Ye Mo stepped onto the loose stones at the edge of the slope. The screws in his right leg's Steel Bone were still loose, making each step feel like stepping on a spring, his legs feeling weak. He didn't dare take big strides, inching his way down the rock face, using his elbows as leverage against protruding rocks, his knees low, his whole body almost parallel to the ground. The wind blew up from the bottom of the pit, carrying a metallic, acrid smell mixed with an indescribable sweetness, making him feel slightly dizzy.
He stopped, took a breath, and tested the vibration feedback with his palm on the ground—nothing. The low-frequency pulse Emma Frost had sent earlier had stopped, and the light signal from Thor's side hadn't flashed again. The magnetic field here was ridiculously chaotic; the signal from the Vibranium shard was like throwing it into a pile of cotton, without even a sound.
"Alright, I'll rely on myself." He muttered to himself, pulling the last piece of Vibranium from his pocket and lightly scratching it with his thumbnail three times short and two times long.
"Buzz."
The sound was extremely faint, like the sharp pain just before tinnitus. The ground didn't react, but he felt a faint resonance at his fingertips, traveling up his finger bones like ants crawling through his nerves.
"I'm still alive." He breathed a sigh of relief and continued moving forward.
The crater appeared deeper than it seemed from a distance. The cracked rock layers at the edges looked as if they had been burst open from the inside by some immense force, with jagged surfaces. In some places, dark golden filaments hung from the rocks, like solidified liquid light, reflecting faintly in the dim light. He dared not touch them, only glancing at them out of the corner of his eye before feeling a burning sensation behind his eyeballs and quickly looking away.
A system notification then sounded, "10 degrees south of southeast, distance shortened to 180 meters, energy density continues to rise, local gravitational deflection phenomenon intensifies."
He squinted at the bottom of the pit, where the dark golden light emanated from the deepest part, as if a heart was beating underground.
"You're pretty accurate, but it's a pity you can't navigate to the door." He muttered to himself, put away the pieces, and started looking for a place to stand.
There was a slanted crack in the left rock wall, just wide enough for a person to squeeze through sideways. He tentatively stepped onto it, and as soon as he put his foot down, a rock rolled down beside him, hitting the darkness with a few thuds. Several seconds passed before he heard the echo. He held his breath and listened for any sound, but nothing happened except for the sound of the wind.
"You're being kind to me." He gritted his teeth, grabbed the top edge of the crack with one hand, and moved his body sideways inside.
The path was less than twenty meters long, but it took him almost five minutes to walk. He had to use his hands to steady himself before slowly moving his foot. His right leg Steel Bone would occasionally snap, making a soft "click" sound, which startled him so much that he almost froze on the spot. By the time he finally stepped onto the relatively flat ground at the bottom of the pit, his back was soaked with sweat, and he shivered as the cold wind blew.
Before him was a semi-circular depression, about seven or eight meters in diameter, its surface covered with spiderweb-like fine lines, each crack seeping with a dark golden light. In the very center was a depression, like an inverted bowl, from which the light emanated. He crouched down, took off his gloves, and held his palm about ten centimeters above the crack.
His skin reacted immediately—his hairs stood on end, as if he were near an electrified wire mesh. The air distorted slightly in front of his fingers, forming a tiny vortex that swirled with dust.
"This thing has quite a temper." He frowned and silently recited the system command in his mind: Activate Low-Frequency Resonance Capture Mode.
This was a function he had figured out by trial and error. The first time he activated it, he accidentally bumped " Regenerative Phasing " and " Microscopic Perception Fragment " together, which somehow managed to reconnect a severed nerve. Later, he discovered that this combination could also fine-tune biological frequencies. Although it was very mentally taxing, it was still quite effective against unstable energy sources.
He closed his eyes, cleared his mind, and let his consciousness sink downwards following the system prompts. A few seconds later, the repulsive feeling in his palm lessened, and the vortex pulling at the air slowed down.
"It's done." He opened his eyes and quickly pulled the vacuum metal canister from his backpack—silver-gray, palm-sized, with a red light around the edge of the lid. Tony had given it to him saying it was a temporary modification, and the inner wall was coated with a nano-coating to prevent the escape of high-dimensional energy.
He took a deep breath, held the jar in both hands, and slowly brought it towards the brightest light source.
The moment the jar's opening touched the air, the gold threads underneath seemed to retract in fright. He didn't dare stop, and in one breath, he pressed the entire jar down and tightened the lid.
"Drop--"
Red light off, green light on.
"Sealing complete." The system notification sounded.
He slumped to the ground, leaning against the rock wall, panting, his hands still trembling. It wasn't fear, but the exhaustion from being on edge for so long. What had just happened seemed simple, but if he had been even a fraction of a second slower, the particles would have escaped; if he had been a fraction of a second faster, it might have triggered a resonance backlash. Whether he would have been killed was uncertain, but his ears would certainly have been gone.
He looked down at the jar; its surface was warm, like a piece of tin that had been sun-dried. Through the outer shell, he could feel a faint pulse inside, regular like a heartbeat.
"You're really resilient." He grinned, stuffed the can into the shockproof pocket on the side of his backpack, and zipped it up.
After resting for a few minutes, his head was still spinning. His Regeneration abilities were still cooling down, and the spot on his ribs where the black flames had burned throbbed with a dull ache, as if a red-hot needle was stuck inside. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, silently repeating the system notification as Anchor: "Objective not completed, mission not terminated."
After reading it three times, my mind cleared up a bit.
He opened his eyes and stared at the rock wall illuminated by particles, suddenly realizing something—he had only collected one cluster. The system notification was still popping up: Other energy fluctuations detected, scattered in location and varying in intensity.
"This is nothing," he muttered to himself, pushing himself up from the ground and stretching his shoulders, his Steel Bone joints cracking a few times.
He patted his backpack to make sure the canister hadn't fallen out, then looked up at the sky. The clouds were lower, and the wind was stronger, whipping sand and gravel that stung his face. He squinted to get his bearings; it was southeast of south, and there were at least three or four more mobile phone signals moving.
"One at a time," he said, taking a step forward.
The screws in his right leg's Steel Bone were still loose, making each step feel like a broken bicycle chain coming loose. He ignored it; he could still move. As long as his feet could still touch the ground and he could still lift his hands, he had to finish the job.
The wind blew the loose stones on the hillside, and a muffled sound of rock breaking came from afar, as if the earth was turning over. He walked slowly, but without stopping. The canister in his backpack swayed gently with each step, and a faint Energy Pulse clung to his lower back, like a star hidden in his clothes.
He passed a broken rock ridge, casually broke off a piece of rock, and drew an arrow on the ground, pointing towards the next signal source. After doing this, he paused, then took the Vibranium fragment out of his pocket and tapped it on the rock three times short and two times long.
"Leaving a mark," he said, though it was unclear who it was for.
The wind ruffled the hood of his hoodie, revealing half his face. His forehead was sweaty, his chin was dusty, but a slight smile lingered on his lips—not big, but steady.
He continued walking forward.
The ground began to tremble slightly, as if something was moving in the distance. He didn't turn around or speed up; he simply reached into his backpack to make sure the can was still there.
The next signal was 200 meters away, 15 degrees south of southeast, with an energy intensity 12 percent higher than the previous one.
He adjusted his direction, but his steps remained steady.
The wind grew stronger, making the golden threads in the rock crevices tremble wildly, like countless tiny snakes crawling. He walked across a patch of gravel, his shoe cracking a loose stone, from which a sliver of dark light seeped out, vanishing in an instant.
He didn't stop, as if he hadn't seen anything.
He only stopped when he reached the edge of the depression and stepped onto a sloping, barren ridge. He took the can out of his shockproof bag and glanced at the green light—it was still on.
"Thank goodness it didn't explode," he said softly, putting it away again and looking up ahead.
The horizon was obscured by black mist, its end nowhere in sight. But he knew the particles were still drifting, still scattering, still waiting for him to find them.
He felt his hoodie pocket; the Vibranium fragment was still there.
"Then let's continue." He finished speaking and stepped into the sandstorm.
Three hundred meters to the left front, a new rift valley quietly opened up, its bottom gleaming with a familiar dark golden light.