Only then did Chen Xiao slowly draw a breath.
Boom!
His figure abruptly vanished, becoming a black afterimage that tore through the air and met the charging Juggernaut head-on.
Boom!!
The air erupted with a violent blast, and the ground shook. Rubble and dust exploded outward from their point of impact, sweeping across dozens of meters. Trees on either side shook violently, their leaves and branches showering down.
Bang!
Before the dust had cleared, a figure shot out like a cannonball, hurtling straight through a villa more than ten meters away. A piercing whistle split the air as tree trunks snapped, courtyard walls crumbled, and walls collapsed along his path.
It was Juggernaut.
Boom!
The villa shook violently. Amid several screams, Juggernaut smashed through the wall on the other side without a scratch, threw back his head with a furious roar, and lunged at Chen Xiao again.
Chen Xiao had not actually met his charge head-on. Instead, he had used his superior speed to slip around his flank and send him flying with a deftly delivered punch.
This unexpected approach left Juggernaut, who firmly believed in direct clashes, both disappointed and enraged.
But this time, before he had charged even half a step, Chen Xiao appeared in front of him as though teleporting, trailing several afterimages. His fist, gleaming with a pale golden sheen, slammed into Juggernaut's chest.
Boom!
The full-force blow, backed by subsonic kinetic energy, sent Juggernaut flying again before he could build up his momentum, smashing him through the outer wall of a distant villa.
Two young people inside screamed in terror.
Almost at the same instant, Chen Xiao burst through the wall in a rush of wind, seized Juggernaut's arm just as he propped himself up, and swung him out with brutal force.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Everything in their path became rubble.
Walls collapsed, vehicles crumpled, and the streetscape was destroyed. They were like two ancient dragons running amok through the streets, raising clouds of dust that blotted out the sky.
Just as Chen Xiao gradually gained the upper hand over Juggernaut and drove their battle farther and farther away,
inside Jean's villa, Nightcrawler's rapid, flashing attacks were forcing Storm into a corner, while Wolverine was locked in fierce combat with Arclight and Quill.
Suddenly, an indescribable surge of telekinetic power erupted!
Boom!!
In an instant, an immense invisible force pinned everyone to the ceiling, leaving them unable to move. The entire villa was lifted off the ground and suspended in midair!
From a distance, the building seemed to float in the air.
Everything within a hundred-meter radius rose off the ground. Even the groundwater gushing from the street after the explosions hung suspended as crystalline droplets, floating silently.
The extraordinary sight instantly caught Chen Xiao's attention several hundred meters away.
After punching Juggernaut away, he hovered motionless several meters above the ground, gazing toward the villa as he murmured with a complicated expression:
"So it's come to this."
In the distance, Juggernaut pushed himself out of the wreckage of a flattened car, let out a deafening roar, and charged recklessly at Chen Xiao again.
Chen Xiao's gaze turned cold, and his figure vanished.
Boom!
Juggernaut had barely charged a few meters before he flew backward like a kite with its string cut, smashing through several thick plane trees by the roadside before crashing heavily to the ground.
And while Chen Xiao pinned Juggernaut to the ground and pummeled him,
in a second-floor bedroom of the villa, Jean stood wrapped in layers of churning crimson telekinetic energy, glaring fixedly at Professor X. Her eyes blazed, her fury scorching.
Before her, Professor X had been lifted into the air by an invisible force, his wheelchair suspended empty nearby. The red energy, permeated with an aura of destruction, was eating away at his body inch by inch. His flesh and bones disintegrated and dissolved at a visible rate.
Yet even as agonizing pain pierced him and his body and spirit were torn apart, not a ripple crossed the professor's face. He simply gazed calmly at the enraged Jean.
That composure instead drove into Jean's nerves, already on the verge of collapse, like a red-hot needle. She gritted her teeth, forcing each word through them. "Get... out... of... my... head!"
Meanwhile, an oceanic surge of psychic power poured furiously into her sea of consciousness, trying to suppress and strip away the restless, violent dark personality deep within her mind.
The entire room had already been swallowed by crimson energy.
The walls cracked and peeled, wooden splinters flew from the floor, and the bookshelf and its yellowed volumes turned to dust together, as though a hundred years had been stripped away.
This was the Phoenix Force. Wherever it passed, all things returned to oblivion.
Inside the villa, everyone except Professor X, including Magneto, Wolverine, and Storm, was pinned in place by that oppressive force, barely able to breathe.
Their faces were filled with horror.
This power was too strong, beyond anything any of them had ever experienced. The destructive will that reached straight into their souls sent chills down their spines.
Wolverine, who was closest, felt his throat tighten. Enduring the wrenching agony in his internal organs, he crawled toward the bedroom inch by inch.
"Get. Out." Veins bulged at Jean's temples, and black marks spread like spiderwebs across her hideously contorted face.
There was no trace of warmth left in her eyes as she looked at Professor X, only naked killing intent and hatred that would burn everything to ash.
Even so, the professor did not give up. With every last shred of clarity he had, he continued driving his psychic power into Jean's mind again and again, trying to tear through the chaos and pull her back to the shores of reason.
And it was precisely this persistent "salvation" that fully ignited the fiercest flames within Jean's heart.
The Phoenix Force sleeping inside her abruptly spun out of control, surging with a furious howl as its destructive will reached its peak in an instant.
Under that world-destroying energy, the professor's body disintegrated faster. His legs turned to stardust first, followed by his arms, then farther up...
Yet until the very last moment, his familiar, warm smile remained on his lips, his gaze as gentle as ever. He said softly, "Jean, don't let it... take you away."
Before his words had faded, his entire body went out like a candle flame, dispersing into a wisp of smoke without a sound.
The sight made Magneto's pupils contract sharply as he remained pinned behind him by telekinetic power. Disbelief filled his face. His chest felt as though it had been struck by a heavy hammer, aching and stifled, leaving him as though bereft of his soul.
He had never imagined Charles would die at Jean's hands.
He had only wanted to take her away. He had never intended for her to kill anyone.
At the same time, Wolverine was peering through the gap in the door, his fingertips digging into the wooden frame, his knuckles white. That instant of disintegration he witnessed through the gap left his entire body cold and rigid, his eyes bloodshot with inexpressible grief.
As Professor X's presence vanished completely, the psychic power continuously pouring into Jean's sea of consciousness abruptly stopped.
Immediately afterward, the destructive telekinetic power boiling inside her from her rage rapidly subsided like an ebbing tide.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
With the telekinetic force withdrawn, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, and the others pinned to the ceiling suddenly lost their support and fell, crashing awkwardly onto the floor.
The entire villa also crashed to the ground. The earth shook violently, and dust showered down.
In the distance, Chen Xiao sensed the professor's presence cut off. A low growl rose in his throat, and his gaze suddenly sharpened like a blade.
He grabbed the ankle of Juggernaut, who had just pushed himself halfway up, and swung his arm in a full arc, repeatedly smashing him against the ground. Rubble flew, cracks spread like spiderwebs, and Chen Xiao looked like a crazed tiger.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Roar! Roar! Roar!
Swung and smashed around like a punching bag, Juggernaut was consumed by humiliation and fury. He kicked and struggled desperately, but could not budge Chen Xiao's wrist in the slightest.
In terms of absolute strength, he and Chen Xiao were indeed evenly matched.
But against Chen Xiao, who was ten times faster, had lightning-fast reactions, knew the principles of boxing inside out, and had achieved mastery of close combat, he had no chance even to defend himself.
Magneto drew a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the grief churning in his chest. He rose expressionlessly and walked slowly into the room.
He looked down at the red-haired woman slumped on the floor, her long hair disheveled. His lips moved, but in the end, he only said softly, "I know this wasn't what you truly wanted."
"Let's... leave here first."
As he spoke, he reached out and steadily helped the distraught Jean to her feet.
Jean's mind was blank. Immense guilt over killing her mentor churned within her, along with bewilderment, helplessness, and the trembling, drained pleasure that followed her release.
It was as though two voices were tearing fiercely at each other inside her.
One screamed, He deserved it! He still wanted to bind me with psychic shackles!
The other whispered over and over, No... it shouldn't be like this... this shouldn't have happened...
Her consciousness muddled, she walked out of the ravaged villa step by step with Magneto supporting her.
Nightcrawler, Arclight, and Quill endured their injuries, struggled to their feet, and staggered after them.
When they stepped through the front door, the three looked up at the red figure supported by Magneto and held their breath in unison, their eyes filled with awe.
That eruption had been too terrifying. Even its residual force had pressed them to their knees, almost crushing them into bloody pulp.
"Where's Juggernaut?"
Magneto scanned the courtyard, his brow furrowing slightly. One of his men was missing.
Of the three, Quill hesitated briefly before answering quietly, "Before we went inside, we saw him fighting that boy on the professor's side."
Magneto swept his gaze around. The street was pitted like the surface of the moon, plane trees lay strewn in every direction, the villas' outer walls had collapsed, and window frames were twisted. The whole area looked as though it had suffered a devastating bombardment.
The corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
Just then, a series of dull tremors came from the direction of the town's exit. The ground faintly shook, prompting everyone to look up.
After a moment's thought, Magneto started walking. "Come on. Let's take a look."
Driving was out of the question. The van they had arrived in had long since been torn into scrap metal by some unknown force and lay scattered a hundred meters away.
Intact cars were also hard to find along the roadside. Wreckage was everywhere.
They could only walk.
As the five of them crossed the devastated street, eyes quietly watched them from the courtyards of the villas on either side and behind second-floor windows. Some held terror, some bitter resentment, some evasion, and others undisguised loathing.
Magneto did not even lift his eyelids, as though those gazes were merely dust brushing past his face, unworthy of a glance.
As soon as the five reached the town's entrance, the sight before them took their breath away. Within a hundred-meter radius, the earth was cracked and overturned, the ground forcibly torn open into savage gashes. Craters covered the scorched, mottled earth, as though an ancient behemoth had repeatedly trampled and crushed it.
Juggernaut, known as the "steel bulwark," lay sprawled at the bottom of the deepest crater, covered in dust, mud, and rubble, his breathing faint. His thick, warped helmet sat crooked over his face, almost concealing it entirely.
At the sight of his miserable state, Nightcrawler and her two companions went deathly pale, chills running down their backs. Thankfully, they had not faced that boy head-on.