116. The Army Marches In, Loki Disappears

Perhaps infected by Su Ye’s calm demeanor, Tony Stark slowly descended and came to stand before the Cosmic Cube.

“So, Su… Uncle? You’ve been studying this thing for a while, right? What have you tried?”

Hearing Tony’s question, Su Ye scratched his head and waved his hands around randomly.

“Like this, this, and this.”

Tony Stark was speechless. “Are you performing some kind of ritual?”

Su Ye rolled his eyes. “Of course not. Do you understand qi?”

“…”

Tony frowned. How had they gotten onto qi again? He was talking science, while Su Ye insisted on discussing mysticism.

Seeing his expression, Su Ye spread his hands helplessly. “Then I have no way to explain it to you. You know, to primitive people with no concept of mathematics, calculus is as incomprehensible as the heavenly scriptures.”

“…”

Tony Stark frowned again. Was this guy calling him a primitive? He, Tony Stark, had roamed the world for so many years, only to be called a primitive?

Tony had never lost an argument in his life. Naturally, he was not about to let some youngster get the better of him.

He was just about to open his mouth and retort when Su Ye spoke again.

“You look like a child with a head full of questions. How about I explain it to you after all?”

“What is qi?”

“When the qi of Heaven and Earth unites, all things arise naturally.”

“The Great Void cannot exist without qi; qi cannot help but gather and become all things; all things cannot help but disperse and return to the Great Void.”

“True qi is what one receives from Heaven, combining with the qi of food to fill the body.”

“A person receives qi from food. Food enters the stomach, passes into the lungs, and from there all the organs receive qi.”

“After hearing all that, are you even more confused? It’s all right. I’ll explain it to you bit by bit.”

Tony Stark hurriedly raised a hand to stop him. “No need. I have absolutely no interest in what qi is. Right now, I just want to shut down that portal and put an end to this catastrophe. The sooner, the better!”

In the past, Tony Stark had loved talking. He was always looking for opportunities to say all sorts of irrelevant things to other people, leaving them utterly bewildered while he basked in his own cleverness.

Now, he finally understood the suffering of everyone he had bullied with his fast mouth.

“All right. Since you don’t want to listen now, we can talk about it another day. We’ve got plenty of time.” Su Ye spread his hands, then made an inviting gesture. “It seems my method isn’t going to work. You take over. Let’s see what brilliant idea you have.”

Su Ye stood up and moved aside. Iron Man thought for a moment, then raised his hand and fired a repulsor blast at the Cosmic Cube.

Boom!

A blue-white energy shield appeared once again, blocking the blast. It transformed into a wave of energy and rippled outward.

Professor Erik Selvig, who lay unconscious on the ground some distance away, was sent crashing into the wall again with a bang.

The corner of Su Ye’s mouth twitched. Wasn’t this method practically the same as his?

The news that the portal could not be shut down normally, and that even the nuclear bomb had been dismantled halfway to its destination, soon reached the military command room. Everyone’s faces darkened, and they felt that their careers might well come to an end that very day.

Silence continued for a long time before someone finally spoke.

“There’s no other way. The superheroes inside won’t let us launch a nuclear bomb. Unless we detonate a high-yield nuclear weapon near New York and destroy a large portion of the city, anything we send over will probably be dismantled.”

“Detonate a nuclear bomb outside the city? Leaving aside the damage radius and the subsequent contamination, can you guarantee that doing so will definitely close the portal? What if we drop the bomb and the portal still doesn’t close?”

“Then we’ll have to fight the aliens in a nuclear-radiation zone.”

“In that case, we might as well deploy our forces now and fight directly inside New York!”

“But if we fight directly, New York will be destroyed!”

“That would still be better than destroying it once with nuclear weapons, only to have it destroyed all over again afterward!”

Arguments flew back and forth without end. In the end, the president, attending the meeting remotely, made the decision.

“Fight inside the city!”

With those words, the arguing stopped at once. In truth, everyone knew this was the only option left. They had simply been unwilling to be the one held responsible.

After all, the price of that decision was the entire city of New York.

Once the decision had been made, the immense war machine of the military swiftly began to turn.

Before long, formations of fighter jets appeared on the horizon once again. Tanks, armored vehicles, and truck-mounted rocket launchers rolled into the city in orderly lines, accompanied by countless soldiers.

According to one senior military officer, they had not deployed this many troops at the beginning of the war against Iraq.

As the military launched its large-scale operation, the superheroes’ presence grew increasingly insignificant.

This was no longer a war they could meaningfully participate in. They could still make themselves useful here and there, but their impact was extremely limited. If they charged too recklessly, they might even be accidentally hit by their own allies.

Gradually, all the Avengers gathered on the roof of Stark Tower. Because of the Cosmic Cube’s special nature, both the military and the Chitauri had abandoned attacks on the building. For the moment, the rooftop had become the safest place in the city.

Several members of the Avengers, together with the Great Wall Guardians who had originally been stationed there, made up more than a dozen heroes gathered before the Cosmic Cube’s activation device.

Outside, the army had taken over the battlefield and was fighting the Chitauri to the death. Meanwhile, the dozen or so people on the rooftop suddenly found themselves with nothing much to do. The whole situation felt strangely awkward.

“Hey, those lightning bolts of yours are pretty good!” Thor said to Max as he hammered a Chitauri soldier that had veered off course and flown onto the rooftop.

Max immediately broke into a broad smile. “Right? I designed the movements myself. Like this, and this!”

As he spoke, he struck two absurdly overdramatic poses and released two arcs of electricity, blasting apart a small Chitauri aircraft passing overhead.

Thor nodded approvingly. “Good designs. It would be perfect if you added a slogan or two.”

“Really?” Max pretended to think hard. After a long while, he shook his head helplessly. “That’s difficult. I can’t think of anything at the moment. Do you have any suggestions?”

Thor pondered earnestly, then nodded. “Something like this.”

He adopted a solemn expression and shouted fiercely, “I am Thor, God of Thunder! I’m giving you five minutes to get out of there! Otherwise, I’ll fly over, chop off your hands, and shove them up your ass!”

Everyone nearby hurried away from the two of them, afraid that their intelligence would be dragged down by association.

Superheroes were never truly idle. Banter and wisecracks were part of their daily lives. A superhero who could not talk trash had no future.

Thor was a living example. He had begun as an arrogant, handsome powerhouse, only to be dragged down, installment by installment, to Star-Lord’s level.

Yet while gaining a huge number of fans, Thor also became the only superhero to receive a fourth solo film—and the only one who would continue playing an active role throughout the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In the post-Avengers era, as the original Avengers died, retired, or gradually faded away, that was practically a miracle.

And judging by the ending of Thor’s fourth film, the fourth installment was not the end. Continuing on to make a fifth, sixth, and seventh, eventually gathering enough films to summon a dragon from the Dragon Balls, was not entirely impossible.

Compared with the antics of those two, everyone else was much more serious. Whether they understood mechanical construction and energy circulation or not, they crowded around the device, pretending to offer advice.

They discussed the matter for a long time and tried one thing after another, yet still achieved nothing.

Then Professor Erik Selvig, unconscious nearby, slowly came to his senses. Thanks to the second impact—two negatives making a positive, in a manner of speaking—he finally woke up, and everyone learned how to shut down the portal.

“Use Loki’s scepter. The energy in the scepter is something the Cosmic Cube cannot resist. It cannot resist its own power. And I left a back door!”

Professor Erik Selvig spoke with absolute certainty. At this stage, no one on Earth—not even Thor or Loki—knew about the Infinity Stones. They all believed that the Mind Scepter was merely a treasure created by the Cosmic Cube.

That understanding was inaccurate, but it did not affect the procedure for shutting down the activation device.

There was only one problem.

Where had Loki gone?

Without Loki, they could not obtain the Mind Scepter in his possession, and without the scepter, they could not close the portal. It was an insoluble problem.

Since the battle in Los Angeles began, Loki had not appeared on the front lines. He had not even come close to worshipping the portal he had opened. No one knew whether he simply did not care about what was happening here or whether he was afraid of Su Ye, who had once inflicted such pain upon him.

Finding him would be difficult as well.

For one thing, the man could shapeshift. If he changed his face, facial-recognition systems would become completely useless.

For another, the activation of the Cosmic Cube was releasing gamma rays in enormous quantities, interfering with both observation and reception. Thus, the method Bruce Banner and Tony Stark had previously suggested—using equipment to track the gamma rays—was useless too.

After discussing the matter, everyone discovered that they seemed to have only one option left: wait.

Wait for Loki to appear, seize the Mind Scepter from him, and bring it back to shut down the portal.

Su Ye actually knew of another method. The Eye of Agamotto hanging around the Ancient One’s neck contained the Time Stone, which could also do the job.

According to what he knew, the Infinity Stones could influence one another. Since the Mind Scepter could pierce the Cosmic Cube’s defensive shield, the Time Stone naturally could as well.

However, even if he revealed this method, there was no way to put it into practice. After all, that was the Ancient One. How was he supposed to explain any of this to her?

He might fail to borrow the stone, end up attracting unnecessary trouble, and expose the fact that he was a time traveler and the possessor of a system.

Besides, Su Ye had never intended to shut down the portal easily in the first place, much less suggest it himself.

Thus, the problem that lay ahead became the search for Loki.