The black waves surged, with a constant crackling and slurping sound. Su Ming watched expressionlessly as the symbiote devoured the Hydra, whom he didn't recognize.
From the words of the guy wearing blue gloves, Su Ming learned that his opponent was likely Conqueror Kang.
The King of Kings, that's his title. This egotist has adorned himself with every famous conqueror title in history.
However, this actually made Su Ming breathe a slight sigh of relief. Many in the Marvel World can manipulate timelines. If the opponent were a super-powerful mutant like Yasbees, it would be truly troublesome.
As for Kang, he has his weaknesses...
He might be worried about complications, so he sent the Namor Fragment over to Su Ming. But now that Su Ming has discovered his existence, pretending he didn't see it? Impossible.
Conqueror Kang, who has conquered countless time nodes—if others' time is like a developing tree, his time spreads like spots.
He can extract a time segment from the time tree, change it, and claim it, as if sawing it off the tree.
This essentially keeps creating parallel worlds, and these universes are all Kang's domain.
In the comics, he ruled over numerous timelines, but he just couldn't handle the Avengers' timeline, so every few days he would go looking for trouble.
The key is that on countless time points, there are countless versions of him. Even if one is killed, there are thousands upon thousands more—each his self at an independent time point.
Su Ming has no interest in being a submissive under Kang's rule.
It looks like now he has to partially take on an Avenger's work, battling a future tyrant for an entire world. Pretty thrilling.
"Still not done eating? Is it that chewy?"
He walked over to Strangulation, watching it continuously wriggle in a very bloody scene.
A pair of big eyes emerged from the black cocoon, a pale white. He could feel Strangulation conveying a message that this ghostly thing was simply unpalatable.
Though it looked like a human, smelled like a human, eating it was like chewing wood.
"Bionic man, synthesized off the assembly line using artificial protein, make do with a couple of bites." Su Ming patted its body. If they weren't on the battlefield, and it hadn't done meritorious service, he wouldn't cultivate its habit of eating people.
The symbiote conveyed a sense of grievance, spat out the now skeletal blue gloves. Oddly, the gloves remained intact, just reverted to their original form.
This should be something good. Earlier it could even transform. Su Ming picked up the gloves.
Immediately, he used Godslayer to strike the corpse's head.
One part to prevent Kang from resurrecting it or reading its memory, another to examine this guy's brain structure.
Sure enough, within the skull was a small white bead, neither metal nor plastic, an unidentifiable material.
"Hmm, this should be something akin to a CPU, right? Or what he called a 'soul'? Let's keep it for now."
After carefully examining the scene, ensuring there were no traces of his presence, Su Ming turned towards the street corner, doing what he does best.
Which is disappearing into the darkness.
.............
In the basement of Berlin's Prime Minister's Office, it has been converted into a secret factory. In numerous devices resembling giant fish tanks, green liquid and pipelines were everywhere.
In the dark factory, only these tanks were illuminated, and there were hundreds of such tanks.
Just then, the water in one of the tanks churned violently, as if something inside was struggling. Suddenly, a naked silhouette leaped out.
He kept gasping and coughing before gradually calming down.
He flipped over and climbed out of the tank, groping in the dark, retrieving clothes and a pair of blue gloves from a nearby cabinet.
After drying his hair and putting on the Hydra emblem, he returned, now ready to report on the situation in Paris to the Great Supreme.
LMD (Life-Model Decoy), a life-mimicking proxy device, one of the future inventions of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Used to create an identical double to the original, or to re-inject the original's memories after death, allowing the proxy to continue its work.
It's said that when Nick Fury became the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., he hid in a safe house and sent an LMD proxy to work in his stead.
His LMD ended up being taken down six times in one day, adding to his stress.
Hydra hated him.
Of course, Conqueror Kang modified this technology, enabling its creation in this era, built on a poor industrial foundation.
This entire factory was filled with backup bodies for Blue Gloves. Everything he experienced would have its data continuously backed up here.
For instance, what he had eaten, how it tasted, its spiciness, its sweetness, all recorded.
Because such information was too fragmented, Kang could hardly be bothered to check, so Blue Gloves occasionally needed to report useful information to him directly.
Also, it suited Kang's favor, seeing it as a game. He enjoyed the 1940s vibe—Supreme Leader, military uniforms, war machines, and such.
He even started liking imitating Xiaohuzi-style speeches.
The small ball Su Ming found in Blue Gloves' mind wasn't just a processor; it was also an information transmission device.
At the moment the original Blue Gloves died, it uploaded all the intelligence from his brain to a server here, which then activated a backup body and injected the memories of Blue Gloves.
Now Blue Gloves lived again, except his skin was more tender, and his stomach, intestines, and bladder were empty. Otherwise, he was exactly the same as before.
He knocked his head chidingly, annoyed that a 'native' had ambushed him, rendering him powerless to resist, losing a body, and losing the weapon bestowed by the Sovereign—the transforming gloves.
But what's done is best left unchanged. Crossing again to alter an already adjusted timeline risks more than the value of a single body.
This chance meant he could shift from overt to covert, let Deathstroke believe he was dead.
Reporting these matters to the Sovereign had to be done.
.........
At this moment, Su Ming was hiding in the clock tower of Notre-Dame Cathedral, meeting with the Secret Guest. He took out the little trinket he had just picked up, offering it for their inspection.
"What is this? A sugar bean?" Secret Guest sniffed the small white ball under her nose but could only smell blood. She wrinkled her nose, stuck out her tongue, indicating unfamiliarity.
Time Vortex merely glanced at it and shook her head. She was just an ordinary girl; it was useless showing her.
Journey, however, took it to examine. Recollecting his past experiences, his face, weathered with time, grew surprised.
"I've seen something similar."
As a teammate of Cable, he had been to the 39th century future. Yet actually, such objects always existed and were evolving.
Su Ming took off his helmet and lit a cigarette, also offering one to Journey and Blast: "What is it?"
"A signal transmitter; I have seen it in the head of a Sentinel robot. Though not as refined as this, it was much larger, but its shape and material were nearly identical."
Journey also took a drag, trying to recall, though due to the mutant apocalypse being rewritten in time, many things were hard to remember.