No one in the control room dared make a sound.
Inside the medical chamber, Chu Hang's body floated in a field of deep-blue energy.
Golden cracks covered him from head to toe.
They were not wounds in any conventional sense. His very existence was coming apart.
Countless motes of light drifted from his body.
They were fragments of his essence, being erased bit by bit in a way that could not be reversed.
The life-support system's alarm rang out in a monotonous loop.
Meanwhile, the line tracking his vital signs continued to fall before their eyes.
Tony had long since removed his iconic armor.
The hero who usually appeared as Iron Man was now smeared with oil and blood.
He braced both hands against the console so hard that his knuckles turned white.
He stared at the screen, his eyes bloodshot.
Every change in the numbers felt like another merciless cut into his flesh.
"Tony."
Clark's voice came from behind him.
"You need to rest."
"Shut up!"
Tony did not even turn around. His fingers kept flying across the holographic controls.
"Rest? If I blink, he'll be gone!"
"Damn it... Why won't any of the models work?"
"He won't last seventy-two hours."
Reed Richards approached, his face pale and his eyes calm to the point of cruelty.
With a sweep of his hand, a three-dimensional hologram appeared in midair.
It showed the structure of Chu Hang's essence.
Once as brilliant as a nebula, it was now shattered, with a pitch-black fissure running through its core.
"Stop wasting your effort."
Reed spoke quietly.
"This isn't a physical injury. His Dao is breaking down."
"The laws of the Multiverse are rejecting him, much as an immune system eliminates a virus."
In the corner, Thor gripped Stormbreaker so tightly that veins bulged along