Beast

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

The scent was domineering beyond reason, mixed with the gamey stench unique to wild meat and the charred fragrance of fat sizzling at high heat. Like an invisible hand, it brutally dragged his consciousness out of a bottomless darkness of chaos.

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

Above him were rough log beams. A prickly wool blanket covered his body, while the firelight from the hearth cast the entire room in a warm, dim yellow glow. A field pot sat over the fire, bubbling with milky-white soup. That soul-hooking aroma was coming from it.

I'm still alive...

That thought finally allowed his tightly wound heart to settle back into his chest. The two earth-shaking uses of spatial manipulation at the Hydra base last night had nearly drained him dry. The weakness that rose from the depths of his soul was no act—it was real. Although the [Healing Factor] and [Life Reversion] had been silently repairing him all along, the enormous mental depletion was like a severe cold. It was not something he could fully recover from with a single night's sleep.

Without drawing attention, he scanned his surroundings. Several veterans from the Howling Commandos sat around the fire, using knives to divide a roasted rabbit browned to a crisp. They were covered in blood and grime, unshaven and ragged, yet they carried the relaxed air of people who had survived a disaster.

"Hey, look, he's awake!"

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

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

Chu Hang sighed inwardly. He knew that after displaying that godlike power, an invisible abyss had opened between him and these mortal comrades.

"You're awake?"

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

The Super-Soldier Serum's endurance really was monstrous. Chu Hang silently gave it a thumbs-up, while his expression management immediately kicked in.

His formerly normal complexion turned deathly pale within a tenth of a second. His eyes dimmed as well, and with just the right amount of labored breathing, his whole body exuded the weakness of someone on the verge of death.

"How are you feeling?" Steve strode over and crouched beside him. Seeing him like this, his brow unconsciously furrowed as he skillfully pressed the back of his hand to Chu Hang's forehead.

No fever.

"Much... much better, Captain." Chu Hang forced out a smile uglier than crying, his voice as faint as a mosquito's buzz. "I'm just... weak all over. Feels like my body's been hollowed out."

He had to maintain this persona. He did not want those madmen in white coats from the Strategic Scientific Reserve to set their sights on him and haul him away to be sliced open for research.

Steve's clear blue eyes were full of sincere concern, without a trace of suspicion. He nodded, rose to his feet, and said in a tone that brooked 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 seemed Captain America's "ideological guidance class" was unavoidable.

Breakfast consisted of bland rabbit soup and black bread hard enough to kill someone with.

But with his stomach growling in hunger, it was a feast beyond compare.

As the hot soup went down, some warmth finally returned to his chilled body. Chu Hang could feel the [Healing Factor] accelerating the repair of his mental fatigue, while the dormant Cosmic Cube energy also regained a faint, nearly imperceptible trace of activity.

Yet his face still wore that frail, helpless expression. Even the hand holding his spoon trembled "professionally."

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

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

Outside was a clearing in the woods, where snow rose above their ankles. Logan had already been waiting in the center of the clearing. He lounged against a pine tree with a cigar between his teeth, his wolf-like eyes half-lidded through the smoke. He was clearly here to watch the show.

Steve let go and allowed Chu Hang to barely steady himself. He pointed at a bare rock some distance away, his expression as solemn as if he were delivering a pre-battle speech. "Chu, yesterday you said your power came from a kind of 'resonance' that you couldn't fully understand, and that the cost was enormous."

Chu Hang weakly nodded, wearing the bewildered expression of a failing student listening to an advanced lecture.

"Dr. Erskine once told me that the serum amplifies everything in a person. The good, the bad, even their will." 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 letting it control you."

Chu Hang ranted 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 utterly helpless. "That power... it doesn't listen to me."

"Start with the simplest thing." Steve bent down, picked up a black pebble no larger than a fingernail from the snow, and placed it atop the rock. "Try moving it."

He pointed to the other end of the rock, around twenty centimeters away. "Don't destroy it. Move it. Use your mind like you would use your hand. Gently push it over there."

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

"I... I'll try."

Chu Hang extended his right hand toward the pebble from afar, closed his eyes, and cautiously tried to mobilize the primordial power within him.

Bzzzz—!

An invisible ripple abruptly spread outward, and the air around them visibly distorted. Logan's eyes flew wide open beneath the tree, and his cigar dropped into the snow with a plop. He smelled it again—that scent belonging to a "god," the one that made every hair on his body stand on end!

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

The pebble on the rock finally reacted.

It did not move. Instead, it began to tremble violently at high frequency, emitting a buzzing noise as though it would explode on the spot the next second.

"Control it! Chu! Use your mind to command it!" Steve shouted encouragement from the side.

Crack!

A barely audible crisp sound rang out, and a hairline fracture appeared on the pebble's surface.

It was over. Chu Hang's heart sank. He was going to fail. If this continued, the violent energy would shake the pebble directly into dust. That would be utterly humiliating.

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

[Will... the serum amplifies everything in a person, including their will...]

That was it! Will!

How could I be so stupid? I've been using my own willpower—a mortal hemp rope—to forcibly drag this cosmic beast that is the Cosmic Cube! Of course it's exhausting!

But what I have now is a "Super Will" enhanced exponentially by the Super-Soldier Serum!

That is the rein meant to tame the beast!

The moment that thought emerged, 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 unyielding willpower belonging to a Super-Soldier as strands upon strands of incomparably resilient golden thread, carefully and gently winding around that restless mass of spatial energy.

The command in his mind was no longer a crude Move your damn ass, but a patient, coaxing guide.

"Hey, buddy, calm down... yes, just like that... see that little pebble ahead? Go say hello to it. Be gentle..."

The next second, a miracle occurred.

The energy that had previously rampaged through his body actually began to calm under the soothing influence of his "Super Will." An extremely slender thread of blue energy, like an obedient child, meekly separated itself from the vast mother mass of energy under the guidance of his will.

Now!

Chu Hang abruptly opened his eyes, and starlight seemed to glimmer within his pupils.

That thread of tamed energy silently wrapped around the pebble atop the rock.

There was no violent shaking, no piercing noise.

Under the stunned gazes of Steve and Logan, whose jaws nearly dropped to the ground, the tiny black pebble wobbled gently into the air from the rock, as though tugged by invisible threads.

One centimeter, two centimeters... At last, it hovered steadily in midair, utterly motionless.

He had succeeded!

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

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

Plop.

The hovering pebble fell with him.

"Chu!" Steve lunged forward and caught him securely.

"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 held him up, his voice filled with incredulous shock and barely suppressed joy.

On the other side, the previously silent Logan walked over. He picked up the cracked pebble from the rock and examined it before his eyes for a moment. Then he raised his head and looked at the exhausted Chu Hang with the complicated expression one might give a rare prehistoric animal. He grinned, revealing a smile mixed with wildness and a trace of approval.

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

"But..."

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

With that, he stepped forward and stuffed the pebble, still warm from his hand, into Chu Hang's jacket pocket.

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

They supported the nearly unsteady Chu Hang back into the little cabin. The others inside were startled when they saw that he looked even weaker than before.

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

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

Steve glanced at Chu Hang, whose eyes were closed and whose breathing was weak. Then he looked at the corner of the black pebble protruding from Chu Hang's pocket, and his gaze became incomparably firm.

"He can." He said it without hesitation. "I believe in him. He can definitely do it."

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

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

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

Just then, a set of hurried footsteps, so frantic they nearly stumbled, came from deep within the forest, drawing closer and closer. It was Jones, who had been posted on the outer perimeter as a sentry.

He tumbled into the little cabin, his face filled with apocalyptic terror.

"Captain! Bad news! It's Hydra!" He braced himself against the doorframe, shouting between ragged breaths, his voice cracking. "Hydra's main force! They're everywhere, covering 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 the entire mountain region! Every route down the mountain has been sealed off!"

He shouted the final sentence in despair, his voice tinged with tears.

"We... we're surrounded!"