The snow-covered mountain range lay sprawled across the ground like a giant dragon. Above the rolling peaks, Kamar-Taj's white-walled, black-tiled complex glittered beneath the sunlight.
Special wards prevented unauthorized people from entering or even seeing this sacred place, but Huaxi Village at the foot of the mountain was open to the public. Perhaps because Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching, the trade-oriented town was exceptionally lively. Vast numbers of spellcasters bustled about, and the streets teemed with people.
"Seeing Wanda sent back first had worried me a little, but judging by things now, you brought back good news again?"
When Deathstroke returned to Kamar-Taj with Death, Ancient One and Monark were tending to Wanda. The Scarlet Witch slept on a simple little bed in the infirmary, and her expression seemed far more relaxed.
Teacher Yao, the bald woman, sat beside the bed. She held a mortar and used a small pestle to grind something inside it. The materials looked like the bones of some creature, grayish-white and crackling as they broke apart.
Su Ming nodded to The Mustache Mage at the side in greeting before smiling and answering his teacher.
"Another wonderful day. Humanity wasn't exterminated by cold-hearted gods—at least not today. I sent those ancient alien scum to the Western Paradise. They weren't going there to seek scriptures, so they probably won't be coming back."
As he made that bad joke, Su Ming raised a hand and displayed energy projections of scenes across Earth, gathered from the various surveillance devices he had arranged in advance.
While he had been constantly plotting and fighting the enemy in the Beyond Realm, the people of Earth-40K had noticed nothing. The battle on a higher plane had not endangered the stability of the three-dimensional world. This place had remained well protected.
Even the Avengers knew