Chapter 142: It's Useful (Part 2)_1

Nights in New York are always brightly lit. In the busiest districts of Manhattan, the lights never go out. Amidst the hustle and bustle, the dazzling neon lights dazzle the eyes. A stretch black luxury car passed through a curtain of countless colors and stopped in front of a grand mansion.

The waiter opens the car door, Shiller steps out, following an usher into the elevator. As the elevator ascends slowly until the door opens again, the brilliant light from the hallway floods in. Shiller squints his eyes as he steps out of the elevator.

Turning a corner in the hallway, Shiller enters a room where he sees a hefty figure, standing before a floor-to-ceiling window, overlooking Manhattan's nightlife.

"Mr. Dean, you're here," The man turns. He's fat like a sumo wrestler, with a face full of flesh. His voice is loud and commanding when he speaks.

"Hello, Mr. Kingpin."

Kingpin stands still, his hands behind his back. He sizes up Shiller, and then says, "The famous Dean of Arkham Sanatorium. You're not really an Arkham, right?"

"You're right, Kingpin. You seem to know a lot about me," Shiller walks over to Kingpin, and looks at him, "So, why did you invite me here tonight?"

Kingpin turned and walked a few steps to the side, lowering his head, "If you were just a dean of a sanatorium, I wouldn't have to invite you."

Without waiting for a reply from Shiller, Kingpin continues, "So many strange things have been happening recently, and they all seem to be tied together by an invisible string."

"People mostly focus on Stark, S.H.I.E.L.D., or even Spider Man and Night Devil. But I'm different, I'm interested in this invisible string. What about you, Dean Arkham?"

"Just speak your mind." Shiller replied plainly: "You've invited me here, which means you must've found this string. There aren't many who could do that. This is your ticket."

Kingpin suddenly turns around, his gaze set on Shiller, "You, offering me a ticket? To the underground King of the East Coast? What makes you so confident?"

"If you don't want it, you wouldn't have invited me here. I don't believe that the underground king of the East Coast has only discovered my real name after such an extensive investigation."

"Alright, it seems I haven't invited the wrong person." Kingpin turns back around, "Did you create the Eternal Life Factor?"

"Not at all, it exists in the blood of vampires."

"Stop feeding me that bullshit. We both know it's just hype."

"Oh really? How do you think vampires can live forever?"

Kingpin stares directly at Shiller, seemingly attempting to read him, but Shiller's face remains expressionless. Finally, Kingpin asks, "Do you truly have the technology for immortality?"

Shiller chuckles, "Do you still think I'm bullshitting you now?"

"... I admit, it's too tempting. Nobody wouldn't want to live forever. For a split second, when you retorted, I truly believed."

"I'm not joking, nor am I trying to probe you." Shiller tells Kingpin. "I can offer a batch of approximately 1500 potions, I can guarantee that they have extremely noticeable effects."

Kingpin sits down behind a solid wooden table in the room, Shiller takes a seat across from him. Shiller says, "I'm not here to act as a salesman, nor are we seller and buyer, we can both be sellers."

"What do you mean?"

"Hand Union, Dragon bone."

Kingpin frowns, "You know more than I expected."

"After all, I wouldn't dare accept the invitation just knowing the name 'Kingpin'."

"To my knowledge, the Dragon bone's biggest effect is prolonging life, the Hand Union seeks it to extend the life of their higher-ups."

"For this, they even dispatched hundreds to thousands of assassins, relentlessly searching for this material globally, regardless of the cost."

"Prolong life... Even though I don't know what effect the Dragon bone can achieve, at least in its early stages, it definitely wouldn't be more effective than the potion I have."

Kingpin squints his eyes, catching a trace of peculiarity in Shiller's tone. As the actual underground King of the East Coast, he's very familiar with this type of tone.

He straightens his body, rests his arms on the table and asks, "What benefits does partnering with you bring me?"

"Drop your futile drug-in-school project, it won't change anything. It is the worst method of market expansion."

"Seems like you also have a good relationship with those two annoying flies."

"As long as you can successfully sell the 1500 potions to the Hand Union, of course, we'll take half the profits. Then, soon, some precious bat materials will circulate in the underground markets that you control."

"So, the media's claim that there are only two bat materials left is just a marketing gimmick from you."

Once the business talk started, Kingpin became quite insistent. He said, "Additionally, you must provide me, personally, with an intact bat. It must be the same type that you use to extract the potion."

"If I may be frank, even if I provide it to you, you wouldn't have the technical ability to unravel the secrets it holds."

"You don't need to worry about that."

"At most, I can provide you with some research samples from the Stark Laboratory, including blood, organs, and skin tissue."

"The intact bats are with the S.H.I.E.L.D. Director. As you know, he's a greedy vampire, and you can't sway him without enough incentives."

"I only need one intact bat, that's my bottom line. Otherwise, there's nothing to discuss." Kingpin states.

"It seems we'll have to discuss this condition later, or you could give a call to Nick."

Seeing Shiller's relentless stance, Kingpin surmised that perhaps Nick didn't have many bat samples either. Moreover, although Shiller had formed a collaboration between S.H.I.E.L.D, Stark, and the Osborn Group, there had to be a process of exchanging bargaining chips between them. Now it appeared that all the bat sample chips had landed in Nick's hands. Shiller, the middleman, probably didn't have the power to make decisions.

"Alright, I don't need the complete bat, but the research samples you provide must be brand new and no less than two-thirds of the bat in quantity."

"Deal."

Then, Kingpin asked Shiller, "What are you moving in the 1500 doses you plan to sell the Hand Union?"

Shiller shook his head, "I'm not that stupid to poison it or do other small actions. I know, you're worried that the Hand Union's fierce retaliation would cause heavy losses."

"But in the 1500 doses I provided, you can randomly check, I guarantee, there is no harmful substance in it."

"I don't understand what you're up to. Is this a scheme set up by the S.H.I.E.L.D Director? Is he finally planning to take action against the Hand Union?"

"Why can't your focus shift from fighting and killing?" Shiller said somewhat helplessly, "Can't I genuinely want to do business with the Hand Union?"

Kingpin snorted, "Nick Fury must be getting fed up with these fleas. If it weren't for their ninjas being so hard to kill, S.H.I.E.L.D agents would have come knocking a long time ago."

"That was before when trash was only misplaced resources."

In the end, Shiller told Kingpin, "If you still want to expand your underground empire, I have some good advice, but that's extra, and it will be after our cooperation this time. If you're interested, come find me at Arkham Sanatorium."

After leaving, Shiller was taken away by a S.H.I.E.L.D car. He arrived at Nick Fury's office. Without saying much, they went towards the underground of S.H.I.E.L.D together.

After passing through several closed elevators, they arrived at a huge underground factory.

On the conveyors there, all were individual freezers, and inside these freezers were frozen giant bats.

The storage area of the entire underground factory was over a thousand square meters, filled with countless frozen bats.

Shiller took a report from an agent and after looking at it, said, "Kingpin is forecasting further than I imagined. He agreed to this cooperation very readily."

"What condition did he propose?"

"He needs samples of two-thirds of the bat."

Nick, looking at the piled-up mountain-like froze bats storage area in the underground factory, could hardly keep himself from laughing.

He could imagine that Kingpin and Shiller must have gone through several rounds of confrontations, bargaining, only to end up with this result.

Maybe the underground king felt smug, attracting flatters. He possessed two-thirds of the bat samples, which were only two in total.

Nick kind of felt sorry for Kingpin.

Shiller was not surprised, he just looked at the report and said, "Not all of the ones circulating in the black market can be genuine. We need to mix in some fake ones, then establish a set of standards to identify the real ones."

"Fakes? You mean..."

"That's right. We divide the bats meant for circulation into two types, although they are indistinguishable in essence, one batch has a counterfeit-proof mark, the other does not."

"Put some exclusive marks on ones with the anti-counterfeit mark, or labels indicating the source, then mix them all together and circulate them on the black market."

"You're really ruthless." Nick sighed, "So the Eternal Life Factor they bought is worthless, all of them are fakes?"

"Exactly, serves you right for not coming to our sanatorium for treatment. If you buy fakes, that's what you deserve."

"The sanatorium is out of beds, what could I do? The sanatorium is short of funds, we urgently need donations. If you don't donate, and I don't donate, then you can only buy those indistinguishable Eternal Life Factors on the market."

"I think, your choosing the black market under Kingpin's control, is not so simple? I always feel like you want to trick him."

Nick, crossing his arms and looking at the freezers on the conveyors, said, "I don't believe you would be so kind as to knowingly bait a crocodile that can never be sated into sharing the cake."

"We are currently lacking some means to protect this newly born industry, not only legally, but also through some underhanded methods. I simply chained this crocodile to the cake, to deter anyone who wanted to get a piece of it."

Shiller paused for a moment, then continued, "I have no favorable impression of Kingpin, not because he's the king of the crime empire."

"Whether he is a mob boss or a crime kingpin is not important in my eyes."

"The reason I think he's not a good partner is that he trusts too much in force, thinking that assassinations can solve all problems. He and I are not on the same path."

"Indeed." Nick looked at Shiller and said, "You haven't assassinated anyone, but it seems you've solved all the problems."

"But as I said," Shiller put down the report, looked at the underground factory, and said, "Garbage is a resource misplaced. It's the same for Kingpin."

"At least at this stage, he has his uses."

"That's enough."