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That night.
"Have you found the source of the earthquake?" Professor X sat in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, his voice carrying a trace of weariness.
"We found it, yes. The epicenter is shown to be in Cairo." A look of confusion appeared on Beast's face.
"But... how could an epicenter in Cairo affect us here? Besides..."
Before he could finish, the Professor chimed in,
"Your thinking is correct. We indeed misunderstood that young man. If this incident really had something to do with him, he could have gone straight to Cairo instead of staying here with us."
Just as Professor X breathed a sigh of relief at this conclusion, thinking he could get some good rest, a sudden psychic shockwave swept through the entire academy.
It wasn't powerful enough to knock everyone unconscious like Peter's Haoshoku, but it was enough to wake all the sleeping Mutants.
"This is..." Beast and Professor X exchanged a look, then rushed toward Jean's room without a second thought.
"Children, it's nothing major."
"Don't worry, we will handle everything. What you need to do now is go back and get some good rest."
After comforting the children who had been awakened by Jean's psychic shockwave, Professor X arrived at Jean's bedroom.
Jean Grey was currently lying in bed with a look of pain on her face. Cold sweat soaked her thin pajamas, and her wet red hair clung to her pale cheeks.
As she struggled in her nightmare, the temperature in the room was rising rapidly at an extremely abnormal and terrifying rate!
*Sizzle—*
The exquisite vintage wallpaper on the walls began to curl on its own, its edges turning scorched yellow, and then sparks actually flared up out of thin air.
The lamp on the nightstand, the glass filled with water, the heavy hardcover books... every object in the room broke free from gravity under this uncontrolled, violent telekinesis, floating in midair.
Jean let out a deeply suppressed groan of pain, her hands clawing tightly at the bedsheets, her nails nearly tearing the mattress. Beneath her skin, a heart-palpitating, dark-red glow, flowing like magma, was faintly visible!
Professor X didn't even need to consciously read her mind to feel the immense pressure from that psychic shockwave.
Countless fragments of scenes pricked at his mind like needles—
The sky burned with fire, cities were reduced to ruins, and above that endless destruction, a towering blue figure looked down upon all living things like a god.
"Jean! Wake up!"
Finally, under Professor X's gritted-teeth calls, Jean Grey woke up from her nightmare, and the terrifying psychic shockwave dissipated.
After barely easing the unease in Jean's heart, the Professor left the bedroom and said to Beast beside him without a second thought:
"Jean's nightmare this time isn't that simple. I sensed an ancient, powerful, and extremely dangerous existence in her nightmare! We must find the source immediately, or else the entire World might be in big trouble!"
"So, you mean... use cerebro?" Beast asked.
"Yes!" The Professor took a deep breath and nodded.
"This might be the only way to uncover the truth!"
Before long, the two entered the underground cerebro chamber.
As Professor X put on the special helmet, a vast sea of light points immediately appeared on the metal walls of the entire spherical room, representing every living soul on Earth.
"Egypt... Cairo..."
Charles closed his eyes, his immense psychic power scanning half the Earth like a radar, quickly locking onto the energy source that made his heart palpitate.
Suddenly, he snapped his eyes open, a hint of astonishment in his voice. "Wait, this is... Moira?!"
"Agent Moira MacTaggert, why is she there too?!"
Looking at Moira's photo appearing on the screen, a highly complex emotion suddenly surfaced on Charles's gentle face, filled with deep nostalgia and hard-to-conceal worry, his eyes looking somewhat dazed for a moment.
"Staying up in the middle of the night, coming to the Underground Room to daze off at a crush whose memory you personally erased... I'm familiar with this plot."
A lazy, even somewhat teasing voice abruptly sounded behind the two of them.
"Who?!"
Hank's fur instantly stood on end, his blue muscles tensing up. Almost out of beastly instinct, he spun around, bared his sharp claws, and assumed a fighting stance.
With a ripple like waves in the air, Peter's figure appeared out of thin air without warning.
At his fingertips, a barely perceptible thread of energy was currently swirling.
But the moment his figure emerged, that energy also sank into his body and disappeared—it was precisely a sliver of the Phoenix Force he had captured earlier when Jean's nightmare went out of control.
Although this sliver of the Phoenix Force was thinner than a strand of hair and almost useless for combat, it confirmed Peter's previous speculation—he had indeed obtained the ability to absorb the Phoenix Force by copying Jean's Mutant genes!
With this thought, Peter was in an excellent mood, and when he looked at Professor X, he rarely showed a bit of a joking attitude.
Thus, with a flash of his storage ring, a pack of tissues instantly appeared in his hand:
"Professor, I think you need this~"
Professor X's old face flushed red, completely losing his usual gentle and refined demeanor:
"Don't talk nonsense, I don't have that kind of bad habit!"
"Hmm?" Peter blinked, intentionally putting on an innocent and pure expression.
"Is using tissues to wipe tears some kind of bad habit?"
Professor X: "..."
Ah, so it was using tissues to wipe tears. I thought he meant using tissues to wipe somewhere else...
To ease the embarrassment, the Professor quickly thought of a new topic:
"You... you've been here the whole time?"
"You could say that." Peter had a serious look on his face, but he was secretly thinking.
It really felt good to use Invisible Woman Susan's ability to watch the drama unfold from the sidelines.
Should I use this ability to spy on Harry's date next time?
That kid bragged to high heaven before, saying he dominated the San Fernando Valley, but Tony, that playboy, didn't seem to have ever seen him at any orgy!
Could it be that he talks a big game, but in reality, he just stands on the dance floor like a nobody?
Shaking his head to toss out those messy thoughts, Peter also behaved slightly more seriously.
"Back to the point, everything that happened today has also made me sense an unusual aura."
"That 'big guy' in Jean's nightmare feels like he'd be a pretty good punching bag. So, count me in for this mission, how about it?"
Professor X took a deep look at Peter. The other party's bottomless strength, like a cosmic black hole, made it impossible for him to even think of refusing.
More importantly, from his observations of Peter over the past few days, Peter didn't seem like a purely evil person.
If he was willing to help, for them, perhaps... it really would be a good thing?