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

Early morning in a courtyard house.

Stephen Chow squatted by the sink in the corner of the yard, clutching the receipt with grief and indignation.

I was careless; this guy ate half a month's salary in one meal!

That's 85 yuan a plate of black tripe!

That bastard Lao Jin swallowed it without even chewing it, like a cow chewing on a peony!

What a waste of money!

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. His features scrunched up, and he muttered some kind of slang from the vegetable market.

Martha and Harry, who were standing nearby, glanced at him.

The two looked at each other, unable to understand what he was muttering, but inexplicably felt relaxed.

This kind of down-to-earth, street-smart attitude, jumping up and down over a few taels of silver, is far more real than the lab coats worn by professionals in laboratories.

The courtyard gate was pushed open.

Xiao Liu walked in carrying a tin box.

The front of the box was sprayed with several crooked characters in red paint: Da Vinci Brand Real-Time Cross-Language Mass Communication Assistance System.

Immediately afterwards, Director Wang stepped across the threshold with his hands behind his back.

"Stephen Chow".

Completely unaware of the leader's arrival, Zhou Xingxing shuddered, quickly stood up, touched his heels together, and saluted.

"Good morning, Director! Oh? Is there new equipment?"

Zhou Xingxing stepped forward, took the box from Xiao Liu, and opened it.

Inside, there was a neat row of strangely shaped objects.

This thing looks like a hybrid of a hearing aid, an earwax clip, and an old-fashioned radio antenna.

Each earpiece also has a black spiral wire trailing behind it, connected to a miniature microphone that is clipped to the chest.

On the plastic shell of each earphone, there is a line of small handwritten text in marker.

[Do not soak it in water, do not feed it to the dog, and do not let Edith use it to exchange for milk tea.]

The carefree girl, who was walking over with a fried dough stick in her mouth, immediately objected.

Her blue cheeks puffed out as she pointed at the box and protested loudly.

"This is a serious personal insult! Why single me out on public facilities?"

"Do I look like the kind of person who would sell off state-owned assets for a few cups of dessert?"

Stephen Chow glanced at her but didn't say anything.

Where did that military-grade high-powered flashlight go?

Don't think I don't know you traded it with the old man at the street corner for three candied hawthorns!

"Come on, come on, it's the equipment testing phase. New colleagues, come and line up to get your equipment."

Stephen Chow waved his hand and directly put one of the earphones with the longest antenna on the gerbil's ear.

Then clip the miniature microphone onto the gerbil's dirty collar.

"Comrade Miguel, just say something to test the microphone."

The gerbil swallowed hard and nervously stammered out an English sentence.

"I am willing to work hard."

The red indicator light on the headphones flashed once.

A clear and articulate Mandarin voice came from the microphone tucked between his chest and his arm.

"Boss! I'm willing to work for the organization illegally for the rest of my life! I absolutely refuse overtime pay!"

Xiao Liu gasped.

The gerbil looked at the expressions on the faces of the others and seemed a little confused.

Hey?

Was I not sincere enough?

Stephen Chow stroked his chin and squinted as he looked him over.

"Very good. Vinci's inventions may not be aesthetically pleasing, but at least machines are more honest than humans."

"This belongs to the subconscious precision capture system, which perfectly expresses your true inner desires."

After the laughter and commotion subsided, the atmosphere calmed down.

Each of them received their own quirky pair of headphones.

Director Wang stood a few steps away and saw everything.

The lines on that perpetually expressionless face have softened.

Damn it, these capitalist bastards don't treat people like human beings at all.

Director Wang cleared his throat, straightened his face again, and turned to glare at Zhou Xingxing.

"What are you standing there for, kid!"

"Did you bring them back just to stand here in the cold wind? Call a job evaluation meeting immediately!"

"Submit your preliminary resettlement plan to me today!"

"Yes, Chief!"

The "Spring Breeze Action for the Re-employment of Overseas Exceptional Talents" is now officially launched!

The carefree girl came closer.

She snatched the last spare earphone from the box when Stephen Chow wasn't looking.

She clipped the microphone to her collar and cleared her throat.

She decided to test the accuracy of this broken machine's translation with a broken Chinese sentence she had just learned.

"Zhou Bapi, yes, a heartless boss."

The headphones paused for a second, the red light flashed wildly, and then a perfect London accented English came through.

"Stephen Chow is a capitalist vampire."

Wolverine, who had been observing coldly from the corner, finally couldn't help but grin and laugh out loud.

Stephen Chow's face was as black as the bottom of a pot.

What the hell is this translation?!

Who exactly taught Leonardo da Vinci to use his translation corpus?

This is going to incite internal class conflict!

Deduct his R&D funding! He absolutely must have his R&D funding deducted!

"Stop fooling around, let's get down to business."

Stephen Chow rolled his eyes at the carefree girl, then turned and went inside.

A short while later, he came out carrying a whiteboard with wheels and set it up in the middle of the yard.

A table has already been drawn on the whiteboard with a black water-based pen.

On the left, there are several names written in a column.

The four people at the front of the line were rescued from prison.

Luke Shaw, Harry Kane, Nina Stewart, Martha Barton.

Behind the four were Miguel Rock the gerbil and Logan Howlett the Wolverine.

The column on the right is the corresponding job category column, which is currently blank.

The atmosphere suddenly became serious.

They knew that the moment that would decide their fate had arrived.

Stephen Chow knows this better than anyone else.

These job titles on the whiteboard are not tools for labeling people.

This is a way for these displaced people, treated like monsters and expendable resources, to reintroduce themselves to the world.

With jobs, they gained a social identity belonging to this land.

Stephen Chow put away his playful smile.

"Everyone."

"Starting today, forget about that basement, forget about those barcodes."

"You are the most urgently needed talents awaiting assignment in our great infrastructure construction project in China."

These words even made Director Wang, who was standing to the side, take a second look at him.

When this kid isn't spouting nonsense, he actually looks like a decent human being.

Stephen Chow pulled the cap off his marker and prepared to write on the whiteboard.

"Alright, let's start with our first comrade..."

"Bang."

Wolverine suddenly stood up and placed the enamel water cup he was holding on the stone table next to him, splashing water all over the table.

"Don't assign me any of that damn job!"

His eyes held an unspeakable loneliness and weariness, as well as an instinctive aversion to all organizations.

I've been manipulated enough in my life.

Weapons, monsters, killing machines...

It's just a matter of using a nicer-sounding word now; what's the essential difference?

Wolverine stared into Stephen Chow's eyes and said, word by word:

"I will not work for anyone. I will certainly not be a henchman for bureaucrats like you who wear the government hat."

"I just want to find a place where no one will bother me."