"Oh!"
"Damn it!"
A gunshot rang out, startling Ethan Chen. Luckily, the bullet missed, whizzing past his head. Panicked, he dropped to the ground and ducked behind a nearby car for cover.
"Damn it! Die already!" he shouted, his heart pounding furiously.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted another man stepping out of the driver's seat of the car in front—pistol in hand, blood seeping through his clothes. Apparently, some of Ethan's earlier shots had landed. That moment of distraction had bought Ethan his life.
"You're gonna regret this!"
Rage boiled inside Ethan. He had just stared death in the face. What about his mission? What about the dream of rebuilding the country with advanced tech? He couldn't die here—not before it all began.
"Damn punk. Didn't expect you to be packing heat," the man growled. He looked unsteady, holding a gun in one hand and pressing the other to his bleeding abdomen.
"Thought you were an easy mark, huh? Out of ammo yet? Come out and face me!"
Bang!
Another shot blasted toward Ethan's hiding place. He clenched the rifle in his hands, paralyzed. His mind screamed for a solution.
"Damn it... If I had Captain America's physique, this wouldn't be a problem!"
Ethan cursed under his breath. This wasn't a video game. He'd only ever shot targets at a firing range—he'd never been in a real-life gunfight. He got lucky with the first guy by catching him off guard, but this one wasn't going to go down easy.
His hands trembled.
"Think, Ethan. Think!"
Then it hit him.
"Xiao Ai, how far can I deploy items from the warehouse?" he asked urgently.
"As long as it's within your line of sight," she answered coolly.
That made sense. Deploying handheld items like guns directly into his grip was one thing—but what about bigger equipment?
"Then drop that Porsche you produced earlier... straight on top of this guy's head."
"Got it."
It was a simple but brutal plan—crush the guy to death with a car.
The system's manufacturing capabilities were insane. Earlier that day, while heading to the shooting range, Ethan had created his own custom car model. After analyzing the Porsche he'd seen, the system had already built a duplicate within an hour.
And now, that same Porsche materialized out of thin air above the man's head.
CRUNCH!
The guy never saw it coming. Focused entirely on Ethan, he didn't even notice a car dropping from the sky.
Despite being built with lightweight carbon fiber, the Porsche was still a thousand-kilogram death machine. It slammed into him, crushing him instantly into an unrecognizable pulp.
"Holy crap... it's over."
Ethan slowly stood up, cautiously scanning the area.
"No more gunshots... no more movement..."
Gun in hand, he circled the wreckage, stepping carefully over the blood-soaked asphalt and twisted steel.
"Wait... is that...?"
Through the shattered window of the attackers' vehicle, Ethan caught a glimpse of someone inside. His brow furrowed.
It was her—the fashionable woman in the Porsche. Only now, her once-perfect figure was riddled with bullet holes.
"You tried to have me killed over a slap?"
Ethan recognized her immediately. She was the same woman from earlier—the entitled driver he'd had a heated encounter with. Clearly, she hadn't taken it well and had enlisted two hardened criminals to ambush him.
Whatever excuse they had—"just trying to scare him" or "teach him a lesson"—nobody was going to believe that. This was a hit job, plain and simple.
"Guess I just did society a favor."
Looking at the mess—three dead bodies, one of them flattened by a car—Ethan knew he had to clean things up, and fast.
"No other choice. I have to get out of here... but not without covering my tracks."
Thankfully, the Porsche now sitting at the scene was identical to the woman's. It would be easy to make it look like it was her vehicle. The only thing Ethan needed to do was swap his own bullet-riddled car for a fresh one.
He opened the system interface, stored his bloodstained car back into the warehouse, and summoned a clean version to take its place.
As for the corpses, guns, and evidence... he wasn't going to linger.
"Just plant a few fake wounds on that guy's body and let the cops figure the rest out."
He dragged the first attacker's body out of the car and scattered some forged scars across him using a quick system tool. Then, with the scene staged to look like an internal conflict among criminals, Ethan drove away.
Fingerprints? They wouldn't matter if he wasn't a suspect to begin with.
By the time investigators arrived, the entire case would be a mystery—two men full of holes, one crushed by a car, and a woman with more bullets than brain cells. It was likely to become an unsolved case.
"Xiao Ai, can you identify those guys?"
"Li Zhigang. Fugitive. Class A wanted criminal. Three confirmed homicides."
"Liu Xiongfei. Fugitive. Class A. Serial murderer."
"Tian Ting. Business owner. Sand and gravel factory..."
Ethan rolled his eyes. He didn't need more info on her. Her company was shady, and she'd been caught running with fugitives. That was enough.
"Forget it. What's done is done."
The priority now was disposing of the damaged car and ensuring he left no trace.
But even in all the chaos, Ethan couldn't help but marvel at his warehouse's hidden potential.
A near-limitless storage space.
Instant deployment of anything within line of sight.
And a production function capable of creating weapons, vehicles, and even tactical tools within hours.
The more he explored the powers of the Huaqiangbei system, the more amazed he became.
One thing was for sure—this system was far more than a convenience.
It was a weapon. A game-changer.
Huaqiangbei... you're incredible.