the glass. The tea shop's door was closed, but the "Open for Business" sign above it was lit.

MX-031 pushed open the door and went inside.

“He went in.” Jane stopped in front of a fruit shop across the side street, pretending to pick out dragon fruit. “There are two consciousness signals on the ground floor—him and another person. There are three signals on the second floor. There’s no one on the third and fourth floors.”

Lynn stood behind a roadside tree, his gaze passing through the passersby and landing on the tightly closed door of the tea shop. The faded signboard read "Yong He Tea House" in traditional Chinese characters, with a line of smaller English text on the left.

He took out his phone and sent Jason a text message.

"Wu Street. Yonghe Tea Shop. Across the street in front of the fruit shop. Immediately."

Three minutes later, Jason's silver Accord appeared at the entrance to Mott Street. He parked next to a fire hydrant—illegally parked, but nobody cared at the moment. He got out and walked over, hands in his leather jacket pockets, pretending to be a tourist strolling through Chinatown.

"How about it?"

“He went into a tea shop. Two people on the ground floor—himself and a contact. Three people on the second floor—probably the fraternity's resident liaisons.” Jason's gaze swept over the unassuming four-story brick building. “Chinatown,” he said, his tone ambiguous, a mixture of wistfulness and bitterness. “San Francisco's Chinatown was their starting point, New York's Chinatown was their contact point. Do these guys have some special connection to Chinatown?”

"Dense population, complex streets, low surveillance coverage, and strong community isolation—a perfect cover environment. A tea shop in Chinatown is like a grain of sand dropped into the desert; you can never tell which one you're looking for."

"But we found it."

“But we found it.” Lynn repeated, his tone devoid of pride, only a quiet confirmation.

He glanced towards the end of Mott Street. There lay Canal Street—the main thoroughfare of Chinatown—where the two o'clock afternoon sun shone lazily at a low angle, casting long shadows of pedestrians. A vendor selling roasted sweet potatoes pushed his tin cart past the street corner, the charcoal in the stove hissing in the cool autumn air. The sweet potatoes, roasted to a caramel color, cracked open in several places, releasing a sweet aroma that wafted far and wide.

Everything seemed normal. It was an ordinary late autumn afternoon in New York, with sunlight, people, smells, and sounds—the same background scenes that the city repeated countless times every day.

But in a tea shop on Mott Street, a clue leading to the heart of the fraternity is being pulled out by a fake victim.

Lynn glanced down at the woven bracelet on her wrist. Red, blue, and white—the three colors stood out clearly in the afternoon sunlight, no longer blending into a blurry, dark hue as they did in the shadows. Each thread was clearly and distinctly intertwined, tight and intact, without a single break.

He raised his head.

“Jason, notify the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I need a search warrant for Yonghe Tea House—not through Brooks’s channels, but directly through the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Also, have Mike prepare technical support—I need communication records, financial statements, and personnel entry and exit data for every corner of this building.”

"time?"

"Within twenty-four hours. Before they know we've already set our sights on this place."

Jason nodded and turned to walk towards the Accord.

Lynn remained behind the roadside trees in front of the fruit shop, her gaze never leaving the tightly closed door of the tea shop.

He can wait.

He had chased the man from San Francisco to Renault, from Renault to the wilderness of Nebraska, from the wilderness to a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and from the island back to the streets of New York. Each step was like groping for a spider's thread in the dark—so thin as to be almost invisible, so fragile as to break at any moment—but he never let go.

And now the other end of the spider silk has finally met something solid.

It's not spider silk. It's a web.

He wanted to lift it up completely.

The doors of Yonghe Tea House reopened at 3:17 p.m.

MX-031 came out. He stood at the door for two seconds, took out his prepaid phone from his hoodie pocket, glanced at it, and then walked towards the north end of Mott Street, disappearing into the crowd on Canal Street.

“He’s gone,” Jane said from under the fruit shop awning. “The emotional signals showed a kind of—if I had to describe it in one word—satisfaction. He accomplished what he wanted to do.”

Where are the people inside?

"There's one person left on the ground floor. There are still three on the second floor. Nothing has changed."

Lynn didn't follow MX-031. The snake had already led him to the entrance of the snake hole—following it any further was far less valuable than staying at the entrance to figure out the structure inside.

He dialed Jason's number.

“He’s out, heading north. Don’t follow him, let him go. Start monitoring the tea shop now. I need you to contact Mike and have him bring that electronic surveillance equipment to Mott Street. Also—” He lowered his voice, a delivery van rumbling past, its exhaust fumes and diesel smell filling his nostrils, “Contact Jason Rodriguez himself—that’s me, wait, I’ll contact him myself, you go get Mike.”

"Received. Fifteen minutes."

Lynn hung up the phone and leaned against a roadside tree, thinking for a while. The afternoon in Chinatown was entering its busiest time—school had let out, and groups of children in school uniforms poured into the milk tea shops and bakeries along the street, their laughter overflowing from every open door. An old man pushing a cart selling candied hawthorns slowly walked past him; the candied hawthorns on the cart gleamed amber in the sunlight, and the sweet and sour aroma of hawthorns trailed a long tail in the air.

Jane stood beside him, pretending to look at her phone. Her gaze was actually half-closed, her attention focused on the four consciousness signals inside the building.

“The three people on the second floor are talking,” she said. “It’s not casual conversation—there’s a rhythmic reporting and receiving of instructions. One person is speaking, and the other two are listening. The speaker’s consciousness is quite distinctive—a strong sense of control, with minimal emotional fluctuation. Like someone accustomed to giving orders.”

Can you determine his age?

"Not precise. But the texture of the consciousness signal—if the word makes sense—reveals a long-trained mental structure. Not young. Over forty, possibly older."

"Mutants?"

"No. None of the three signals contained any mutant characteristics. They were all ordinary humans."

This surprised Lynn slightly. There were no mutants at the Brotherhood's liaison points—meaning either the liaison points were purely administrative and intelligence-related, not involved in any actions requiring mutant abilities; or the Brotherhood's organizational structure contained an intentional separation of personnel—mutants were responsible for execution, while ordinary people were responsible for command and coordination.

The latter aligns better with the operational logic of a tightly organized criminal organization. Separating mutants from the command structure effectively prevents the entire network from being exposed if any link is breached. If mutants are captured, they won't know where the command center is; if the command center is destroyed, they won't know where the mutants are hiding.

“A clever structure,” he said in a low voice.

"What?"

"Nothing. Continue monitoring."

Mike arrived twenty minutes later. He was driving a dark gray Toyota Highlander borrowed from the college, with two black waterproof boxes on the back seat. He parked in a legal parking space at the entrance to Mott Street—a spot about seventy meters from Yonghe Tea House, within sight but not intimidating.

Lynn climbed into the back seat of the Highlander. Mike had already opened one of the boxes—inside was a compact electronic listening device, including a spectrum analyzer, two directional microphones, a modified laptop, and several antennas.

"These are the academy's equipment?" Lynn looked at the unfamiliar markings on the equipment. (End of Chapter)