As midnight drew near, the Train to Paradise materialized right on schedule, coming to a surprisingly orderly halt at the platform. Amelia stepped out from the shadows of the station and boarded the phantom vessel without a hitch. Watching the surveillance feed from his monitor, Captain Wong counted the seconds in his head. Once he was certain she was safely inside, he snapped his order into the radio: «Move in!»
The next instant, a coordinated barrage unleashed absolute hell upon the train's bizarre, twisted engine. Though the special operations squad relied on conventional firearms, their ammo was anything but standard. The most ordinary rounds in their magazines were forged of pure silver; the rest were specialized ordnance-bullets soaked in holy water, etched with binding runes, or packed with exotic, unidentifiable explosives. Bizarrely, someone had even managed to procure energy-based munitions from parts unknown. At the same time, an ornate ceremonial retinue of over thirty clergy members, draped in lavish vestments and bearing sacred relics, marched toward the train under the leadership of a bishop. They chanted high religious rites as they advanced-these were the master exorcists Captain Wong had personally enlisted from the Church.
The battle erupted into absolute violence. Driven to desperation, the Train to Paradise shed its metallic form, dissolving into a writhing swarm of specters and demonic horrors that fought back madly. Adapting instantly, Captain Wong reshuffled his tactical deployments on the fly, methodically squeezing the entitys battle space and whittling away its power step by step, aiming for complete annihilation.
Yet for all the fury and noise of the firefight, the battle was effectively over before it had even begun. The moment the train rattled blindly into Captain Wongs carefully laid trap and failed to break containment, its doom was sealed. The Train to Paradise was undeniably a terrifying, formidable paranormal anomaly, but in its utterly shattered, insane state, it could no longer direct its vast power with any semblance of strategy. It wasted its strength in mindless, frantic thrashing. Pithed against a meticulously prepared force executing targeted countermeasures, how could it possibly prevail?
The specialists deployed by the federal government might not have possessed legendary personal strength, but the state possessed unlimited coffers. They simply rained down specialized, high-grade weaponry without a second thought for the cost-a horde of ants devouring an elephant piece by piece. Furthermore, Captain Wong was no fool. He knew the limitations of his own unit, so the moment he understood the nature of the threat, he brought in heavy hitters from the Church. Their opening volley crippled the engine; without a locomotive, where could the damn thing run? With the Churchs masters applying holy suppression from the flank while the special ops squad delivered concentrated, high-yield fire, the ghost train couldn't hold out for even ten minutes before being battered into a heap of scrap metal.
Because every phase of the operation unfolded strictly according to plan, collateral damage was remarkably light. Among the strike team, only one operative suffered severe injuries, with three others sustaining minor wounds. As for the unfortunate passengers trapped on board, two caught stray bullets and lost their lives, while fewer than thirty suffered minor injuries. With the Train to Paradise destroyed, the curse binding them dissolved automatically. However, because the incident had dragged on for days, a portion of the victims had already been fully digested by the entity. A final headcount revealed 288 survivors, Amelia among them. Captain Wongs agents immediately set to work treating the wounded and securing the scene, plunging the platform into utter chaos.
And where was Li Yunlong while all this unfolded? Not far at all. He was hiding inside a long-dried drainage ditch roughly five hundred meters as the crow flies from the abandoned station. To mask his presence, he had used a cluster of paper puppets to erect a temporary concealment shelter, allowing him to watch the battle in relative comfort. Seeing the entity blasted to smithereens under a rain of concentrated fire, Li Yunlong finally gained a clear, visceral understanding of why government officials in this Marvel world always acted so insufferably arrogant-the sheer disparity in resources was staggering.
Take the persecuted mutants, for instance. How much actual capital and resources did they command? To make matters worse, they were fractured into countless squabbling factions. Even their two most powerful organizations-the Brotherhood of Mutants and the X-Men-spent half their time at each other's throats, recklessly squandering their limited strength in endless internal feuds. It was no wonder the politicians looked down on them! They were completely outmatched in terms of organization and backing. But what about their individual deterrent power?
Having lived in this world for a while now, Li Yunlong was utterly convinced of one thing: never blindly trust Marvel lore! American comic books had a long-standing tradition of hyperbolic grandstanding-boasting felt great in the moment, but looking back years later, one would find the lore riddled with logical plot holes that no amount of retconning could fix. Marvels official creators had run into this exact embarrassing predicament. After their cinematic universe exploded in popularity, they attempted to establish a grand, unified Marvel Universe to streamline all their superhero assets, only to realize to their horror that decades of past writers had blown things hopelessly out of proportion. Generations of creators had taken turns spouting sensational nonsense just to make their own runs sound impressive. When the time came to weave it all into a coherent whole, the contradictions were too glaring to ignore. In the end, they hurriedly threw together the concept of a parallel multiverse, but even that failed to smooth over all the old fabrications. They were ultimately forced to master the art of playing deaf and dumb, sticking their heads in the sand like ostriches to ignore the publics ridicule. In short, Li Yunlong didn't buy a single word of Marvels overblown lore anymore. As someone who personally possessed the superpower of sensory control, he had a very grounded, realistic grasp of what the X-gene could actually accomplish.
While he had never met Magneto or Professor X in person and couldn't precisely gauge their absolute upper limits, he could still accurately deduce the boundaries of their output. Take Professor X as an example. In the exaggerated lore, when hooked up to Cerebro, the Professor could supposedly use his telepathy to kill every single person on Earth. But in reality, Cerebro was nothing more than an amplifier; it could only magnify power that was already present. No matter how much the machine boosted his output, the energy channeled through it could never exceed the hard physical limit of the X-gene itself. And Li Yunlong was certain that the power of the X-gene reached only as far as the seventh consciousness, the manas, touching upon the eighth consciousness, the alaya-vijnana, at the absolute absolute most. Therefore, the claim that Professor X could kill the entire global population using Cerebro was fundamentally impossible.
Looking closer at his supposed operational range: according to the lore, Professor X's telepathy reached roughly 400 kilometers on his own, and extended worldwide when using Cerebro-with «worldwide» presumably meaning the entire planet Earth. Yet that kind of range was no different from a modern telecommunications network; any ordinary person using a smartphone could achieve global reach. As for controlling the minds of every living soul within that radius-what a joke! Draw a circle with a diameter of 400 kilometers over a bustling metropolis, and imagine how many millions of people lived inside it. If Xavier truly possessed that level of mental capacity, he could have conquered the globe by brute force long ago, rather than hiding away in his little school. In truth, his telepathy was absurdly easy to counter. Plenty of beings in the Marvel universe were completely immune to mind attacks, and even those who weren't could simply follow Magneto's example-wear a specially lined helmet, and Xaviers psychic powers were rendered completely useless. Taking him out was just as trivial: lock onto his coordinates from afar and launch a long-range missile or artillery strike. Professor X would have no choice but to sit there and die, as his mental powers had zero effect on inanimate machinery.
If even Professor X, with his superior range, was reduced to such a pathetic plight, the short-ranged Magneto was in an even worse state. The claim that he could manipulate the entire planet's magnetic field while sitting in one place was pure fantasy-blowing up the Earth directly would be easier than pulling off a feat like that! Strip away the gloss of exaggerated hype, and Magnetos actual limits were easy to see. In the films, Magneto had once ripped a massive suspension bridge apart and relocated it. Setting aside how difficult that was, even if one assumed he could do it with ease, the entire span of that bridge was under two thousand meters. Standard military artillery possessed an effective firing range well over 200 kilometers. Replace the metal warheads with specialized non-magnetic shells immune to his manipulation, and how many salvos would it take to turn Magneto into pink mist? Running the numbers made it painfully clear why those federal officials, fully aware of what Magneto could do, still had the gall to arrogantly brand him a mere terrorist. In their eyes, Magneto truly was nothing more than a glorified insurgent!
Magneto and Professor X practically represented the absolute pinnacle of individual mutant power in the Marvel universe. If even they were reduced to such miserable circumstances, it was only natural that figures like Wolverine and Rogue struggled to get by, while brute force types like Juggernaut ended up locked away in military prisons.
All in all, apart from the Train to Paradise collapsing far faster than he had anticipated, events had largely unfolded within Li Yunlong's expectations. Just as he had predicted, Amelia had been forced onto the train by those so-called official professionals. But what had she gained by risking her life? Nothing more than acting as a living beacon for a backup plan. In truth, virtually anyone could have filled that role, yet those self-righteous government experts had insisted on forcing her to do it. Li Yunlong saw right through their motives-those bastards in uniform didn't possess an ounce of moral integrity. Why sacrifice our own valuable specialists for a pure cannon-fodder assignment when anyone will do? Since Amelia was already cursed, why waste time finding someone else? Send her in!
Amelias misfortune played out right before his eyes. Learning from the mistakes of others, Li Yunlong reminded himself to carve this lesson deep into his mind, mentally noting: Never, under any circumstances, trust the moral integrity of government officials! As for leaping out to rescue her once she was in danger-he and Amelia were completely unrelated, mere business partners at best. Charging blindly into a life-or-death situation for her sake? Unless his IQ suddenly dropped below zero, there was zero chance he would ever do something so foolish.
In fact, Li Yunlong felt a quiet sense of satisfaction seeing her forced onto the train by those official suits. Even with the Train to Paradise on the verge of destruction due to its own madness, he wouldn't dare risk boarding it himself. Yet the underlying secrets at the core of the train held an immense pull for him. If he couldn't extract those secrets before the entity was destroyed, they would vanish forever alongside its collapse. Unwilling to venture onto the train himself, Li Yunlong had long anticipated that Amelia would be pushed to the front line, and had devised a clever compromise to harvest what he needed!