Not far from LaGuardia Airport, they arrived at the bustling and lively Manhattan District. For this trip, Xióng Fēng had specifically booked a comfortable hotel suite, planning to get a good night's sleep to replenish his energy. After waking up, he indulged in a lavish feast at the hotel, and then began to wander through the streets and alleys of Manhattan, experiencing the unique charm of the city.
However, all of this was merely a rare moment of peace before Xióng Fēng made his move. In reality, his true purpose for coming here was to conduct on-site reconnaissance, carefully observing and understanding the specific distribution of major shopping malls in the area.
Walking on the bustling streets, Xióng Fēng did not deliberately conceal his face. He merely wore a pair of sunglasses, like any ordinary passerby, to block the dazzling sunlight. But if anyone were to check relevant video records, they would be astonished to find that Xióng Fēng's face in the footage was blurred and unrecognizable.
It turned out that after days of skillfully applying and deeply exploring his own Lightning ability, Xióng Fēng had successfully developed a unique secret technique: using the magnetic force generated by lightning to irregularly scatter it across his face, thus effectively evading the capture of his facial image by surveillance equipment.
He could also use his electromagnetic abilities to make the images captured by surveillance videos appear as a horse, a dog, or a dragon, and so on.
With Xióng Fēng's arrival, the entire New York City began to be shrouded in fear. In just one night, over a dozen large supermarkets, led by the Manhattan area, were plundered. Not even the shelves were left in the spacious supermarkets.
When people realized the anomalous disappearance of goods, all they saw were empty supermarkets, with not even a scrap of waste paper left behind.
Subsequently, the police quickly retrieved the surveillance footage from inside the various supermarkets, but to their shock, the screen only showed a fleeting black shadow resembling a winged leopard, after which all items in the supermarket, including the shelves, vanished without a trace.
Faced with this series of bizarre events, the local police were helpless and eventually had to transfer the case to the Special Operations Team, which was investigating in Deerbruk.
Meanwhile, at this very moment, the instigator, Xióng Fēng, was leisurely sitting in a coffee shop on Liberty Street, basking in the warm morning sunlight.
After savoring his coffee, Xióng Fēng paid and left the cafe. Along the way, he couldn't help but shake his head. This place truly lived up to its reputation as the most prosperous place in the world, with people everywhere; he couldn't find a secluded spot.
Finally, he arrived by the waterway and saw people swimming. Taking a cue from them, he plunged headfirst into the water when no one was looking. In the water, he didn't even need to activate his Water Element Ability; his whole body was in harmony with the water, allowing him to absorb oxygen ions without any equipment.
Following the embankment, Xióng Fēng activated his Earth Element Ability, creating a diagonally downward passage. He did not isolate the water; it flowed along the passage with him.
Estimating that he had descended about 20 meters below ground, he began to move forward horizontally. Forgetting to keep track of time, he carved a long tunnel beneath Manhattan Island, directly leading to underground at 33 Liberty Street.
This was the underground of the Beautiful Country Federal Reserve Bank's New York branch. Utilizing Manhattan Island's hard rock as a barrier, a super bunker had been constructed here. The entire bunker was divided into five levels, each half the size of a football field.
The fifth level was the famously known as the Beautiful Country's largest Underground vault, housing over 8,300 tons of gold from all over the world.
However, despite all his calculations, Xióng Fēng made a mistake this time. He hadn't anticipated that people would actually come to visit the vault in broad daylight. The moment he surfaced, he saw a pair of bright blue eyes looking at him.
But the person looking at him wasn't nervous at all; rather, they seemed very excited. It was a white little girl with braided pigtails, visiting the vault with her parents. They had registered months in advance for this visit.
Xióng Fēng glanced around, put his finger to his lips. The little girl covered her mouth and nodded vigorously with excitement. Then, looking back every few steps, she followed the adults. It was clear that this little girl had a lot of courage and greatly admired this mysterious man, Xióng Fēng.
"What bad luck," Xióng Fēng chided himself inwardly. Since he was already here, he couldn't leave empty-handed. Why hadn't he come at night? He had really shown off too much this time.
He carefully observed the people ahead while he swept through the vault like a whirlwind. Everywhere he went, even the iron racks holding the gold and every metal compartment were cleaned out meticulously.
After collecting half of the gold from the fifth level, the three accompanying security guards were alerted by a voice in their earpieces, "Anderson, look quickly, the gold is gone."
The voice from the security guard monitoring the surveillance exclaimed. The three security guards knew something was wrong, quickly drew their guns, and looked around in confusion.
Xióng Fēng watched their movements while madly using his abilities to collect gold from the vault.
His movements were swift. Although the three security guards saw him, they couldn't track his trajectory. One security guard fired at Xióng Fēng's afterimage, but Xióng Fēng, who was constantly observing, rushed forward and collected the handguns from their hands into his space.
More than ten tourists stared blankly at the bizarre scene until Xióng Fēng had emptied the vault, and then someone finally screamed.
The disarmed security guards were terrified and could only shout for backup through their walkie-talkies.
Having finished his collection, Xióng Fēng approached a wall and activated his Earth Element Ability, merging into the hard rock. Before leaving, he specifically glanced at the girl, about six or seven years old. The little girl's face was flushed red, full of excitement. Xióng Fēng grinned at her, and the girl clenched her small fists and waved them. It was clear she was a girl deeply influenced by Marvel.
After entering the wall, he didn't leave the vault directly but went up one level. It turned out that the fourth level was entirely dedicated to storing US Dollar bills.
Upon entering this floor, it was empty, with no one else present, only stacks of cash piled as high as mountains. Although banknotes had lost their original value after the apocalypse, Xióng Fēng decided to take all of them into his space just to annoy those Americans. After all, when he opens a paper mill in the future, a large portion of these banknotes could be recycled!
As for the third basement level to the first basement level, there was virtually nothing of value. However, as he prepared to leave, he didn't forget to casually take the vault's all-steel door, weighing over a hundred tons, with him. After all, such a solid door, even if recycled, could yield countless items!
Finally, as he departed, he chose the same method as when he arrived – leaving quietly through the underground tunnel. However, this time, the return path was not the same one he took to get here, but he headed in the direction of Liberty Island.