Different Now

Back in Walled City, Lin Feng landed atop the wall. The robots guarding it did not attack him.

Lin Feng opened the Eyes of the Universe and finally saw Tony's condition clearly this time.

The guy was actually encased in a massive machine, his eyes half-closed, his body submerged in some strange liquid inside a glass chamber.

"What happened?"

Lin Feng walked up to a black iron door and looked at a small light on it that resembled a camera.

He leaned his head closer and directly saw the scene beyond the door.

Behind it was an elevator shaft. The moment Lin Feng pressed his face close, a heavy sound came from within.

Then several thick cables began moving up and down, pulling up the elevator below.

"What exactly happened to you?"

Tony had not spoken at all, yet ever since Lin Feng stood on the wall, he had felt that this guy was still controlling everything.

He could not quite make sense of it.

Boom!!!

With a heavy, muffled thud, the elevator reached the top.

The door before Lin Feng slowly opened as well.

He looked at the surrounding robots, then walked inside.

Boom!

The iron door closed again. Lin Feng descended with the elevator, and after going down roughly thirty or forty meters, it stopped.

The iron door before him had become a silver alloy gate. With a click, it slowly opened.

A faint white light squeezed through the crack. He looked at the opening door, revealing the scene within.

Before his eyes was a silver-white hall, somewhat similar to Lin Feng's base.

However, a strange machine stood in the center of the hall.

Several black pipes extended from the machine into the ceiling. Tony was immersed in the glass chamber at its center, which was filled with an unknown liquid. Whether he was alive or dead was unknown.

The moment Lin Feng stepped inside, Tony's voice immediately rang out around him.

"Lin Feng, you're back."

Tony's voice was calm and emotionless. Lin Feng looked around in confusion, then his gaze fell once more upon Tony, who appeared unconscious inside the glass chamber.

Lin Feng could sense that Tony in the chamber still showed signs of life.

That meant he was not dead yet.

But what was with this state?

"You're like this now... what happened?"

Lin Feng walked up to the glass chamber and examined it curiously.

This machine looked a little like a recovery pod from Dragon Ball.

"I opened Pandora's Box. Only now do I understand why you wouldn't let me study your abilities back then."

Tony's regretful voice echoed through the room. Meanwhile, Tony inside the glass chamber did not move at all; only a few bubbles drifted from his mouth.

"What happened to you?"

After a moment of silence, Lin Feng did not want to say anything about himself.

Tony probably knew a little about his secret already.

The secret of the Blacklight Virus.

"How should I put this... sigh..."

Tony's voice carried an indescribable feeling. After a long sigh and a lengthy silence, he changed the subject. "Where did you go during this time? You must have appeared in New York back then too, right?"

Though it was phrased as a question, Tony's tone was certain.

Lin Feng smiled faintly upon hearing that.

"Something that big happened. Aliens descended on Earth. Anyone would be curious."

Looking at Tony in the glass chamber, he slowly stroked his chin with one hand, then suddenly asked teasingly, "In your condition, you can't get it up anymore, can you?"

Clang!!!!

Rubbing his head with a resentful expression, Lin Feng was pressed into a chair by several robots, his back facing Tony in the glass chamber.

The robots stood beside him as though they were keeping watch over him.

"Sigh..."

He let out a lazy sigh, looked at the white wall before him, and added, "Fine, I won't look at you. At least move me somewhere else. Let me look at the scenery outside the city or something. Sitting like this feels like I'm being made to face the wall."

Lin Feng crossed one leg over the other. The robots beside him pushed his chair around to face the other direction.

Then the wall in front of him suddenly became transparent, revealing the scene outside the city.

Below the wall, zombies surged forward like a tide, marching here to attack without any awareness of pain.

There were also mutated zombies with distorted limbs, as well as zombie animals controlled by zombies. Relying on their mutated abilities, they fiercely attacked the wall.

But numerous small openings emerged along the base of the wall, right next to the ground.

Countless bullet-like pieces of metal sprayed from these openings. After Phasing through the nearest zombie monsters, the metal abruptly transformed into tiny robots, which then assembled together again into larger ones and fought the zombies.

It seemed endless. Lin Feng had noticed it when he flew out of Walled City.

Even after he returned, these robots were still fighting, without the slightest chance to rest.

"Can't they kill them all?"

After watching for a while, Lin Feng asked.

"They can't. These zombies can corrode inorganic matter and convert it. If this continues, the Earth will be devoured by them."

Tony spoke anxiously.

Lin Feng's gaze shifted. He had not considered that.

The Blacklight Virus could devour inorganic matter. On top of that, the current virus had fused with all sorts of miscellaneous things and had almost lost its original form.

Although Lin Feng had altered part of the virus's structure back then, the earliest released virus had flowed out from Sharon.

The virus in that woman's body possessed complete devouring properties. Ever since he lost contact with Sharon, Lin Feng had suspected that these viruses originated from her.

Though he later released some Blacklight Virus himself, it had all been weakened. He had stripped away its strongest devouring and evolutionary traits, leaving only an ordinary zombie virus.

"Can you still access information on S.H.I.E.L.D. members here? I want to look into someone—Sharon Carter."

Only now did Lin Feng remember that he should investigate Sharon Carter, and it felt a little late.

"Yes. She lost contact during a mission. Later, Peggy Carter, one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s founders, asked Steve—Captain America—to investigate the matter. He found Sharon in Australia, but Hydra had turned her into an experimental subject to study a virus—the one inside you."

"After Sharon Carter was rescued, she spent some time undergoing psychological treatment in a quiet small town. But Sharon's mental state never improved. Coupled with the brutal modifications Hydra had made to her body, one day her body self-destructed and she died. Afterward, a strange virus erupted from her explosion and infected the entire town, turning everyone into zombies."