American Adventure: My Uncle is Don Quixote

"How did you know?" Mark asked in surprise. "You know him too?"

"He’s my uncle. My goodness," Li Wei said, breaking into a laugh. "We’ve been traveling together for days and didn’t even realize this."

"Mr. Don Quixote is your uncle?!" Mark leaped to his feet. "My God, what are the odds?"

"You have to tell me, how has he been lately? Is he doing okay?" He gripped Li Wei’s hand tightly and didn’t let go. "After his divorce and bankruptcy, he changed his address and contact info. I’ve been trying to find him for a long time with no luck."

"He went through some hard times," Li Wei said with a smile after a moment of thought. "But that’s all in the past now."

"I’m afraid those must have been very hard times," Mark said with a wry smile. "How’s he doing now? Is he alright?"

"He’s my agent now, he has a rich girlfriend, and he got custody of his daughter back," Li Wei said. "Don’t worry, he’s doing great."

"Agent?" Mark froze. He had always assumed Li Wei and Anya were just regular rich kids. "Are you a celebrity? Or an athlete?"

"Do you ever watch football?" Li Wei extended his hand. "NFL, the Giants, Quarterback Li Wei."

The series of bombshells Li Wei dropped left Mark feeling a little dizzy. He steadied himself with a chair and sat down, holding one hand to his head and gesturing for Li Wei to stop with the other.

"Alright, alright, Mr. Li Wei," he said with a wry smile. "Can you give me a second to catch my breath? Each piece of news is more shocking than the last. I need a moment to process this."

"First," he said, pausing to collect his thoughts, "you’re his nephew?"

"A distant nephew," Li Wei nodded. "I came from the Celestial Dynasty."

"Oh, right. Mr. Don Quixote mentioned he had a brother who went to the Celestial Dynasty to make a living," Mark said, accepting Li Wei’s identity. "So, how old are you now? I don’t watch football, but I get the sense that with your age and ethnicity—"

"I’m the first person of Asian descent in history to bypass the NCAA system and enter the NFL," Li Wei shrugged. "If you follow sports news, you probably came across me in the last couple of months."

"I think I have a vague memory of that," Mark said with a wry smile. "But I’m sorry, I mostly follow the tech and chemical manufacturing sectors, so I probably didn’t pay much attention to sports news."

"So he’s your agent now?" He let out a long sigh of relief. "That’s really the best thing that could have happened for him. I imagine an agent’s commission is more than enough for him to get back on his feet."

"That’s right," Li Wei said. "He, his daughter Lily, and I are all living together in Battery City Park in Manhattan."

"Battery City Park? A nice place. Sarah and I lived there for a while, but the school district isn’t as good as the Upper West Side’s, so we eventually moved," Mark said, clearly happy about the news. "That’s really amazing, Mr. Don Quixote."

"Truly amazing," he repeated twice. "Wonderful, wonderful. This is the best news I could have hoped for."

"I can give you his contact information," Li Wei said, taking out his phone, which had no signal. "Maybe you can get in touch with him when you get back to New York."

"That would be great," Mark said, quickly pulling out his own phone. "I was asking around about him a few years back. Sigh, he never should have gotten involved in that mess with Julian—"

"What about Julian?" Li Wei asked sharply. "What’s his connection to Uncle Don Quixote?"

"Mr. Don Quixote never told you about that?" Mark shook his head. "He probably has his reasons. I think it would be better if you asked him yourself."

"Really?" Li Wei frowned. "He even took me to ask Julian for a letter of recommendation."

"And Julian gave it to you?" Mark gave Li Wei a strange look. "You didn’t use it, did you?"

"No," Li Wei shook his head. "I was specially recruited by Yale, so I didn’t need his recommendation letter... What’s wrong?"

"Uh, it’s nothing. Maybe I’m overthinking it... I just feel that Mr. Don Quixote shouldn’t have gotten involved in Julian’s business... though that’s always been his personality," Mark paused. "He’s like a true Knight."

Li Wei nodded in agreement.

But he still felt that Mark was probably holding back the truth out of concern for Julian.

’Was there something wrong with that recommendation letter?’ Li Wei thought. ’If there was, it would explain why Julian avoided me at the party.’

After bidding farewell to a delighted Mark, Li Wei began to wander around the resort.

As he walked, he casually observed the security cameras around him while also gathering some useful information.

For instance, the man who called himself the Prophet, Warren, was also staying at the resort, just like them, in the small building right next to theirs.

Li Wei took a look and realized he could get there by walking along the cliff’s edge.

As he walked, he suddenly caught a faint, bitter smell.

The smell was very familiar, instantly reminding him of the welcome drinks the front desk manager had served.

Following the scent, Li Wei saw the front desk manager in the hallway, carrying a tray with four welcome drinks toward the main entrance for some newly arrived guests.

Li Wei didn’t alert him. Instead, after the manager was finished, he followed him at a leisurely pace. At one point, he even climbed out of a bathroom window and tailed him along the cliffside for a long time, finally arriving at a nondescript room from which he could hear voices.

Li Wei stood outside the wall, quietly observing the activity within.

The room was filled with plants Li Wei had never seen before. Under several rows of high-intensity heat lamps, the plants were growing quite healthily.

Inside, the front desk manager was talking to a man in a dust-proof suit.

"How’s production coming along?" the manager asked, as was his routine, his gaze sweeping over the plants in the greenhouse.

"Everything’s normal," the man in the suit replied without looking up. "Nothing new."

The front desk manager nodded. Just as he was about to turn, he paused.

He frowned and suddenly asked, "Tell me, is it possible for someone to be completely immune to this hallucinogen?"

"It’s possible," the man nodded. "The datura extract acts directly on the acetylcholine receptors in the central nervous system. However, its effects might be weakened or suppressed in heavy drug abusers who have developed a tolerance."

"Then they must have built up a tolerance from shooting up long ago." The manager didn’t press the issue further, simply nodding before leaving the room.

Whether it was the rich girl or the athlete, it was possible they had developed a tolerance from drug use.

After the manager’s footsteps had completely faded down the hall, the man in the lab poked his head out to take a look.

He quickly walked to a corner of the room, brushed aside the top layer of potting soil in an empty flowerpot, and pulled out a medical syringe filled with a pale green liquid.

The man’s eyes grew unnaturally excited.

He expertly flicked the syringe to expel the air, rolled up his sleeve, inserted the needle into a vein, and injected about a tenth of the contents.

In less than ten seconds, the man’s normal expression twisted into a bizarre, ecstatic grin.

"Hehehe... HAHAHAHA..."

He ripped open the zipper on his suit, tilted his head back, and began to laugh foolishly at the heat lamps on the ceiling.

His limbs began to dance wildly as if he were a puppet whose strings were out of control. He danced farther and farther away, eventually leaving the room and disappearing from sight.

Li Wei quietly slipped inside.

He went to the corner, dug through the empty flowerpot again, and, just as he expected, found two full syringes.

"Skimming off the top for yourself, huh," Li Wei muttered. "Consider it confiscated!"

This could be a piece of evidence. Li Wei stored them away carefully.

Just as he was about to leave, he noticed a dispatch log hanging on the wall. It already had some names written on it, but a dose destined for a place called the "Observation Room" had not yet been picked up.

Li Wei carefully examined the previous entries on the log, checked the time, and thought to himself, ’Someone will be here to pick it up in fifteen minutes.’

’Observation Room?’ Li Wei immediately thought of the door he had been blocked from entering earlier.

He slipped back outside and waited quietly for fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes later, a young waitress came in pushing a turf cart. After a sigh, she signed her name on the dispatch log, placed the dose from the table under the turf cart, and left.

He followed her all the way, and just as he expected, she ended up outside the basement from before.

Li Wei activated [Stealth] and stood right beside her as she entered the password.

The door swung open to reveal rows of incubators, at least twenty or thirty of them.

Li Wei didn’t follow her in. Instead, he memorized the password and left.

’I’ll come back late tonight when it’s quiet.’ Li Wei already had a plan.

...

「Late at night.」

Anya was fast asleep beside Li Wei. She had spent the day comforting Sarah and had come back excitedly telling Li Wei that Sarah was feeling much better.

Then she and Li Wei had their own fun for a long while, and now she was lying beside him, letting out soft, even snores.

Li Wei took out the Venom Spider-Man suit again. As he looked at his reflection in the full-length mirror, he suddenly felt that something was off.

’Doesn’t Spider-Man also have no parents, an uncle, and that uncle died?’

He looked at the Spider-Man mask in his hand and suddenly felt a little awkward.

’Sigh, let’s not think about it.’ He put the mask back on. ’I’ll have to get a new costume next time.’

Lost in thought, Li Wei arrived at the entrance to the Observation Room. He used [Stealth] again to bypass the two guards at the door and entered the basement.

He entered the password and gasped at the sight before him.

’If there were really any superheroes in this world, a scene like this would never have happened.’

All twenty to thirty incubators in the room were in use. A medical clipboard was attached to the side of each one, holding a thick stack of observation records.

"#012, Sam and his biological sister..., Day..., Injection..., Assessment:..."

"#014, Jimmy and his female cousin..., Day..., Injection..., Assessment:..."

Li Wei glanced at a random one; they all contained detailed records.

Just then, he noticed another room behind this one.

Inside was an altar, stained a dark brown.

His heart, which had been beating steadily and slowly, began to race at a frantic pace.

He had never imagined that humans could be capable of such absolute evil. The crimes were too numerous to count.

He had never felt such an intense killing intent before. It wasn’t just about killing this heretic; it was about executing him, making him suffer an extremely painful death.

He took out his phone and recorded everything.

On one of the documents, he saw a photo of the person in charge of the Observation Room—it was none other than the brightly smiling front desk manager.

[You have confronted evil. The evidence is conclusive. It is time to burn the heretic!]

"I don’t care if you’re a Prophet," Li Wei muttered to himself. "You will pay for what you’ve done."