Chapter 71 Spatial Law Affinity
The communication channel was filled with heavy breathing and the sounds of gunfire.
Tony's warning rang out once more.
"Watch the right, a squad of heavy infantry is coming through."
Steve pushed forward.
The shield blocked the first wave of gunfire.
But he was pushed off his feet by the immense impact.
Crashing into a car behind him.
Natasha rushed forward to help.
Only to be blocked back by an energy shield.
"The equipment's been upgraded!"
Tony swooped down from the air.
Simultaneously locked onto by four heavy laser guns on the ground.
"Damn it."
He rolled continuously in mid-air.
Still, his left-leg thruster was hit.
The armor lost its balance and smashed into a corner shop.
"Stark!"
Steve shouted.
"I'm fine, just a little dizzy."
Tony's voice came through intermittently.
"These bastards really play dirty."
The battle fell into a deadlock.
Everyone reached the limit of their physical endurance and equipment.
All hope was pinned on that sorcerer on the rooftop.
Thor descended from the heavens, crushing the enemies surrounding the shop.
And pulled Tony out of the ruins.
"Iron Man, your armor has a hole in it."
Tony shook his head.
"Don't touch that panel, there are circuits inside."
"We need to change our strategy."
Steve walked over, panting.
"How do we change it?"
"We can't push them back."
Tony pointed at the sky.
"To the roof."
"Help that sorcerer hold the position."
"The aliens are bound to figure out what he's doing."
Natasha and Barton closed in.
Both of them had sustained injuries.
"I agree."
Barton wrapped his bleeding arm with a bandage.
"I could see clearly from above; the enemies are gathering in that direction."
Steve looked at the building shrouded in golden light.
"Everyone, listen up."
"Target: the roof of the Sanctum Sanctorum."
"Move out."
On the rooftop of the Sanctum Sanctorum.
The wind whipped like knives.
The light of the golden magic array had grown so dense it was nearly tangible.
Lin Yi stood in the exact center of the rooftop.
His hands maintained that ancient seal.
The bricks beneath his feet were completely pulverized.
Dark red blood dripped down his fingers.
Before it could hit the ground, it was vaporized by the terrifying energy.
The blue spatial rift in the sky was constricted by a giant golden net.
The gap, originally hundreds of meters wide, shrank by a third.
Chitauri craft had to line up in single file if they wanted to charge through.
Their speed was as slow as squeezing toothpaste.
Sophia stood at the stairway entrance, gripping the doorframe.
The gale whipped her hair around like weeds.
"Lin Yi!"
She shouted at the top of her lungs.
"You're going to die!"
"This power isn't something a human can bear!"
Lin Yi didn't even turn his head.
"Shut your mouth."
"Stand there and don't move."
Right now, even when he spoke, he was spitting out puffs of white air.
The tearing effect of higher-dimensional space was crazily destroying his body.
The power of the Tesseract didn't reason with anyone.
It just wanted to shred everything standing in its way.
But this was exactly what Lin Yi wanted.
White text frantically pulsed across his retina.
[ Endured the crushing weight of high-density spatial rules, Spatial Law Affinity +1000 ]
[ Endured the backlash of Infinity Stones energy, Spatial Law Affinity +1500 ]
[ Physical body is being torn apart by spatial concepts, Constitution +20000 ]
[ Spatial tearing has been reversed into cellular recombination, Cellular Activity +1000 ]
Every time a notification pulsed, his body underwent a cycle of collapse and rebirth.
His bones, the moment they broke, were forcibly healed by black dimensional runes.
His blood was drained and regenerated anew.
This was a form of extreme and agonizing torture.
Yet the corners of Lin Yi's mouth stretched wider and wider.
Issuing a low chuckle.
This laughter sounded particularly harsh amidst the howling wind.
"Fantastic."
"This is the exact feeling."
Lin Yi licked the blood from the corner of his mouth.
"Much more potent than that idiot Dormammu."
"Give me more force!"
He poured even more dark energy into the magic array.
A layer of black flames flickered over the golden net lines.
These black flames burned along the net lines toward the edge of the rift.
The Tesseract sensed a threat.
The blue beam of light doubled in size.
Smashing straight through the first layer of defense nets Lin Yi had set up.
And slammed heavily into his chest.
Lin Yi was struck half a foot off the ground.
The magic array beneath his feet pinned him in mid-air like a spike.
[ Endured pure spatial origin impact ]
[ Demigod Body defense breached ]
[ Spatial Law Affinity +3000 ]
[ Gained Spatial Folding Perception ]
Lin Yi dropped to the ground.
His knees buckled slightly, but he didn't kneel.
His understanding of the surrounding space had completely changed.
The air was no longer transparent.
It turned into layers of foldable grids.
He could see minute faults in the air a hundred meters away.
This was the substantive change brought by Spatial Law Affinity.
Tony's anxious voice came through the communicator.
"Sorcerer, are you alright?"
"Radar shows a nuclear-bomb-level energy burst happened on your end."
Lin Yi reached out and patted the sparks off his clothes.
"I won't die."
"This stone has quite a temper."
Tony flew at full speed through mid-air.
"Captain and the others are rushing toward your direction."
"You'd better hold on."
"That rift seems to be shrinking?"
Lin Yi raised his head to look at the sky.
"No shit."
"Isn't that me tightening it up right now?"
"It still takes time to close it completely."
Fury's voice cut in.
"How long?"
"The outside army has completely gone crazy."
"They are charging toward your position at all costs."
Lin Yi looked at the alien army beginning to change formations in the sky.
"Let them."
"Ten minutes."
"Give me ten minutes, and I'll shut this faucet off for good."
Sophia poked half her body out from behind the door.
"You can't last ten minutes!"
"Your magic reserves have already exceeded the limit."
"That's the Infinity Stones!"
Lin Yi turned his head and glanced at her.
The dark red light in the depths of his eyes had not yet dissipated.
"If I say I can, I can."
"Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about my power?"
Sophia was so frightened by his gaze that she shrank back behind the door.
This pure, tyrannical aura was even more terrifying than Kaecilius.
She completely couldn't understand why this man could survive under such backlash.
Lin Yi rolled his sore neck.
His hands pulled outward.
The giant golden net in the sky contracted accordingly.
The spatial rift emitted an unpleasant screech of twisting metal.
It was directly constricted down to only a few dozen meters wide.
Now large spacecraft were completely stuck.
Only individual soldiers could barely squeeze out.
[ Forcibly interfered with the spatial channel ]
[ Endured spatial causal backlash ]
[ Spatial Law Affinity +2000 ]
This wave of bonuses made Lin Yi feel thoroughly refreshed all over.
He felt that if he tore open a spatial gate right now,
he wouldn't need to draw circles; a mere thought would take him to the other side of Earth.
The Infinity Stones were truly a super power bank.
Much faster than gnawing on books in the Kamar-Tajlibrary.
The blue light in the sky was becoming increasingly unstable.
Fine cracks began to appear at the edge of the magic array beneath Lin Yi's feet.
These cracks spread all the way down along the bricks.
Chapter 72 Fleet Assembly Order
The entire rooftop let out a painful groan under the crushing weight of spatial pressure.
The communication channel was filled with static.
Tony's voice was the first to pierce through the chaos.
"This commotion is way too exaggerated."
"Lin Yi."
"Are you about to tear down the entire sky over there?"
"The radar of Jarvis shows that the spatial energy readings around you have already gone off the charts."
"Do you need to switch shifts and take a break?"
Lin Yi gripped the golden web-line tightly with both hands.
Dark red blood trickled down the back of his hands.
As soon as it dripped, it was directly evaporated into a cloud of red mist by the high temperature.
He gritted his teeth and chuckled.
"Shut up."
"Tin Man."
"Mind your own business."
"I can handle this bit of backlash."
White system prompts scrolled frantically across his retina.
[Enduring high-dimensional space rule suppression]
[Spatial Law Affinity + 1500]
[Bones suffering fragmentation damage]
[Constitution + 5000]
Every time his bones cracked and reassembled,
made Lin Yi's breathing grow heavier.
Yet not only did he not retreat,
but he poured even more of the Origin of Darkness into the magic net.
A layer of black flames instantly surged over the golden web-line,
burning the edges of the crack until they crackled.
Steve's voice sounded in the channel.
"Tony."
"Do not disturb him."
"The pressure on the ground is much less now."
"We need to take this opportunity to push the defense line on Central Avenue out."
"Natasha."
"There are three big alien soldiers on your right."
"Leave them to me."
Natasha's gunshot rang out along with her reply.
"Barton."
"Lend me your high-explosive arrows."
"The skin of these guys is too thick."
Barton drew his bowstring to the max at the high vantage point.
"This is the last one."
"Use it sparingly."
"After this battle is over, I will have the Director reimburse me for the equipment costs."
Fury stared at the command big screen on the Helicarrier.
"Cut the crap."
"Everyone focus."
"Hill."
"What is the situation with the portal now?"
Hill's hands tapped rapidly on the control keyboard.
"Director."
"The expansion of the portal has been completely contained."
"It currently shows a shrinking trend."
"That sorcerer really pulled it off."
But this brief victory did not last long.
Far beyond Earth's orbit,
inside the command ship of the Chitauri army,
the Commander kicked over the metal table in front of him.
He stared at the flashing red warnings on the main control screen.
The communication channel was filled with the panicked screams of frontline soldiers.
"My Lord."
"The teleportation portal has been blocked."
"An unknown energy network is slaughtering our vanguard troops."
The Commander grabbed the operator by the collar.
"Who did this?"
"How could there be this level of defense force on Earth?"
The operator tremblingly magnified the image.
The hologram screen displayed the image of the rooftop at 177A Bleecker Street.
A tiny human stood in the dazzling golden light,
single-handedly pulling against the rules of the Tesseract.
"Kill him."
The Commander's spittle sprayed directly onto the operator's face.
"No matter the cost,"
"flatten that area for me immediately."
"Have the Leviathan formation turn around completely."
"Concentrate all firepower."
The order instantly reached the interior of Earth along the alien communication network.
Over New York,
five Leviathan beasts that were previously causing destruction everywhere stopped in mid-air simultaneously.
Their massive bodies emitted an ugly mechanical friction sound,
swinging around together in the air.
A huge shadow swept across several blocks.
Over a hundred Chitauri soldiers stepping on flying devices, like sharks smelling blood,
gave up their entanglement with the Avengers,
and all turned their muzzle to follow behind the Leviathans.
Hulk was holding up a car, preparing to smash it at the enemies in the air,
but the enemies all flew away.
He tilted his head in confusion,
dropped the car, and let out a dissatisfied roar.
Thor put away his hammer,
looking at the dark cloud-like formation in the sky.
"Where are they going?"
"Did they run away?"
Steve gripped the shield in his hand tightly.
"This is not running away."
"They are regrouping."
"The direction is..."
Steve glanced at that location,
and his expression changed.
"Tony."
"They are heading towards the Sanctum Sanctorum."
"That sorcerer is in danger."
Tony completed a sharp turn in the air,
and the red lights inside the armor began to flash wildly.
Jarvis's emotionless mechanical voice sounded.
"Sir."
"Five high-energy reaction sources detected approaching."
"The target points directly at the location of Mr. Lin Yi."
"The number of enemy escorts exceeds two hundred."
"Estimated to enter the firing range in ten seconds."
Tony pushed the thruster to maximum output,
and the armor pulled a red sonic boom cloud in the air.
"Lin Yi."
"Can you hear me?"
"There is an alien fleet throwing a party right above your head."
"Hurry up and let go of that magic net."
"A large number of enemies have already rushed to your location."
"Do you need firepower support?"
Fury on the mothership also saw the change of red dots on the radar.
His hand pressed hard against the edge of the communication console.
"Lin Yi."
"This is an order."
"Fall back immediately."
"You alone cannot withstand this kind of firepower coverage."
"We will find another way to deal with that spatial rift."
Sophia hid behind the iron door leading to the rooftop,
her hands tightly covering her ears.
The wind outside was fierce enough to shatter bones.
She poked out half her head,
looking at the solitary back of Lin Yi.
"Master Lin."
"Stop already."
"The portal has already been compressed."
"If you keep draining like this, you will lose your life."
Lin Yi did not even turn his head back.
"Get back inside and stay put."
"Shut the door properly."
"If you get splattered with blood in a while, I will not wash it for you."
Sophia shrank back in fright,
but still gritted her teeth and cried out.
"The Ancient One said,"
"magic cannot be used to resist head-on."
"You will burst from overexertion."
Lin Yi sneered.
"That set of hers does not work with me."
"I just like taking things head-on."
Lin Yi stood right in the center of the rooftop,
raising his head against the howling wind.
Five iron monster fish, along with locusts filling the sky, had already pressed down overhead.
Blue charging light lit up on the outer armor of the bodies of the Leviathans.
Over a hundred alien energy guns locked onto his head entirely.
He could even clearly see the breathing holes on the helmets of those alien soldiers.
Not only did Lin Yi not let go,
but he chuckled instead.
That laughter was transmitted to the ears of everyone through the channel,
carrying a madness that chilled people to the bone.
"Fall back."
"Director."
"You have got one thing wrong."
"There has never been the word 'retreat' in the dictionary of my life."
He licked his chapped lips,
his voice hoarse yet full of oppression.
"Tony."
"Take care of your pile of junk."
"Do not come steal my rations."
"Let them come."
As soon as his voice fell,
the blue light filling the sky completely tore apart the gloomy firmament of New York.
Chapter 73: The Frenzied Dance of the Black Chains
The blue light spots in the sky reached their peak in an instant.
The piercing energy roar completely drowned out all other noises.
Five Leviathan beasts opened their huge mouths simultaneously.
The high-energy beam from the main cannons, mixed with the energy gun strafing from over a hundred Chitaurisoldiers,
was like a blue rainstorm,
pouring down overwhelmingly,
heading straight for the roof of the Sanctum Sanctorum.
"Lin Yi."
Tony roared out in the communication channel.
He had already pushed his thrusters to an overload state,
but it still couldn't catch up with the speed at which the beams fell.
Lin Yi raised his head,
watching that blue firepower network that filled people with despair.
He didn't make any dodging movements at all.
Instead, he actively let go of his hands that were gripping the golden magic net.
"Bring it on."
He let out a wild roar.
As his hands released,
that massive golden net suppressing the spatial rift instantly shattered and disintegrated,
turning into golden sparks filling the sky, drifting in the air.
The forcibly tightened spatial passage seemed to have found relief,
and immediately began expanding outward crazily.
The power of the Tesseract ran wild again.
But Lin Yi didn't care about the life or death of the passage at all.
What he wanted was to free up his hands.
The blue energy storm slammed into his body without reservation.
The entire building shook violently under this massive impact force.
The cement bricks on the surface of the rooftop were directly vaporized by the high temperature.
The air distorted.
Tony hovered a few streets away,
watching the rooftop that had turned into a scorched wasteland.
"Damn it."
"It's over."
"No living creature can survive under this kind of firepower network."
"Jarvis."
"Scan life signs immediately."
Jarvis's voice echoed in the helmet.
"Sir."
"The energy interference in the target area is too strong."
"Unable to perform precise scanning."
"A massive amount of energy is gathering in the core area."
Sophia downstairs was shaken and fell to the ground.
Countless cracks split open on the ceiling overhead.
Dust fell in large handfuls onto her mage robes.
She covered her face, not daring to make a single sound.
Only one thought remained in her mind:
that madman really played himself to death.
But in the central area of that dazzling white light,
Lin Yi not only didn't die,
but not even a bit of his skin was broken.
The abnormal defense of the Demigod Body was vividly displayed at this moment.
The system's white text flashed before his eyes like a waterfall.
[Sustained alien high-energy laser strafing]
[Energy Resistance +2000]
[Energy Resistance +3000]
[Sustained Leviathan main cannon bombardment]
[Constitution +10000]
[Acquired new trait: Plasma Shield Absorption]
Comfortable.
This feeling is too comfortable.
This feeling of being tightly wrapped in high-concentration energy
is simply more addictive than a full-body massage.
Lin Yi stretched his somewhat sore and swollen neck.
His joints made crisp cracking sounds.
He raised his right hand
and yanked off the dark red bracer on his left wrist.
"Is it fun hiding up there shooting sneak attacks?"
"Now it's my turn."
The moment the bracer left his wrist,
it emitted a sharp and piercing screech.
This sound penetrated the roar of the artillery fire all over the sky
and directly drilled into the minds of every Chitauri soldier.
A black chain formed entirely by the condensation of the origin of darkness shot out from his hand.
This chain was like a living black venomous snake,
swelling against the wind
and instantly elongating to a distance of dozens of meters.
The surface of the chain burned with heart-palpitating black flames.
Lin Yi exerted force with his feet,
and the explosive power of over 500,000 constitution directly stomped a large hole through the floor beneath his feet.
He himself was like a black cannonball,
braving the residual energy aftermath,
and soaring straight into the sky.
He crashed directly into the dense flight formation of the Chitauri.
The sky instantly fell into chaos.
Lin Yi had gone berserk with killing.
He didn't need to make any defensive moves at all.
The energy guns in the hands of the Chitauri soldiers hit his body,
unable to even make his movements pause for a second.
They only turned into reward numbers constantly jumping on the system panel.
With a casual wave of his right hand,
the dozens of meters long chain of despair swung out a semicircle in the air.
The black afterimage swept across the sky,
and over a dozen Chitauri flyers were like flying insects hit by a flyswatter,
directly exploding into balls of dazzling fireballs mid-air.
The black flames burned along the metal debris,
leaving not even a pinch of ashes behind.
An elite Chitauri soldier drove a flyer and rushed over from the side,
raising his gun and pulling the trigger at Lin Yi's head.
Lin Yi didn't even look in that direction,
backhanding a grab with his left hand
and directly pinching the incoming high-energy blue beam.
The beam was crushed into countless tiny light spots in his palm.
Before the soldier could react to what happened,
Lin Yi had already stepped on another flyer and jumped in front of him.
A powerful and heavy hook punch
landed solidly on the alien's helmet.
The muffled impact sound spread through the communication channel.
That hard alien helmet, along with the head inside,
was blown apart raw like a watermelon run over by a truck.
The headless corpse fell straight down from mid-air.
Lin Yi snatched that flyer to use as a stepping stone,
exerting force again to leap toward the next target hiding behind.
This was simply a one-sided massacre.
He shuttled through the dense formation of flyers,
and every time he swung his chain
or threw a punch,
it would take away a few aliens' lives.
Blood and metal debris fell down like raindrops,
smashing onto the empty streets of Manhattan.
The remaining Chitauri soldiers began to panic.
They tried to increase the distance,
but the five Leviathan beasts let out a deafening roar.
They turned their huge bodies around.
Fury stood in front of the control console of the Helicarrier.
His only remaining solitary eye stared fixedly at the big screen.
On the screen was high-definition footage transmitted back in real-time by Tony's armor.
Right at the exact center of the footage,
that man wearing a tattered top was utterly dominating an alien fleet in the sky.
Hill pressed both hands on the table,
her usually calm voice completely distorted.
"Director."
"All energy readings are completely chaotic."
"His body is absorbing the energy output of those alien weapons."
"Not only did he not suffer any injuries,"
"Instead, he gets stronger the more he fights."
Fury took a deep breath,
withdrew his hands that were pressed on the table,
and quietly wiped the cold sweat on his palms against his black trouser legs.
"Record all combat data."
"Don't miss a single frame of footage."
"After the war ends, we need to reassess the threat level of Kamar-Taj."
Tony was hovering less than 500 meters away from the battlefield at this moment.
Watching that black shadow flying through the sky and earth,
he let out a long, loud whistle.
"Everyone."
"Did you see it on the screen?"
"This guy up there is playing a game of Whack-A-Mole."
"And he doesn't even need a hammer to smash the moles."
Tony opened the public communication channel.
"I told you he was reliable."
"You guys didn't believe my judgment just now."
"Now, who else needs me to provide aerial firepower cover?"
Chapter 74 A Combat Show That Refreshes Cognitive Understanding
Steve sat in a jolting abandoned car.
Watching the bloody slaughter on the tactical tablet.
He wiped the dust off his face with a mud-caked hand.
"I've served in the military for so many years."
"Fought Hydra's perverts."
"Fought Nazi madmen."
"But I swear to God."
"I've never seen this kind of suicidal fighting style."
"He completely abandoned conventional tactical defense."
"Are these battlefield actions something a normal human can pull off?"
Barton sat in the passenger seat and sneered.
The bowstring in his hand creaked as he pulled it.
"Captain."
"Do you think he is still within the biological category of humans?"
"I saw his bones glowing with black light just now."
"Those high-energy lasers hitting him were just like tickling him."
Natasha chimed in while turning the steering wheel hard.
"Don't care what kind of species he actually is."
"As long as he stands on our side right now, that's fine."
"Thor."
"You've lived a long time and seen a lot."
"Does Asgard have such a fierce melee warrior?"
The channel was quiet for two seconds.
Then came Thor's low voice.
Accompanied by a few loud thunderclaps exploding.
"Midgard actually hides such a powerful warrior."
"His power is very pure."
"And it carries a dark aura that makes me feel extremely wary."
Thor stood on the damaged top of a building.
Watching the battle situation here from afar.
The hammer in his hand spun unconsciously.
"When this war ends."
"I must have a fight with him."
Tony immediately took over the conversation in the channel.
"Big guy."
"As a friend, I advise you to better put away this dangerous thought."
"Did you see that black chain in his hand?"
"I think he can pack you up with your hammer and throw you back to Asgard."
Banner's voice cut in leisurely.
"Tony's analysis is correct."
"His body density and compressive capacity completely violate Earth's laws of physics."
"That level of intensive firepower outpouring."
"Even Hulk might not be able to withstand it so easily."
As if responding to Banner's comparison.
Earth-shaking roars from Hulk came from the distant street corner.
Seeming very unconvinced by Banner's depreciation.
An unlucky armored vehicle was grabbed by Hulk and thrown into mid-air.
But no one cared about that green big guy's emotions now.
Everyone was staring at this solo show in the sky.
Lin Yi had already cleared most of the surrounding aircraft formations.
Under his control, the chain of despair was like the sickle wielded by the Grim Reaper.
As long as it was grazed even a little bit by the black flames on the chain.
Whether it was hard armor or the flesh and blood of the Chitauri.
It would turn into ashes flying all over the sky within a few seconds.
He completed a high-difficulty twist in the air.
Avoiding two sudden gunshots fired from the blind spot behind.
The chain in his hand took the momentum and whipped back fiercely.
Directly splitting those two sneak-attacking soldiers along with their aircraft into two halves.
Lin Yi landed steadily on a wreckage still smoking black smoke.
Taking advantage of the wreckage's downward momentum.
He kicked down heavily.
The aircraft accelerated like a meteor crashing toward the ground.
And he himself used the reaction force to elevate his figure again.
His sight tightly locked onto the five big guys he had ignored for a long time.
The Chitauri Commander looked at the heavy casualties of the vanguard troops in space.
So angry that the green scales on his face even exploded.
"Trash."
"They are all a bunch of useless trash."
"Let the Leviathan go up for me."
"Crash him directly with its body."
"I don't believe he can withstand that kind of terrifying mass impact."
The harsh sound of steel friction echoed over Manhattan.
Five Leviathan beasts with a length of more than two hundred meters parted the clouds, and the dark golden heavy armor plates shimmered with metallic sheen.
Their huge bodies crowded the entire field of vision, and the densely packed breathing holes on both sides spewed out orange-red high-temperature gas, and the airflow swept across the roof of the Sanctum Sanctorum with gravel.
The blue light of the alien heavy artillery gathered inside the behemoth's mouth.
Lin Yi stood on the edge of the dilapidated rooftop, and the concrete fragments under his feet were crushed into powder by the wind pressure.
The dark red bracer on his left wrist had completely unlinked its restraints, the black and red intertwined patterns spread along the skin of his forearm, and the high-dimensional runes in his blood circulated rapidly.
The Chitauri Commander's command was transmitted to the behemoth's brain cavity through biological nerves.
The five mechanical monsters swung their spines at the same time, and the huge gravitational acceleration made the foundation of the entire building emit a dull groan.
They were going to use pure tonnage impact to grind this rooftop along with the mage on it into meat paste.
"Jarvis! Push the thruster power to one hundred and twenty percent!"
Under Tony's damaged mask, the muscles at the corner of his eyes twitched, and the energy indicator light of the repulsors began to flash alarm red marks.
"Sir, this will cause the left shoulder servo motor to be completely scrapped."
"Shut up and execute!"
Tony dived at low altitude, the red-gold coated armor tearing through the air, trying to use small missiles to attract the attention of one of the behemoths.
Two anti-armor miniature warheads hit the cheek armor plates of the Leviathan, exploding two clusters of sparks, and shell fragments splattered everywhere.
The behemoth didn't even blink its eyelids, and the airflow stirred up by the tail armor directly flipped Tony away, the armor rolling continuously three times in mid-air, smashing through a billboard.
"Back off, Tony."
Lin Yi's voice sounded flatly in the communication channel.
He raised his hands, his ten fingers hooked emptily.
The black chain wrapped around his right arm made a sharp metal stretching sound, and the black flames ignited layer by layer along the iron rings.
The explosive power of 500,000 physique surged within the subcutaneous muscle groups.
The black chain transformed from one into five, and the branched chain bodies were several times thicker than the original, with heavy iron rings carrying barbs, whistling and piercing into the sky.
The five black chains, like wild pythons breaking out of the water, cut through the sky and chased toward the behemoths in five directions respectively.
The lower jaw of the first behemoth was bitten to death fiercely by the rough iron ring, and the black flames burned inward along the gaps of the outer armor, burning through the biological muscle fibers.
The second and third black chains penetrated from the flanks, locking tightly the keel centers of the two Leviathans.
The remaining two black chains poured down from high altitude, directly trapping the tail thruster nozzles of the last two behemoths.
The five air fortresses weighing tens of thousands of tons were forcibly dragged in mid-air by the five black chains.
The forward kinetic energy made the iron chain tighten into a straight spear shape.
The rings on the chain squeezed each other, making a teeth-aching clicking sound.
The high temperature on the black chains burned out five hollows in the surrounding clouds.
Lin Yi's two feet were deeply stuck into the concrete beams and columns of the rooftop, the entire twelve-story building emitted a violent tremor, and the load-bearing walls split open with crisscrossing cracks.
But he stood as firm as a rock.
"Get over here."
Chapter 75 Nuclear Strike Incoming
Lin Yi's arm muscles bulged, the tattered strips of cloth on his upper body were blown off by the airflow, and intricate black meridians appeared on his lean torso.
He exerted force inward, sharply pulling his arms back toward his chest.
A scene defying the laws of gravity appeared in the sky.
Five Leviathan beasts advancing at full speed suddenly stalled, their massive bodies forcefully dragged toward the central airspace by a colossal force.
The armor plates twisted and deformed under the pull, and Chitauri soldiers fixed to the backs of the beasts lost their footing, falling from the high altitude in rows.
The Chitauri Commander suddenly stood up inside the deep space mothership, the gravity readings on the holographic screen completely chaotic.
"This is impossible! How could a carbon-based lifeform possess this kind of pulling force!"
Before the roar faded, the image on the main screen plunged the entire command cabin into dead silence.
Lin Yi crushed the load-bearing beam beneath his feet, leaping ten meters into the air, holding five tightening black chains with both hands, twisting and revolving in mid-air.
The black chains coiled around the five beasts, looking as if five giant battering rams were being swung across the sky.
The airflow was torn into a vacuum passage, and all the cars on the streets of Manhattan were sucked up into mid-air.
The five mechanical beasts slammed toward the central core point at an extremely fast speed two hundred meters high above Manhattan.
The muffled sound of metal colliding with alien bones shattered all the glass within a radius of three kilometers.
The heads, decks, and thrusters of the five beasts fiercely smashed together.
The iron chains contracted and tightened, and the black flames took the opportunity to detonate the biological reactors and high-energy ammunition depots inside the Leviathan.
A crimson-gold fireball with a diameter exceeding two hundred meters expanded in the mid-air of New York.
Impact swept across all directions, blowing away the black smoke hanging over the sky of Manhattan completely clean.
The five beasts completely disintegrated, and tens of thousands of glowing iron pieces mixed with charred wreckage turned into a dense metallic meteor shower pouring down.
The Chitauri infantry regiment originally hanging on the beasts lost their foothold in the air, crashing down onto the ground streets like falling leaves in a rainstorm with a pattering sound.
The fireball illuminated the entire gloomy neighborhood.
Lin Yi recalled the black chains; the iron cables automatically contracted and spiraled in mid-air, transforming back into a dark red bracers, snapping seamlessly onto his left wrist.
He plummeted straight down from a hundred-meter high altitude.
Without using spell cushioning, or even opening a protective gas shield.
His entire body smashed into the asphalt road right in the center of the street.
The ground was smashed into a deep pit two meters deep, cobweb-like cracks spreading outward for dozens of meters, and fire hydrants on both sides of the road burst under pressure, spraying columns of water shooting into the sky.
The smoke and dust dispersed.
Lin Yi slowly walked up from the bottom of the pit, shaking the dust off his hands.
Behind him, the huge wreckage remaining after the collision of the five Leviathans crashed heavily into the intersection in front of the Sanctum Sanctorum, igniting towering flames.
The firelight swallowed those fallen alien stragglers.
Lin Yi stood before the flickering firelight, calm and composed, his breathing not even missing half a beat.
[ You withstood the close-range Impact of the Leviathan's self-detonation ]
[ Physical Defense + 1000 ]
[ Physique + 3000 ]
The text prompts faded at the edge of the vision.
The communication channel was dead silent, with only heavy breathing and current static echoing repeatedly.
Tony pushed open his helmet's faceplate, hovering in mid-air, his lips moving without uttering a single word.
Steve's Vibranium shield hung beside his legs, the sweat oozing from his forehead streaming down mixed with mud and ash.
Barton leaned against the edge of the scaffolding, the bow and arrow in his hand completely loosening, staring blankly at the figure standing in front of the sea of fire.
"Captain..." Barton swallowed a mouthful of saliva, "I feel like our tactical discussion just now... was a bit redundant."
Steve took a deep breath, wiping the sweat from his face: "There has never been any record of this kind of existence in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database."
Fury stood straight inside the command cabin of the helicarrier.
His single eye stared intently at the heat distribution map on the big screen.
Hill turned her head, the electronic pad in her hand suspended in mid-air: "Director, the aerial formation around the Sanctum Sanctorum... is completely wiped out."
Fury slowly sat back down in his chair, tapping his fingers three times on the armrest.
"Raise the security classification of this footage to level ten."
"No one is allowed to access it except me."
On the streets of New York, Lin Yi raised his foot, crushing the chest of a Chitauri straggler trying to crawl up.
He patted the scorch marks on his body, preparing to turn his attention to the Tesseract at the top of Stark Tower.
But right at this second.
His ears twitched, and a harsh line-switching sound suddenly came from the communicator.
Fury's tone completely changed, losing his usual composure and even carrying irrepressible Fury.
"Everyone listen up, emergency!"
Inside the bridge of the helicarrier, the warning lights on the console all turned into a glaring blood red.
Fury smashed a fist onto the main console, a fine crack splitting across the bulletproof glass table surface.
"They're crazy!"
Fury roared into the communication microphone, the veins at his neck bulging one by one.
"The Council bypassed my authorization!"
Inside the communication channel, harsh buzzing came through the earphones of all Avengers.
Tony was landing on top of a street lamp to inspect the thruster, hearing this his hand slipped, and the wrench dropped to the ground: "Fury, make yourself clear, who is crazy?"
"world Security Council!" Fury gritted his teeth, pulling up a set of top-secret radar tracks.
"Two minutes ago, a fighter jet belonging to the Council was catapulted from the mothership and launched a 760,000-ton yield tactical nuclear bomb toward Manhattan!"
This sentence poured like a basin of cold water over everyone's heads.
Steve's eyes froze instantly.
"They are going to detonate a nuclear bomb in a civilian area?"
"Those idiots think New York is out of control." Fury's voice was hoarse, "They intend to block the alien army by cleansing the ground, and it is expected to reach the center of Manhattan in 180 seconds!"
"760,000 tons..."
Banner's voice sounded from behind, his green skin looming faintly at the neck.
"That will wipe the entire Manhattan Island off the map, and millions of civilians haven't even had time to evacuate the subway stations."
Natasha discarded her bullet-emptied rifle, looking up toward the skyline.
Everywhere on the streets were citizens shivering behind car wrecks.
There were mothers holding children cowering under bank porches, and old people sitting in piles of broken glass looking around blankly.
These people had just managed to salvage their lives from the aliens' energy artillery fire.
"It's too late to evacuate." Natasha's voice lowered, "Three minutes, you can't even walk out of three blocks."
"Tony, can you intercept it?" Steve quickly raised his head, looking at the red-gold figure in mid-air.
Tony closed his faceplate, the white light on the armor's eyes flickering violently.
Jarvis's voice reported numbers rapidly in his ear.
"Sir, radar has captured the ballistic trajectory, the target is breaking through at low altitude from the Atlantic Oceandirection, speed exceeding Mach 3."
"With our current energy reserves, the interception success rate is less than forty percent, and you are not carrying a heavy-duty detonation device; you must manually push the warhead at close range."
"Don't talk to me about probability, route all backup energy to the main thrust nozzle."
Chapter 76: "Tony, move aside, let me do it"
Tony's feet suddenly blasted with flames, and his armor kicked up a gale on the street as it rose into the air.
"Stark!" Steve shouted into the communicator.
"Captain, someone's got to throw this big firecracker into the Water." Tony's voice sounded cheerful, but his breathing was rapid. "Jarvis, concentrate all remaining power, ignore any overload protection."
The armor pulled a White vapor cone in the air, hurtling toward the eastern horizon.
Everyone knew what this meant.
Getting close to the nuclear missile's trajectory, his damaged armor stood no chance against the radiation and ultra-high temperatures; this was a one-way ticket.
Aboard the helicarrier, Hill watched the radar screen with red eyes.
The red dot representing the nuclear bomb was rapidly approaching the waters off New York, while the gold dot representing Tony was flying straight toward it.
"Director, the Council has locked the launch terminal; we can't guide an in-air self-destruction." Hill's voice trembled.
Fury stood by the window, one hand stuffed into his leather coat pocket, his knuckles rigid from clenching.
He stared at the satellite weather map, his entire being exuding a sense of helpless dejection.
In the face of absolute political bureaucracy and rigid procedures, the behemoth that was S.H.I.E.L.D. was also being choked to death.
Meanwhile, on the streets of Manhattan.
Lin Yi stood at an intersection pooled with rainwater and engine oil.
His Void Perception was fully unfolded.
After his Spatial Law Affinity rose to over three thousand points, the entire sky of New York turned into a three-dimensional grid woven from latitude and longitude lines in his perception.
He could clearly "see" that conical metal creation.
The missile sliced through the clouds, the rocket engine at its tail spewing a blazing White plume, tearing through the air at a speed of one kilometer per second, less than sixty kilometers away from Manhattan's central island.
The enriched fissionable material packed inside the nuclear warhead emitted heart-palpitating radiation fluctuations in his perception.
That was a deathly power capable of wiping out all life.
In front of the nuclear bomb, Tony's armor was climbing shakily, its thrusters emitting black smoke, its speed already at its limit, yet it still seemed inadequate.
At Tony's current speed, even if he collided with the nuclear bomb, he could only detonate it prematurely over Long Island.
The Impact of the nuclear explosion would still turn half of Manhattan to ashes.
A line of tiny White text popped up on the system panel below Lin Yi's field of vision:
[Extremely high-energy fissionable material detected approaching]
[If you fully withstand the radiation and Impact of a lethal-grade nuclear explosion's epicenter, estimated Constitution +50,000, unlocking the Nuclear Resistancetrait]
The corners of Lin Yi's mouth curled up.
This was indeed a massive temptation.
If he stood at the epicenter and took this nuclear blast head-on, his physical strength would directly step onto a whole new level.
But he took a look around.
The brick walls of the Sanctum Sanctorum had been blown to pieces, and Sophia was shivering by the door, clutching her staff.
At the corner of the street, several children covered in dust were crawling out from under a collapsed newsstand, crying out for their parents.
Steve was organizing civilians to move into a sturdy underground vault, his shield covered in blackened scratches.
If the nuclear bomb detonated overhead, he wouldn't die, but this urban area, this crowd of people, including Tony Stark, would be vaporized within a single second.
If Tony died here, the subsequent Ultron, nano-armor, and those research results containing high-dimensional costs would all vanish into thin air.
For Lin Yi, a living genius inventor was far more valuable than a one-time gain from nuclear radiation.
"In business, one must take the long view."
Lin Yi muttered to himself in a low voice.
He reached up and pressed the communicator by his ear.
Only one hundred and ten seconds left on the countdown.
At the edge of the skyline, the blinding White trail of smoke could already be seen with the naked eye.
Tony's armor was already close to the missile, his metal arms tightly hugging the midsection of the nuclear bomb, thrusters sparking wildly as he tried to force a change in the trajectory's direction.
"Jarvis... lock the rudder... let's push it toward the sea..."
Tony's voice was intermittent in the channel, and the communication signal began to distort under the intense electromagnetic interference.
"We can't push it, sir. The kinetic energy exceeds the load limit by three hundred percent..."
Steve stood on top of the ruins and closed his eyes.
Barton looked up and slowly lowered the hand holding his bow.
In everyone's communicators, a lazy yet clear voice suddenly cut in.
"Tony."
Lin Yi stood at the edge of the crater, slowly raising his hands.
"Let go, and get lost."
The communication channel went dead silent for a brief moment.
Tony's arms were smoking from the high temperature of the nuclear bomb's shell, the paint on the armor's hands completely melted and blackened.
"What did you say?" Tony gritted his teeth against the intense G-force pushing him back. "The moment I let go, Manhattan is gone!"
"I told you to let go."
Lin Yi's voice had no ripples of emotion, as calm as if he were ordering Tony to get a cup of coffee.
"If you don't let go within three seconds, I'll send you away along with this hunk of iron."
Tony was stunned for a moment.
In this brief instant, through the armor's rear-view radar, he saw a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life.
In the sky above Manhattan, a thousand meters high directly in front of the nuclear bomb's flight path.
The originally smooth atmosphere was suddenly torn violently to both sides as if by a pair of invisible giant hands.
The golden magic sparks were no longer tiny circles, but turned into a golden waterfall cascading down from the sky.
The patterns of the spatial laws interwove into a net in the air, forcefully tearing open a massive circular passage with a diameter of over a hundred meters in the middle of the atmosphere.
The space at the edge of the passage showed intense Water-like ripples of distortion, the blue spatial cracks perfectly merging with the golden Vishanti magic circle.
That was no ordinary portal.
That was a high-dimensional corridor that Lin Yi had forcefully torn open by fully mobilizing the three thousand points of Spatial Law Affinity in his body.
The other side of the portal was not any corner of Earth.
Through that golden curtain of light, the deep, pitch-black, freezing Universe could be clearly seen.
Stars shone brilliantly, without the obstruction of an atmosphere.
And right in the center, the Chitauri army's command mothership, shaped like a giant moth, was impressively hovering.
The blue energy circuits on the mothership's surface were clearly visible, with countless small crafts entering and exiting like worker bees.
"My god..."
Inside Tony's helmet, Jarvis's voice froze completely.
"Let go!" Steve roared into the communicator.
Tony let go of his arms almost instinctively, rolling away to the side using the remaining thrust of his armor.
The unrestrained tactical nuclear bomb, carrying a violent kinetic energy of over a thousand meters per second, plunged straight into the massive golden spatial portal without the slightest deviation.
The next second.
The golden portal slammed shut in the air, the remaining Fire sparks dissipating into nothingness in the wild wind.
A dead silence returned to the skies above all of New York.
There was no blinding light from a nuclear explosion, no destructive Impact, and not even a trace of excess thermal radiation leaked onto the ground of Manhattan.
Everyone subconsciously held their breath, looking up at the miniature spatial crack at the top of Stark Tower, which had originally been opened by the Tesseract.
Through that narrow gap connecting to outer space, the Avengers, the civilians on the streets, and Fury on the command ship...
...all witnessed a silent blossoming taking place thirty thousand kilometers away.
Against the deep black background of the Universe.
The nuclear bomb that had passed through the spatial portal crashed straight into the main reactor shell of the Chitauri command mothership in the most primitive and brutal manner.
A White light flared.
It was an ultimate sphere of light rising in space.
Although there was no air to transmit sound, the visual shock made everyone staring at the sky feel their ears ringing.
Seven hundred and sixty thousand tons of equivalent nuclear fission energy erupted in the vacuum.
The Chitauri mothership, as massive as a mountain, was torn to pieces like paper by the high temperature the moment it made contact with the core of the nuclear explosion.
The scorching energy torrent swept in all directions, swallowing up all of the thousands of escorting crafts around it and turning them into molten iron.
The mothership was completely reduced to space debris.
And the instant the mothership turned into a sea of Fire, a chain reaction instantly crossed dimensions along the biological neural control network.
On the streets of Manhattan.
The thousands of Chitauri soldiers still wandering and shooting among the building ruins suddenly went rigid.
The red light inside their visors extinguished at the exact same time.
Like humanoid puppets with their power cut off, the alien soldiers collapsed forward one by one, their energy weapons falling to the ground with crisp clangs.
The remaining two or three crafts lost control, spinning down from mid-air and crashing onto the empty ground.
The clamor, gunfire, and roars of monsters that filled the sky and land vanished without a trace within this single second.
The entire New York battlefield fell completely silent.
Chapter 77: Contact with the Mind Scepter
The golden sparks in the Manhattan sky were completely extinguished.
The dark clouds were torn apart by the shockwave of the nuclear explosion, and sunlight filtered through the wreckage of tall buildings, shining down on the debris-strewn streets.
Steve slightly loosened his grip on his shield.
He wiped the soot and sweat from his face, his chest heaving violently as his gaze swept down the empty street.
In the middle of the street stood the young man, his upper clothes shredded.
Lin Yi shook his wrists. The dark red bracers on his wrists returned to their original size, and the Black Flames silently withdrew back beneath his skin.
Tony landed on top of the ruins on one side of the street.
He flipped open his faceplate and stared at Lin Yi, his lips parting and closing, unable to utter a single word.
Barton slid down from a tilted steel girder.
He stopped ten meters away from Lin Yi, his eyes falling on Lin Yi's intact shoulders.
Those energy beams, which half an hour ago were enough to melt through main battle tanks, had not even left a white mark on Lin Yi's skin.
Natasha leaned against a deformed car door, looking down at her palm.
Her hand was trembling.
It was a muscle spasm caused by prolonged nervous tension.
Banner walked out from a corner, shredded denim strips hanging from his body. The green glow in his eyes faded, revealing tired brown eyes.
He pushed up the non-existent bridge of his glasses, his gaze lingering on the deep crater beneath Lin Yi's feet, his eyes flickering.
Thor carried Mjolnir, stepping over the alien wreckage, his boots crushing charred bone fragments.
The Avengers formed a circle, with Lin Yi right in the center.
The air seemed to freeze.
"You..."
Steve spoke first, breaking the silence of the entire block.
He took a step forward and stopped three paces away from Lin Yi, his gaze locking onto Lin Yi's eyes.
"You saved all of New York."
Tony jumped down from the ruins, sending debris flying.
"Correction, Captain."
Tony stepped forward and stood beside Steve.
"He didn't just save New York."
"He saved the entire world."
"If that nuclear bomb had detonated over Manhattan just now, the 760-kiloton yield would have directly incinerated the entire island..."
Tony stopped there.
The data recorded inside his armor was vivid in his mind.
A dive speed of Mach 3, a core temperature exceeding five thousand degrees, and fission energy sufficient to annihilate millions of lives.
Those data points were stored in Jarvis's core hard drive right now, as heavy as a mountain.
Tony reached out and patted Lin Yi's right shoulder.
Thor took a step forward, raising his thick arm and clapping it heavily on Lin Yi's other shoulder.
"In Asgard, only the bravest berserkers can destroy an enemy's mothership head-on in deep space."
Thor's beard trembled slightly as he spoke, his eyes filled with the mutual respect of warriors.
"Mage of Midgard, you deserve the highest honor of the Divine Realm. Asgard will sing of your name."
Banner leaned against the pile of rubble, his voice soft and low.
"The door of physics was kicked half-shattered by you today."
Natasha walked to the side, her hands slipped into the pockets of her tactical suit, a relaxed curve playing at the corner of her lips.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. owes you a medal for saving civilization."
Barton stood at the back of the group, nodding his head slightly to Lin Yi.
Amidst the ruins, a wild wind swept through the street, kicking up paper scraps and ash.
Everyone's eyes were focused on Lin Yi, waiting for this world-saving hero to deliver a post-war speech, or at least show some expected exhaustion and gravity.
Lin Yi merely raised his hand and waved it dismissively, his face expressionless.
"Saving the world?"
"Leaving a name in history?"
These things were not even worth a speck of dust compared to the attribute points ticking on his system panel.
He turned around, his gaze passing directly over the Avengers in front of him, looking toward a black armored SUV that had just stopped at the end of the street.
The car door opened, and Nick Fury, dressed in a black trench coat, stepped down, his single eye locking with Lin Yi's from dozens of meters away.
Behind Fury, two high-ranking Agents carried a portable alloy lead case, its surface crackling with high-voltage electric arcs and suppression runes.
Lin Yi grinned, showing a mouth of white teeth.
"Alright, save the compliments for the press conference."
His voice rang out clearly across the field, calm without a single ripple of emotion.
"The play of saving the world is over, and I have my own goals."
Lin Yi walked toward Fury.
He stopped three steps in front of Fury, reached out two fingers, and tapped lightly twice on the edge of the alloy lead case.
A faint mental tremor emanated from inside the lead layer, resonating slightly with the Dimensional Runes deep within Lin Yi's blood.
"Director Fury."
Lin Yi withdrew his fingers, his gaze pinned onto Fury's single eye.
"Since the war is won and the aliens have been driven away."
"Now, it's time to fulfill the promise you made to me."
...
The temporary Manhattan command post was set up inside a semi-underground air-raid shelter.
Fury stood outside the thick bulletproof glass, both hands tucked into his coat pockets.
The access control system let out a long beep.
The sealed pneumatic door slowly slid open to both sides, revealing a spacious isolation room.
In the center of the room stood a levitation platform made of pure titanium alloy, surrounded by light blue containment bands.
The slender scepter, gleaming with a dark golden luster throughout, lay quietly on the bracket.
The metal blade at the tip encased a rounded core, its outer layer of deep blue light rising and falling rhythmically like breathing.
With just a single glance through the bulletproof glass, the two guarding S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents outside felt a throbbing pain in their temples and had to look down to avoid direct eye contact.
Lin Yi walked into the isolation room.
The pneumatic door shut heavily behind him, the sound of the latch clicking echoing back and forth in the sealed space.
Lin Yi walked up to the levitation platform.
As the distance closed to half a meter, a cold, stinging wave of mental energy slammed directly into his forehead.
That was the passive defense mechanism of the Mind Stone.
Once an ordinary person touched it physically, their cranial nerves would be instantly overwhelmed by high-dimensional thoughts, turning them entirely into a puppet of the stone.
Even super soldiers with slightly more resilient willpower, when facing such a wash, would fall into endless illusions and consciousness tearing, ultimately leading to brain death.
Lin Yi reached out his right hand.
Spreading his five fingers, he firmly grasped the metal shaft of the Mind Scepter.
Boom!
A loud boom echoed deep within his mind.
The moment the outer blue protective shell touched Lin Yi's flesh, its light flared up several times over, and the originally gentle fluctuations instantly turned into a violent mental storm.
The yellow gem core vibrated violently inside the blue light, and a mental will sufficient to cover the entire planetviolently poured into the meridians of Lin Yi's arm along the metal conductor of the scepter.
This power wanted to tear apart Lin Yi's Sea of Consciousness, erase Lin Yi's personality, and transform this Demigod Body, which possessed nearly five hundred thousand constitution, into a slave vessel for the gem.
Countless chaotic whispers exploded in Lin Yi's ears.
Anger, fear, greed, destruction, despair... the negative emotions of billions of living beings accumulated over the vast timeline turned into spikes, stabbing frantically into Lin Yi's soul core.
Chapter 78: Fury's Compromise
If a normal mage were standing here, their soul would have already been torn to shreds, turning into cosmic dust.
But as this storm rushed into the deepest depths of his Sea of Consciousness, an absolutely cold system notification text suddenly flashed across the very center of Lin Yi's vision in pure white font.
[Cosmic-level high-dimensional rule attack detected: Mind Stone mental assimilation and consciousness pollution]
[Cost Reversal System has intervened!]
[Lethal dose of mental invasion received, Cost Reversal in progress...]
[Your Sea of Consciousness barrier is being continuously torn, converting into Soul Resilience enhancement!]
[Your thinking center is being formatted by high-dimensional concepts, converting into Absolute Mind Immunity!]
[Mental Strength +10,000!]
[Mental Strength +10,000!]
[Mental Strength +10,000!]
...
The numbers rolled down like a waterfall. With every character that ticked by, the noise in Lin Yi's mind weakened by a fraction.
The originally violent mental storm was instantly transformed into pure, flawless high-dimensional divine sense upon entering his Sea of Consciousness, backwardly irrigating Lin Yi's dried-up mental pond.
His Sea of Consciousness was expanding.
From an original small pool of water, it was directly stretched into a vast, boundless ocean.
[Ding!]
[This mental backlash has been completely absorbed!]
[Final attribute settlement: Mental Strength +100,000!]
[Mind affinity has been maxed out: Mind rule affinity has reached the current physical body's bearing limit (MAX)!]
[Obtained exclusive passive trait: Absolute Mental Immunity (Any control, tampering, mind-reading, or illusion targeting the host's consciousness, soul, or mind is determined to be absolutely ineffective, and the controlling energy will backlash against the caster in reverse)!]
The storm subsided.
The faint blue light on the scepter dimmed, becoming as docile as a sheep.
Lin Yi's fingers holding the scepter tightened slightly, his fingertips rubbing against the cold metallic patterns.
His mental strength broke through the 450,000 mark.
This sense of control was clearer than ever before.
He didn't even need to expand his Void Perception. Relying solely on the faint divine sense drifting in the air, he could'see' Fury's rapid heartbeat outside the isolation room, see the code Tony was typing on his armor's screen, and see the faint residual echoes of consciousness remaining on the entire surface of Manhattan.
The six Infinity Stones of the Universe.
The first one.
One-sixth of the power's cost had already been transformed into a cornerstone of his physical foundation.
Lin Yi stood in front of the levitation platform, the corners of his mouth curling up bit by bit.
So this was the taste of an Infinity Stone.
It was more pure, more high-dimensional, and far more addictive than Dormammu's dark source.
Lin Yi held the scepter, not putting it down immediately.
His divine sense traced down his arm and probed into the interior of the scepter once again.
After penetrating the already calmed outer layer of energy, Lin Yi touched an extremely complex three-dimensional maze in the deepest depths of the scepter.
That was the crystallization of wisdom and the framework of mind rules engraved by the Mind Stone over the long cosmic ages.
The originally agreed half-hour seemed a bit insufficient now.
Ten minutes passed.
There was no sound inside the isolation room.
The backlash ripples on the scepter had already completely vanished.
Lin Yi released his right hand, his palm leaving the metal surface.
The scepter hovered in the center of the containment light bands, shaking slightly twice before coming to a complete standstill.
The system panel inside his body slowly faded away. The slight feeling of fullness brought by the surge of 100,000 mental strength points had been completely digested and absorbed by his Demigod Body.
But the true value of this scepter had only just revealed a corner of itself before his eyes.
During the deep investigation just now, Lin Yi discovered that a complete consciousness network framework was sealed inside this stone.
It was one of the rule carriers belonging to the highest dimensions of the Marvel Universe, recording underlying formulas regarding consciousness dimensionality reduction, mental projection, and even the conversion of pure thought into physical reality.
This thing didn't just provide passive attribute bonuses.
If these frameworks could be analyzed, they could even be used to guide Tony in completing a deep link between his armor and his soul, or fundamentally crack the logic of the Dark Dimension's corruption on the Ancient One.
A half-hour was only enough for the system to eat the coarse grains of the backlash.
Chewing slowly to digest the dry goods inside would take time.
Lin Yi turned around and raised his hand to snap his fingers.
The heavy pneumatic door made a soft click and slid open to both sides automatically.
Outside the door, Fury's single eye narrowed slightly, his right hand resting on the holster of the sidearm at his waist.
"Time isn't up yet."
"Fury's voice was low and powerful, the hem of his leather trench coat hanging near his knees."
"You don't look like you've been controlled by it."
"If it could control me, the one standing here talking to you right now wouldn't be Lin Yi."
Lin Yi walked out of the isolation room, pushing the pneumatic door halfway closed with a backhand motion.
Fury didn't reply. His gaze swept past Lin Yi's shoulder, carefully scanning the scepter on the isolation platform. Only after confirming that the dangerous object was intact did his expression ease slightly.
"Since you've already confirmed its safety, according to our agreement, S.H.I.E.L.D. will seal it under the highest level of containment in ten minutes."
Fury pulled a miniature timer from his pocket and flipped it between his fingertips.
"It doesn't belong to Kamar-Taj, let alone any individual. It is a safety asset belonging to all of humanity."
Lin Yi leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms with a playful smirk on his face.
"A safety asset belonging to all of humanity?"
Lin Yi raised an eyebrow.
"A few hours ago, if I hadn't thrown the nuclear bomb into the portal, you bureaucrats who claim to represent all of humanity would have already blown Manhattan into a radioactive crater."
Fury's face darkened, unable to refute.
The Council's unauthorized launch was the biggest scandal since the founding of S.H.I.E.L.D., and a stain on Fury's career that could never be washed away.
Lin Yi took a step forward, his overwhelming pressure crashing directly against Fury.
"Half an hour is too short."
Lin Yi held up three fingers.
"I need three days."
Fury's single eye widened suddenly. He leaned back slightly, his tone abruptly turning cold.
"That's impossible!"
"Do you know what this thing is? It's the source that triggered this war!"
"The Asgardians want to take it away, the World Security Council is watching its every move, and giving you half an hour has already violated the bottom line of my Agentprotocols!"
"Three days? Three days is enough time for world War III to happen three times over!"
Fury's voice echoed in the corridor, carrying his unique authority and leaving no room for doubt.
Lin Yi didn't care about the other's anger at all.
He approached Fury, his gaze calm.
"Director... Fury, don't use your rules to pressure me. You know that set of rules is nothing but a scrap of waste paper in the face of absolute power."
Lin Yi pointed to the isolation room behind him.
"Why do you think Loki was able to use it to control DoctorSelvig?"
"Because you don't understand its structure at all."
"It has a self-consciousness amplification circuit inside. As long as it remains on Earth for a day, anyone who comes into contact with it will have attack instructions subtly implanted in them."
"If you put it in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s underground vault, within a month, your own Agents will open the vault doors themselves and hand it over to the next ambitious madman."
Chapter 79: Qualitative Change in Spiritual Power
A flicker of shock passed deep within Fury's eyes.
They had studied the Tesseract for decades, only to bring about Loki.
Now, facing this equally bizarre scepter, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s existing scientific framework was an absolute blank.
"You can solve this?" Fury asked in a deep voice.
"Only magic can decipher this kind of higher-dimensional structure."
Lin Yi lowered his hand, his tone casual.
"Give me three days."
"Within three days, I will disarm the spiritual self-destruct trigger inside and neatly organize the energy rules within it."
"In exchange..."
Lin Yi paused, pointing to the Military-grade spectrum analyzers and holographic recorders lining both sides of the corridor.
"During these three days, you can have your scientists set up all their equipment in the room."
"S.H.I.E.L.D. can record all energy readings and rule diagrams during my deciphering process."
"This data can advance Tony and Banner's technology by at least half a century."
Fury fell silent.
Only the hum of the equipment cooling fans echoed in the long corridor.
Lin Yi possessed absolute power, yet he proactively offered a reasonable bargaining chip.
S.H.I.E.L.D. needed technology, and even more, the ability to contain alien objects; the immense power Lin Yidemonstrated on the New York battlefield made Furyrealize that a direct clash offered zero chance of victory.
Time passed minute by minute.
"Three days."
Fury's voice squeezed out through his teeth.
"Exactly seventy-two hours, not a minute more."
"All experimental processes must be conducted under around-the-clock surveillance by myself and Tony Stark."
"The moment the instruments detect any energy leakage exceeding safety thresholds, I reserve the right to cut off the containment room's life support systems and initiate self-destruction at any time."
Lin Yi smiled.
He turned sideways and unlatched the pneumatic door's sliding lock again.
"It's a deal."
Lin Yi stepped back into the containment room, walking toward the dimly glowing scepter on the levitation platform.
"Get your recording tapes ready, Director Fury."
"What you see over the next three days might overturn your entire understanding of this world."
The pneumatic door closed in front of Fury, its heavy metal deadbolt dropping into place, completely isolating the entire space.
Fury stood before the one-way glass, watching Lin Yi's back as he gripped the scepter once again, his lone eye filled with deep calculation and vigilance.
He picked up the walkie-talkie and pressed the high-priority internal call button.
"Hill."
"Transfer the tech team from Stark Tower over here and bring all the energy analyzers."
"Leave the Manhattan cleanup to the Military."
"For the next three days, our battlefield is right inside this room."
...
Lin Yi sat cross-legged directly in front of the levitation platform.
His five fingers gripped the Mind Scepter.
The translucent blue shell rippled beneath his palm, and the golden gem core inside projected a beam of pure light spot, pinning straight between his eyebrows.
The connection was established.
Boom!
A wave a hundred thousand meters high stirred up in Lin Yi's sea of consciousness.
If the impact of energy was like a siege battering ram, then the scouring of knowledge was like forcefully stuffing the sand of an entire galaxy into the eye of a needle.
The first wave that surged in was spiritual secret arts of ancient civilizations.
Intent dimensionality reduction technology from an extinct Andromeda race, building geometric topological models of matter using pure thought.
The underlying logic blueprint written by the Kree Empire's first-generation Supreme Intelligence.
The mind camouflage technique of the Skrulls, simulating same-frequency resonance between genes and thoughts...
The lifelong thoughts of tens of thousands of generations and billions of sages squeezed into Lin Yi's neural circuits in a tenth of a second.
Three bloody cuts split open on the skin of Lin Yi's forehead.
Blood flowed down the bridge of his nose, dangling at the tip of his chin, before being directly evaporated by the intense heat into a faint red mist.
Ordinary carbon-based brains have a physical ceiling for neuronal conduction speed.
When an information flow exceeding dimensional limits pours into the brain matter, brain cells heat up, denature, and cook through in an instant, turning brain tissue into a lifeless pool of jelly.
His thinking center emitted an overwhelmed wail.
His optic nerves were flooded with intense light, and broad swathes of purple spots bloomed at the bottom of his eyes.
Intensely painful.
But in this body that had already crossed the threshold of a demigod, runes deep within his bones lit up at this moment.
[Detected infusion of high-dimensional information flow exceeding the host's physiological limits!]
[Cost Reversal System has intervened!]
[Brain neural tissue damage reversal: Neuronal synaptic conduction efficiency increased by five times, brain area development forcibly expanded!]
[Cognitive information overload reversal: Knowledge fragments formatted and erased, converted into absolute logical analytical capability!]
[Spiritual load crushing reversal: Spiritual Power +10,000!]
[Spiritual Power +10,000!]
[Spiritual Power +10,000!]
A crisp sound like cracking ice echoed deep within his mind.
The swelling pain that threatened to burst his skull to pieces disappeared.
Replacing it was an unprecedented feeling of coolness and clarity.
The tyrannical torrent of information was no longer wild waves bursting through a dam; under the crushing rule of the system, they were forcibly organized into smooth, orderly light tracks of data.
The corners of Lin Yi's mouth curled up beneath the bloodstains.
"Again."
The roaring sound escalated once more.
This time, what flooded his consciousness was no longer concrete technology, but grand propositions about the fundamental nature of the Universe.
How does matter collapse into form from pure intent?
How does a soul achieve anchoring across different dimensions?
How does an ideological projection on the timeline evade erasure by causality?
The three thousand high-dimensional life forms recorded by the Watcher Civilization, the essence of spiritual hunger of world-devourers, and even the mind whispers of unspeakable entities in the rifts of the multiverse...
This was a library of the gods.
A mortal opening the first page would go mad; a demigod opening the first chapter would lose themselves, becoming a mental puppet of the stone.
But Lin Yi's system was an insatiable black hole.
As much as comes, it swallows.
The instant all spiritual pollution came into contact with the reversal law, its malice and toxicity were drained away, leaving behind the most fundamental crystals of wisdom to settle deep within Lin Yi's sea of consciousness.
[Detected impact from high-dimensional causal concepts!]
[Your soul capacity barrier is undergoing continuous tearing, converted into Spiritual Sense Tenacity!]
[Spiritual Power +20,000!]
[Spiritual Power +25,000!]
[Your brainwave frequency has broken free from material constraints, gaining the passive trait: Mind Overclocking State!]
[Spiritual Sense control range expanded to a ten-kilometer radius!]
Time lost all meaning inside the containment room.
The first day passed.
Faint golden specks of light spewed outward from every pore on Lin Yi's body.
The cosmic knowledge he absorbed and digested began to merge with the dimensional runes in his blood.
The dark energy that was originally wild and unbridled became perfectly seamless in its operation path under the organization of the Mind Stone's logical framework, without a single shred of waste.
In the past, he relied on pure physical brute force and energy surges to fight, but now, his consciousness could be refined down to manipulating the energy cycle inside individual cells.
Chapter 80: The Shock in the Monitoring Room
Deep into the second night.
The Mind Scepter suspended above Lin Yi's head emitted a high-pitched hum.
The light at the core of the stone shifted from blinding to introverted, its blue shell completely assimilated, and the entire scepter completed a deep resonance with his nervous system along the meridians of his arm.
In the ocean of his consciousness, originally formed of water, a layer of pale gold crystalline armor condensed on the surface.
His mental power was forcibly compressed from a scattered mist into a heavy fluid like mercury.
This was a qualitative change.
This was a stepwise transition in the dimension of life and soul.
By the morning of the third day.
The torrential stream of information finally slowed its flow rate.
The explicit civilization records stored within the Mind Stone had been completely stripped, reconstructed, and archived by the system.
Lin Yi still maintained his cross-legged posture.
His chest rose and fell smoothly and leisurely; with every inhalation, the air in the isolation room contracted by an inch;
and with every exhalation, the floor flashed with a cold metallic sheen.
Within a half-meter space around him, the light had already warped.
But he had not yet opened his eyes.
The soaring, peak mental pressure within his body finally pierced through S.H.I.E.L.D.'s proud lead shielding, spreading along the ventilation ducts and metal skeleton toward the external monitoring room.
...
Inside the monitoring room.
The air was heavy and oppressive.
Over sixty high-precision oscilloscopes, brainwave analyzers, and quantum gravity monitoring equipment were lined up together, the cold light of the fluorescent screens casting upon the faces of dozens of scientists.
Tony Stark stood before the main control console, his eye whites bloodshot.
On the holographic projection screen in front of him, the curve representing Lin Yi's brainwave activity was not the smooth, undulating broken line of a normal human, but an airtight, completely crimson wall of light.
"Is this machine broken?"
A white-haired neurology expert pushed up his glasses, his fingers tapping rapidly on the keyboard.
"Switch to the backup sensors. Human brainwave frequencies are between thirty and one hundred hertz, which is the limit peak for epileptic patients! How much is shown on the screen? Thirty thousand hertz! This is not brain cell discharge at all!"
"The sensors are not broken."
Tony's fingers swept heavily across the control console, pulling up another set of underlying code.
"Jarvis used four synchronous orbit satellites for computing power diversion. Three seconds ago, the satellite receiving chips burned out two logic gate matrices because they couldn't parse this high-frequency signal."
Tony turned his head to look at Nick Fury, who had not sat down the entire time.
"Fury. He is using his brain to directly read all the information inside that stone."
"To put it metaphorically, you engrave five hundred years of books from the Library of Congress onto a piece of microfilm, and then shake it past his eyes at sixty revolutions per second. Not only did he finish reading it, but he also re-proofread every book in his mind."
Fury rested both hands on the edge of the metal table, his single eye staring at the monitoring screen of the isolation room.
In the footage, Lin Yi sat there, motionless.
The titanium alloy flooring on the ground had already developed a slight depression.
"What about his physiological signs?" Fury asked in a deep voice.
The Agent responsible for monitoring vital signs swallowed a mouthful of saliva and pulled up the holographic human body model.
"Heart rate, twelve beats per minute. Blood pressure, zero fluctuation. Body surface temperature, maintained at two degrees above freezing point."
"But Director... look at his cell division readings."
A string of green double-helix structures popped up on the screen.
The periphery of those spiral structures was wrapped in a faint layer of golden force field.
"His telomerase activity is ten thousand times higher than that of an ordinary person."
"Every time a high-frequency brainwave sweeps across his body, his muscle fibers, bone density, and visceral connective tissue are undergoing micron-level reconstruction."
"Normal energy scouring would tear a human body into minced meat, but he... his body is actively accommodating this destruction, and within the exact same microsecond the destruction occurs, it completes a reorganization of even greater hardness."
The expert took off his glasses, pressed both hands on the experimental bench, his chest rising and falling violently.
"This violates the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy increase seems to have failed on him."
The door slid open.
Phil Coulson walked in holding a freshly printed report.
Coulson walked to Fury's side.
"Director, the Council has called seventeen times within the last half hour."
Coulson lowered his voice.
"They demand to immediately terminate the experiment, initiate the underground base's liquid nitrogen freezing procedure, and seal up the target person and the sceptertogether."
Fury didn't even turn his head, the corners of his mouth pulling into a cold, hard arc.
"Tell those fools sitting in the Washington offices that the freezing pipelines short-circuited at midnight last night due to energy overload."
Coulson looked at the report in his hand and was silent for two seconds.
"Director, if this report leaks out, the Military and major conglomerates will go crazy."
The first page of the report strikingly read a line of red-lettered conclusions:
[Target brainwave activity exceeds known human physiological limits by one thousand and four times, spiritual energy radiation index surpasses nuclear fusion singularity, risk assessment: uncontainable.]
Fury reached out, took the report, and directly stuffed it into the shredder next to him right in front of Coulson and Tony.
Fury raised his single eye, his gaze sweeping past Tonyand finally resting on Coulson's face.
"Phil, remember today."
Fury's voice had no undulations, yet carried a heavy accent like metal colliding.
"The New York City citizens outside think we won an alien war."
"The Avengers think they saved the world. But that was just child's play."
Fury pointed at the one-way perspective glass of the isolation room.
"Look behind that door."
"We haven't imprisoned a prisoner, nor are we assisting a sorcerer."
"We are witnessing a human... no, an existence, evolving toward a tier we cannot understand."
"This evolution doesn't rely on Darwin's survival of the fittest; he is stepping on the fatal rules at the bottom of the Universe, forging himself step by step into a living taboo."
Tony leaned against the console, not voicing a rebuttal to the Director who usually loved to pick faults.
He raised his right hand, looking at the faint gravitational tremor fed back by the armor sensor in his palm.
His scientific system, his equations, his genius IQ—separated by that thirty-centimeter-thick titanium alloy door—all became meaningless graffiti.
"How much longer until seventy-two hours?" Tony asked.
"One minute and forty seconds." Coulson glanced at the countdown meter.
Everyone in the monitoring room involuntarily held their breath.
The crimson wall of light on the oscilloscope violently jumped at this moment, its frequency beginning to turn from rapid to slow.
That airtight wall of light was contracting toward the center at a speed visible to the naked eye, finally transforming into a straight, deep, pure black baseline resembling an endless abyss.
The oppressive feeling descended.
No alarms, no blinding light.
But the temperature in the monitoring room plummeted by five degrees; everyone only felt the air in their chest being sucked away by an invisible hand, their hearts feeling as if they were soaked in ice water, their beating becoming sluggish and laborious.
The countdown pointed to Zero.