Return Journey

Mongor, Warworld's current supreme ruler, stood before the hangar doors Jay had torn apart, his face ashen as he pondered something unknown. His advisor held his breath and cautiously studied his superior's expression, yet could not read the slightest emotional shift from that chiseled face.

After calculating for a moment, he felt there were matters he had to report promptly. He said softly, "The enemy infiltrated the human research division and took all the Earth prisoners. Warriors who encountered the intruders reported that there were only two of them, but they seemed to be Kryptonians. Because they—"

His words seemed to touch some special part of Mongor's heart. Violent emotion suddenly appeared on his rigid face, and his crimson eyes seemed to burst into flames. The advisor had never seen such an expression in his brutal monarch's eyes. What shone there could almost be described as twisted fanaticism.

The advisor was so frightened that he swallowed the rest of his words. Mongor demanded in a low voice, "What about them?"

The cold, heavy voice jolted him back to his senses. He hurriedly said, "They... they were wearing Kal-El's emblem on their chests. That Kryptonian from Earth, the one Earthlings call 'Superman.'"

Mongor took two steps closer. His massive figure blocked out the dark red sunlight, enveloping the advisor entirely in his shadow. "Of course I know who Kal-El is. I could never forget him for as long as I live. Where are those two Kryptonians now?"

The advisor felt the pressure multiply and instinctively lowered his head to avoid that terrifying gaze. "We... we've already dispatched a team after them. We believe their destination may be the interstellar gate to Earth in the junkyard."

"Idiots! How could one team possibly capture two Kryptonians!?" Mongor's face nearly twisted with rage.

"Yes, yes, we'll send more men immediately."

"Idiots! Is there even time to catch up now?" Mongor nearly roared in fury. The poor advisor was sprayed all over with spit but did not dare raise a hand to wipe it away. He had held this position for only two years and had no idea what kind of history this ruler had with Kryptonians that the very word could provoke him so intensely.

Mongor pondered for a moment. "Send three more teams in pursuit. At the same time, shut down that interstellar gate."

Hearing the order, the advisor forgot his fear and looked up in shock. "Shut it down...? But... but the shutdown process will take time to cycle through. And establishing a stable interstellar gate between Earth and Warworld consumed enormous amounts of energy and time. Forcing it closed would cause us serious losses—"

"I said do it!" Mongor raised his voice several octaves and barked, "At any cost, the Kryptonians must be brought back!"

The advisor got sprayed in the face again and meekly lowered his head. He could not help becoming even more curious about what history this tyrant shared with the Kryptonians. Mongor gazed at the dark red sky outside the window and said in a low voice, "Prepare a ship. I'm going personally."

Jay watched the three spherical aircraft chasing behind him with satisfaction, then accelerated into the busy city district. Even after entering the densely populated area, the three aircraft showed no intention of easing their fire. They continued firing at Jay without pause, all their shots missing and slamming into buildings throughout the city. Flames erupted everywhere, debris rained through the air, and chaos broke out below.

Jay's breathing had begun to grow labored, and his limbs were starting to feel weak and numb. Yet he had only been flying for a few minutes. Back on Earth, he could fly continuously for hours without even breathing hard.

That meant he had to end this quickly.

He darted into a narrow gap between buildings, using his smaller size to weave through the cramped spaces like a fish through water. The three spherical aircraft were small, which was normally an advantage over other flying vehicles, but here it became a disadvantage. They struggled to follow Jay through the complex terrain, their pilots needing to maintain high speed so as not to lose the target while constantly swerving up, down, left, and right to avoid all kinds of obstacles.

Jay flew in a particularly tricky manner, suddenly rising and diving, veering left and right, always choosing the hardest routes. At last, after one of his countless abrupt turns, the aircraft trailing at the rear made a mistake and slammed through a sparkling, truncated-cone-shaped building. By the time it burst out the other side at extreme speed, it had become a blazing fireball trailing thick smoke.

Four down. Two left.

But maintaining such high-speed flight and making such frequent turns further accelerated Jay's exhaustion. The rays of the Red Star shone down from the dark red sky, leaving every cell in his body utterly drained. His limbs went limp, and his body suddenly dipped in midair, nearly sending him plummeting headfirst.

He corrected himself in less than half a second, but in the midst of the fierce pursuit, that brief instant became a fatal opening. Four laser blasts from the two aircraft struck him in the back almost simultaneously. He grunted, trailing black smoke as he fell. Carried by his momentum, he hurtled toward an alien open-air restaurant like a burning passenger jet, smashing through countless tables and chairs before barely coming to a stop.

Jay panted as he climbed to his feet. His back throbbed with pain; it had definitely been burned. Still, he should be grateful that his durability had not deteriorated too severely, because those lasers could have instantly melted most metals on Earth.

His ears rang, and his super-hearing seemed to have completely failed as well. The alien residents around him screamed in terror and hurried away as if fleeing a plague. As he rose, he seemed to spot the green seahorse-like creature that had smiled and waved at him earlier among them. Kara had apparently said she was from some kind of... Mountain-whatever planet. He could not quite remember.

"That's right, get out of here," Jay muttered to the panicked crowd. "You won't want to stick around, because things might get a little ugly next."

The buzzing whine of the spherical aircraft's engines reached his ears again—though no super-senses were needed, since their shrill noise could be heard several streets away. One of the aircraft appeared to have temporarily left its companion behind. Its cannons on both sides fired furiously as it dove at Jay with its engines at full power. Dense laser fire stretched into two long blue curtains before him, dragging twin trails of dazzling flames across the ground as they came straight at his position.

Jay casually grabbed half of a broken electronic billboard nearby. It displayed an image of ruler Mongor grinning broadly, the picture flickering constantly.

He strode forward, gripped the alien billboard tightly in both hands, and swung with all his strength in a textbook baseball motion just as the aircraft firing wildly overhead passed above him. The electronic screen exploded the instant it struck the cockpit, and dense spiderweb cracks spread across the windshield in a fraction of a second. Like a baseball hit for a home run, the aircraft flew backward in the opposite direction, following a precise trajectory and colliding squarely with the companion accelerating in from behind. The last two aircraft instantly broke apart in a magnificent burst of sparks, shattered parts scattering across the ground in flames.

After delivering that final swing, Jay finally breathed a sigh of relief. He could not help recalling how he had once struggled to breathe during a thousand-meter run in gym class in his previous life. The feeling was truly unforgettable, because he had not sweated a single drop in six years.

He forced his exhausted body to stay upright and shakily took flight again. He could not stop here, because he still had a promise to keep and people waiting for him. If only to answer their expectations, he had to pull himself together.

Kara successfully piloted the ship into the interstellar gate before it closed, but by the time their vessel entered the tunnel churning with turbulent currents, the tunnel itself had already begun to lose stability. The energy-formed space gradually crumbled apart beyond the windshield. Vast amounts of corrosive energy scraped violently against the hull, like torrents battering the ship until it shook without end. Parts and chunks of metal continuously broke off the outer shell and fell into the rushing currents, and everyone could hear the ship beneath their feet wailing as it neared disintegration.

The raging energy was like countless thorny whips, lashing the windshield until it was covered in cracks and nearly robbing the pilot of all visibility. But light from the exit finally shone through those cracks. Kara gripped the controls tightly and shouted, "Everyone, hold on!"

The violent shaking reached its peak the instant the ship burst from the chaotic tunnel. Its underside struck the ground and skidded at high speed, trailing a long stream of brilliant sparks. The left wing had vanished somewhere in the turbulence long ago, and now the right wing finally gave way during the lengthy skid. The ship spun into a wall and barely came to a stop, its ruined engines belching choking black smoke.

Kara took two deep breaths, hardly able to believe it. She had actually done it.

"All right, the interstellar return journey is now over. Passengers, please collect your belongings and, uh... disembark in an orderly manner."

As she spoke, she pressed the button to open the hatch, only to discover that it appeared to have jammed during the crash. She had no choice but to go to the rear and tear off one of the two hatch doors herself. What she had not expected was to find an entire ring of gun barrels aimed at her head outside.

Outside the cabin stood a dense crowd of soldiers in black combat uniforms, each wearing black helmets and goggles. The way they aimed at the hatch made it seem as though they were awaiting some vicious alien monster.

"Put the guns down." Huntress strode out from the formation and came before Kara. "They aren't enemies."

She appeared to be the commander here. The soldiers obediently lowered their weapons in unison and stepped aside. Kara frowned slightly. "Helena... Didn't you go work for the government? What are you doing here?"

Clearly, they had known each other for some time. Helena shrugged. "As you can see, I'm working. We received word about an unexpected situation at Kairi Technology Creative, so I brought people over to investigate."

She motioned for her subordinates to quickly assist the people who had escaped aboard the ship. After scanning the area, she frowned slightly. "I heard there was another guy with you. Didn't he come back?"

Kara turned her gaze toward the purple tunnel crackling with electricity. "He'll catch up soon."

"But this device's readings have already reached the critical point. It has completely lost stability and will disappear very soon." Helena frowned. "If he doesn't make it through within the next thirty seconds, he won't get another chance."

Kara's brow twitched, and she seemed tense for an instant. But soon, her gaze became firm again as she looked toward the spinning vortex.

"He promised," she said. "He'll come back. I believe him."

Her trust proved worthwhile. With less than a second remaining in the thirty-second countdown, just as the crumbling tunnel spun inward and collapsed, a red-and-blue afterimage shot out like a bullet piercing through space, trailing violent purple lightning from the collapsing realm behind it. Jay landed in a somewhat awkward tumble, his back slamming hard into the wreckage of the ruined ship.

Jay rubbed his muddled head, half-kneeling on the ground as he gasped for breath. It felt as if the final trace of air in his lungs had been squeezed out by that burst of acceleration. When he raised his eyes and saw Huntress and Supergirl standing to his left and right, he rubbed his eyes in confusion.

"Hey, ladies," he said. "Am I hallucinating?"

(Thanks to reader Wanshui Shuren and reader Lie Zhe Qingxiang Bailian Su Huan Zhen for their 100 Qidian Coin rewards, and to reader Half a Love Letter for the 500 Qidian Coin reward!)