Su Mian dragged him into the gym bathroom before Boss Zhao could start asking questions again. Chen Feng's knuckles were still leaking that black dust, thin streams of it dripping onto the cracked tile floor. Wherever it hit, the grout started fizzing.
"Hands. Now." She shoved his fists under the faucet.
The water ran black for ten seconds, then clear. Chen watched the dust swirl down the drain. His hands looked normal again. Skin, bone, the usual scrapes. But he could still feel it under there, that metallic hum in his marrow, like his skeleton was vibrating at a frequency just outside human range.
"You almost killed him." Su Mian's voice was flat. She wasn't asking.
"I stopped."
"Because I grabbed you. You didn't stop. You got stopped."
Chen turned off the faucet. His reflection in the mirror over the sink looked wrong. Same face, same busted lip from three fights ago, but his eyes—something about the color was off. Darker. Flatter.
"You need to get out of here," Su Mian said. "Tonight. Pack your shit and disappear before my dad starts selling tickets to whatever you're turning into."
"I'm not turning into anything."
"Chen Feng, you were leaking metal."
"I'm fine."
"You're not." She grabbed his wrist, the same one she'd grabbed in the ring. Her hand was warm. Small. He could feel her pulse against his skin, fast and hard. "I don't know what you ate or what's happening to you, but you're not fine. And if you stay here, my dad's going to work you until you break or until you kill someone. Probably both."
Chen pulled his hand back. Not rough. Just enough to get free. "I need the money."
"For what? You live in the supply closet and eat leftovers. What do you need money for?"
He didn't answer. How could he explain it? The rust chunk he'd swallowed three months ago had woken something up inside him. Something that wanted more. Different metals, rare metals, metals he couldn't find in Scrap Alley. And the only way to get those was to climb. Fight bigger, win bigger, until he could buy his way into the real underground circuit where the prize pools had six zeroes and the champions wore custom alloy implants like jewelry.
Steel Claw owned a piece of meteor iron. Chen had heard the stories. A fist-sized lump of metal that fell from the sky twenty years ago, still cold to the touch, denser than anything on Earth. If Chen could get his hands on that—if he could eat it—
He caught his reflection again. For just a second, his eyes flashed steel-gray.
Su Mian saw it too. She stepped back.
"Get out," she said quietly. "Please."
Chen Feng walked past her, shoulder brushing the doorframe. His depth perception was off. He'd grown half an inch since the third fight. His clothes fit tighter across the chest. Looser at the waist. His body was redistributing mass, prioritizing muscle and bone density over everything else. He was burning through calories so fast he'd eaten four protein bars between rounds and still felt hollow.
Boss Zhao was waiting in the office, door half-open, counting cash on the desk. He looked up when Chen came in.
"Sit."
Chen sat.
"You made me thirty-eight thousand yuan tonight." Boss Zhao tapped the stack of bills. "Three fights, three wins, and the last one had a crowd. People recorded it. By tomorrow morning, half the city's going to know about the kid who crushed Chen Wu's hand."
Chen said nothing.
"I want to book you again. Friday night. Warehouse on the south side, bigger venue, better payouts. You'll fight once, maybe twice if you're up for it. We split seventy-thirty."
"Fifty-fifty."
Boss Zhao's smile didn't move. "You're a mop boy who got lucky."
"Then find another mop boy."
The smile finally cracked. Boss Zhao leaned back in his chair, fingers drumming the desk. "Sixty-forty. And you tell me what you took."
"No."
"Then no deal."
Chen Feng stood. His chair scraped the floor. "I'll fight somewhere else."
"You don't know anyone else."
"I'll figure it out."
He was halfway to the door when Boss Zhao laughed. It was a sharp, ugly sound. "You think you're special now? You think three wins makes you a fighter? You're a freak, Chen Feng. And freaks don't last. Someone's going to put you down, and when they do, I'll be there to mop up what's left."
Chen didn't look back.
The gym was closed. Lights off, equipment locked up. Su Mian was gone. Chen walked to the supply closet he'd been sleeping in for two years, pulled the door shut, and sat on the thin mattress someone had thrown out last spring. His hands were shaking. Not from fear. From hunger.
He pulled the protein bars from his pocket. Four of them, the cheap kind that tasted like cardboard and fake chocolate. He ate them all in under a minute, wrappers and all on the last one by accident. Didn't matter. His stomach didn't care. It broke down everything the same now.
Still hungry.
He needed iron. Or copper. Or aluminum. Anything with weight. He'd tried plastic, wood, cloth—none of it worked. His body only wanted metal. The purer, the better. And every time he ate it, every time he fought, he could feel himself changing. Faster reflexes. Denser bones. Harder hits. But also—other things. The color of his blood. The texture of his spit. The way his teeth felt sharper when he ran his tongue over them.
Su Mian was right. He wasn't fine.
But he wasn't stopping either.
Someone knocked on the door. Three slow taps.
Chen opened it.
An old man stood in the hallway, leaning on a cane. Thin, gray hair, cheap suit that didn't fit right, and a face like a crumpled receipt. He smelled like cigarettes and old whiskey. His eyes were sharp, though. The kind of sharp that didn't miss anything.
"Chen Feng?"
"Yeah."
"I saw your fights tonight." The old man's voice was rough, like gravel in a blender. "All three. You've got something in you."
"I'm tired. Come back tomorrow."
"I know what you ate."
Chen froze.
The old man smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "Rust chunk from the east scrap heap. Size of a fist. You chewed it down three months ago because you were so hungry you stopped caring. And now you're evolving."
Chen's hand tightened on the doorframe. "Who are you?"
"Name's Xu. Old Xu, if you want to be polite. I used to run bets on the underground circuit before I lost everything. But I still know people. And I still know metal." He tapped his cane against the floor. The sound rang wrong. Too bright. Chen looked closer. The cane wasn't wood. It was steel. Polished, old, covered in tiny scratches.
"You want something," Chen said.
"I want to make a deal. You let me train you, teach you how to control what's happening, and I'll take you up the ladder. Real fights. Real money. The kind of money that gets you access to metals you've never even heard of."
"Why?"
"Because I'm dying." Old Xu said it like he was talking about the weather. "Liver's shot, lungs are going, I've got maybe two years if I'm lucky. And I spent forty years in the underground watching mediocre fighters waste their potential. I want to see one real monster before I go. Someone who can take it all the way to the top."
Chen stared at him. The old man stared back. Neither of them blinked.
"What do you know about the iron?" Chen asked.
"I know there's more than one type. I know rust wakes it up, but rare metals make it grow. I know Steel Claw's got a piece of meteor iron, and I know you're not strong enough to take it from him yet." Old Xu shifted his weight, cane clicking. "But you could be. Three years, maybe less if you're smart. I can show you how."
"And what do you get?"
"Ten percent of your prize money. And the satisfaction of watching you beat every smug bastard who said I didn't know talent when I saw it."
Chen Feng looked down at his hands. They looked normal now. But he could still feel the hum. The weight. The hunger.
"I'm turning into something," he said quietly. "I don't know what. But it's not human."
"Good," Old Xu said. "Humans don't win championships."
He reached into his coat and pulled out a card. Thick paper, embossed lettering. Chen took it. The text was simple:
INVITATION MATCH Prize pool: ¥1,200,000 Saturday, 11 PM Bring your own blood.
Chen looked up. "This is real?"
"As real as the metal in your bones." Old Xu turned to leave, cane tapping the floor. He stopped at the end of the hallway, glanced back. "Oh, and Chen Feng? Stop letting them hit you. You don't need the pain anymore. You're strong enough now. Start hitting first."
Then he was gone.
Chen Feng stared at the card. His hands weren't shaking anymore. The hunger was still there, low and constant, but now it had direction. He looked at his reflection in the darkened window across the hall.
His eyes flashed steel-gray.
He smiled.
It wasn't a nice smile either.