The scene shifted.
A dark, damp alley in Gotham City. The Clown's wild laughter echoed in his ears.
In Hell's Kitchen, bodies riddled with gang gunfire lay piled into mountains. Patients he had failed to save crawled toward him, drenched in blood, clutching his trouser legs.
"You can't save anyone."
"You're just a back-alley doctor."
"Give up. Sink beneath the water."
Whispers echoed deep within his mind, trying to dismantle his will and turn him into a puppet like Barton.
In reality, Yang Ming froze. The green chakra steam began to churn erratically.
A mocking smile curled Ebony Maw's lips. It was over.
But he failed to see that Yang Ming's lowered eyes held neither fear nor emptiness.
Only utter coldness.
Illusions? Pain?
Yang Ming laughed inwardly.
He had run a clinic for years in Gotham, where lunatics roamed the streets, and stitched countless severed limbs amid the gunfire of Hell's Kitchen. He had witnessed realities a hundred times more sickening than these illusions.
And this was supposed to shake his mind?
"Get out."
Yang Ming spat those words deep within his consciousness.
The next instant, a terrifying, dark red pressure, almost tangible, erupted from his body!
Conqueror's Haki!
Not outward, but inward. His Conqueror's Haki became an invisible, savage blade and cleaved down through his mind!
Crack!
The icy river shattered. Gotham's alleys shattered. The demonic whispers were pulverized by a domineering will that reigned supreme over all!
In reality.
Yang Ming snapped his head up, his black eyes frighteningly bright. Instead of retreating, he pushed against the Mind Scepter's blue light and took a heavy step forward.
Crack! The paving stone beneath his foot exploded.
Ebony Maw's eye twitched violently. How was that possible? A mere Earthling had resisted the Mind Stone's intrusion through sheer willpower?
Just as