Steel Bone blocked the attack, protecting everyone

When the purple cone of light pressed down, all the glass in the building resonated.

Ye Mo had no time to think about anything else; only one thought remained in his mind: he couldn't let that thing shine on those two idiots behind him.

He lunged forward, crossing his arms to shield his chest, his consciousness sinking downwards, plunging directly into the sixth level of the "Gene Spiral Tower." The power fragments of his Steel Bone Body were violently pulled out like a red-hot iron sheet, slamming down along his nerves. His spine cracked, his shoulder blades stretched outwards, and silver-gray metallic structures emerged from beneath his skin, unfolding layer by layer, finally forming an arc-shaped shield behind him, resembling half a subway door.

"Boom--"

The energy wave struck him, making a sound like a high-voltage wire sparking, crackling and drilling into his bones. Ye Mo was jolted forward, his knees almost hitting the ground, but he gritted his teeth and held on, his feet scraping two deep grooves in the concrete.

The light cone didn't break; it's still pushing.

He could feel the energy traveling up his Steel Bone, like someone was drilling into his skull. His nosebleed had just stopped, but now it started flowing again, dripping warmly down his chin onto his hoodie collar.

"Damn... this is even more intoxicating than fake alcohol..." he managed to squeeze out, his voice trembling.

But the person didn't leave.

He just stood there, his back to Tony and Emma Frost, like a welded steel stake, absorbing the entire shockwave.

The row of terminal screens in the lab flickered a few times before stabilizing. Tony stood in the armor activation area, his hand still on the wake-up button, and it took him a second to react.

"You actually dare to block me, huh?" he roared, rushing to the control panel and furiously pounding his fingers on it. "JARVIS! Mark 42 emergency takeoff! Full power! Don't wait for calibration, fly now!"

Armor components slid down from the ceiling and attached themselves to his body piece by piece. Tony yelled as he put them on, "Do you know your brainwaves are like a microwave about to explode? Hold on for another five seconds and you'll be a roasted sweet potato!"

"Stop talking nonsense!" Ye Mo gritted his teeth, veins throbbing on his forehead. "You two, get to work! Don't just stand there watching me act as a human shield!"

Before the words were even finished, the intensity of the light cone suddenly jumped up a notch.

Ye Mo groaned, and a thin crack appeared on the surface of the Steel Bone in his back, like the crackle glaze on porcelain. The pain exploded instantly, shooting from his shoulder blade all the way to his lumbar spine. His right leg went weak, and his knee slammed heavily to the ground, leaving a small dent in the concrete.

But he pushed himself up with his left hand, managing to lift himself back up.

"Damn... it still works..." he gasped for breath, wiping the blood from his face with his other hand. "Give me some more... I haven't even been reimbursed yet..."

Tony's armor finally completed its assembly, the thrusters ignited, and he soared into the air, hovering behind Ye Mo. He raised his hand and fired a non-directional electromagnetic pulse, his palm cannon unleashing a circular wave that swept towards the drone swarm.

"Complete coverage within 300 meters!" Tony stared at the HUD feedback. "67% jamming success rate. Some targets experienced brief stalls, but didn't crash—these little things are quite resilient."

"Nonsense." Ye Mo gritted his teeth and looked up. "Do you think the person behind Killian is on welfare? They can even mass-produce mental attacks. You expect to take them down with one shot?"

"Then stop making sarcastic remarks." Tony glanced at him while adjusting the frequency for a second wave of interference. "Your current look won't last more than a few minutes, will it?"

"We'll hold out for as long as we can." Ye Mo grinned, though his smile was a little crooked. "Anyway, I'm tough, and the system won't really kill me. Besides—" He paused, slightly adjusting the angle of his Steel Bone Shield to deflect a wave of aftershocks, "Don't you still need me to block for you?"

Tony didn't reply, but instead recharged his palm cannon, shooting a beam of intense light into the sky.

Meanwhile, at the control panel, Emma Frost Thaddeus Ross sat cross-legged on the floor, her hands supporting her forehead, her eyes tightly shut. Her forehead was covered in sweat, her hair clung to her cheeks, and her lips trembled slightly, as if she were tug-of-war with something unseen.

Her consciousness had already extended beyond her.

She didn't use her eyes to see, but rather used her mental tendrils to slowly probe into the signal network of the drones. She could sense faint connections between the machines, interwoven like a spider web, with a blurry node at the center, but she couldn't grasp it.

"It's so slippery..." she muttered under her breath, "Like catching a fish that's been coated in oil..."

She tried to apply pressure and force access to the control system of one of the aircraft, but the other party immediately released a burst of noise in the opposite direction. Her head buzzed, and she almost vomited on the spot.

"No." She opened her eyes, her breathing rapid. "They have firewalls, they're not programs, they're living streams of consciousness... Someone is controlling them remotely, and... they react very quickly."

"Then let's stall it." Ye Mo didn't even turn his head. "No need to take over, just slow it down. Tony goes for a round, then you take the opportunity to disrupt it. We'll take turns annoying it."

"Easy for you to say." Emma Frost wiped the sweat from her brow. "This isn't a router; this is a battle of wits against a hacker."

"Who told you to be Mutants?" Ye Mo snorted. "You've put all your talent points into your brain; if you don't use them now, are you saving them for the New Year?"

Emma Frost glared at the back of his head, but then closed her eyes and sank back into the room.

This time, she changed her approach. Instead of launching a direct attack, she slowly crept along the edge of the signal stream, like a mouse sneaking into a kitchen, finding a crack and slipping inside. She released a very weak mental fluctuation, mimicking the frequency of one of the drones, blending into the queue, and then suddenly distorted the signal, creating a tiny delay.

Just in that instant.

Tony caught him.

His palm cannon immediately switched modes, firing a series of high-frequency pulses that precisely hit three drones that were recalibrating. The drones flapped their wings, spun around in place, collided, and two of them crashed to the ground.

"Great!" Tony shouted, "One more time!"

"If it happens again, I'll be bedridden for three days." Emma Frost opened her eyes, her nostrils flaring, her face a little pale. "That almost blew my brain out."

"Enough," Ye Mo suddenly spoke, his voice low and hoarse, "They're going to escalate the situation."

He's right.

The array of drones high in the sky began to shrink, no longer scattering, but converging into a tighter ring. The purple of the light cone deepened, with a hint of black at the edge, like an overburnt flame.

The energy wave descended once more.

This round is much stronger than the previous ones.

The Steel Bone Shield on Ye Mo's back cracked again with a "crack," this time extending from his shoulder all the way to his waist, as if he had been chopped with an axe. He was forced to sink down, his knees slamming into the concrete for the second time. This time, he couldn't even support himself with his hands and had to brace himself with one hand to avoid falling.

"Damn... this time I'm really going to meet my ancestors soon..." Blood foamed from his throat, and his speech was slurred.

But he still didn't back down.

He gritted his teeth and poured all the remaining energy in his body into the Steel Bone. The silver-gray structure began to glow, not in a dazzling way, but in a soft light, like moonlight shining on the surface of water. The light membrane spread out layer by layer, filtering out the intruding mental fluctuations little by little.

Inside the laboratory, the equipment remained stable.

Tony's armored HUD showed a 41% decrease in the neural interference index.

"You're really something." Tony stared at his retreating figure, his voice a little strained. "You can even fix a bug yourself at a time like this?"

"Don't praise me," Ye Mo said, panting. "Save your energy... I'll need you to finish me off later."

"And what about you? How much longer can you hold on?"

"I'll hold on until you two finish what you've got." He raised his hand and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. "At worst... even if my bones are cracked, I can lie flat and serve as a metal bench, and still keep blocking."

Tony didn't say anything, but silently checked the EMP module's charging progress.

Emma Frost took a deep breath and closed her eyes again.

She knew she couldn't wait any longer.

She suppressed her mental energy to the minimum, no longer attempting to invade, and instead directly threw a chaotic memory into that network of consciousness—not real, but fabricated by her, a stream of illogical images: a cat eating pizza, the moon turning into a hamburger, and Tony dancing Swan Lake in a ballet tutu.

Absurd, but effective.

The remotely controlling consciousness paused noticeably, as if struck by lightning.

Now!

Tony's palm cannon was activated at full power, and the EMP pulse swept across the airspace like a tsunami. More than a dozen drones simultaneously stalled, their formation was thrown into chaos, and the light cone shattered instantly.

The pressure decreased sharply.

Ye Mo leaned back and almost fell, but he used his Steel Bone arms to support himself and barely maintained his kneeling position.

"Did it work?" he asked, looking up.

"For now," Tony, staring at the sky, "They're regrouping, but their rhythm is disrupted. The next attack will be at least thirty seconds away."

"Thirty seconds is more than enough." Emma Frost opened her eyes, panting heavily, but her eyes were bright. "I just saw something—the control source wasn't local, it was remote, and there was a signal delay of about 0.3 seconds."

"That means the other party isn't on-site," Tony quickly deduced. "They're hiding in a safe house, controlling the situation via relay."

"Then let's follow the trail." Ye Mo braced himself on the ground and slowly pulled himself up. "Next time they come online, we'll trace the signal source directly."

"That is, if you can hold on until then." Emma Frost frowned as she looked at the cracks on his back.

"We have to hold on, even if we can't." Ye Mo straightened up a bit, the gleam on his Steel Bone frame still lingering. "If I don't block, who will? One of you relies on empty talk, and the other on wishful thinking. What good are you?"

"You're the king of daydreaming," Tony rolled his eyes. "Who taught you that 'cat eating pizza' move just now?"

"It's my original work." Emma Frost raised her chin. "It's proven effective in real-world testing."

The three exchanged a glance; no one laughed, but the atmosphere eased for a moment.

But just then, Ye Mo's Steel Bone back suddenly made a "crack" sound.

Another crack appeared.

He looked down at the broken section, said nothing, and simply placed his hand on it, mobilizing the remaining energy to repair it bit by bit.

The light film is still there.

The defensive line hasn't been breached.

He looked up, staring at the regrouping shadows in the sky, his voice low but clear. "Don't stop. Keep interfering. I can hold on."