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

Noon on a desert highway in Nevada.

A Ford with most of its paint peeling off was driving along a straight highway, trailing black smoke.

In the rearview mirror, a black SUV was closing the distance.

The King of Cards reached out of the car window with his left hand, and two playing cards slipped from his hand and disappeared into the gap between the wheels of an SUV.

"Bang! Bang!"

The front wheel blew out, and the car slid sideways off the road and flipped over.

"Could you drive a little more steadily?"

Stephen Chow complained while holding his suitcase.

"I have three bone specimens in my box! If they get damaged, it's considered a loss of state-owned assets, can you afford to compensate me?"

"Shut up!"

The strategist swerved sharply to avoid a pothole.

"You stole this junk car!"

"What theft? That's called emergency requisition! Chinese special agents were on official duty..."

"This is America!"

"Spies know no borders!"

Black smoke billowed out from the gaps in the hood.

After holding on for another twenty minutes or so, the car finally broke down completely.

It spun around and slid into the parking lot of a roadside motel, only stopping when it crashed into a half-dead cactus.

A parasol leans askew at the entrance to the parking lot, beneath which is a hot dog stand.

The stall owner was a tanned Mexican man who was fanning flies with a newspaper.

The King of Cards kicked open the car door, ready to go to the stall to buy water, but when he turned around, the passenger seat was empty.

Stephen Chow is standing in front of a hot dog stand, holding up three fingers.

"Two hot dogs, three dollars. My friend, you must understand——"

(Two hot dogs, three dollars. My friend, you have to understand this…)

"Four dollars!"

(Four dollars!)

The uncle also held up four fingers.

Stephen Chow's face fell as he prepared to continue haggling.

The card player walked over and slammed the money onto the counter.

"Four hot dogs and two bottles of water."

"Wait a moment!"

Seeing that someone was paying, Stephen Chow took out a five-cent coin from his pocket and placed it in front of the uncle.

"What's the difference between your bargaining and not bargaining at all?" The King of Cards' voice was tinged with exasperation.

"no the same."

Stephen Chow took the hot dog.

"Three dollars and ninety-five cents is a commodity exchange, while five cents is a spiritual and humanistic concern. The former sustains the body, while the latter nourishes the soul."

"Did you bring any funds at all?"

Stephen Chow's gaze drifted towards the distant desert, sunlight illuminating his melancholy profile.

"Funding, such a vulgar thing, can bind the soul of an agent."

"You didn't bring it."

The King of Cards leaned against a pillar, looking up at the sky.

The desert sky was a blindingly blue, without a single cloud.

Under the sunshade of the hot dog stand, there were only two people chewing.

After eating his second hot dog, the King of Cards pulled out the crumpled contract from the inside pocket of his trench coat and unfolded it.

This is the third time.

"Staring at it won't add another line of text."

Stephen Chow burped: "It's not an acrostic poem."

"I'm wondering where your tricks are hidden."

"Our biggest strategy is that we have no strategy."

Stephen Chow crumpled the hot dog paper bag into a ball and threw it into the trash can three steps away.

"You, a con artist, would never understand this kind of simple and unpretentious sincerity."

Just as the strategist was about to retort, he caught a glimpse of the parking lot entrance out of the corner of his eye.

A short man strolled in, wearing an oil-stained baseball cap, a mechanic's overalls, and carrying a toolbox.

Stephen Chow noticed it too, and with a flick of his right foot, a piece of gravel bounced off the ground.

The curve is ridiculous.

It first grazed the ground and bounced up, then hit the wheel hub next to it, changing direction, and finally hit the short guy right on the temple.

"Bang!"

The short man fell face down.

How do you know he has a problem?

"you guess."

Stephen Chow stepped forward, took the car keys from his pocket, and pressed a button.

Taillight illuminated a gray Chevrolet pickup truck in the corner of the parking lot.

"Cousin, congratulations on your new car!"

"That's his."

"He's lying down now, so he's not needed."

Stephen Chow tossed the keys to Gambit: "Where's that guy you're talking about? He's been driving for hours."

"We still have to go north, to the Broken Finger Bar."

Is it reliable?

The King started the engine, and the pickup truck coughed twice before barely getting started.

"Unreliable. That guy has a terrible temper and is very stubborn."

"That's perfect."

Stephen Chow opened the passenger door and placed his suitcase on his lap: "People with strong tempers are usually capable. I'm best at signing contracts with capable people."

......

The Chevrolet pickup truck sped north along the desert highway.

The afternoon sun baked the asphalt road surface, creating a shimmering wave of heat.

The radio was so bad it only produced white noise. I tried tuning it to several frequencies, but finally gave up and turned it off.

With one hand on the steering wheel, the King of Cards suddenly spoke.

"You said the Toad Man is in Guizhou now."

"Um."

"Given his appearance...aren't the workers there afraid of him?"

Stephen Chow twirled the mineral water bottle in his palm.

"I was scared on the first day at the construction site. On the second day, I called him Master Mo. On the third day, I asked him for help."

"On the fourth day, the cafeteria lady started giving him an extra spoonful of twice-cooked pork."

"He saved a worker who fell off a cliff with his tongue. Where I'm from, a brother is the one who can save your life. Looks don't matter."

The King of Cards fell silent again.

An hour and a half later, the pickup truck turned onto a dirt road.

At the end of the road was a wooden house.

Calling it a bar is an insult to the word "bar".

This thing is just old wooden boards nailed together, covered with a layer of dry mud, and then they say with disdain, "Okay, that's it."

The signboard was hanging crookedly, and the words had faded to only half of their outline, but the words "severed finger" could still be barely made out.

A Harley-Davidson motorcycle stood on the wasteland in front of the gate, its metal body covered with scratches and dents.

There was a long scratch on the fuel tank.

Stephen Chow got out of the car, looked around for three seconds, and then took out his phone from his suit pocket to take a picture.

What are you doing?

"Product research. This postmodern dilapidated style facade design can be replicated into a popular, Instagrammable ruin bar after our old city renovation project is demolished."

"They'll charge admission then, and sell you a cup of milk tea for eighty."

The King of Cards pushed open the wooden door.

The lighting was dim, and several broken tables were placed crookedly.

The bottles behind the bar were covered in dust, and you could make out a few bottles of bourbon and a bottle of brown liquid with the label torn off.

I don't know if it's whiskey or industrial alcohol.

The deepest corner.

A man sat alone with a half-empty bottle of bourbon and a dirty glass in front of him.

The muscles exposed at the neckline of the vest were as firm as two pieces of raw iron.

His right arm rested on the table, his forearm as straight as if cast in steel.

Stephen Chow squinted.

The mutant profile he had written before popped into his mind.

Healing factor, adamantium skeleton, a mutant who has lived for a very long time, unemployed...

I go!

Wolverine!

Logan Howlett!

Zhou Xingxing pulled out a blank contract and a pen, and was about to step forward to conduct recruitment negotiations.

"Take one more step forward, and you'll have six more holes in your body."