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

After examining the keys under the light for a while, Stephen Chow put them away.

"Let's not touch this hot potato. Trying to force our way in would only make things worse."

Wolverine, who had been silently smoking his cigar, took a final, sharp puff and stubbed out the cigarette against the wall.

"I need to go back to the ruins of the Broken Finger Bar."

"What? To clean up your old life?" Stephen Chow raised an eyebrow.

Wolverine ignored him and simply pushed open the door and left.

Stephen Chow sighed, told the card king to keep an eye on the game, and then strode after him.

Outside in the parking lot, the two men stole an old Mustang with a creaking chassis.

With both hands on the steering wheel, Zhou Xingxing dodged one pothole after another on the road surface, each large enough to shatter the suspension.

"The quality of your infrastructure is truly appalling. Did 80% of the maintenance fees end up in the pockets of those politicians?"

Stephen Chow floored the accelerator and continued his relentless attack:

"Look at you, your bones are practically rusting! A person should find a place where they can work hard and make a living. Building bridges and roads benefits future generations—that's a promising future!"

Wolverine, in the passenger seat, closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, as if a broken radio was crackling in his ear.

After a long while, the wild horse suddenly braked in front of a clearing that had been reduced to scorched earth.

The once sheltering bar, Broken Finger Bar, is now just a pile of charcoal.

Wolverine stepped onto the land where he had lived for countless days and nights.

He stopped at the old bar counter, relying on his memory of the location.

He reached into the ashes with both hands, roughly pried open two pieces of charred iron sheet pressed together, and pulled out a hard object from between them.

Looking over, Zhou Xingxing saw that the old wolf was holding a deformed glass wine glass and remained silent.

He doesn't have the habit of being sentimental about spring or autumn.

After much thought, Stephen Chow began searching through the ruins, making frequent clanging noises.

A few minutes later, he came out carrying two miraculously surviving bottles of bourbon whiskey, with a bag of fried peanuts in deformed packaging tucked under his arm.

"What the hell have you done now?" Wolverine turned around, his voice extremely irritable.

"War-damaged assets can be recycled. Just salvage them, wipe off the dust, and they're back on the dinner table!" Zhou Xingxing patted the black ash off the bottle.

Wolverine's face twitched.

He stepped over two burnt beams and snatched one of the bottles of whiskey from Stephen Chow's hands.

"You lackeys masquerading as government officials, you always have this repulsive face!"

"They blow everything away wherever they go! They try to grab whatever they see, and they drag everyone they see to register, file, and lock them up!"

Stephen Chow was completely unconcerned about the stolen spoils, and before he could even crack a joke, he was met with a soul-searching question from Lone Wolf.

"If it were up to your rules... how would you classify a monster like me, with hands stained with blood?"

"Follow our rules and procedures."

"First, we'll send you to the logistics medical center for a comprehensive physical examination, including genetic screening, to identify any potential health risks. Then we'll create an employee file."

"After we finish all this, let's find a meeting room, brew a cup of premium pre-Qingming Longjing tea, and ask you face-to-face what kind of job you really want to do in the future."

Wolverine let out a cold laugh.

"You ask me what position I want? Don't you even bother to check how many lives these hands of mine have taken?"

"Go ahead and investigate! Background checks are a necessary part of the hiring process, how can a political review be omitted?" Zhou Xingxing said confidently.

"But that shouldn't be the first thing we talk about when we sit down."

"I used to sell pork at the old district market. I became the top butcher in the whole street with just a knife."

"The white-skinned pigs delivered every morning, regardless of which manure pit they rolled in before they died, or how bad-tempered they were and how many feeders' ribs they broke..."

"When it's delivered to my stall, the first thing I always do is check the blue hygiene and quarantine stamp on it."

"As long as you're willing to follow our rules, who the hell has the time to dig up your old, trivial grievances?"

This absurd, colloquial theory actually extinguished the anger raging within Wolverine.

Even a professor, in his view, is a high and mighty moral judge.

But this eccentric agent in front of him actually used the method of weighing meat by the pound to estimate the price for him!

Oh shit!

Wolverine tilted his head back, gulped down the whiskey, and smashed the bottle to pieces.

Six Adamantium alloy steel claws popped out.

"That insane bastard William Stryker used a catheter to force molten alloy, inch by inch, into the depths of my bones!"

"He doesn't need me to think like a normal person, nor does he need me to retain any damned emotions. All he wants is a knife that only knows how to obey orders! A damned knife!"

To tell you the unpleasant truth.

Stephen Chow boldly extended his finger and flicked the side of the Adamantium claw, which could cut through iron like mud.

"Tools are born without independent consciousness, so how can they be right or wrong? The ones who created this mess are all brain-dead employers who are just waving tools around blindly!"

He circled Wolverine halfway around.

"Look at your skeleton and claws. They're wear-resistant, pressure-resistant, and unaffected by conventional corrosion."

"This is a top-tier infrastructure project that you couldn't find even with a lantern!"

Stephen Chow raised his hand and slapped this broad back.

"In the reconstruction of the disaster-stricken areas in Southwest China, you can easily cut through the tightly tangled load-bearing steel mesh under the landslide with just a few quick swipes of your claws!"

"In a chain-reaction collision on the highway, while others were anxiously waiting for hydraulic shears, you rushed in, ripped off the mangled roof of one of the cars, and pulled the suffocating driver out!"

"Logan, you can do a lot of things."

He stopped in front of the old wolf.

"Do you really want to label yourself a 'killing machine'? That's so petty, bro!"

"With a slight modification to the application scenario, you'll be the coolest guy in our Huaxia Engineering Emergency Response Team!"

Wolverine suddenly...

This was the first time in his life that he had ever heard someone stitch together the nightmare that had haunted him throughout his life with concrete terms like "engineering demolition" and "rescue" into a single sentence.

"You really think... these hands of mine can only draw blood, and can't actually save lives?"

"yes!"

"I'll first assign you to do high-risk engineering special operations for a few months. During the probationary period, if you feel you're not skilled enough or can't do it well, or if one day you get really tired of dealing with cement and steel bars on the construction site..."

He stroked his chin, pretending to think for a few seconds.

"You think I can pull some strings and arrange a cushy security guard job for you privately?"

Wolverine stood on the scorched earth, letting the strong wind make his already messy hair even more disheveled.

He examined the badly deformed glass again.

Finally, he bent down and placed it back on the bar wreckage.

I didn't look at it a second time.

This dilapidated shelter, along with the years of fighting he spent numbing his senses with alcohol, was all buried cleanly here tonight.

If one wants to start anew, there's no need to carry the ashes of one's old life.

He turned around, straightened his back, and faced Stephen Chow directly.

"I will not sign any indenture to your bureaucratic institutions."

"Don't worry, this is a legitimate and legal labor agreement. The price is clearly marked and there's no deception." Stephen Chow knew when to stop.

"The 749 Bureau never does anything as unethical as withholding wages from its outsourced workers."

Wolverine raised an eyebrow and glanced at him sideways, his claws threatening to pierce his skin again.

"Got it, got it! Let's reach a verbal agreement on a trial period first!"

He quickly reviewed the back-and-forth negotiations in his mind.

This old wolf is truly impervious to both soft and hard tactics. To get him on board, you have to convince him that he has the right to choose a second way of life, aside from being a killing machine.

Stephen Chow returned to his car.

Wolverine walked over, opened the other car door, and suddenly asked an extremely abrupt question.

"Does your bureau's cafeteria provide drinks?"

"There are countless fine wines in China, including Erguotou, Moutai, and Fenjiu. But rules are rules, and field staff must abide by the alcohol restriction regulations during their onboarding assessment period."

He drawled out the sound.

"Especially... anyone is strictly prohibited from sitting at the same table and drinking with a certain blue-skinned space teleporter."

"Who is the blue-skinned, red-haired space teleporter?"

"A drunkard, oh, now he drinks milk tea."

Wolverine didn't ask any further questions.

The night sky outside was high and desolate.

He leaned back in his chair, gazing at the intercontinental highway ahead.

"I'll go back with you and just watch from the side."

"If the work is too boring, I'll just leave."