Filling His Stomach Came First

The icy seawater scraped across Chu Hang's skin again and again like countless tiny blades.

He lay quietly on the wet beach, his body as heavy as trash casually cast aside by the waves. The night wind swept over him without mercy, carrying away the last trace of warmth from his body and triggering an uncontrollable shiver. Exhaustion spread from every cell deep within him like a sickness clinging to his bones, so overwhelming that even moving a finger felt like an impossible luxury.

But he was alive.

That was enough.

Inside his body, a silent repair was underway. The Healing Factor copied from Logan worked like a colony of tireless ants, slowly but steadily patching up his nearly shattered shell. Meanwhile, the Super-Soldier Serum acted like a loyal engine, desperately squeezing the last scraps of food from his body and converting them into a negligible amount of energy, barely maintaining a trace of body heat against the seawater's assault. As for the newly acquired cosmic energy, vast as a sea of stars, it still slumbered safely deep within him like a lofty god, utterly indifferent to its host's life-or-death predicament.

Chu Hang simply lay there without moving. Time seemed to lose all meaning. Perhaps more than ten minutes had passed, or perhaps much longer. He greedily savored this brief peace after surviving disaster, allowing his body's instincts to take control and carry out the most primitive form of self-repair.

Only when the bone-deep chill that made him feel as if he could shatter at any moment gradually faded, replaced by a rigid numbness from being frozen stiff, did he finally gather a little strength. He laboriously propped himself up on his elbows and struggled into a sitting position on the soft sand.

He raised his head and looked around.