Frank left. He knew that staying in the red mist would only make him a burden to Renzo. A reckless intervention might hinder Renzo instead, and he would not be able to save anyone else.
He had handed Renzo his remaining self-defense bullet, which also meant that if he encountered another infected superhero with a tough body on his way back, he would be powerless to fight back.
Frank only had two rifles left with ammunition, along with a few disruptive explosives, but all the explosives capable of causing real damage had already been used up. In other words, he could only point two guns at the enemy now and hope for the best.
Bullets were very strange things in the Marvel world. Sometimes, they could easily blow out a superhuman's head. Sometimes, tanks and planes bombing together could only scratch a few layers of skin. Sometimes, they could kill a superhuman without aiming, and sometimes, even when aimed perfectly, the enemy would dodge through strange movements...
Renzo said goodbye to Frank and continued deeper into the red mist.
"What method did Chthon use to enter this universe? Such a large amount of chaos magic shouldn't be able to come in at all. Just breaking through the barrier of the universe would exhaust his power..."
"Unless there's a medium in this world that allows Chthon to send chaos magic in easily."
As Renzo moved forward, he thought about the possible reasons behind the red mist's eruption. He did not know which universe he had fallen into. In any case, it could not be his original universe. There was no Red Hulk in his world.
The members of the Illuminati had left early before Renzo woke up. When Renzo opened his eyes, the only things in front of him had been an overwhelming number of Ultron robots. After getting rid of those Ultrons, the red mist arrived. In order to save more people, Renzo had decided to break into it.
The structure of the red mist was very strange. Perhaps chaos magic could block signal transmission. As soon as he entered the mist, Renzo found that his connection to the outside world grew weaker and weaker, until he could not even connect to a simple network.
Renzo regretted it a little. He should have learned more about this world before entering the red mist.
The deeper he went, the denser the magic became. The scarlet grew darker, gradually blurring his vision, and visibility dropped again and again. In the end, the Mind Stone became a flashlight, illuminating the road ahead.
Mind Stone: ???
Severed limbs, plasma, flames, corpses... wherever he looked, there was tragedy.
Every time Renzo saw a corpse, his heart grew heavier. This was the first time in three years he had seen such tragic bodies. Even the scene of Apocalypse massacring Cairo had not been this shocking. The bodies here had been torn apart.
He did not know how long he had been walking. Nearly an hour had passed, but he still had not seen the source of the red mist. This made Renzo very confused.
"It should be here." Renzo frowned. Before breaking into the red mist, he had flown high into the sky and looked over the city, nearly a third of which had been covered. The red mist was expanding outward in a circle, and the center of that circle was Renzo's destination.
Logically speaking, the center of a circle should be the source of its spread, but Renzo had been walking for a long time, and according to the coordinates recorded in his mind, he should already be nearby. The problem was... there was no one here.
Renzo looked at the empty street. Aside from a bicycle fallen on the ground and a huge cedar tree blocking the road, there was not even a single infected person. Not one.
Renzo looked around in confusion. This place was completely different from the outside. Past a certain boundary, the field of vision suddenly became clear. The red mist did not seem to erode this area.
Looking up at the sky, he saw a huge mass of red mist suspended above, refusing to fall.
"This is like a barrier, a place similar to a shelter." Renzo realized that this was most likely a protective shield created by the first superhero who had entered.
That meant... there might still be survivors here!
Renzo's mind became active. The light of the Mind Stone instantly shot out in all directions. It could sense the mental fluctuations of nearby life to determine whether anyone was around, and it could even judge nearby life-forms by the size and intensity of those fluctuations.
Buzzing...
A golden halo shot out from Renzo's body and spread through the surrounding areas, houses, streets, and even underground.
After a while, the light reflected back and focused on Renzo.
Renzo frowned. The Mind Stone actually indicated that there was no one nearby. That did not make sense.
"That's not right." Renzo looked in one direction, narrowed his eyes, and sensed carefully. The spiritual light from that direction had returned faster than from the others. The energy he emitted spread outward in a circle, so there should not have been any difference between first and last. It should have returned all at once.
Renzo slowly flew in that direction. There was definitely something there blocking the Mind Stone's exploration. It was even... very likely to be a survivor.
...
"Still can't contact the outside world?" Sam Wilson held his shoulders and paced back and forth, worry written across his face.
This was a basement that should have been a wine cellar. It was about fifty square meters, dimly lit by only one light bulb.
In addition to Sam, there were two or three ordinary people crowded into the corner. They were residents of this small town, lucky enough to survive the catastrophe. Sam and the others had happened to encounter them, so they had brought them here to hide together.
Wong sat in the middle of the basement. Magic circles with strange patterns were scattered across the ground, carrying a faint aroma of wine. They had probably been drawn with wine from the cellar.
Obscure and incomprehensible spells kept coming from Wong's mouth. The fat man's body was soaked with sweat. His face had turned pale from exhaustion, almost whiter than the faces of the people around him.
His hands formed strange seals as he sat there in an odd posture. The aura on his body was already very weak, as if his magic power were about to run dry.
Sam had been questioning Wong just now. Wong had almost single-handedly driven away all the red mist within fifty meters and maintained their defense with a magic circle drawn in wine, but that was all.
Wong's physical strength had nearly reached its limit. If this continued, he would probably die first from exhaustion even if he managed to hold on for one more day. Without Wong's protection, the others would gradually be infected by the red mist and turn into mad monsters.
Of course, the lucky ones might be bitten to death directly.
There were more than just two superheroes here, Sam and Wong. In fact, there were five of them.
Daredevil, Matthew Murdock.
Beast, Hank McCoy.
Hill, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The three had been part of search-and-rescue teams sent by various organizations and had landed here directly from a helicopter. According to Hank's research, the red mist was extremely harmful to the human body. Wearing a gas mask could only delay death. The mist was everywhere.
But what made it worse was that almost all the remaining teammates who had followed them in were infected. Among them was even General Ross, who had been sent by the government. After being infected, he transformed into the Red Hulk and went on a killing spree. Some teammates who had not been infected, along with the surviving civilians, all died at Red Hulk's hands.
Matthew Murdock had also lost a leg. It had been crushed and torn off alive... Fortunately, Wong had used magic to treat his wound in time. Otherwise, Matthew would not have survived until now.
"No, there's still no signal. This red mist has blocked every channel that can send messages, including phones, pagers, radios, and even pigeons."
Hill and Hank debugged the equipment, trying to let the outside world know what was happening here so they could send rescue.
"Professor X can't contact this place either, Hank?"
"To be honest, I've never wanted someone to enter my mind so badly." Hill's face remained straight, and there was not much humor in her tone.
As Nick Fury's deputy, Hill might not have been a powerful superhero, but she was definitely an excellent commander.
"Hank, can you make a brainwave amplifier, like the one Professor X uses?"
"You want to attract Professor X's attention?" Hank understood Hill's meaning instantly. "First of all, a brainwave amplifier can't be completed with a few wires, circuit boards, and several strikes of a hammer."
"Secondly, we don't have that much time..."
Hank looked at the civilians huddled in the corner. Their pupils were covered in bloodshot veins. The red mist that had not been expelled from their bodies had begun gradually invading them again. Wong's physical strength was about to reach its limit. They had no choice but to accept this bleak truth.
There was nothing Sam could do. His role was the smallest among these people. He was the first Avenger Captain Carter had assigned to enter the red mist.
"That thing looks very poisonous," Sam had said to Carter before putting on a professional gas helmet and rushing into the red mist without hesitation.
"If you can... leave me behind and live your own lives..." Matthew lay on the only stretcher in the basement. His broken leg had been bandaged. If he could get back alive, Reed's technology should be able to help him restore it.
But they could not go back...
Matthew looked at the others pessimistically. As a disabled superhero, he had lost his sight in exchange for super senses. His hearing, smell, touch, and sixth sense had all been enhanced to varying degrees. Even without vision, he could still "see" everything around him.
But his leg was broken. His abilities were based on the fact that his limbs were intact. He could transform into a devil in the dark, weigh good and evil, and judge the sins of the world.
With his leg broken, he could no longer be Daredevil, could no longer uphold justice and protect civilians.
He had fallen from Daredevil to Matthew, a lawyer who used his intelligence to defend justice during the day. Matthew Murdock, who could do nothing but speak in court. Any stronger man could knock him down with a single punch.
He was now a burden, lying alone on a stretcher in a wine cellar, like an incurable patient, unable to move normally. Unlike Hank and the others, he could not use his ingenuity to help solve problems. Unlike Wong, he could not single-handedly try to stop the erosion of the red mist. He hated himself for being useless, just like on the day more than twenty years ago when chemicals had blinded his eyes. A deep sense of powerlessness filled his heart.
Sam stepped forward, patted Matthew on the shoulder, and comforted him. "We won't give up on you. If we die, we die together."
"But they don't think so..." Matthew's weak voice sounded in Sam's ears. He pointed tremblingly at the scattered crowd around him. They looked at Matthew coldly, their eyes emotionless, as if they were looking at a stray dog on the street that had nothing to do with them.
"You can't speak for everyone..." Sam fell silent. He glanced at the people hiding around them. For a moment, it felt as if they were not people, but a group of beasts, a group of emotionless beasts.
Sam trembled all over, and an inexplicable fear rose in his heart. How could warm-blooded people look at someone with such cold eyes?
He had also received looks like that. Not as cold, but still full of contempt.
He was a Black man, one with no proper profession aside from being an Avenger. His identity as an Avenger had not brought any convenience to his family. His sister still worked at the shipyard, and when driving on the road, she was still stopped and inspected, looked at with suspicion by police who quietly reached for the guns in their pockets, as if they might pull them out and point them at her head at any moment.
His life itself was not worth mentioning in the eyes of those officers. Only the aura of being an Avenger gave him a basic layer of protection, so he would not have a gun pointed at his head like so many others, his arms pressed behind him as he lay against the hood of a car and shouted "Help, help!" in panic.
It was not only disabled people or people like him and Matthew who faced prejudice. Mutants like Hank were also discriminated against everywhere. Their strange appearances, unusual abilities, and powerful strength had not won people's respect.
On the contrary, the eyes people used to look at mutants were full of disgust and hatred. Even though Professor X had tried his best to ease tensions between humans and mutants, that only reduced open conflict. It did not erase the fear and rejection.
Some conflicts between groups were difficult to reconcile. Once fear and greed took root, people who had lived on the same land for generations could still be pushed aside, oppressed, or erased by those who came later and claimed everything for themselves.
Matthew's eyes were filled with sorrow. He wanted to live. Of course he wanted to live. But others did not want him to. His survival meant that someone else's chance might be replaced, that their hope of escape might become much smaller.
Selfishness was human nature. Whether ordinary people, aliens, mutants, super criminals, or superheroes, the prerequisite for all their good or evil actions was... to live.
Sam was speechless, but his eyes showed the same emotion as Matthew's.
Sorrow.
Sadness.
"I can't hold on anymore!" Wong suddenly interrupted the emotional atmosphere between the two, and the magic circle on the ground began to dim.
Just as he said, he could not hold on any longer.
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