Whoosh!
He had anticipated it. Driving his feet hard against the ground, he shot several meters backward, his brow slightly furrowed in thought.
Almost simultaneously, a long blade identical to the previous one materialized beside him, and he caught it with a backhanded grab.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
The two middle-aged men gave him no respite, catching up in an instant and slashing down again with blades that seemed capable of tearing through any obstacle.
Strictly speaking, this contest was a drawn-out struggle in which Chen Xiao kept dodging, occasionally meeting a strike head-on. It lasted more than ten thousand exchanges before coming to an end.
He had not died in battle. His mental strain had simply reached its limit, forcing him to stop voluntarily.
In the darkness, Chen Xiao slowly opened his eyes. He loosely curled his right hand, and a mass of energy radiating a biting edge instantly gathered in his palm.
But the vaguely blade-shaped force lasted only an instant before abruptly dispersing, leaving nothing but a faint breeze brushing his fingertips.
He quietly studied his palm, his gaze calm. "Still no good... Looks like I'll really have to kill one of those middle-aged men to fully master this blade technique."
As he understood it, the Virtual Battlefield did more than hone the instincts needed in life-or-death combat. It was also a place where power was passed down.
Easy mode bestowed the essentials of fist techniques, while hard mode held that advanced blade technique.
Once he cleared hard mode and learned it, the hell mode that followed might unlock another, even more formidable legacy of power.
Having already acquired extraordinary physical abilities, was he truly uninterested in these legacies?
Of course he was interested. Who would complain about knowing too many skills or having abilities that were too powerful?
The mastery of three fist techniques he had gained after clearing easy mode, for instance, had allowed him to easily crush Juggernaut when their strength was comparable.
At that thought, a faint smile rose on Chen Xiao's lips. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
After breakfast the next morning, he went straight to the library. After browsing for a while, he brought back a stack of books on computer architecture, programming languages, and network offense and defense.
What had been his greatest gain from yesterday's complete transformation of his body and soul?
It was not faster growth in strength, but a leap in his thinking.
A superbrain in the truest sense.
This ability was often glossed over in comics and movies, yet it was precisely Superman's most terrifying aspect:
Perfect recall after a single second's glance, information processing at the speed of light, and logical deduction so fast it was breathtaking.
He chose a sunny seat by the window, sat down, and immediately began reading at high speed.
Rustle! Rustle! Rustle!
Pages flew like the wind between his fingers. Every word his eyes passed over was seared into his mind, while deep in his consciousness, the information was broken down, categorized, and reconstructed at a frightening pace.
One book, then two...
With his background in science and engineering and his major in computer science and software engineering, he faced no barrier to learning this material.
As he absorbed information at this explosive rate, his expertise in computing advanced by leaps and bounds, especially his hacking skills.
Why had he prioritized this field rather than the biological genetics that had first interested him?
Because he planned to use hacking to pave the way for his later actions.
Genetic science could wait. Once he had time to spare, it would not be too late to pursue it steadily.
While Chen Xiao basked in the sunlight to temper his will and buried himself in books to accelerate his growth,
at ten that morning, Wolverine stood alone before Professor X's grave.
On the headstone, the image of the bald man looked peaceful and serene.
An indescribable expression crossed Logan's face.
He had known the telepath for decades, yet he had never imagined the man would meet his end this way,
dying at the hands of his most cherished student.
He sighed softly. "Charles, do you know? Without you, the school for mutants has already lost that purity."
In the past, every rule at the school had stemmed from Professor X's will alone.
Now, only two days after his departure, several fierce arguments had already erupted within the school, with everyone insisting on their own views.
Although Ororo had taken the lead in bringing the X-Men back together, the one actually directing their decisions was Vitas, who was only fifteen.
The boy acted calmly and decisively, and his judgments were precise, but at his core, he was utterly different from Professor X, who had advocated peaceful coexistence.
There was always an unyielding sharpness in his expression.
Logan felt a vague unease: at this rate, sooner or later, the school would be dragged into war. It might even ignite an all-out global conflict between mutants and humans.
But he was powerless to change the situation.
However senior he was, his judgment on crucial matters was clearly inferior to Vitas's, making it difficult for him to win everyone over.
And the source of all these changes was Jean Grey, who had awakened and returned.
At that thought, a trace of pain flickered in Logan's eyes.
Jean must have been suffering terribly right now, too. Having accidentally killed the beloved mentor who had taught her for decades, she bore a weight no ordinary person could endure.
"Logan..."
Suddenly, an exceedingly faint call sounded deep in his mind, so soft it seemed like an auditory hallucination.
"Logan."
The voice sounded again, clear and real.
"Jean!"
"Logan, save me!" This time, the urgency and helplessness in that voice instantly made Logan's pupils contract and his expression change drastically...
A little over ten minutes later, the sounds of a heated argument between Wolverine and Storm could faintly be heard from the faculty building.
Before long, students saw him climb onto Scott's motorcycle and speed away amid the roar of its engine, quickly disappearing beyond the school gates.
The atmosphere on campus, which had only just begun to settle, was once again stirred into a swirl of undercurrents.
At precisely eleven, Clarice found Chen Xiao in a corner of the library. He was surrounded by stacks of computing books, his fingers turning pages so quickly they almost left afterimages.
She sat down opposite him and tilted her head as she studied him. "Vitas, what are you looking for?"
An ordinary person would need at least ten or twenty minutes to flip through a book, but Chen Xiao could scan an entire one in under sixty seconds. That was not reading; it was clearly searching.
Chen Xiao's fingers paused. "No, I'm studying."
"Studying?" Clarice blinked, looking as though she had not quite registered his answer.
He chuckled. "A genius's daily routine. You wouldn't understand just yet. So, did you need something?"
"No, I just had nothing to do and dropped by to see you." The black-haired girl waved a hand.
"Is that so?"
After a moment, seeing him lower his head and resume rapidly flipping through the pages, Clarice could not help herself. "I heard Mr. Logan had a falling-out with Ms. Ororo and left in a rage."
"Mm." Chen Xiao's response was exceedingly mild.
She leaned closer, a hint of tension in her voice. "Aren't you worried?"
He looked up. "About what?"
She lowered her voice. "Everyone's talking about it. They say Mr. Logan left today, and tomorrow..."
Chen Xiao sighed. "Enough. You spend all day letting your imagination run wild. Do all girls love prying this much, getting worked up over the slightest disturbance?"
"Stop overthinking it. Since you've got nothing to do, read something useful."
He casually pushed two books toward her. "An Introduction to Computer Fundamentals and Elementary Mathematics: A Detailed Guide to Linear Equations in One Variable. Finish them today."
Under Chen Xiao's daily tutoring, Clarice's mathematics had firmly reached a sixth-grade level, progressing at an astonishing speed.
"Aww..." Her shoulders slumped as she drew out the sound.
"What are you whining about?" He raised an eyebrow. "Your ability is spatial jumping. The stronger your math skills, the more accurately you can pinpoint locations and the more stable your teleportation will be."
"Learn a little computing along the way and see if you've got a talent for hacking. If I ever need remote support, you might actually be able to lend a hand."
The moment Clarice heard that she could help him in the future, her eyes lit up.
Her complaints stopped abruptly. She snatched up An Introduction to Computer Fundamentals, sat up straight, and earnestly opened the first page.
As she lowered her head to read, Chen Xiao took out his laptop. His hands flew across the keyboard like lightning, the keystrokes as dense as a sudden downpour.
Lines of code streamed down the screen like a cascading silver waterfall.
In just one minute, the page changed, revealing Slack Company's backend administration interface. The corners of Chen Xiao's lips lifted slightly.
In his first test of his skills, he had taken over a publicly listed company's core system in the blink of an eye.
This was the proper way to use a superbrain.
Superman smashing walls with his fists in the movies? Far too primitive.
He nodded in satisfaction. "We're civilized people. Why use our fists when we can use our brains?"
Before he had finished speaking, his fingers moved again. The keystrokes abruptly intensified, his fingers blurring into a haze. This was his real target today: the White House's internal network.
He wanted to retrieve a few files and, while he was at it, keep an eye on what America's officials had been doing over the past two days.
As the world's most technologically advanced country, America led the field in computing and the internet, and spared no effort in its investment in cybersecurity.
Especially where state secrets were concerned, the White House had a dedicated internal agency: the Cybersecurity Bureau.
This department brought together top programming experts from across America and even overseas. Its main job was to defend the country's networks. Its side business... was digging up intelligence on other countries while it was at it.
Yes, it was that brazen.
Near noon, eighteen-year-old Corrod was slouched at his workstation, playing games.
At twelve, he had hacked into the White House's official defense website, prompting FBI agents to visit him personally with an "invitation." He had ultimately joined the security department and had long been recognized as a prodigy in the field.
Over the past six years, with him there, the White House's firewall had never fallen. As time passed, almost no one dared to come looking for trouble anymore.
And so his greatest daily challenge was figuring out how to make lunch last a little longer.
But today, just as he was about to close his game and go eat, a bright yellow exclamation mark suddenly popped up in the lower-left corner of his screen. He abruptly sat upright, his pupils contracting.
"It's been over a year. Someone's finally come knocking again?"
Excitement instantly overwhelmed his weariness. He briskly quit the game, set all ten fingers to work, and made the keyboard clatter.
Windows popped up one after another on the screen, then rapidly closed, as though an invisible hand were snuffing them out one by one.
A minute later, he leaned back in his chair, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. The intruder was a novice, actually using a public proxy server as a stepping stone without even bothering to optimize the basic intrusion chain.
If the other party had not disconnected so decisively, another ten seconds would have let him trace the IP address and hack straight into their device.
Just then, Tart, the security section chief, strolled out of his office. "Corrod, the system just reported an intrusion alert."
Corrod shrugged. "Piece of cake, boss. Just a rookie. They pulled the plug and ran."
Tart gave him a thumbs-up. "Nice work. Next time, if you can catch them and identify them, that would be even better."