Ye Mo's fingertip twitched again.
This time it wasn't because of an underground signal, but because of a familiar tremor overhead. The air seemed to split open, and golden light poured down from the cracks in the clouds. A figure landed on lightning, his cloak fluttering, a warhammer in his hand.
"Oh, you finally decided to come back?" Ye Mo didn't move, his tone lazy. "If you had come any later, I would have thought the Asgard had been renamed the ' Odin Seclusion Center'."
Thor steadied himself, removed his shoulder armor, and looked more composed than ever. He glanced at Ye Mo, then at Emma Frost, who was sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed, and nodded in greeting.
"I'm not going on vacation," he said, "I'm going to settle old scores."
Emma Frost opened her eyes, her gaze falling on Thor's face. She didn't speak, but her mental senses had already quietly spread out, scanning his brainwave frequency. A few seconds later, she nodded slightly—there was no pretense, no magical interference; he was telling the truth.
"So you found out?" Ye Mo leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets. "What is Loki after? Don't tell me he wants to be king again; this is the eighth time. I'm getting tired of it."
Thor shook his head. "He doesn't want to be king. He just wants people to see him."
The air fell silent for a moment.
Ye Mo raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
Thor sat down and put his warhammer aside. He no longer stood up straight as before; instead, he hunched over wearily.
"Do you know? I found a sealed file in Asgard. It's not about war, nor is it a prophecy; it's a record about a child." He paused. "The day Loki was born, Odin ordered a news blackout. He wasn't Asgardians; he was an orphan of the Jotuns. His father adopted him not out of kindness, but to use the relationship to control Jotunheim."
Ye Mo didn't reply, his fingers lightly tapping the seam of his trousers. The system ran quietly in his mind, automatically marking keywords: concealed background, bloodline suppression, political tool.
These words reminded him of Emma Frost, Hellfire Club, and the Mutants who were trained as weapons.
"So he knew he was different from a young age?" Emma Frost asked softly.
"No, he didn't know." Thor smiled bitterly. "All he knew was coldness. His mother loved him, but never openly protected him. My father looked at him like he was looking at a weapon. And me..." He paused, as if swallowing some unspeakable emotion, "When I was little, I laughed at him in public for not looking like a warrior, saying he was more suited to wearing robes and chanting spells. When I said that, my father was laughing. The whole room was laughing."
Ye Mo scoffed, "So the whole family is involved in PUA?"
"Pretty much." Thor nodded. "He learned magic because it was the only thing he could control. He used tricks because he couldn't win head-on. You think he's cunning, but in my eyes, it's the first way a child learns to protect himself after realizing that crying and screaming don't work."
Emma Frost closed her eyes and probed into Thor's memory again. She saw a little boy curled up in a corner deep within a golden palace, clutching a tattered runebook. Footsteps sounded outside the door, and he immediately hid the book, putting on an obedient expression. No one knew that he had just been teaching himself Space Folding Technique.
She opened her eyes, her breathing slightly heavy.
"You're right," she said. "He's not crazy, he was driven to this."
Ye Mo stroked his chin. "So when you see him now, do you still consider him an enemy?"
"I don't know," Thor confessed. "I want to hit him, and I also want to hug him. I want to curse him for betraying me, and I also want to ask him—why didn't you tell me the truth back then?"
The three remained silent.
The wind swept through the ruins, ruffling the drawstring of Ye Mo's hoodie. In the distance, city lights twinkled, like an ever-burning galaxy.
"And what about you?" Ye Mo suddenly asked, "You've been in the Asgard for so long, do you genuinely want to go back and deal with that mess, or have you been assigned something again?"
Thor smiled, not angry.
"I was part of the plan," he said. "My father groomed me to be his heir, instilling in me a belief in order, power, and honor. But now I understand that true power isn't about crushing countless enemies, but about seeing clearly how many people under this sky are living inhuman lives."
He looked up at the night sky.
"I grew up in Asgard and thought that was the whole world. Until I came to Earth, people bought me beer and asked me, 'How was your day?' They weren't afraid of me, and they didn't kneel before me. They treated me like a friend."
Ye Mo laughed, "So you're a regular guest on Earth now?"
"I suppose so," Thor, looking at him. "If there is war in the Nine Realms, I will join the battle. But if there is peace, I want to be an ordinary person."
Emma Frost said softly, "Perhaps the true god is not the one born in the clouds, but the one who is willing to come down."
Thor didn't reply, but his eyes changed. He was no longer the aloof god, but someone who had finally seen his place.
Ye Mo gazed at the lights in the distance, but other thoughts raced through his mind.
Asgard maintains peace through lies, Mutants are driven to survival by fear. On one side is the oppression of the gods, and on the other is the rejection by humans. What is the fundamental difference?
His system suddenly vibrated, and a notification sounded: [New resonance clue detected: Fate manipulation information stream, source unknown].
He didn't say anything, only looked down at his palm. The scorch marks were still there, slightly warm.
"Have you ever thought about," he asked Thor, "What you would do if one day your fate were also predetermined?"
Thor thought for a moment, "I'll tear it up first, then talk to the person who wrote it."
"Ruthless enough." Ye Mo nodded. "I like it."
Emma Frost suddenly frowned.
"Wait," she whispered. " Thor, you said you found the sealed archives. Who gave you permission to access such things? Isn't Odin most averse to people touching forbidden knowledge?"
Thor paused, his expression faltering.
"Nobody allowed it," he said. "I forced it open. I used the key my mother left me. But strangely... the door wasn't secured. It's like... someone wanted me to see it."
Ye Mo's eyes narrowed.
"So this wasn't a discovery you made on your own," he said. "Someone deliberately let you discover it."
"And the timing was perfect, right when we had just set up our defenses," Emma Frost continued. "The underground signal had just appeared when you returned with the secret."
The air suddenly tightened.
Thor realized something. "You mean, this conversation itself... might be part of the plan?"
"It's not necessarily harmful," Ye Mo said slowly, "But it's not necessarily well-intentioned either. Information is also a weapon. Sometimes, one truth is more dangerous than ten lies."
He looked at Emma Frost: "Can you tell he's lying?"
"No." Emma Frost closed her eyes and sensed, "His emotions are real, his memories are genuine. But the information he doesn't know might be being used by someone."
Thor stood up. "I need to go back to Bifrost to check. If someone really is leaking information, then I might not be the next target."
"Go ahead," Ye Mo nodded. "But remember to bring some Earth snacks next time you come back. I'm almost malnourished from eating Divine Realm bread every day."
Thor smiled, picked up his warhammer, and lightning flashed once more.
"Wait for me," he said. "There's more to say."
A pillar of light rose and disappeared into the night sky.
Ye Mo didn't move, and neither did Emma Frost. The two stood side by side, the wind passing between them.
"Do you think he'll come back?" Emma Frost asked.
"Yes," Ye Mo said, "But next time he says something, we have to listen twice—once with our ears and once with our hearts."
Emma Frost nodded, about to say something, when suddenly her brow twitched.
"No," she whispered, "Did he forget something?"
"What's up?"
"He said the file was opened with a key left by his mother," Emma Frost said in a low voice. "But Frigga is long dead. Her last words were—'Don't believe in dreams.'"
Ye Mo suddenly turned around and looked at the sky.
"Wait, did he just mention dreams?"
Emma Frost's expression changed.
"He didn't mention it," she said, "But the scene he described... was exactly the same as the scene in Loki's last hypnosis experiment."
Ye Mo pressed his hand against the wall, and the current seeped into the ground through his fingertips, connecting to the vibration pile network.
Three hundred meters deep, the traffic light flashed.
It's not a geomagnetic shift.
It's data transmission back.
Someone is using the information Thor brought back to reactivate a program.
He looked at Emma Frost, his voice so low it was almost inaudible.
"Tell me... what would Loki's reaction be if he knew all of this had been revealed?"