Chapter 302: Giving You a Loan
Lu Chen formed a hand seal with one hand.
Dense thousands of deep red chains emerged from the space in all directions.
But what flowed through them was not Cyttorak's dimensional energy; Lu Chen's energy seized the spot a step ahead, and the crimson chains wrapped around one after another, tightly hanging the monster in mid-air.
With a thought, energy weaponization activated.
But this time, he didn't use his own energy.
The borrowed power of the Crimson Lord, which had nowhere to be unleashed, was stuffed into the mold of a long sword.
Countless flying swords formed around the monster, each wrapped in crimson light and flames from a higher dimension, layer upon layer filling the sky.
"Go."
A torrent of blade edges poured down from the sky.
Thousands of swords piercing the heart.
The golden light on the monster's body was still operating desperately, greedily swallowing the dimensional energy stabbed into its body.
The wounds were being pierced through on one side while being forcibly healed on the other.
Lu Chen watched it absorb without feeling any heartache at all.
Anyway, it wasn't his energy, so absorb away; however much it absorbed, the tab was charged to Cyttorak's side.
But as it kept absorbing, the golden light on the monster's body began to change color.
First orange, then red, and finally turning into a blood-like crimson.
Something extra appeared in its eyes, and that wasn't its own consciousness.
An ancient, domineering will accompanied by the sound of clashing chains was descending into this body along with the absorbed energy.
The debt-collection program set by the Crimson Lord had come to collect the goods.
The monster opened its mouth, but what came out was a scream with two overlapping voices.
The monster's soul was dragged out of its body by a higher-level force, and even its physical body began to shift toward the Crimson Dimension.
It struggled frantically, but it didn't have Lu Chen's means to suppress the power of magical entities.
Lu Chen watched its body on the verge of collapse, raising his hand to form another Dharma seal.
Vishanti's white light descended from the sky, pouring directly onto that mass of crimson.
That force of order crashed into the monster's body, forcibly dispersing the will left behind by Cyttorak.
The two dimensional forces tugged at each other inside the monster's body, and cracks appeared simultaneously on its bones, muscles, and energy core.
Its recovery speed finally slowed down.
The crimson power retreated from the wounds and was completely retracted by Cyttorak.
The bloody light on the monster's body dissipated, leaving only a broken body hanging on the chains.
Only then did Lu Chen walk over and look down.
This body was left with almost nothing but an empty shell; its energy was drained, its soul torn to shreds, making it no different from a piece of dead meat.
He reached out and pressed his hand on the monster's forehead.
Matter Transmutation.
Grayish-white spread outward from under his hand, turning skin, muscle, and bone into rough granite layer by layer.
A few seconds later, an open-mouthed, distorted-expression stone statue appeared on the ground.
Lu Chen withdrew his hand and nodded with satisfaction.
This practical test of borrowing energy had a pretty good effect.
Especially when encountering this kind of energy-absorbing thing, feeding it with someone else's power—if it died of overeating, it was Cyttorak's problem; if it starved, it was its own.
This trip was originally just to save people, and it was only a temporary idea when he saw that layer of golden light.
He didn't expect the harvest to be quite substantial.
Lu Chen waved his hand casually.
The folded and twisted space quickly closed up like a ripped-apart plastic wrap.
The light of the World fell back into the underground passage.
Just in the half-second when the Mirror Dimension closed, Wong subconsciously glanced inside.
The entire Manhattan block was forcibly flattened, skyscrapers collapsed into deep trenches like crushed building blocks, and the water of the Hudson River poured backward into it, washing over the charred deep pit.
Wong's eye corners twitched fiercely, and his hand holding the Wand of Watoomb tightened even more.
Is this the foundation of the next Sorcerer Supreme?
Sorcerer Ancient One always talked about respecting the balance of nature and restraining the borrowing costs of dimensions on ordinary days.
But Lu Chen was something else; he borrowed the Crimson Lord's energy to use as firewood and casually plowed through the entire Manhattan mirror image.
How was this a mage? This was clearly a fierce beast wearing mage robes.
Wong hid the wand behind his back, secretly suppressing the shock in his heart.
"Boss!"
Wanda hurried over, her chestnut curly hair somewhat disheveled. She looked Lu Chen up and down, and seeing that not even a speck of dust was on Lu Chen's overcoat, her eyes finally softened.
Behind her, Pietro walked over baring his teeth and wincing.
Although his broken bones had been forcibly reconnected by Lu Chen using blood manipulation, the previous sharp pain was still darting wildly through his nerves.
Pietro caught sight of the grayish-white granite statue standing in the center of the passage at a glance.
The monster's mouth was still wide open, its face covered with terrified and distorted lines, and all its muscle fibers had turned into hard stones.
"Screw you!"
Gritting his teeth, Pietro raised his leg and kicked hard twice at the stone statue's buttocks.
With two muffled thuds, a few pieces of stone chips fell off.
Rubbing his sore toes, Pietro gasped: "This damn thing almost broke my bones just now. Boss, why didn't you blast it directly into slag? Keeping it as an exhibit takes up too much space for my liking."
"Keeping it is useful; there are still quite a few interesting gene samples inside." Lu Chen glanced at him. "Shut up if you can walk. You almost lost S.H.I.E.L.D.'s future Director just now."
Pietro shrank his neck and laughed sheepishly, not daring to make a sound.
At this time, Coulson supported Skye, who had weak footsteps, as they walked over.
Although Mei's face was still as pale as paper, her hand holding the tactical pistol was steadily raised in front of her chest.
As for Ward, whose spine had just been reconnected, he silently retreated into the shadows, lowering his head with shifting eyes, his heart filled with shock and fear at being casually saved back to life by Lu Chen.
Coulson looked at the mess all over the floor, then at the dozens of Skrulls standing motionless on both sides of the passage. Although the stone in his heart had landed, his brow locked even tighter.
"Mr. Lu, thanks to you this time." Coulson wiped the cold sweat from his face and pointed to both sides of the corridor, "However... how should these Skrulls be dealt with? They seem to be scared silly, and don't even have any intention of running."
Lu Chen didn't answer.
Intuition told him something was wrong.
It was too quiet.
Under the circumstances where their stronghold was destroyed and their trump-card combat power was wiped out, these fanatical alien lizards neither counterattacked nor fled, just propping themselves up like wooden stakes. This simply didn't make sense.
The next moment, a sudden change occurred.
The more than seventy Skrulls who had been standing obediently against the wall had their necks pulled as if by the same steel wire, making a neat cracking sound with their movements, and simultaneously turned their heads, their hollow green eyes staring straight at Lu Chen.
Exactly seventy mouths opened at the exact same second.
A man's roughness, a woman's shrillness, an old person's hoarseness—dozens of vocal timbres mixed together, forming an extremely harsh, monotonous heavy accent:
"Lu Chen."
Chapter 303: Where the Hell Did These Alien Hillbillies Come From
Skye was so frightened by the horror-movie-like scene that she gasped, clutching her head and shrinking behind Coulson.
Mei clicked off the safety of the pistol in her hand directly, her muzzle sweeping rapidly between the two rows of figures.
"It's indeed identical to the files I saw in S.H.I.E.L.D.."
"Endless means, a powerful physical body, and you are still growing stronger... You can even easily defeat the Super Skrulls made using your blood sample."
Lu Chen's eyelids twitched.
My blood sample?
No wonder that monster's self-healing just now was so abnormal; as expected of me.
"But it doesn't matter anymore." Seventy Skrulls sneered in unison, their mouths pulling into a sickeningly disgusting smile, "I have already obtained all the experience to make complete Super Skrulls. Next time, I will definitely be fully prepared. No one can stop us from conquering this Planet, including you, Lu Chen."
The very next second after the harsh words were finished.
Snap.
It was like a main power switch being pulled down.
Without any extra movement, the lights in the eyes of the seventy Skrulls went out simultaneously, slamming straight down toward the ground.
Thud, thud.
The dull sounds of falling merged into one in the corridor, and seventy corpses sprawled haphazardly across the concrete floor, completely losing their breath.
They died completely cleanly, without even a shred of struggle.
"Th-This... What is going on?" Coulson stepped forward quickly and probed the carotid artery of a fake Police officer, his expression turning extremely ugly, "Did they commit suicide?"
"It doesn't look like suicide."
Lu Chen took two steps forward.
"It's more like a Hive mind link. Just like those Chitauri soldiers during the Battle of New York, a Hive Commander inserted mind slices into these people's brains. Using their mouths to threaten me, and then pulling the power switch casually afterwards to prevent intelligence leakage."
Lu Chen sneered.
Wanting to pat your ass and leave right after running your mouth?
"You come when you want, and leave when you want—did I agree?"
Lu Chen raised his right hand, his five fingers slightly contracting.
Overbearing psychic psychokinesis whistled out, directly grabbing the nearest Skrull corpse on the ground into the air, steadily suspending it mid-air.
Wong frowned as he looked at Lu Chen: "Their brain nerves have been completely burned out, and necromancy or memory extraction should be completely useless against such charred remains."
Lu Chen chuckled dismissively.
"If he were to unilaterally detonate the psychic bombs in these people's brains, I would indeed have to spend a bit more effort to find him. But in order to pursue that showing-off effect of seventy people speaking simultaneously just now, and to better control his subordinates, in those short few seconds just now, his origin consciousness connected with these seventy puppets into a complete net."
Lu Chen brought two fingers together, and a faint white light lit up at his fingertips.
That was the Light of Order of the Vishanti.
"Since they are connected into a net, the network cable cannot instantly evaporate just by pulling the plug." Lu Chen looked at a wisp of faint psychic aftermath that had not yet dissipated on the corpse's forehead, "This psychic thread isn't even cold yet."
Track and locate, following the clues.
In Kamar-Taj's mystic arts system, this was merely a basic tracking spell, but under the blessing of Lu Chen's extremely abundant magic, this hair-thin psychic fragment was instantly lit up into a straight band of light piercing into the distance.
Lu Chen raised his left hand, and his Sling Ring slashed violently through the air.
"A bunch of alien hillbillies, let's go, time to check the water meter."
Meanwhile.
Hundreds of kilometers away from Manhattan, a Skrull Base hidden underground in an abandoned nuclear power plant.
Gravik violently ripped off the neural conduction helmet on his head, panting heavily. His face was ashen, and two streams of fresh blood slowly flowed from his nasal cavity.
"Damn bastard!"
Gravik smashed his fist fiercely onto the console, the hard alloy control panel being dented with a fist print by him.
Although it was extremely satisfying to speak those harsh threats through the mouths of seventy subordinates just now, in his heart there was only towering anger and a trace of panic that even he was unwilling to admit.
That Super Skrull was the ultimate weapon he had piled up by expending countless painstaking efforts and draining most of the Base's inventory resources.
He had integrated Hulk's violent muscle sample, added the Abomination's bone-strengthening tissue, and even extracted Carol Danvers's blood sample left behind on laboratory instruments decades ago. What he had placed the highest expectations on was that Lu Chen blood sample of the highest internal security classification within S.H.I.E.L.D..
According to his prediction, once the blood sample integration was successful, the Super Skrull would not only inherit Captain Marvel's perverted characteristic of absorbing energy, but could even directly replicate Lu Chen's endless abilities!
But what was the result?
The result created by integrating Lu Chen's blood sample was merely a Frankenstein's monster that was super resistant to beating and had super-fast self-healing!
Lu Chen's bizarre energy manipulation, space-folding spells, Super Speed, and even the means of instantly turning living creatures into granite—this creation failed to inherit even a fraction of their fur!
That incomparably expensive blood sample was like the most ordinary saline solution in the fusion chamber; other than slightly raising the physical upper limit after integrating into Hulk, it completely failed to parse out any deep-seated abilities.
Not only that, the monster didn't even last a few minutes in Lu Chen's hands, being beaten into stone alive like a stray dog.
"Trash... You're all trash!"
Gravik wiped away his nosebleed, forcing himself to calm down.
He couldn't rush.
Since a direct frontal assault couldn't take down Lu Chen, they would execute the second plan. First, provoke a nuclear war between major powers, create global chaos, and let these conceited humans march toward destruction in internal consumption. The Skrulls could completely lurk in the shadows and slowly harvest blood samples from more high-tier super-powered individuals.
As long as there was enough time, and as long as they obtained the genes of more powerhouses, this Planet would sooner or later be within their grasp.
As long as they hid deep enough, whether it was S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Vought Company, this Planet would sooner or later belong to them.
Gravik's thoughts abruptly jammed.
In his mind, the surviving thought network suddenly transmitted back the shared vision of a sentry subordinate.
Directly above the central control room of the nuclear power plant, a golden-yellow speck of light inexplicably appeared in the air.
That speck of light vibrated at high speed, like a spark fanned by the wind.
Sizzle!
The light star suddenly spun into a ring, and countless dazzling golden-orange sparks surged out crazily.
A circular cross-space portal tore through the reinforced concrete dome above the nuclear power plant without any warning, forcefully resting right above his head.
On the other side of the portal.
Coulson's entire team was fully armed with live ammunition, Mei's muzzle locked straight onto his forehead, and Skye put on headphones, carrying an RPG on her shoulder, her eyes full of anger.
At the very front, Lu Chen looked down at him condescendingly, a barely concealed mockery hanging at the corner of his mouth.
Gravik froze entirely in place, his mind blank.
How is that possible?!
For absolute secrecy, he had even personally killed those seventy elite subordinates who had lurked for many years, wiping out all communication lines.
How on earth did Lu Chen cross hundreds of kilometers to pinpoint his location here within a minute?!
This is simply unscientific.
How the fuck did he pull this off!
Chapter 304: Eat My Uncle Pietro's Big Slap
The air underground in the nuclear power plant was stiflingly stagnant.
The exact second gold-orange sparks tore open the alloy dome, the scales all over his body stood on end.
Portal, Lu Chen, and that group of dead-yet-resurrected S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents.
They had all come.
How they arrived no longer mattered; if he didn't run now, he would be left here just like that stone statue from earlier.
Gravik pushed off hard with the soles of his feet, catapulting his entire body toward the escape secret passage in the rear.
Gravik Super Skrulls Form
Lu Chen stood at the edge of the portal, watching.
Running?
In this confined control room, a lizard relying on two legs wanted to slip away right under the nose of a speedster?
Lu Chen only found it laughable inside his heart.
It seemed this bunch of alien scum wasn't just arrogant; their brains truly weren't working very well either.
A silvery-white shadow trailing the sound of the wind chased directly after him.
"Did I tell you that you could move?!"
Pietro had bottled up a stomach full of aggrieved anger that finally found an outlet.
He didn't give Gravik any chance to approach the escape passage door at all, taking a step out as his figure dragged five or six afterimages through the air, directly cutting off the other's path.
Slap!
A big slap viciously landed across Gravik's face.
The sound of the slap exploded in the empty underground Base, and Gravik's entire body was smacked into a horizontal half-turn in mid-air, three molar teeth mixing with thick blood flying out on the spot.
Before he could hit the ground, Pietro reversed his hand for yet another forehand slap!
Slap!
Gravik's head whipped violently to the other side, his nasal bone collapsing with a snap, his entire face swelling up with a large bluish-purple lump at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"Running? Keep running, you fucking bastard!"
Pietro got more and more spirited the more he hit, his spit flying faster than his hands, "Weren't you very majestic just now in the underground stronghold? Acting all high and mighty with our boss across dozens of corpses, who are you putting on an act for?!"
Gravik let out a Beast-like roar from his throat, attempting to raise his hand to grab Pietro's throat.
But he clearly overestimated his own abilities.
The early experiments were still imperfect, and for the sake of safety, this true body of his had only been injected with the early Super Soldier Serum, having no time at all to fuse those high-risk genes of various deities and demons.
This level of physical strength might allow him to walk sideways in front of ordinary Agents, but in front of Pietro, who was high on drugs and whose physical body had reached LV6, he was as fragile as a rotting piece of wood.
Pietro grabbed his wrist and snapped it, his other hand executing a rapid chain of blows.
Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!
The alternating slaps merged into a dense series of explosive sounds.
Gravik was slapped into wobbling in place like a spinning top, his two green pointy ears even beaten until they folded backward.
"Speak! How did that stitched monster just now run so fast? Did you steal my blood?!"
Pietro cursed loudly while slapping, "You green-skinned knockoff, you even dare to steal my unique skills? Why don't you take a piss and look at yourself to see if you're worthy!"
At the entrance of the control room, Coulson watched with his eyelids twitching wildly.
It wasn't that he sympathized with this alien leader.
It was mainly because Gravik currently looked too miserable; his entire head was swollen bigger than a watermelon, his mouth filled with nothing but bloody froth and vague whimpering, and the clothes on his chest were completely soaked in blood.
If they hit him with lethal force for two more slaps, this head would definitely burst open like a watermelon.
They still had too much fatal intelligence in their hands that needed to be pried open.
For instance, just how many Skrulls were lurking on Earth?
Among the security departments, White House, and Military of various countries, exactly which high-ranking officials had been swapped out for alien monsters?
If Gravik was beaten to death just like that, all these clues would be cut off.
Coulson opened his mouth, turning his head to look at Lu Chen.
Lu Chen had both hands buried in the pockets of his black coat, the corners of his mouth still carrying a hint of playful amusement from watching a show.
Since Lu Chen didn't shout stop, Coulson didn't dare to rashly court bad luck.
Since he hadn't stopped them, he likely knew what he was doing.
Coulson swallowed back the words at the tip of his tongue, raising a hand at the same time to pull back Skye behind him.
Skye was clenching her fists, fire literally shooting from her eyes.
Just now in the underground stronghold, her head had almost been shaken into paste by sonic waves, and she wanted to settle this account more than anyone else.
Ward, standing nearby, was shaking with anger even more.
Finally, Pietro had enough of hitting.
He shook his sore palms, took two steps back, awkwardly rubbed the back of his head, and turned to look at Lu Chen.
"Boss, the feel was too smooth, I laid my hands a bit too heavy."
Pietro grinned sheepishly, baring a mouthful of white teeth, "But he's still hanging by half a breath, not completely dead yet."
Gravik collapsed on the ground like a puddle of rotting mud, exhaling more than inhaling, his chest rising and falling weakly, his whole face a bloody, mutilated mess.
Lu Chen glanced at Gravik on the ground, turned around, and jerked his chin toward Coulson's team.
"Settle your grievances and take your revenge. Those who want to hit him, hurry up and go give him a couple of kicks. Once you guys vent your anger, I'll take this thing away."
Hearing these words, Ward's eyes lit up, and without almost any hesitation, he strode toward Gravik.
He had bottled up monstrous frustration in his heart.
Having just obtained Compound V from Lu Chen's hands and awakened the LV4 Super Physique, he originally thought he could flex his muscles greatly between HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D.,
yet in the underground stronghold he hadn't even lasted a single move, directly having his cervical vertebrae crushed and being thrown on the ground like garbage.
That sense of powerlessness and humiliation burned in his heart like a branding iron.
Skye had originally taken half a step forward as well, but after poking her head out to take a look at Gravik's current visage—blood from his nose and pus smeared together, the flesh of his cheeks beaten to a pulp, his whole person emitting a thick stench of blood—
Skye curled her lips in disgust and pulled her foot back.
"Forget it, it'll dirty this lady's shoes."
She crossed her arms, let out a huff, and turned her head away.
Ward didn't have such cleanliness obsessions.
He walked up to Gravik, first looking back at Lu Chen.
Seeing that Lu Chen's expression was calm and didn't carry any sense of disgust or probing, the fierce light in Ward's eyes was completely revealed.
"Alien bastard."
Ward cursed through clenched teeth, raised his hard-toed combat boot, and delivered a heavy kick directly against Gravik's side ribs!
Bang!
The crisp sound of breaking bones was exceptionally clear in the confined space.
Gravik twitched in pain, his body arching.
Ward crouched down, swung his hammer-like right fist, and hammered three consecutive punches directly at Gravik's chest.
Every single punch caused the skin and flesh to cave inward.
The stifled frustration in his heart was mostly vented along with these heavy blows; Ward let out a long breath, feeling refreshed all over.
He stood up, wiped the bloodstains off his fists, and turned around, preparing to thank Lu Chen.
At the very instant Ward turned sideways, Gravik, who had previously been like a dead dog, suddenly opened his eyes!
In those bloodshot green eyeballs, there was no pleading, only crazed malice.
Relying on the very last shred of strength brought by the Super Soldier physique, his entire body exploded up from the pool of blood, his emaciated fingers reaching straight for Ward's lower back.
Click!
The large-caliber sidearm custom-made by S.H.I.E.L.D. was instantly pulled out by him.
"Watch out!" Coulson shouted.
Pietro was standing a few meters away, rubbing his chin and pondering what kind of combat suit to customize from Lu Chen after going back—whether silvery-white and cool or cyberpunk and handsome—when the sound of a holster being pulled suddenly reached his ears.
He moved his feet, wanting to rush forward, but Gravik wasn't aiming at anyone else at all.
Drawing the gun, twisting the wrist, reversing the muzzle!
The entire set of actions was accomplished in one go within half a second.
Gravik didn't even spare Ward another look, directly pressing the pitch-black muzzle tightly against his own left chest.
Chapter 305: Life and Death Are Out of One's Hands
Bang!
The gunfire exploded into a fireball in the dim control room.
At point-blank range, the special armor-piercing bullet tore through flesh and blood, piercing from his chest through to his back, bringing out a large, dazzling splash of blood and directly blasting a gaping, translucent hole straight through his heart.
Ward froze in place, his expression instantly turning extremely ugly.
Pietro landed beside him, looking at Gravik lying on the ground, and slapped his thigh in annoyance: "Damn! This bastard actually committed suicide!"
Gravik lay flat on his back on the ground, large mouthfuls of blood gushing out of his mouth.
His heart was completely shattered, and his vitality was rapidly draining away from this shell.
Yet he was smiling.
A ferocious and distorted smile was pulled across his blood-stained and mangled face, his gaze staring straight at Lu Chen, his voice intermittent, yet carrying an unforgettable curse.
"Useless… Lu Chen…"
The bloody foam at the corners of Gravik's mouth bubbled continuously, every word like venom squeezed from the depths of his throat: "The infiltration plan… has already been fully launched… All our compatriots will enter the highest level of silent infiltration… Even if you kill me, it's useless…"
He glared at the few people before him, his eyes filled with the malicious joy of having his revenge fulfilled.
"The fuse to instigate a nuclear war has already been lit… The arrogant humans will burn themselves to ashes in the raging fire… When the ashes of the nuclear winter fall… The Skrulls… will completely take over everything on this Planet! We will wait for you… in hell…"
After finishing the last half sentence, the fanaticism in Gravik's eyes slowly solidified.
His pupils began to dilate, his chest stopped heaving, and he closed his eyes peacefully, a sneer still hanging at the corners of his mouth—the sneer of someone who thought they had won the game of chess—lying quietly on the ground waiting for Death to descend.
The control room fell into an eerie silence.
Coulson's expression was gloomy; the clue was broken.
Gravik had sealed off all intelligence sources by committing suicide.
If it was truly as he said, that the Skrulls had fully infiltrated and were preparing to push for a nuclear war, then the entire World would slide into an unpredictable abyss.
Ten seconds passed.
Twenty seconds passed.
Half a minute passed.
Gravik, who should have fallen into eternal darkness, found that the shred of consciousness in his brain not only did not dissipate, but inexplicably became clearer and clearer.
Even… he felt that the tearing pain in his chest was rapidly receding, replaced by a warm current.
What was going on?
Was the World after Death originally like this? Did hell even come with heating equipment?
Carrying a head full of confusion, Gravik tremblingly opened his eyes.
What met his eyes was neither the sulfur and Fire of hell, nor the ancestral spirits of the Skrulls.
The first thing he saw was Pietro's face, flushed red from holding back laughter.
Beside Pietro, Skye covered her mouth, her shoulders trembling, tears almost laughing out.
Even Mei, who was usually reticent and serious, couldn't control the corners of her mouth from twitching twice.
Gravik was stunned.
He instinctively lowered his head to look.
He saw that the heart area that had been blasted to pieces by the armor-piercing bullet was now shrouded in a layer of dazzling golden brilliance.
That light was pure, magnificent, carrying an ancient and mysterious rhythm of the Universe.
Countless golden threads shuttled and wove rapidly among the flesh and blood, the blasted myocardial tissue crazily reorganized like a reversed movie, the broken ribs automatically closed, and the shattered blood vessels were reconnected.
The large hole in his chest that went straight through was more than half healed, and even a layer of light green new skin had grown out.
Thump, thump.
From the place where he had regained a new lease on life, a strong and powerful beating sound came once again.
Gravik was completely dumbfounded, his green pointed ears frozen in mid-air, his brain buzzing.
What the hell kind of magic was this?!
Lu Chen had one hand in his pocket, his other hand hanging casually by his side, and the wisp of Ajak's cosmic healing energy on his fingertips was slowly receding.
He looked down condescendingly at the bewildered Gravik, his eyes carrying the indifference of looking at a laboratory white mouse.
"The Cosmic Energy of aliens, isn't it amazing?"
Lu Chen spoke, his steady voice echoing in the quiet control room.
"Want to die? Have you asked for my opinion?"
Lu Chen twitched the corners of his mouth, revealing a chilling smile.
"Your Death can only be decided by me."
New York, Vought Company laboratory.
Banner looked at the half-man-high silver instrument on the laboratory bench and let out a long breath.
It was finally done.
The large-scale Skrulls screening device had an effective radius covering the entire country.
Once activated, those alien lizards disguised as humans would light up on the radar like light bulbs.
Banner turned his head, looking at Fitz and Simmons beside him who were flushed with excitement.
These two young people had pulled several all-nighters, their eyes full of bloodshot veins, but their spirits were as excited as if they had been injected with chicken blood.
"Miss Simone, the instrument has been debugged and can be integrated into the Vought Company's satellite network at any time," Fitz rubbed his hands and said to Simone standing at the door.
Simone glanced at her watch and smiled at the two of them.
"You've worked hard, you two. But please wait a moment, the boss will finish handling the loose ends over there soon, and he will come to inspect it personally."
As soon as her voice fell, golden-orange sparks exploded out of thin air, quickly drawing into a huge circular portal.
Lu Chen had his hands buried in his coat pockets, stepping across first.
The team following behind him looked extremely spectacular.
Pietro was dragging a green-skinned alien with a bloody face and a large torn patch on his chest clothes like a dead dog.
Wanda closely followed by Lu Chen's side.
Coulson's team members walked out talking to each other, everyone in the team carrying a heavy scent of blood.
At the very back, Wong kept a straight face, using magic to control a granite-stitched monster statue over two meters tall with a wide-open mouth, slamming it heavily onto the laboratory floor.
With a muffled thump, the entire floor shook.
"Boss." Simone immediately greeted him, her gaze lingering on that stone statue for two seconds, asking nothing, and directly handing over a document, "The screening device is ready."
"Good job." Lu Chen took the document, glanced at it, casually placed it on the table, and turned to look at Gravik, who had been thrown on the floor by Pietro.
The hole in Gravik's chest pierced by the armor-piercing bullet had completely healed, but at this moment he was shrinking on the ground trembling, looking at Lu Chen's eyes as if looking at a true devil.
The fear of life and Death being out of one's hands was more tormenting than Death itself.
Lu Chen had no intention of talking nonsense with him; his mental power pierced into Gravik's brain like a steel needle.
Gravik let out a shrill scream.
Lu Chen ignored its pain; he wanted to pour out everything inside this alien lizard's brain directly for everyone to see.
Chapter 306: The Public Trial of All Humanity
Gravik's memories were amplified by Lu Chen's mental power and shared into everyone's minds.
The first memory took place in a dim bedroom.
Gravik stood by the bed, looking at a middle-aged white man sleeping soundly on it.
The next second, Gravik reached out and tightly covered the man's mouth and nose.
The man struggled frantically, kicking his legs wildly on the bedsheets until he completely stopped moving.
Immediately afterwards, Gravik's body began to transform, his bones stretching and his skin changing color.
In just a few seconds, he turned into the appearance of the dead man.
The scene shifted, and it was already the next morning.
Wearing the man's face, Gravik sat at the dining table, had breakfast with the original owner's wife, smiled and rubbed the little daughter's hair, and finally grandly walked into a senior general's office in The Pentagon.
The scenes switched very quickly.
Politicians, high-ranking Military officials, and well-known media figures.
One living person after another was assassinated and then replaced by this group of green-skinned monsters.
They slept in the dead's beds, held the dead's lovers, and controlled the dead's power.
"Fucking disgusting," Pietro spat on the ground. "This bunch of things is even more nauseating than rats in the sewer."
Wanda turned her head away, unable to bear looking at the unsuspecting smiling faces of the victims' families anymore.
Her stomach churned violently.
Simone frowned and quickly recorded the identities of those replaced persons on her tablet.
The image flashed abruptly, and the timeline in the memory jumped back to 1995.
A young Black Agent appeared in the picture.
At that time, Nick Fury had not yet worn his iconic single eyepatch, and both eyes were intact.
Standing beside him was Captain Marvel Carol Danvers, glowing all over.
"You help me build Earth's alien defense system, and in exchange, Carol and I will help you find a new home in the Universe," the young Fury spoke with absolute certainty.
A group of ragged Skrulls refugees knelt down with gratitude.
This should have been a win-win deal.
But the subsequent memory was a decades-long deception.
Captain Marvel took a portion of Skrulls and flew deep into the Universe, but the Kree's pursuit followed like a shadow.
A few years later, she came back empty-handed with these people, flew away from Earth, and never returned.
Meanwhile, the Skrulls remaining on Earth became Nick Fury's most useful black gloves.
Assassination, intelligence theft, and infiltration of hostile forces.
Fury used the lives of these aliens to bit by bit build his so-called alien defense system.
"Where is the new home?" In the memory, Gravik questioned more than once.
"Still looking, it takes time." Fury always had this rhetoric.
Until a few months ago, the news that Fury was heavily injured by Lu Chen and fell into a deep coma reached the ears of the Skrulls.
The anger suppressed for decades completely erupted through this incident.
"He never thought about helping us find a home! He was just using us!" Gravik stood on the high platform, roaring at his indignant kinsmen below. "Since there is no place for us in the Universe, we will take it ourselves! Earth is our new home!"
The counterattack plan was officially launched.
Using shape-shifting abilities to infiltrate the high levels of multiple countries and provoke a nuclear war between major powers.
Let humans blow Earth into a wasteland themselves.
The Skrulls possessed longer lifespans and physical constitutions. Once the ashes of the nuclear winter fell, they could rightfully take over this Planet.
The screen flickered twice more and completely went out.
No one spoke in the laboratory, and Coulson's expression was ugly.
Inviting wolves into the house, then driving the wolves crazy, and finally making all humanity pay the bill.
Coulson supported his knees with both hands, panting heavily.
The sense of memory confusion brought to him by the TAHITI project struck again, but now he didn't even have the strength to distinguish true from false.
He only felt it was absurd.
Skye bit her lip, looked at Coulson, wanted to go up and comfort him, but didn't know what to say.
She had no good impression of official institutions to begin with, and now she felt even more that this bunch of higher-ups was a bunch of lunatics.
Mei still wore a cold face, but her impatient finger tapping betrayed her feelings.
Gravik slumped on the ground like a puddle of mud, lacking even the strength to scream.
"Simone."
"Present, boss." Simone immediately straightened her posture.
"According to the list that appeared in the image just now, have Vought Company's field forces dispatch entirely." Lu Chen looked at her. "Catch all those replaced politicians, executives, and media figures back for me. Kill anyone who resists on the spot."
"Understood." Simone nodded, stepping in high heels as she walked quickly out of the laboratory to issue the instructions.
"Dr. Banner." Lu Chen turned his head to look at the experimental bench.
Banner hurriedly straightened his back. "I'm here."
"Activate the detection device. Mark all Skrulls strongholds. Gravik is only the leader of the radical faction, and there is another so-called law-abiding faction hiding in the shadows. I don't care whether they are radical or law-abiding, non-our-kin, dig them all out for me."
"Right away." Banner, Fitz, and Simmons immediately rushed toward the console and began entering instructions.
After arranging these, Lu Chen's gaze finally fell on Coulson's team.
Coulson slowly straightened up, barely meeting Lu Chen's gaze.
He knew that today's matter absolutely could not end amicably.
"Agent Coulson." Lu Chen looked at him, the corners of his mouth rising in a mocking smile. "The mess your S.H.I.E.L.D. caused, I cleaned up for you. But this account cannot just be settled like this."
"What does Mr. Lu want to do?" Coulson's voice trembled slightly.
"Very simple." Lu Chen walked up to him, full of oppressiveness. "Go and bring Nick Fury to me."
Coulson was stunned.
"He is now a useless person who cannot even take care of his own daily life." Coulson swallowed his saliva. "You want to kill him?"
"Kill him? That would be letting him off too cheaply." Lu Chen sneered. "I want him to spit out every single one of these damned things he did in front of the World's cameras. I want the World to see what kind of fool he is. I want him to face the public trial of all humanity."
Coulson's heart sank heavily.
If they really did this, S.H.I.E.L.D. would be completely finished.
Nick Fury's name would be nailed to the pillar of shame in history, along with the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. being jointly liquidated by governments of various countries.
Ward stood in the corner, hearing these words, and his brain quickly calculated the pros and cons of this matter for HYDRA.
He had to find a way to pass the news back first so they could respond.
"I..." Coulson still wanted to plead for mercy.
"Coulson, recognize reality." Lu Chen pointed at Gravik on the ground. "If I hadn't intervened today, these aliens would have almost gotten the nuclear bomb codes. That Director of yours lying in the hospital bed almost dragged billions of people down to be buried with him."
This sentence was like a heavy hammer, striking Coulson speechless.
Yeah, what was face worth?
Compared to the lives of billions of people, what was the survival of S.H.I.E.L.D. worth?
"I'll do it." Mei suddenly spoke, her voice crisp and decisive.
Coulson turned to look at this old partner.
Mei did not look at him, but stared straight at Lu Chen.
She had experienced the tragedy of Bahrain and knew better than anyone that some mistakes must be paid for by someone.
Coulson gave a bitter smile.
"Let's go." Coulson took a deep breath and turned to walk out.
Skye hurriedly followed, with Ward and Mei walking at the back.
"Lu Chen." Banner raised his hand in front of the console. "The detection device is fully activated. The result... might be even worse than we thought."
Lu Chen walked over and looked at the big screen.
On the entire map, hundreds of red dots lit up densely.
Some gathered in remote mountainous areas, while others directly took root in core cities like New York and Washington.
The number far exceeded the few manpower in Gravik's memory.
"It seems that the so-called law-abiding faction is also quite prolific at having children." Lu Chen sneered.
Chapter 307: Is There a Problem with the Equipment?
The red dots on the big screen were dense and packed, and Fitz was holding a tablet, rapidly checking the latitude and longitude, his pen tip tapping crisply and loudly on the screen.
Suddenly, his wrist stopped mid-air, and he rubbed his dry eye sockets.
In northern New York near the edge of the Adirondack Mountains, several red dots that were originally clustered and flashing went out without warning.
"Huh?" Fitz pulled down his glasses on the bridge of his nose a bit, his entire face almost sticking to the display screen, "Strange, is there a problem with the equipment? This shouldn't be happening."
Simmons also leaned over, reaching out to quickly tap code on the control console: "I just rechecked the underlying algorithm three times, and the anti-interference capability is military-grade, how could it directly lose the signal?"
Banner pulled his two large hands out of his white lab coat pockets, bent down, and checked the energy circuit and satellite interface once.
That usually mild-mannered face gained a trace of seriousness.
"There is no hardware overload at all, and the feedback channel of the gamma pulse is completely unblocked."
Banner scratched his messy hair, pointing to the large still-bright area next to it, "Look, the markers in other urban areas are still fine, and haven't been hit by any electromagnetic pulse.
Just this small area being empty really shouldn't happen."
Lu Chen walked up to the screen.
That darkened patch of light spots appeared particularly dazzling amidst the full-screen red glow.
If the machine were broken, then what broke should be an entire sector, rather than just wiping out a few coordinates at a fixed point.
Could these alien lizards actually anticipate radar wavebands in advance?
Lu Chen pondered inwardly.
Gravik had died with resentment earlier, and before he breathed his last, he was still clamoring that the infiltration plan was fully launched.
Could this group of so-called peace-seekers really have some special method to avoid directional radiation?
Since he had already decided to clean up the alien cockroaches on this Planet, he could not tolerate a single one slipping through the net.
"Guessing back and forth is meaningless, just go over and take a look and you'll know." Lu Chen said casually.
He raised his left hand, and the sling ring swept smoothly half a meter in front of him.
Gold-orange sparks splashed happily in the air, opening a rotating circular light door in the blink of an eye.
Behind the door was a patch of yellowish wasteland grass.
Lu Chen stepped out of the portal in one step.
Surroundings were a typical North American countryside, with abandoned farm barns in the distance, and a rusted tractor half-buried in the weeds.
As far as the eye could see, except for a few old crows hopping on withered tree branches, not even half a shadow of a living person could be seen.
Very normal.
Quiet, desolate, dilapidated, completely different from the hustle and bustle of downtown Manhattan.
Lu Chen stood in place and looked around for half a minute, his eyebrows twitching slightly.
The equipment wasn't broken, and he trusted the abilities of Banner and that college student pair.
Since the exploration device showed that there was an abnormal energy source here a few seconds ago, this near-perfect normality in front of him was the greatest discomfort and abnormality.
Want to play hide-and-seek with me?
Lu Chen sneered.
He closed his eyes, and the moment his eyelids dropped, Cate's mental mind-reading ability quietly spread out.
The brainwaves of all living creatures within tens of kilometers radius poured wildly into Lu Chen's mind.
"This batch of corn feed has gone up in price again today, damn union..."
"Those two bags of powder hidden in the trunk must not be seen by the sheriff..."
"The pine cones in the tree hole seem to have two missing, which bastard squirrel stole them..."
The farmer's complaints, the drug dealer's calculations, the adulterer's guilty conscience, and even the Beast's most primitive hunger instincts, all kinds of noises crowded together in a mess in his mind.
It sounded completely normal, all trivial matters, without any trace of Skrulls communication.
Lu Chen not only did not rein in his ability, but somewhat defiantly pushed his mental power further outward.
The tyrannical mental power, like an invisible spider web, expanded wildly with him as the center, fifty kilometers, eighty kilometers, one hundred kilometers!
He was like a supercomputer running at full power, setting up keyword filters across tens of thousands of simultaneously sounding thinking frequency bands.
Escape.
Evacuate.
Hide.
Skrulls.
None, none, still none.
Just when Lu Chen thought Gravik had released some kind of interference decoy before dying, an extremely subtle thought wave with violent emotional fluctuations suddenly flashed at the edge of the mountain forest far away.
"Such powerful mental power! Maybe they are here to catch us, run quickly!"
Got you.
Lu Chen opened his eyes, a trace of coldness floating deep within his pupils.
Being able to detect his mental scan, could there really be special individuals among that group of alien lizards who understood mental defense?
He gathered his thoughts and turned off mind-reading.
His toes tapped lightly on the grass, skimming rapidly forward close to the tree crowns of the forest sea.
In just a few strides, the violent wind pressure rolled the fallen leaves on both sides into two towering waves, and a distance of more than a hundred kilometers was trampled under his feet within a few breaths.
On the muddy dirt road ahead, a woman's figure wearing a gray burlap jacket was stumbling and running wildly.
Lu Chen's figure swayed slightly, dropping without warning from mid-air onto the intersection directly in front of her.
Lu Chen squinted and sized up the heavy-breathing woman in front of him.
Something's wrong.
Lu Chen muttered inwardly. Even after using the magic requested from Lao Wang, the person in front of him was clearly a pure Earthling.
Not a Skrull?
The woman slammed on the brakes, slipping under her feet and almost falling.
She raised her head, her dirty face full of fear and alertness, staring at Lu Chen who had descended from the sky.
"You... what are you doing?" The woman's voice was hoarse.
Lu Chen crossed his arms and scrutinized her: "You are not ordinary. One of the Inhumans?"
Having superpowers capable of reacting to his mental scan, not being a super hero he was familiar with, and thinking of escaping the first time she saw him, Lu Chen's first reaction was this group of people.
Hearing the two words "Inhumans", the woman's expression changed completely.
Defensiveness and fear overflowed from her face like a breached flood.
"What Inhumans! I don't understand what you're talking about!"
The woman screamed, her body shrinking back desperately, her voice sharp and piercing, "I don't know! What on earth are you trying to do!"
At the same time she shouted the last sentence, an invisible mental power, like a sharpened awl, slammed without warning into Lu Chen's glabella.
Mental sneak attack?
Lu Chen stood in place without even blinking his eyelids.
Too weak.
This level of mental power, in front of Lu Chen's mental sea of consciousness which had been strengthened several times and was as stable as a mountain, was like an embroidery needle stabbing into a fortress of fine steel.
A muffled snap exploded in the void.
Lu Chen just looked at her calmly, whereas the woman opposite suddenly let out a miserable muffled groan.
She was hit squarely by an invisible heavy punch, staggering back three or four steps, and two thick streams of blood sprayed directly from her nasal cavity, dripping down onto the gray cloth collar.
Chapter 308: Unexpected Harvest
Mental backlash.
His mental barrier automatically deflected the attack, dumping the backlash back into her brain in the process.
The woman clutched her throbbing, agonizing forehead, her eyes filled with disbelief and terror: "You... You know Telepathy too?!"
In this remote place where even filling one's stomach was a luxury, she had relied on this mental intrusion to escape countless dangers.
Yet the well-dressed young man in front of her had managed to shatter her brain almost completely just by relying on instinctive rebound.
Where on earth did this person come from?
Lu Chen twitched the corner of his mouth: "Telepathy? Something like that. I dabble in a lot of things, and I know a little bit of everything."
Although he had found the wrong target and failed to catch any Skrulls, Lu Chen had no intention of returning empty-handed.
Since she could sense his large-scale mental scan and actively launch mental attacks, he would take her back to show Banner and see if the Inhumans had been tracked down all at once.
"Since you are not alien lizards, come with me." Lu Chen's tone was calm, revealing neither joy nor anger.
The woman wiped away a bloody nose, her eyes growing increasingly desperate: "Are you going to take us back for experimentation?"
Lu Chen had no interest in playing melodramas with her.
He casually pulled a heavy gold brick out of the system space, which emitted an extremely alluring yellow glow on the somewhat dim forest path.
Lu Chen flicked his wrist, and the gold brick traced a parabola in the air, hurtling straight toward the woman's chest.
"Catch."
The woman was startled, thinking it was some kind of new weapon, and hurriedly stretched out her arms to block it.
The heavy weight smashed down, causing her arms to sink heavily, and she almost sat down in the mud.
Having finally stabilized her footing, that pure golden hue directly dazzled her eyes.
Gold?
The woman touched the heavy gold nugget, freezing in place as her brain completely failed to process it.
Official Agents who came to capture mutated humans would silently toss over enough gold to buy an entire farm first?
Were these people crazy or had she been beaten into hallucinations?
But this confusion lasted only half a second before the woman's sharp nerves immediately caught the wording in Lu Chen's previous words.
"Wait... Did you just say... you?" The woman's voice changed pitch, and the fear in her eyes was instantly replaced by a frantic protective instinct.
Lu Chen looked at her tense, nervous appearance with amusement.
"Of course it's you." Lu Chen turned his head, his gaze sweeping past the woman's shoulders and falling behind a huge red oak tree a hundred meters away, "You don't really think that with your pitiful concealment skills, you can hide that little tail behind the tree, do you?"
She was discovered!
The woman's face turned pale in an instant, and she couldn't even care about the priceless gold brick in her arms slipping into the mud.
"No! Let her go! She's just a child!" The woman screamed and rushed back.
Lu Chen didn't even move his feet.
Invisible Telekinesis instantly enveloped that shadow.
Behind the tree trunk, accompanied by a short exclamation, a slender and petite figure floated completely uncontrolled from the ground.
It was a young girl wearing a dirty old red sweater, with a hole in her canvas shoes exposing her frost-bitten red toes.
Her long red hair was disheveled over her shoulders, resembling a ball of raging fire soaked by rain.
No matter how hard the girl kicked and struggled in mid-air, that massive force bound her tightly like an iron hoop, gliding steadily and irresistibly toward Lu Chen's direction.
"Let her go! I'll fight you to the death!" The woman lunged forward like a madwoman.
Lu Chen didn't even glance at her, casually waving his left hand as his psychic power transformed into an air wall, isolating the frenzied woman three meters away, unable to advance an inch.
The girl's body landed in front of Lu Chen.
Out of panic, the girl instinctively reached out her hands trying to push Lu Chen away. Lu Chen reached out and precisely grasped her thin, withered wrist.
Lu Chen looked down at the girl's face.
It was a face still covered with freckles, somewhat dim due to malnutrition, but in those eyes, a terrifying storm was churning, extremely dangerous, as if it wanted to tear apart and swallow the entire World.
The exact moment his fingertips touched the girl's skin, the system in Lu Chen's mind displayed a data panel.
[Jean Grey]
[Telepathy] +
[Telekinesis] +
The handwriting flickered with dazzling brilliance, freezing tightly in the void.
Lu Chen's hand holding the girl's wrist paused imperceptibly.
On the muddy path through the forest, fallen leaves were swept up by the wind and rolled into the distance.
Lu Chen lowered his head to look at the shivering red-haired girl in front of him, his gaze contracting bit by bit.
Jean
Jean Grey.
The host of the Phoenix Force!
How could it be her?
The five fingers of Lu Chen holding that slender wrist stopped.
He stared at the system data column, a string of question marks flashing rapidly through his mind.
Jean Grey. The notoriously famous Omega-level Mutant, but the problem was, the system interface clearly only hung the two entries [Telepathy] and [Telekinesis], completely bare behind, without even a shadow of a Phoenix feather to be seen.
Where is my Phoenix Force?
Or perhaps in this ghost World kneaded into a mess, this unlucky girl was simply a regular Omega-level Mutant who had awakened dual-system abilities?
Lu Chen muttered inwardly. But on second thought, even without the accompanying Phoenix Force, Jean Grey's own Omega-level mental talent was definitely a rare uncarved jade. Picking up leaks to this extent was practically like getting it for free.
"Let her go! Bastard! Let her go!"
In the muddy ground three meters away, that woman in gray cloth clothes was still frantically colliding with the air wall. Using both hands and feet, her fists slammed heavily onto the invisible telekinetic barrier.
And Jean, whose wrist was clenched by Lu Chen, was also struggling desperately, her dirty canvas shoes kicking wildly in the muddy water, her freckled face filled with the fear of a trapped beast. The thoughts in her mind were chaotic, trying desperately to pierce into Lu Chen's consciousness, but she couldn't even scrape past his outermost mental defense wall.
Lu Chen only felt that the direction of this Universe was becoming more and more magical.
He had originally thought that the barren hills in northern New York hid a secret den of Skrulls, and that the sudden dark spots on the radar were some kind of anti-reconnaissance method, but after all this fuss, what he went to great lengths to catch turned out to be the Grey sisters?
It seemed that the woman desperately protecting her young next door was Jean's sister Sara Grey, who also possessed mental abilities.
Since the wrong person had been caught, those few red dots that had inexplicably gone out on the instrument earlier probably had nothing to do with those green-skinned lizards from beginning to end.
"All right, stop shouting. No one will come to save you even if your throat goes hoarse."
Lu Chen released Jean's wrist, but used Telekinesis to keep her suspended in mid-air, raising his left hand and turning it in the air.
Golden-orange sparks burst open, and the rotating halo quickly tore open a circular portal connecting two dimensions. On the other side of the door was a bright, even dazzling cold white light, with futuristic metal walls and various precision instruments clearly visible in the halo.
The woman was so frightened that her scream was stuck in her throat, freezing her entire body in the mud, her lips trembling and unable to speak.
"Go inside and wait first, it's windy here."
Lu Chen had no intention of reasoning with them in the mud pit. With a light tap of his fingertips, his telekinetic power pushed the terrified sisters straight through the golden portal, dropping them smoothly onto the clean marble floor of the laboratory.
Immediately after, Lu Chen stepped out, and the portal closed silently behind him.
Chapter 309: The Pure and Foolish College Students
There was peace and quiet in the laboratory.
The originally bustling laboratory hall was now desolate; Wanda, Pietro, Simone, and the others were all nowhere to be seen, leaving only Dr. Banner standing before the main console.
Nearby, the young couple of scientist lovers—Fitz and Simmons—were tinkering away in front of a small spectrometer.
Suddenly, two disheveled women appeared on the floor, and Dr. Banner was clearly startled.
The electronic notepad in his hand almost slipped, and his mild-mannered face was filled with confusion.
He first looked at Sarah and Jean, who were hugging each other and trembling, then shifted his gaze to the main screen.
On the massive map of North America displayed on the screen, two dazzling dark red light points suddenly popped up without warning at the core coordinate point representing Vought Tower in Manhattan.
Dr. Banner pointed at the screen, then at the sisters huddled together on the floor, with a hint of uncertainty in his voice: "Lu Chen, you harvested quite quickly this trip, huh? Are these two also... Skrulls infiltrators in mimetic disguise?"
Lu Chen glanced at the screen following his finger, then looked at Banner, who wore a matter-of-fact expression beside him, and couldn't help twitching the corners of his mouth.
Mimicry?
Mimicry your big head.
"Dr. Banner."
Lu Chen walked up to the console, placed his hands on the edge of the operating desk, and looked at the top-tier physicist: "How on earth did you set the recognition conditions for this precious instrument of yours?"
Dr. Banner froze for a moment, scratching his messy curly hair: "What's wrong? The logic is very rigorous. We release wide-area directional gamma pulses via the satellite network; as long as the target absorbs the pulse band and generates feedback, it will be captured and marked by the radar."
"I'm not asking about the transmission method." Lu Chen sighed, pointing at the dense patch of red dots on the large screen, "I'm asking, what screening benchmark did you guys input? Did this machine print every single special individual different from ordinary humans onto the map as a red dot?"
Dr. Banner froze entirely.
He blinked, a trace of confusion flashing in his eyes: "Is... is that so?"
He turned his head to look at the two youngsters standing by the side console.
"Fitz, Simmons." Dr. Banner cleared his throat, his tone sounding a bit guilty, "When finally calibrating the parameters and the underlying algorithmic code, how did you write the filter? I remember when I finished setting up the underlying architecture, in order to give you guys a sense of participation, I put you in charge of refining the gene database comparison module, right?"
Fitz, who had just been flying across the keyboard with his fingers, stiffened.
The young man slowly turned around, the stylus gripped in his hand trembling constantly between his fingers. He raised his hand to scratch his scalp, messing up his originally neat hair into a bird's nest.
"Uh... well... Dr. Banner, Mr. Lu..."
Fitz stammered, his gaze darting everywhere, not daring to meet Lu Chen's eyes at all: "It seems... probably... indeed like that."
Simmons beside him hurriedly gave Fitz's ribs a fierce nudge with her elbow, her cheeks turning bright red as she lowered her head, wishing she could find a crack in the ground to crawl into.
Fitz gasped sharply, holding his bruised flank, and simply poured everything out in a self-abandoning manner: "Because time was too tight! To cover the entire North American continent, using the previous method of releasing directional trace gamma pulses to everyone and waiting for cells to produce slight mutation feedback, the computational load was simply too massive! Running the supercomputer's floating-point operations for a day could only screen two blocks!"
"So?" Lu Chen asked with raised eyebrows.
"So..." Fitz swallowed, his voice as soft as a mosquito's hum, "Simmons and I discussed it and figured that since Skrulls have alien genes, we could just bypass the complex cell mutation tests and directly input the standard human gene map to use as a ruler."
Simmons added softly from the side: "We set a logic gate at the bottom layer of the algorithm... Any individual with abnormal gene chain expression or non-standard dominant chromosomes... the system would judge them as foreign outsiders and directly mark them as red dots on the terminal..."
By the end, the two pure and foolish young college students buried their heads lower than their chests, looking completely like quails awaiting execution.
Lu Chen stood in place, feeling the veins on his temples throbbing incessantly.
He calculated everything, but never expected these high-IQ scholars to pull off such a crude operation.
No wonder!
What kind of Skrulls detector was this?!
Under Fitz's crude filtering algorithm, Mutants, Inhumans, super soldiers, and even little babies whose genes mutated from drinking too much radiation milk powder would all be branded as alien invaders by this machine!
Bam!
Dr. Banner suddenly raised his large hand and slapped it hard against his own forehead.
That honest-looking face was filled with annoyance, his five fingers dragging down his cheeks, revealing an expression uglier than crying through his fingers.
"Good God..." Dr. Banner groaned, his voice trembling, "No wonder..."
"No wonder what?" Lu Chen turned to look at him.
"No wonder twenty minutes ago, when this instrument had just connected to Vought Tower's mainframe and started running at full power, the alarm for the entire building suddenly sounded."
Dr. Banner's mouth twitched as he pointed at the ceiling: "The screen showed that dozens of ultra-high energy-level dark red alarm points suddenly popped up in our building. Miss Simone took one look at the big screen, and her face turned green on the spot. She thought the main force of the Skrulls had secretly captured Vought Company and swapped out all the core upper management in the building."
Lu Chen's eyes twitched fiercely: "And then?"
"Then Miss Simone directly drew her issued pistol, sealing off the main elevator and all underground exits on the spot."
Dr. Banner scratched the back of his neck, full of embarrassment: "She took Miss Wanda and Pietro, looking murderous as they went floor by floor to purge the infiltrators. I was just wondering earlier, when Pietro left shouting that he wanted to chop up all the alien bastards daring to disguise themselves as company employees and feed them to the dogs, how come he hasn't come back after so long..."
Lu Chen stood before the console, his mind even automatically picturing that chaotic and absurd scene.
What kind of place was Vought Tower?
That was Lu Chen's lair, crammed full of enhanced human bodyguards and field Agent who had injected Compound V.
Facing Fitz's heaven-defying algorithm, every single security personnel from the underground garage to the penthouse suite in the entire building had to trigger an alarm. Simone taking Wanda and Pietro to sweep the floors wasn't catching any spies at all; that was their own people holding machine guns hunting down their own people throughout the building!
"Boss, what should we do now?"
Fitz was on the verge of crying, putting his hands together and bowing repeatedly to Lu Chen: "I can reconstruct the underlying code in ten minutes. As long as we re-introduce the decay ratio of gamma isotopes, we can filter out native mutated humans..."
"Alright, shut up."
Lu Chen rubbed his glabella and turned to glance at the hall entrance.
Just then, a soft click came from the two heavy alloy blast doors of the laboratory, and the access control indicator light turned from red to green.
The door opened.
Simone stepped in first wearing high heels. But the usually meticulous CEO now had slightly disheveled hair, and the collar of her black professional suit skirt even had a button pulled open.
Behind her, Pietro rubbed his aching wrists with an expression doubting his life. Wanda followed at the very end holding a cup of coffee, her rosy lips puckered, and her eyes filled with speechlessness.
"Boss, you're back."
Simone walked quickly up to Lu Chen and slammed the tactical tablet in her hand onto the desk.
"How did the purge of the 'aliens' in the building go?" Lu Chen crossed his arms, asking a question he already knew the answer to.
Simone gritted her teeth and took a deep breath: "Thirty-two cleaning ladies, forty-five security guards, plus two supervisors from the finance department. Pietro pinned them all to the ground and tied them up like rice dumplings."
She turned her head and glared viciously at Fitz and Simmons cowering in the corner: "Wanda used mental magic to search the brains of employees across three whole floors inside and out, yet couldn't find even a single piece of green skin!"
Fitz shrank his neck in fright, completely hiding behind Dr. Banner's not-so-tall figure.
"Alright, I understand the situation; it's purely a technical error."
Lu Chen waved his hand, cutting off Simone's anger. He pointed at the Grey sisters, who were still curled up in the corner and terrifiedly sizing everyone up: "A blunder has led to a blessing, though; it's not entirely without gains."
Everyone's gazes fell uniformly onto that pair of sisters.
"Who are they?" Simone frowned, her sharp professional intuition making her instantly sense something abnormal, "Refugees? Or survivors of a Skrulls attack?"
"Neither."
Lu Chen's mouth curved slightly, revealing a meaningful arc: "They are Mutants."