As for someone finishing off the prey he had been about to defeat, he did not even furrow his brow.
After fighting side by side so many times, they had long understood that a life-and-death battle was never the place to compete for credit. Taking down the enemy was the only objective.
The two teams regrouped. Chen Xiao surveyed the wreckage around them and asked, "Mr. Scott, where's Ms. Ororo?"
Scott adjusted his glasses, his voice low. "She's upstairs, keeping a mutant occupied. Peter and I were worried you'd be under too much pressure, so we broke in early."
"Did you get everyone out? Is anyone hurt?" Before he finished speaking, his gaze had already swept across their faces.
Shadowcat nodded. "We got them all out. Not a scratch on anyone."
A faint smile of relief appeared on Scott's face. "Good."
Logan narrowed his eyes, however, and said gravely, "Something's wrong with this place. This is no ordinary mutant research facility. Let's pull out first. We'll talk on the way."
Scott nodded immediately.
They had destroyed plenty of laboratories before, most of them shabby, poorly equipped places with a few armed guards at most. But this one had nearly a hundred armed personnel and several mutants guarding it. That was a rare sight indeed.
Strictly speaking, the dam base Stryker had controlled three years ago was the only comparable facility they had ever seen.
They remained on full alert during the retreat: Colossus and Chen Xiao led the way, Cyclops and Shadowcat provided support from the middle, and Logan brought up the rear, guarding against a last-minute ambush.
Fortunately, everything went smoothly.
Back aboveground, they found Ororo standing quietly outside the basement exit. A charred body lay faceup at her feet-her opponent.
Blackened lightning scars covered the surroundings, with weblike electrical marks crawling across the walls and ground, proof enough that the man had been no weakling.
"You're out."
Seeing everyone emerge unharmed, Ororo finally relaxed.
Only twenty-odd minutes had passed from the start of the battle to its conclusion.
She had spent most of that time fleeing with the mutant children, moving them to safety.
Yet just five people had taken out a secret base equipped with light and heavy weapons, staffed by a mix of retired special forces soldiers, core gang members, and technical personnel totaling over a hundred.
This was the power of mutants.
Ordinary people had almost no way to fight back against such extraordinary individuals-unless someone with abilities of an equal caliber intervened to counter them.
Before the flames had died down, the Blackbird's engines began to roar. It slowly rose into the air, then accelerated into the night, leaving only wreckage burning silently amid the flames.
Before long, police cars and ambulances came racing over from the city...
"Trial mission complete. Congratulations, host. You have received 1 origin point." "Congratulations, host. New access unlocked: Virtual Battlefield."
Inside the Blackbird, the children looked around the cabin with curious eyes while the X-Men took a brief rest. Meanwhile, system notifications quietly sounded in Chen Xiao's ears.
The origin reward had been expected, but the newly unlocked access caught his attention.
System, what exactly is the Virtual Battlefield?
With his question, a stream of clear information flooded his mind. His gaze sharpened slightly as he considered it.
The Virtual Battlefield was a newly available system function that required a continuous expenditure of mental power to maintain.
Once activated, it projected his consciousness into a highly realistic training space, where he could freely set opponents, environments, and combat conditions to repeatedly hone his combat reactions and judgment under pressure.
Though called "virtual," it was not distorted in the slightest. Pain, pressure, pacing, and even the suffocating sensation of being a breath away from death were all indistinguishable from reality.
This function... is pretty hardcore, Chen Xiao assessed, lowering his eyes slightly.
Looking back on the rescue operation, they seemed to have swept through everything and achieved their objective with virtually no casualties. But in Chen Xiao's eyes, there had still been quite a few holes.
The deadliest had been the gap in their intelligence: the existence of that "Ghost Horn Mutant" had been completely overlooked.
Had Shadowcat been the one to break in, with her current strength, the slightest mistake could very likely have seen her killed by a single slash.
Even Wolverine might not have been guaranteed a win against him:
In brute strength, Ghost Horn was no weaker than Logan; in speed, he was actually a fair bit faster.
Combined with his long blade gleaming with cold light and the special energy dormant within his body, even if he could not sever the adamantium claws, the slightest lapse could still have left Wolverine severely injured.
More importantly, every mutant had weaknesses in their abilities that were difficult to avoid.
Cyclops and Storm, for example, had abilities naturally suited to wide-area, long-range attacks. Once forced indoors or into narrow alleys, their power was greatly reduced, leaving them unable to use their abilities freely.
Against an opponent whose movements were elusive and who teleported repeatedly, even a slightly delayed reaction would immediately leave them on the back foot, taking hits.
As for Shadowcat, there was even less to say. Aside from her ability to phase through walls, her combat strength was practically equivalent to that of an elite special forces soldier, making her suited only to specific infiltration missions.
By contrast, the often underestimated Colossus was solid and balanced in every respect:
In close combat, he could knock down a burly man with one punch; when taking fire head-on, ordinary light and heavy weapons could not even leave a scratch on him; his movement speed also far exceeded that of an ordinary person.
Even more remarkable was his tremendous resistance to various forms of damage after turning to steel: blades could not hurt him, immersion in water could not erode him, poison gas struggled to penetrate him, high temperatures could not melt him, and corrosion could not eat away at him.
After sorting through everyone's strengths and weaknesses, Chen Xiao withdrew his gaze and turned his attention to himself.
He realized he was still very inexperienced.
In wide-area destruction, he could not match Storm's thunderstorms or Cyclops's crimson beams; in defensive toughness, he fell far short of Colossus's metal body. That was why he did not dare take submachine-gun bullets head-on. After all, he was still flesh and blood.
By his estimate, his current bodily density could withstand handgun bullets at most, while high-velocity rounds from submachine guns and automatic rifles could still easily tear through his skin.
His means of attack were also extremely limited: he either punched or kicked.
An ordinary person would suffer broken bones on the spot from one of his heavy punches. But against an opponent with formidable defenses and equally astonishing explosive power, such as Wolverine, things would be entirely different.
In a direct confrontation, Chen Xiao's strength, movement speed, and reactions did indeed have a clear edge over Logan's, and his overall strength should have been greater.
But with his healing factor and adamantium skeleton, Logan could take ten or twenty of his punches head-on. Chen Xiao, on the other hand, would die in a single blow if those claws struck a vital spot.
Only after sorting out his own strengths and weaknesses did Chen Xiao summon his status panel with a thought.
Host: Chen Xiao (Vitas Chen) Race: Human Level: One star Bloodline: Kryptonian Superman, "Bronze Age" Constitution: 1280 Spirit: 672 Strength: 1490 "Grip strength: 20 tons" Agility: 1252 "Running speed: 170-200 km/h" Abilities: Heat Ray "Properties: temperature of 1,000-1,800°C, accompanied by a weak shock wave," flight "Hovering and slow movement" X-Gene ability: Energy Berserk "Level one" Origin: 1 Functions: Virtual Battlefield, Storage Space "1 × 1 meter"
Compared with before, the panel now had a "Level" field, while Storage Space and Virtual Battlefield had been grouped under "Functions."
After quickly scanning the various values, Chen Xiao's gaze finally settled on "Virtual Battlefield."
Remembering that the aircraft still had over an hour of flying ahead, he focused his mind and selected it.
In an instant, his consciousness sank, his vision darkened, and he found himself in a dim, secluded space. A simple selection box appeared directly ahead:
"The host's current level is one star. Only opponents of the same level can be matched." "Training has four difficulty settings: easy, hard, hell, and despair. Pain sensation can be adjusted freely." "For your first training session, the system recommends selecting 'easy' mode and lowering the pain threshold."
...Is it looking down on me? Chen Xiao raised an eyebrow slightly.
Though he did not know how the system classified star levels, with his physique and explosive power, he was certainly no ordinary one-star fighter.
After a moment's consideration, he left the pain setting unchanged but still selected "easy mode."
The next second, a stern-looking middle-aged man appeared silently a short distance away.
The man's stats were clearly displayed above his head: constitution 1280, spirit 672, strength 1490, "grip strength: 20 tons"...
He was an exact mirror of Chen Xiao himself.
In other words, "easy" mode meant fighting someone with exactly the same strength as him?
It shouldn't be too difficult, right?
With that thought, Chen Xiao confirmed the start of the battle, and then...
I... died?
Inside the cabin, Chen Xiao's eyes snapped open. His face was deathly pale, a tearing pain surged through his chest, and his pupils contracted sharply in disbelief.
He had been killed instantly, slain in a single move by an opponent with stats identical to his own.
The instant the battle began, the middle-aged man had burst into his maximum speed, closing in like lightning.
A sprint of two hundred meters per second was nothing much to Chen Xiao. He could instinctively anticipate and block it.
What proved fatal was the instant he swung to meet the attack and their fists collided. His opponent's entire body shuddered like a snake, dissipating all the recoil. Then the man ground his heel against the ground, retreating rather than advancing. In the fraction of a second that Chen Xiao staggered backward from the recoil, the man's left hand clamped around his wrist like lightning, his body slammed into him, and his left elbow drove savagely upward into his chest, shattering his heart on the spot.
I lost because of combat experience.
Chen Xiao narrowed his eyes, his expression darkening.
This was his true weakness.
His practical combat experience was almost nonexistent, and his fighting skills were severely lacking.
With this body, he could handle ordinary people with ease. Even a world-class fighter simply could not withstand the force of a punch weighing dozens of tons.
But once his opponent was close to him in strength, even one tiny opening or a half-second error in timing could instantly turn fatal.
That was exactly what had happened in the battle just now.
After repeatedly going over every detail, Chen Xiao took a deep breath and entered the Virtual Battlefield again, still selecting "easy mode."
The middle-aged man appeared once more.
This time, his opponent used joint locks.
Fully on guard, Chen Xiao gritted his teeth and held out until the fifth move. His wrist was caught, his shoulder joint twisted, and his left arm dislocated with a crack. A heavy punch followed, smashing into his heart and ending it completely.
"Hiss..."
Chen Xiao opened his eyes again, his face deathly pale and cold sweat beading at his temples.
The taste of death was truly unpleasant.
As for lowering the pain setting? He did not choose to.
Because only truly unforgettable pain could drive the lesson into his bones.
Right now, he was still fighting only in the Virtual Battlefield, where dying meant no more than enduring another bout of agony. But on a real battlefield, once he fell, there would be no chance to get back up.