Reborn with Steve Stand

After Fang Mo hung up the phone,

it didn’t take long for the President to send over a death-row inmate.

From this, it was clear that once both sides reached an agreement of mutual interest, the other party was quite willing to satisfy Fang Mo’s various requests.

Though even the President himself couldn’t figure out why Fang Mo specifically wanted a hardcore pedophile…

If Fang Mo had insisted on having a boy or a girl, or claimed he could only reach “orgasm” when fighting and slaughtering the world’s strongest opponents, the President would still have understood somehow and tried to meet his demands. But this insistence on a pedophile left him at a total loss.

Could it be some special fetish of Fang Mo’s?

At this thought, the American President felt rather bewildered.

He glanced instinctively at his colleagues around him. Considering Fang Mo’s god-like level of power, he figured this bunch of scumbags wouldn’t be able to protect their own skins forever…

…

Fang Mo really had no idea what the President was thinking.

His own plan was very simple: he just wanted to find a place to “whip up” a batch of loyal company employees.

And to avoid drawing attention, he temporarily rented an office building that happened to be vacant.

This building used to be the office space for some other enterprise, but judging from the scene on-site, that company was most likely already bankrupt.

Currently, the entire building is just a hollow shell. All the facilities have been moved out; even the floor tiles are gone. What remains is an uneven concrete floor, where even the sound of footsteps stepping on bits of cement echoes for a long time.

Fortunately, Fang Mo’s only there to “whip up” people.

He doesn’t care much about interior décor or anything like that.

As soon as he received the death-row inmate the President sent, Fang Mo dragged the man into the building, then tore the hood off his head in one motion.

“Ugh—!”

Caught off guard by the sudden removal of the hood, the glaring light from outside made the man squeeze his eyes shut.

Seizing the moment,

Fang Mo carefully studied the man’s appearance.

He was a typical middle-aged white man with a golden, bushy beard. He had a bit of a paunch, was balding, sported a big beer belly and sunken eye sockets. Hair on his arms and chest was also quite thick—perfectly fitting some of Fang Mo’s stereotypical impressions.

“You…”

While Fang Mo was still observing him, the middle-aged man gradually adjusted to the light. Now he opened his eyes in alarm and looked at Fang Mo, asking, “Who are you? Where is this place?”

“Hello, I am Fang Mo-phisto, Lord of Hell.”

Fang Mo smiled calmly. “I know you might not be able to accept your fate, but from now on, you’ll become ‘Huojin,’ the Gatekeeper of the afterlife. I hope you enjoy this job—and make sure to give a thumbs-up to each person who beats you.”

“W-What the hell?!”

As expected, once he heard this, the man’s face showed confusion and terror. “The afterlife? You’re a demon? God, where on earth is this place… Where are those FBI guys?!”

“Prepare to say goodbye to your healthy body.”

Fang Mo didn’t care about his questions. He grabbed the man by the throat and slammed him onto the ground. “Time to fly!”

“Ugh—!!!”

The man’s body crashed heavily onto the floor, and the intense pain made him cry out.

He didn’t even get to beg for mercy before Fang Mo lifted his heel and stomped down hard on the back of his neck. There was a loud crunch, and the man’s cervical vertebrae were instantly shattered.

Ordinarily, that would have killed him on the spot.

But Fang Mo had no intention of letting him die.

A flash of white light followed.

He activated the energy of the “Nether Dimension,”

the same type of energy that originated from the Nether Star and Beacon, theoretically capable of healing any injury.

But Fang Mo didn’t choose to heal him—instead, he warped the man’s body. By the time the light dissipated, the guy was utterly reduced to a severe cripple, unable to care for himself, with only his two thumbs barely able to move.

Even the man’s height and appearance were warped.

His muscles atrophied; he lost height; in the end, Fang Mo even deliberately gave him a pair of glasses.

“Wow, you’re paralyzed over 98% of your body, aren’t you?”

Seeing the man was now able to move only his thumbs, Fang Mo couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s pretty rough. You’d best forget all this.”

Saying so, Fang Mo pulled out the Golden Chalice and began issuing commands.

Although Fang Mo himself knew some tricks to alter memories, they were too much hassle to use directly, so relying on the Chalice was more convenient sometimes.

Before long, the man’s memories were wiped clean.

In their place was a strange, absurd set of false memories.

“All right, done.”

After successfully conjuring such a creation, Fang Mo showed no remorse whatsoever. Instead, he turned to the man and instructed, “Go on, give me a thumbs-up.”

“…”

The man said nothing, but his mouth suddenly twitched, and he lifted a single thumb.

“Good, good, looks like it worked.”

Amused by the bizarre gesture, Fang Mo nodded in satisfaction. It appeared that his Gatekeeper for the afterlife was all set.

Nodding contentedly, Fang Mo then drew an End Dagger from behind him and stabbed it into the man’s belly, sealing him inside.

Of course, there was a reason for this.

At the moment, Fang Mo couldn’t leave this world for too long.

If he returned to his own dimension right away to establish the afterlife’s resurrection rules… then his anchor point in this X-Men timeline would gradually fade until it vanished. By the time he finished dealing with everything and came back, who knows how many years would have passed here?

So Fang Mo could only temporarily seal the guy.

He would toss him into the afterlife to serve as a Gatekeeper once he returned in full.

Anyway, according to Fang Mo’s designs, even if someone managed to win the revival tournament in the afterlife… they’d still have to ride an escalator to return to the mortal world.

And everyone knows that Hawking can’t ride an escalator.

“Right, next up are the employees…”

Having dealt with that freakish centerpiece, Fang Mo turned his focus to ‘realizing’ the Villagers from his storage.

That part was simpler.

He’d done something like this before.

In preparation for various situations, Fang Mo had stored quite a few living entities inside World Boxes within the Minecraft realm. Villagers were, of course, among them. Now he just needed to take them out and ‘realize’ them.

No sooner said than done.

After rummaging a bit in Steve’s backpack,

Fang Mo soon found the corresponding World Box and directed Steve to place it on the ground.

A flash of white light burst forth.

The World Box was successfully realized.

Fang Mo raised a hand and lifted its lid. Instantly, countless human figures emerged before him, followed by an endless white radiance. All the Villagers completed the transformation into reality in that moment.

As the glow faded, a dense crowd of people appeared in front of Fang Mo.

They weren’t those big-nosed creatures one sees in the game, but a large group of normal-looking humans in all shapes and sizes.

Yes, this had already been explained back in the JoJo world: when Villagers are realized, they become normal humans, and their appearance is randomized. They don’t all look identical.

If you had to pin it down: their only consistent traits are absolute loyalty to Fang Mo, and an almost fanatical love of emeralds.

“…”

Gazing at the throng of Villagers,

Fang Mo shook his head and raised the Golden Chalice again.

He lightly sifted through Hank’s memories, weeding out the useless parts—like liking Raven, liking donuts, or feeling ashamed of his mutant appearance. After all, Fang Mo just wanted employees, not an army of Hank clones.

Moreover, even if Fang Mo didn’t mind,

Raven wouldn’t be okay with that, right?

But unlike Charles, Fang Mo was no expert in memory manipulation.

Even with the Chalice, it took him a long time to accomplish this. He spent nearly half a day painstakingly filtering out the irrelevant stuff and retaining only daily-life knowledge and academic learning—basically all of Hank’s knowledge in the scientific field—and then implanting it into the consciousness of this entire group of Villagers.

By the time he finished, a whole day had practically gone by.

“Finally done.”

Letting out a long breath, Fang Mo couldn’t help but complain. He’d put in a lot of effort this time—only in the X-Men world would he bother going to such lengths; in other worlds, he couldn’t be bothered.

“Master,” the crowd of Villagers, having digested their new memories, took the initiative to address Fang Mo. “You want us to run that company, right? Is there anything else besides that?”

“That should be it.”

Fang Mo, who’d just wrapped up his work, flopped onto some nearby steps. “As long as the company stays in our hands, you can slowly turn the world’s humans into mutants.”

“All right. We understand.”

One Villager, seemingly the representative, nodded and continued, “To do that, though, we first need legal identities.”

“I know.”

Fang Mo nodded in acknowledgment. “I’ve already spoken with the President. He’ll have all the relevant departments cooperate. Paperwork is a trivial matter—any one of those departments can pull up the authority to create an ID from scratch.”

“I see.”

The lead Villager nodded thoughtfully. “If that’s the case, we can handle it ourselves.”

“That’s awesome.”

Fang Mo instantly grinned. He was lazy, after all, and hated dealing with anything other than ‘stirring things up.’ So he said, “If you can handle it, go for it. If you really can’t, then come find me.”

It was true these Villagers’ loyalty was off the charts.

Even with Fang Mo saying that, none of them showed the slightest trace of complaint. Instead, they all lowered their heads in earnest contemplation on how to get everything done as efficiently as possible for their master.

“Master,” before long, a Villager spoke up, “We’ll need some startup funds…”

“Go on, take as much as you need.”

With a wave of his hand, Fang Mo scattered a heap of gold ingots all over the floor. After a pause, he tossed out a bunch of emeralds as well. “Here’s your bonus.”

“!”

At the sight of emeralds, every Villager’s eyes lit up.

They didn’t even seem to care that Fang Mo was still there. The entire crowd rushed in, vying for the emeralds with unbridled passion, displaying the most genuine kind of love, free of any other emotion.

“You all have fun with that. I’ll head off.”

Watching the commotion, Fang Mo stretched lazily. “If you run into trouble, just come find me, all right? You know where I am, right?”

“You’re at Xavier’s School,”

someone in the scuffle shouted, holding two emeralds tight.

“Exactly.”

Fang Mo nodded in satisfaction.

It seemed Hank’s memories were indeed proving useful.

In the Minecraft world, everything he realized was essentially ‘top quality,’ and that included living beings themselves.

These Villagers, who in the game were basically mindless or at least seemed so, become top-tier humans once realized. That means their intelligence is higher, and for the most part, they’re more attractive too. They really are “elite” versions of humanity, with all their capabilities surpassing the norm.

Normally, Fang Mo might have worried whether they could adapt to this new world.

But now that he’d implanted Hank’s memories—keep in mind Hank McCoy was a genius, capable of inventing the X-Jet, the serum to suppress mutation, Cerebro, and more.

A genius scientist’s memories, plus a group of top-tier Villagers from beyond this world—

Fang Mo believed that even if he played the hands-off boss, they’d be able to handle it all in no time and run it all smoothly in the long haul.

After all, these Villagers are seriously extreme. They have minimal emotional ties, with no typical attachments to family, romance, or material desires. Deep down, they hold only two convictions: the absolute supremacy of their master and an unwavering love for pure emeralds.

Compared to, say, a group of Nudist Beach members or other worldly enticements, they would probably just prefer gathering together and installing emerald-based… ahem… “accessories” for themselves. That’s a uniquely Villager sort of revelry, also hinting at their extreme cohesiveness and deep distrust of outsiders.

Fang Mo never doubted how frightening their efficiency and execution could be.

You could already see clues of it in the JoJo world.

For instance, the Emerald Chamber of Commerce formed by Villagers there… No matter what orders Fang Mo gave, they’d overfulfill them. If Fang Mo so desired, they might even become an infamous race themselves, then beat magic with magic.

Though, if they really went and wrote a “Bible: The Book of No-Promise,” then Fang Mo might have ended up as Jesus…