Beast

After an unknown amount of time, Chu Hang was awakened by an almost savage aroma of meat.

The scent was tyrannically unreasonable, mixed with the gamey reek unique to wild meat and the scorched fragrance of fat sizzling under high heat. Like an invisible hand, it violently dragged his consciousness out of a bottomless abyss of chaotic darkness.

He laboriously lifted his eyelids. It took over ten seconds for his vision to refocus from a blur of colors.

Above him were rough log beams. A scratchy wool blanket covered him, while the firelight from the hearth cast the entire room in a warm, dim yellow glow. A field pot sat over the flames, bubbling with milky white soup. That soul-hooking fragrance came from within.

I'm still alive...

That thought finally let his tightly wound heart settle back into his chest. Those two earth-shattering displays of spatial control at the Hydra base last night had nearly drained everything from him. The weakness rising from the depths of his soul was no act—it was real. Although the [Healing Factor] and [Life Reversion] had been silently repairing him, that massive mental exhaustion was like a severe cold. One night of sleep could not completely cure it.

Without drawing attention to himself, he scanned his surroundings. Several veteran members of the Howling Commandos sat around the fire, using knives to divide up a roasted rabbit with golden-brown skin. They were covered in blood and grime, with unkempt beards, yet they carried the relaxed air of survivors who had escaped disaster.

"Hey, look, he's awake!"

A sharp-eyed team member spotted him. The cabin instantly fell silent.

More than a dozen pairs of eyes snapped toward him like searchlights. Their expressions were incredibly complicated—curiosity, fear, but above all, reverence and distance toward something that was not their kind.

Chu Hang sighed inwardly. He knew that after displaying power like that of a god, an invisible abyss now separated him from these ordinary comrades.

"You're awake?"

A steady voice came from the doorway. The wooden door creaked open, and Steve Rogers walked in, bringing a gust of icy air with him. He carried two freshly skinned rabbits in his hands, looking absurdly energetic, as if he had not been the one who had endured repeated battles and a march through the snow yesterday.

The endurance of the Super-Soldier Serum really was monstrous. Chu Hang silently gave it a thumbs-up, but his expression management instantly kicked in.

His previously normal complexion turned deathly pale in a tenth of a second. His eyes dimmed as well, and with just the right amount of labored breathing, his entire body radiated the weakness of someone on death's door.

"How do you feel?" Steve quickly walked over and crouched beside him. Seeing him like this, Steve's brows unconsciously furrowed as he expertly checked Chu Hang's forehead with the back of his hand.

No fever.

"Much... much better, Captain." Chu Hang forced out a smile uglier than crying, his voice as faint as a mosquito's buzz. "It's just... I have no strength anywhere. It feels like my body's been hollowed out."

He had to maintain this persona. He had no intention of getting noticed by those white-coated maniacs from the Strategic Scientific Reserve and being taken away for dissection.

Steve's clear blue eyes were filled with sincere concern, without the slightest trace of suspicion. He nodded, stood up, and said in a tone that allowed no argument, "Eat something first. Then come outside. We need to talk."

Chu Hang's heart skipped a beat.

What was coming had finally come. It looked like Captain America's "ideological counseling session" was unavoidable.

Breakfast was bland rabbit soup and black bread hard enough to kill someone if thrown. But with his stomach growling from hunger, it was supreme delicacy.

After the hot soup entered his stomach, some warmth finally returned to his cold body. Chu Hang could feel the [Healing Factor] accelerating its repair of his mental fatigue, while the dormant Cosmic Cube Energy also regained a faint, nearly imperceptible trace of activity.

But his face still wore that fragile, sickly expression. Even the hand holding his spoon trembled "professionally."

After the meal, Steve indeed came to find him again.

Under his teammates' concerned gazes and calls of "Take it easy" and "Captain, be gentle," Chu Hang was half-supported and half-carried by Steve as he staggered out of the cabin, swaying with every step.

Outside was a clearing in the forest, with snow rising past their ankles. Logan had long been waiting in the middle of it. He lazily leaned against a pine tree with a cigar clenched between his teeth. Through the drifting smoke, his wolfish eyes were half-lidded. He was clearly here to watch the show.

Steve released him, allowing Chu Hang to barely stand on his own. He pointed at a bare rock nearby, his expression as serious as if he were delivering a pre-battle speech. "Chu, yesterday you said that your power came from a kind of 'resonance' you couldn't fully understand, and that the cost was enormous."

Chu Hang nodded weakly, wearing the confused expression of a poor student listening to an incomprehensible lecture.

"Dr. Erskine once told me that the serum amplifies everything in a person. The good, the bad, including willpower." Steve stared into Chu Hang's eyes, his tone more serious than ever. "Your will is strong. I can feel it. So in theory, you can definitely control it instead of being controlled by it."

Chu Hang cursed inwardly. Obviously! I'm a transmigrator carrying the script for the next several decades. How could my will not be strong?

"But... Captain, how do I do that?" He looked helpless. "That power... it won't listen to me."

"Start with the simplest thing." Steve bent down, picked up a black pebble the size of a fingernail from the snow, and placed it on the rock. "Try moving it."

He pointed to the other end of the rock, about twenty centimeters away. "Don't destroy it. Move it. Use your mind like a hand, gently push it over there."

The request sounded simple, but for Chu Hang, it was harder than ascending to heaven. The spatial energy in his body was violent, chaotic, and filled with a primal desire for destruction. Asking it to do delicate work "gently" was like asking Godzilla to embroider.

"I... I'll try."

Chu Hang extended his right hand toward the pebble from a distance, closed his eyes, and carefully tried to mobilize that prehistoric force within him.

Bzzzzz—!

An invisible ripple abruptly spread outward, and the air around them visibly warped. Logan's eyes flew wide open beneath the tree, and the cigar fell from his mouth into the snow with a soft plop. He smelled it again—that scent that made every hair on his body stand on end, the scent of a god!

Beads of sweat the size of beans seeped from Chu Hang's forehead. He felt as though he was not controlling power, but desperately playing tug-of-war with an invisible cosmic beast.

The pebble on the rock finally reacted.

It did not move. Instead, it began vibrating violently at high frequency, emitting a buzzing noise as if it were about to explode on the spot.

"Control it, Chu! Command it with your mind!" Steve shouted encouragement from beside him.

Crack!

An extremely faint crisp sound rang out, and a hairline fracture appeared across the pebble's surface.

Damn it. Chu Hang's heart sank. I'm going to fail. If this continued, the pebble would be shattered into dust by the violent energy. That would be truly humiliating.

Just as he was about to give up and simply roll his eyes back to pretend he had fainted, Steve's earlier words flashed like lightning through his chaotic mind.

[Willpower... The serum amplifies everything in a person, including willpower...]

That was it! Willpower!

How could I be so stupid? I've been using my own willpower—a mortal rope—to forcibly pull a cosmic beast like the Cosmic Cube! Of course it's difficult!

But what I have now is a "Super Will" that has been geometrically enhanced by the Super-Soldier Serum!

That was the rein meant to tame the Beast!

The moment that thought appeared, Chu Hang's entire state changed. He stopped desperately suppressing the violent energy and, for the first time, tried to understand it—to guide it.

In his mind, he imagined the unwavering willpower of a Super-Soldier as strands of incredibly flexible golden thread. Carefully, gently, he wrapped them around that restless mass of spatial energy.

The command in his mind was no longer the crude, Move, damn it, but a patient, coaxing guide:

"Hey, buddy, calm down... Yeah, that's it... See that little pebble ahead? Go say hello to it. Be gentle..."

The next second, a miracle happened.

The energy that had been rampaging through his body actually began to calm under the soothing influence of his Super Will. An extremely thin strand of blue energy, like an obedient child, gently followed his will and separated from the vast mother source of energy.

Now!

Chu Hang suddenly opened his eyes, and it seemed as though starlight glittered within his pupils.

That thread of tamed energy silently coiled around the pebble on the rock.

There was no violent shaking, no piercing noise.

Under Steve and Logan's stunned gazes, their jaws nearly dropping to the ground, the tiny black pebble slowly and gently floated up from the rock as if drawn by invisible threads.

One centimeter, two centimeters... Finally, it hovered steadily in midair without moving at all.

He had succeeded!

Joy surged through Chu Hang's heart! This proved that he had finally found the right way to wield this godlike power!

However, before he could celebrate for even three seconds, a tsunami-like wave of dizziness and weakness instantly swept through his mind. His vision went black, his legs gave way, and his body toppled forward out of control.

Plop.

The floating pebble fell as well.

"Chu!" Steve dashed forward and steadily caught him.

"I'm... fine..." Chu Hang leaned against Steve's solid chest, gasping for breath. His face was ten times paler than when he had been pretending to be sick. This time, his mental strength had truly been completely drained.

"You... you did it." Steve supported him, his voice full of disbelieving shock and barely contained joy.

On the other side, Logan, who had remained silent, walked over. He picked up the cracked pebble from the rock, examined it before his eyes for a moment, then looked up at the exhausted Chu Hang with the complicated expression one might wear when looking at a rare prehistoric animal. He grinned, revealing a smile mixed with wildness and a hint of approval.

"Kid," he slowly exhaled a ring of smoke, "you're a monster."

"But..."

"...you're an interesting monster."

After saying that, he walked over and stuffed the pebble, still warm from his body temperature, into Chu Hang's coat pocket.

"Keep it, kid. Consider it... your first trophy."

They helped Chu Hang, who could barely stand, back into the cabin. When the others inside saw that he looked even weaker than before, they were all startled.

"He's just exhausted. He needs rest." Steve explained to everyone, unable to hide the satisfaction in his tone. "We're trying to help him learn to control that power. That power is too dangerous. If he doesn't learn to control it, it will be a huge threat to himself and to all of us."

"Can... can he control it?" Falsworth asked quietly.

Steve looked at Chu Hang, who had his eyes closed and was breathing faintly, then at the corner of the black pebble sticking out of his pocket. His eyes became incomparably resolute.

"He can." He spoke with absolute certainty. "I believe in him. He can definitely do it."

Logan silently smoked his cigar nearby without saying a word, but an unfathomable light flickered in those beast-like eyes.

Chu Hang had not actually fallen asleep. His mental strength was merely exhausted, leaving him without enough energy to move even a finger. He touched the cracked pebble in his pocket, yet his heart was filled with the calm of someone in complete control.

Starting with taming a grain of sand, next would come mountains, rivers, and the whole world!

Just then, hurried footsteps came from deep within the forest, so frantic that their owner nearly stumbled. They drew closer and closer. It was Jones, who had been stationed on the outer perimeter as a lookout.

He stumbled and crawled into the cabin, his face filled with apocalyptic terror.

"Captain! Bad news! Hydra!" He clutched the doorframe and shouted between ragged breaths, his voice cracking. "It's Hydra's main force! They're everywhere, all over the mountains! Our men spotted at least two battalions of Hydra troops in the eastern valley, with Tiger Tanks and energy weapons! They're conducting a carpet search of this mountain range! Every route down the mountain has been sealed off!"

He shouted the final sentence in despair, his voice trembling with a sob:

"We... we're surrounded!"