Explanation of Abilities

Being helped along by someone felt fucking awful.

Especially when the person supporting you was the famous Captain America—Steve Rogers.

Chu Hang could clearly feel that Steve's hand, which seemed to be casually resting on his back, had never been honest for a second!

Several times, that hand lightly pressed, slid over, and probed the muscles in his back with an extremely subtle, skillful force.

Damn it!

He was testing whether he was really as weak as he looked!

Chu Hang cursed Steve's ancestors through eighteen generations in his heart, but the acting on his face instantly rose to Oscar-winning levels.

He perfectly cooperated with Steve's support, making his body appear utterly limp, his muscles completely relaxed and his core strength entirely scattered—the genuine collapse of someone who had run out of strength.

At the same time, he deliberately kept his breathing shallow and rapid. His face was deathly pale, his lips dry and cracked. He looked exactly like some unlucky bastard who had just been dragged out of the ICU with end-stage kidney failure.

"Cough, cough... cough cough cough..." He immediately threw himself into the performance, coughing violently as if he were about to hack up his lungs. His face turned several shades paler, frail as a sheet of paper. Leaning against Steve, he said weakly, "Captain... I'm fine..."

Steve's body suddenly stiffened, not because of Chu Hang, but because the Super-Soldier Serum had allowed him to hear footsteps coming from the passage ahead on the left.

He instinctively stopped, held his breath, and listened closely.

Steve remained silent for a full two seconds.

Then Captain America made his decision. He sharply waved a hand and whispered to the men behind him, "Change direction! Everyone, take the right passage! Absolute silence!"

No one objected.

The team silently changed course, turning into the narrower, darker passage on the right like a pack of ghosts.

Sure enough!

Less than half a minute after they left the main tunnel, three Hydra soldiers carrying MP40 submachine guns appeared where they had just been! Their flashlight beams swept through the empty corridor.

Everyone's backs were instantly soaked in cold sweat!

The rest of the journey became strangely smooth.

Several times, they could even clearly hear Hydra soldiers on the other side of a wall, cursing and grumbling about something in German.

At last, after more than half an hour of nerve-racking travel, they crawled out of the underground maze through a long-abandoned ventilation shaft.

The instant cold, fresh air filled their lungs, everyone felt as though they had been reborn, greedily gulping down breath after breath.

Outside, dawn was beginning to break.

In the distance, the once-mighty, heavily guarded Hydra Factory had now become a blazing ruin. Black smoke rose like an ugly dragon, staining half the sky an ominous, apocalyptic gray.

"We... we really... succeeded."

Dugan stared at the spectacular sea of fire and muttered to himself, his voice filled with disbelief.

Not only had they rescued every prisoner of war, they had also flattened one of Hydra's most important secret bases in Europe.

No one would believe a record like this! This shit could be made into a movie!

"Let's get out of here first and find somewhere to rest." Steve broke the silence, his voice carrying a trace of post-disaster exhaustion. "Head for the Hunter's Cabin marked on the map."

The Hunter's Cabin was an emergency shelter they had designated before the operation, located in a dense coniferous forest more than ten kilometers east of the factory.

There were food, fresh water, and basic medicine stored there in advance.

For this exhausted, ammunition-depleted team, with everyone wounded, that place was heaven.

Then came another grueling march through the snow.

His body had actually recovered almost completely long ago.

Give me a break!

The abilities he had copied were not limited to the [Super-Soldier Serum] and [Cosmic Cube Energy]. He also had a passive skill he had snagged from Logan, one so absurdly overpowered it was a bug among bugs—[Healing Factor]!

It was a small cabin built from thick logs. It looked old, its roof covered in heavy snow, blending perfectly into the surrounding landscape. You would never spot it unless you walked right up to it.

When they pushed open the creaking wooden door, the mixed smell of wood and dust hit them in the face.

But to this group of survivors, that smell was better than any French perfume.

"Falsworth, check everyone's wounds! Dugan, take some men outside and keep watch! Everyone else, start a fire, boil water, and get the food out!"

The moment he entered, Steve began issuing orders. The whole team moved in an orderly fashion, displaying the discipline of an elite unit.

As for Chu Hang, Steve carefully helped him over to the fireplace and let him sit against the rough stone wall.

"You rest first." Steve looked at his bloodless face, his eyes carrying a trace of barely perceptible guilt and concern. "I'll go help."

Chu Hang weakly nodded, too lazy to even speak.

Soon, a warm orange flame crackled in the fireplace, driving away the biting cold in the cabin. A field pot was set over it, and the snow water inside quickly melted, bubbling with steam.

Everyone received a piece of black bread hard enough to use as a brick and a can of cold beef. With hot water, they wolfed it all down.

This was the first hot meal they had eaten in two days.

The atmosphere gradually eased under the comfort of food and fire.

However, what was coming would come eventually.

After everyone had eaten their fill and their wounds had received preliminary treatment, the little cabin fell into a strange, suffocating silence.

Everyone's gaze, intentional or not, flicked toward the Eastern young man resting beside the fireplace like searchlights.

Finally, Logan, the hot-tempered bastard, could not hold back any longer.

He took a few bites to finish the bread in his hand, wiped his greasy fingers carelessly on his filthy uniform, then strode over to Chu Hang. Looking down at him from above, his eyes resembled those of a beast examining prey about to be dissected.

"Kid," he said. His voice was not loud, but it was like a boulder crashing into a calm lake, stirring up towering waves. "Quit fucking pretending. Tell me the truth. What the hell are you?"

The question was extremely rude, filled with provocation and judgment.

The air in the room instantly froze. The Howling Commandos did not even dare breathe loudly.

Chu Hang slowly opened his eyes and raised his head, calmly meeting Logan's beastlike pupils, which were filled with aggression and scrutiny.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said flatly, without the slightest ripple in his voice.

"You fucking do!" Logan's temper flared at once. He took a sharp step forward and nearly pointed at Chu Hang's nose as he growled, "Don't give me that crap! I've lived for hundreds of years, and my nose is sharper than a dog's! The smell on you is completely different from before! That power, the kind that can crush someone into a meat patty out of thin air—what the hell is it?!"

"I explained it already." Chu Hang's tone remained as bland as a glass of plain water. "It was... an ability I awakened. The cost was enormous. I nearly died after using it. You saw that."

"Bullshit!" Logan spat. "You call that nearly dying? I've seen you recover faster than anyone! This dying act you're putting on is all fake!"

"Logan!"

Steve's deep shout stopped things from escalating in time. He strode between them and pushed the furious Logan back slightly like a wall.

"Calm down," he told Logan first. Then he turned around and slowly crouched so that he was eye level with the seated Chu Hang.

"Chu," he said gently, "we're comrades. Brothers. We fought side by side and escaped Hydra's base together by the skin of our teeth. I hope there are no secrets between us."

"I'm not trying to pry into your privacy, but I have to know." He paused, then asked the three most crucial questions, one word at a time. "What are the limits of your power? And is it... controllable?"

This was no longer simple curiosity.

This was a commander conducting a risk assessment concerning the survival of the entire team on the most powerful and unstable "super weapon" under his command.

Chu Hang fell silent.

He looked into Steve's sincere yet terrifyingly sharp eyes and knew this would not be easy to get through.

A simple lie could no longer fool these two old foxes.

"Captain," he said with a bitter smile, rubbing his temples, "what are you two so hung up on? Logan has healing abilities too, and your body is far beyond normal because of the serum. I'm the same as you. I just have some special power, that's all."

"I don't know what it is. Some kind of invisible, intangible medium."

"I can... at a price too enormous to imagine, forcibly distort or compress a small area. Like what you saw—I can block bullets, or... crush enemies."

"But..." His tone shifted, and his voice became weaker and hoarser, full of lingering fear. "Every time I use it, it feels like I'm recklessly draining my life away. If I hadn't been born with a healing ability similar to Logan's holding me together, I would have died long ago—died without even a scrap left!"

"As for its limits... I don't know. All I know is that those two attacks in the base were my limit. If I used it one more time, I have no doubt I'd explode on the spot."

"As for controllability... there's no point even talking about it." He shook his head helplessly. "It can only possibly awaken when my life is under fatal threat. I... I can't control it."

Steve, meanwhile, fell into a long silence.

He lowered his head, his handsome face shifting through several expressions as he seemed to rapidly process the enormous, terrifying amount of information in Chu Hang's words.

After a long while, he slowly raised his head, looked at Chu Hang, and said with utmost solemnity, "I understand."

"Chu, no matter what you have hidden inside you, today, you saved all of our lives. That is beyond question."

"From today onward, your ability will be the Howling Commandos' highest-level secret! S-Class! No one is to reveal a single word about it to anyone outside this room, including Colonel Phillips!" He abruptly stood and swept his gaze across every member of the team. His tone was firm and beyond dispute.

"Yes, Captain!" everyone answered in unison, their voices loud and clear.

"As for you..." Steve looked at Chu Hang again, his gaze becoming complicated yet resolute. "You need to learn to control it. Not to fight, but to... stay alive."

"We'll help you."

With that, he reached out and heavily patted Chu Hang on the shoulder.

There was no more probing in that gesture, only the weighty trust between comrades—the kind that could entrust one's life and death to another.

Chu Hang looked at him and solemnly nodded.