I, Lake, Rely on My Own Strength

Lake and Laura walked out of the aircraft.

The first thing they saw.

Even the seawater near the shore was tinged red. Looking up, they saw countless corpses, along with a group of… slaves?

This wasn’t a normal Earth, after all, but the Marvel Earth. Laborers from Southeast Asia were still in considerable demand here. At the very least, whenever some dark organization wanted manpower, Southeast Asians were their first choice.

The Suicide Squad dared to fight and kill, but they also had their own principles. At the very least, they were different from the other mercenaries who acted without restraint on the battlefield. The Suicide Squad never fired on civilians.

Unless the situation was extremely dangerous—for example, if the enemy was using civilians as human shields. In that case, the Suicide Squad would fire. They weren’t foolish enough to throw away their own lives for complete strangers.

"Highway!"

Barney shouted toward his teammates in the distance, "Guard the aircraft. Don’t let them ambush us."

Highway nodded. "Understood."

Barney walked over to Lake. "So, where exactly is Richard Crawford? The jungle is huge. If we spread out, we’ll be at a serious disadvantage."

Lake nodded. "You’re right. That’s why we need to confirm Richard Crawford’s location."

Lake had deliberately waited until the Tracking Card expired for the reinforcements to arrive. He couldn’t be bothered to spend money extending its duration. Richard was on this island, anyway. How far could he have run?

Besides.

Lake maintained that the reason he had risen to his current position was entirely due to his own strength. With one fist and one gun, he had fought his way to where he was today.

The next second.

Lake took off his backpack, opened it, and pulled out a ruler that looked like one of those essential tools for tomb raiding.

"What’s that…?"

"The Dragon Seeking Ruler!"

Lake looked at Barney, who had turned his gaze toward it, then looked at Yin Yang, whose head was filled with schemes for getting rich through real estate. "You should know what this is, right?"

Yin Yang shrugged.

All right.

He was illiterate.

The Dragon Seeking Ruler was a Class C feng shui-type tool. It could measure feng shui from afar and determine good or bad fortune up close. It could even be used to find people. As long as one was sincere, it would work.

This was a purely technological tool.

It wasn’t supernatural.

Moreover, Lake had specifically brought it along in his backpack. If the Creation Spirit still judged this to be supernatural, then there was nothing more to say. Lake could only bring over his main account.

After all, who could blame him when the Creation Spirit refused to play fair?

Lake took out the slip of paper on which he had already written Richard Crawford’s name. With a click, he pinned it to the Dragon Seeking Ruler, then handed it to Laura. "Hold this and think about your father’s name."

Laura accepted it blankly. She was highly skeptical of what the thing could do, but she still followed his instructions.

After seeing Laura nod, Lake immediately turned the dragon’s head.

"Off you go!"

The Dragon Seeking Ruler began spinning rapidly.

After three rotations, the Dragon Seeking Ruler, which had still been whirling at high speed, suddenly violated the laws of motion and stopped, pointing directly north of them.

Seeing this, Lake looked at Barney. "North."

Barney opened and closed his mouth. He really wanted to say that this seemed a little childish. But he was still thinking about how the Dragon Seeking Ruler had suddenly stopped in defiance of common sense.

Besides…

If the client said north, then north it was. The customer was always right.

Soon.

After Barney had arranged for people to guard their base, he set out with Christmas, Yin Yang, and six temporarily recruited team members, following the Dragon Seeking Ruler’s directions toward the northern part of the island.

The dense forest on this island wasn’t a true jungle in the strictest sense. There were traces of explosions everywhere. Nine years had been more than enough to bomb the entire island into ruins.

And yet, the people of Trinity had still failed to find Himiko’s tomb.

If Lake hadn’t known the truth, he probably would have shared the same thought as Trinity’s manager. Damn it, the men stationed on this island are deliberately slacking off.

As he had said before.

After nine years, even with a shovel, they could have dug through every corner of the island.

"Six o’clock!"

"What?"

"Pfft!"

A flash of brilliance suddenly appeared. A flying knife shot out with a whoosh and pierced the forehead of a mercenary at six o’clock.

Lake looked at Yin Yang. "Your real surname wouldn’t happen to be Li, would it?"

Yin Yang paused slightly. "How did you know?"

"Three o’clock!"

"Pfft!"

Almost as soon as Lake called out the direction, the flying knife in Yin Yang’s hand flashed brilliantly. The next second, another mercenary fell to the ground with a knife in his forehead.

Lake stared at him in amazement. "Li as in Li Xunhuan?"

Yin Yang shook his head. "No. Li as in Jet Li!"

"Impressive!"

"Thank you."

"…"

Even without using any supernatural abilities, Lake’s extraordinarily powerful Sixth Sense was already a passive ability. Even without deliberately activating it, he could still detect hostile presences in his surroundings.

So…

On the way to find Richard Crawford, Lake encountered more than a dozen mercenaries who planned to shoot at them from hiding. Under Lake’s passive ability, the journey became a flying-knife performance featuring the seamless cooperation of Lake and Yin Yang.

The words fell, the knives flew, and the enemies died.

When they were nearly at the destination indicated by the Dragon Seeking Ruler, Barney had the feeling that this wasn’t a mission at all, but a vacation.

A paid vacation, at that.

A ten-million-dollar paid vacation.

When the Dragon Seeking Ruler reached a cliff, it gradually stopped pointing toward a fixed location and began spinning slowly, as though moved by an unseen breeze.

Laura looked at the Dragon Seeking Ruler as it changed, then turned to Lake.

Lake walked to the edge of the cliff, leaned forward, glanced down, and said, "We’re here."

Laura blinked. "We’re here?"

As she spoke.

Laura turned around. Barney and the others formed a tactical formation, shielding Lake and Laura in the center. Looking out, Laura seemed to realize something. She walked over to Lake, leaned forward, and looked toward the dizzying drop.

The first thing she saw.

In the middle of the cliff, there seemed to be a cave.

Lake looked at Laura. "Call out to him."

Laura glanced back at Lake. Then, with excitement, anticipation, and nervousness mixed together, she immediately lay down at the cliff’s edge and shouted down, "Daddy?"

There was no response.

Laura shouted again, "Daddy, it’s me, Laura. Come out and look at me. I’m above you."

Still, there was no response.

After calling out several times, Laura couldn’t help turning back toward Lake.

"After living alone for nine years, he’s obviously experienced auditory hallucinations late at night from time to time. He probably thinks he’s hallucinating again."

As he spoke.

Lake stepped forward and drew his gun with his right hand.

Bang bang bang bang!

He emptied a magazine in one second, then said to Laura while reloading, "Call out again. This time, he should snap out of it."

Laura came to her senses and shouted down again, her voice choked with sobs.

This time, there was a response.

Rustling sounds came from the cave. Immediately afterward, a disheveled man carefully poked his head out. Richard Crawford had somehow transformed himself from a British aristocrat into a wild man of the forest.

Five minutes later.

Under Laura’s astonished gaze, Richard Crawford climbed up the nearly foothold-less mountain with several bare-handed leaps and appeared in front of Laura and the others.

Phew.

Ten million pounds secured.

That was what Lake thought as he checked the time on his wristwatch. He then said to Laura, "Ten minutes. Make it quick. Once your business is settled, it’ll be time to deal with mine, as promised."

The purpose of this trip to the island was search and rescue.

Lake had originally planned to put his own mission first, but after thinking about it, he decided Laura’s temperament was too unstable. If they reached the island without finding Richard first, who knew what kind of tantrum she might throw?

He only had one chance to seize the Creation Spirit’s opportunity. Lake would rather be cautious than take unnecessary risks.

"He’s Richard…"

Yin Yang looked at Richard, who looked every inch a wild man, and couldn’t believe his eyes. "I’ve seen his pictures. The difference is a little too big."

Christmas glanced at him as well, then said to Yin Yang, "If you spent nine years alone on this island, believe me, by the time I saw you again, you’d already be bones."

Yin Yang looked at Christmas helplessly. "Want to make a bet? The Amazon rainforest. Starting point to finish line, one month?"

Christmas chuckled. "Sure. How much?"

Yin Yang thought about it. "Fifty dollars?"

Christmas took a deep breath, fell silent for a moment, then raised his middle finger at Yin Yang.

Among the entire Suicide Squad, Yin Yang was undoubtedly the most frugal. He usually couldn’t even be bothered to use firearms, claiming that bullets were too expensive. Knives, on the other hand, could be recovered and reused.

But if one asked who in the entire Suicide Squad had the highest debt, the answer was still Yin Yang. When he had taken this job, he had calculated that he currently owed the Eastern Kingdom Bank nearly ten million in mortgage payments, not even counting the interest.

This left the members of the Suicide Squad feeling as if surreal reality had come crashing down on them. The stingiest person was somehow also the one with the highest debt.

Five minutes later.

Lake checked the time on his wristwatch. The moment five minutes were up, he walked over to the father and daughter, who were locked in an emotional embrace, and said, "All right. We’ve found him. Hurry up. Once we finish my business, you can say whatever you want on the way back."

Richard Crawford wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes, rubbed both hands against his tattered clothes, and extended one toward Lake. "Thank you, Professor Xavier."

Lake looked down at Richard Crawford’s weathered right hand, shook it, and said with a smile, "Don’t thank me. Just remember to transfer ten million pounds to me later. I paid the rescue expenses up front, after all."

Richard Crawford said, "Of course. Certainly."

With the Suicide Squad.

Christmas raised an eyebrow. "That Professor X just said pounds, right?"

Yin Yang nodded.

Christmas lowered his voice. "So, he’s paying us ten million dollars, and then asking Richard for ten million pounds?"

Yin Yang’s expression turned strange.

This…

Did this count as a classic example of an intermediary making obscene profits?

One pound was equal to 1.4 dollars.

Ten million pounds was equal to fourteen million dollars?

Damn.

That was a straight four-million-dollar profit?