American comic: From Beijing with Love, starting with a mutant.

Stephen Chow got back into the car and threw the brown paper envelope in his hand onto the passenger seat, where it landed right on the Toad Man's knee.

"Open it and take a look."

Mortimer clumsily opened the envelope, his knuckles covered in calluses.

That was honed from years of climbing up and down the iron ladders in the sewers; American winters are very cold.

The iron ladder was so cold it was sticky, and every time he climbed it, he had to tear off a layer of skin.

Several small notebooks and a card slid out of the envelope.

The card had his headshot printed on it, next to which was a string of Chinese characters, and a red stamp at the top.

"This is……"

Mortimer spoke broken Chinese, his tongue twisting and turning.

He recognized the photo; it was taken in the basement of Bureau 749, where Stephen Chow had helped him wash his face and lent him a clean shirt.

The photographer waited for a long time with his camera in hand because Mortimer couldn't help but grin.

"Your indenture... no, your work permit."

As Zhou Xingxing turned the steering wheel around the corner, he said, "From today onwards, you are the specially appointed technical advisor for the Seventh Engineering Team of Urban and Rural Infrastructure Construction under Bureau 749. It's a three-year contract."

Mortimer stared at the card, his vertical pupils shrinking.

In New York, he only had a photo on a wanted poster, which was pasted on the iron fence at the entrance to the sewer, with the word "monster" written on it in red pen.

The toad-man bent the iron fence three times, and each time a new wanted poster was put on it the next day.

"See that red booklet? That's your social insurance registration certificate. It covers pension, medical, unemployment, work injury, maternity insurance, and supplementary medical insurance."

"There are also housing provident fund and enterprise annuity."

"If you do a good job, you'll have a chance for promotion and a raise, and then you'll have seven types of insurance and three types of housing funds!"

Stephen Chow stepped on the foot brake, turned his head and instructed, "You probably won't need maternity insurance, but our regulations require you to pay the full amount."

The toad-man held the pile of cards and red books, his hands trembling uncontrollably.

Magneto promised to create a mutant utopia.

He believed it.

Later, when Magneto was sent to blow up the X-Men's spaceships, he said it was "fighting for his race."

The spaceship exploded, and he was thrown into the Hudson River by the blast wave, but Magneto didn't care about him at all.

The X-Men advocate for peaceful coexistence.

He believed it too.

Once, he mustered up the courage to shield them from an attack, but passersby still threw stones at him.

They talk a good game but sing a bad game.

They never provided Mortimer with any benefits such as reimbursement for hospital medical expenses.

Two streams of tears rolled down Mortimer's cheeks.

He recalled that winter night in New York, the day he was kicked out of his home and had nowhere to go.

They could only huddle under the bridge, so hungry they licked pizza boxes from the trash can.

He dared not move even when someone cursed at him, because if he moved, he would get kicked again.

At that time, Mortimer thought that this was probably how his life would be.

They died in the sewers, rotting into mud, and nobody knew.

"Don't rub your snot on my leather seat covers! I bought them for eighty yuan!"

Stephen Chow threw a pack of tissues at him, cursing.

He saw the toad-man's face fall and tears stream down his face. He tensed his cheeks and rolled down the car window a crack.

The wind from outside blew in, dispersing the fishy smell inside the car.

"Hold it in now, and when you get to the construction site tomorrow, work like crazy!"

Mortimer pressed his ID to his chest and nodded emphatically.

He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but his tongue wouldn't obey him.

I forgot all the Chinese characters I had memorized on the plane, and in the end, I could only manage to squeeze out a broken sentence in Chinese:

"I...have someone...want me."

Stephen Chow didn't reply, rolled up the car window, and started the car.

The van continued driving into the mountains, its chassis slamming against the ground a few more times, but he didn't curse anymore.

.....

The next day, Tiankeng Village.

The terrain was even worse than Director Wang had described.

The sinkhole, with its steep, vertical karst cliffs on all four sides and a diameter of over 300 meters at the bottom, is pitch black and resembles a giant, gaping maw.

Local legend says that a dragon lives underneath.

The construction team built several rows of prefabricated houses with corrugated steel roofs on the only flat piece of land halfway up the mountain.

Project manager Lao Liu, wearing a hard hat, squatted in the mud, smoking silently, with cigarette butts scattered all around his feet.

He's been working on this construction site for so long, and a third of his hair has turned white.

It rained last night, and the rubble temporarily piled up against the cliff face slid down another layer, almost burying the excavator's tracks.

"Engineer Liu, the expansion bolts on that section of cliff face are a bit loose, and the weathered cracks are as wide as a palm," a foreman whispered as he approached.

Old Liu stubbed out his cigarette butt hard in the mud: "We'll reinforce it again this afternoon when we change shifts. Let the brothers stay away from that section first."

Before he could make any further arrangements, a bread cart covered in mud bounced up the dirt road.

Stephen Chow led a person who was wrapped up tightly off the bus.

Old Liu got up, patted the mud off his legs, and went to greet him:

"Comrade Zhou, right? The higher-ups said they'd send a special expert in high-altitude operations, is this the one?"

Today, the toadman was wearing an oversized camouflage outfit, a helmet with goggles on his head, and a sun-protective mask around his face, so not a single hair was showing.

"Manager Liu, it's a pleasure to meet you."

Stephen Chow stepped forward to shake hands and casually slipped a pack of cigarettes into Old Liu's hand.

Old Liu looked down and saw it was a soft-packed item, so he quickly waved his hand.

As a result, Stephen Chow simply put it in his pocket.

"This is Lao Mo, a top-notch high-altitude special operations soldier from the Northwest. He can't stand the wind, so his skin isn't in good condition. Please bear with him."

Old Liu touched the cigarettes in his pocket, sighed, and pointed to the cliff opposite: "Brother Mo, it's not that I'm making things difficult for you. Look at that cliffside road, the explosives blew a hole in it, and now they're going to drive steel channels in for support."

"The machine can't get in, so we have to rely on people suspended by safety ropes to drill holes with pneumatic drills. The rock is severely weathered, and it crumbles as we drill. Two people were injured just last month."

"Especially that section, did you see it? That whitish rock layer in the middle of the cliff, it loosened again last night, the crack is three fingers wider than before..."

He looked Mortimer up and down again: "Is there a way? If not, don't force it, let's think of another way."

Mortimer didn't say anything.

The toad-man ripped off the tool bag from his back and strode toward the edge of the cliff.

This guy wasn't wearing a safety harness.

This action stunned several workers who were putting on their safety belts nearby.

A young laborer dropped his cigarette and yelled, "Hey! You there! Are you out of your mind?"

Old Liu glared and took two steps after him: "Why didn't you hang a rope! I'll take responsibility if someone dies—"

Before he could finish speaking, a sound of metal breaking came from above the cliff.

In mid-air, Lao Li, a worker responsible for clearing away rubble, suddenly experienced a large-scale collapse of the rock strata beneath his feet.

That area was exactly where Lao Liu had just pointed and said, "The crack is three fingers wider than before."

The expansion bolts securing the safety rope, along with several hundred kilograms of stones, were pulled out by the roots.

The bolt sparked as it struck the rock face.

"Holy crap! Help!"