Outside the porthole, Earth was no longer a tiny dot, suspended against the dark backdrop of space in shades of blue and white, like a glass marble carelessly tossed into an ink bottle. The spaceship was still flying steadily; the jump gate had long been shut off, and the engine noise had been reduced to its lowest setting, a buzzing sound that made one feel a little sleepy.
Ye Mo was awakened by the images in his mind.
It wasn't a system notification sound—that thing hadn't made a sound since collecting the last piece of Aether, as quiet as a customer service representative playing dead. He was dreaming that when he was healing Emma Frost, his hand slipped and he used "Partial Evaporation" instead of " Regenerative Phasing," and then Thor stood beside him and said, "You're not saving her, you're trying to make her a human decoction, aren't you?"
He suddenly opened his eyes, a thin layer of sweat on his forehead.
He was still in the same position, legs stretched out, head tilted, glasses slipped down to the tip of his nose. He adjusted them and glanced at Emma Frost in the passenger seat, who was staring at the navigation screen, occasionally tapping it lightly with her fingers. Her profile was clean and sharp, and her breathing was steady; she was clearly alright.
In the rear cabin, Thor leaned back on a bench in the rest area, Mjolnir resting across his lap, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, snoring softly.
That's good. Everyone's alive, and no one's missing an arm or a leg.
But Ye Mo just couldn't let his guard down.
On the surface, he seemed to have won the battle, and the process was relatively smooth, but upon closer inspection, it was full of flaws. For example, the last move he made to extend Emma Frost's life involved an uncommon combination of " Self-Healing fragments + Wall Phasing fragments," which theoretically could activate cellular-level repair and provide a brief period of invisibility to avoid backlash damage. However, when he actually used it, he almost burned off his left shoulder. If Thor hadn't thrown a low-frequency electric arc in time to stabilize his nerve conduction, he might be eating with his right hand now.
There was also Emma Frost's mental interference. She should have anticipated Malekith's resonance attack half a second in advance, but she got stuck during the third wave of suppression and lost her connection, only reconnecting a full two seconds late. If it had been any other enemy, the three of them would have been blasted into cosmic dust long ago.
As for Thor... don't be fooled by how powerfully he swings his hammer. There were actually two instances where the rhythm of his lightning strikes was clearly off. Once, he exploded when the energy was about 80% full, and the other time, he simply missed, hitting the rock formation right at his feet and making himself stagger.
Normally, no one would bring up these things; as long as you win, who would bother bringing up the past? But Ye Mo knew he couldn't continue like this.
He sat up straight and cleared his throat.
"Was our battle just now," he said, "Really well fought?"
Emma Frost's finger remained on the screen; she didn't turn around.
Thor's snoring stopped abruptly, and he opened his eyes a crack. "So you're starting to nitpick now that you've won?"
"I'm doing a debriefing." Ye Mo took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. "I'm not nitpicking, I just want to figure out how to avoid almost ruining myself next time."
Emma Frost then turned her head, raising an eyebrow slightly. "You want to hear the truth?"
"Why else would I ask? Do you expect Tony to record a podcast to critique our mistakes?"
Thor sat up, tossing his hammer aside. "Alright, you say yours, I'll say mine. But let me state first—those two lightning bolts missed because the rocks were too slippery."
"You're standing on Obsidian platform," Emma Frost said calmly. "It's as hard as Vibranium; it won't slip."
"It deliberately split open to trip me!"
That's because you landed too hard.
Ye Mo waved his hand to interrupt, "Stop, stop, stop. The point isn't who takes the blame, it's where the problem lies. I'll go first—that last ' Regenerative Phasing,' I didn't control the output power well, and I didn't understand the cooling mechanism. I relied purely on trial and error. If you two had injured your key targets back then, and my ability had stopped midway, the three of us would have been sent to our deaths."
Emma Frost paused for a few seconds, then nodded. "I had a problem too. During the melee, my mental field overloaded, and I received more than thirty enemy consciousness fluctuations in succession, causing my prediction model to crash once. For seven seconds, I completely lost track of Malekith's movements."
"Seven seconds?" Ye Mo frowned. "What were you doing then?"
"Delete the ads from my mind." She said calmly, "His memories are too fragmented, childhood traumas, power obsessions, revenge scenarios playing out in turn, like watching short videos until I have a brain hemorrhage. I have to manually block out those messy images to concentrate."
Thor scratched his head. "So, the scene where I was kneeling in the rain when I was a kid, that was also something he tucked in?"
"Right."
"That's not my shameful past, it's his mental pollution?"
"Yes."
Thor breathed a sigh of relief, "That's good. I thought you actually saw it."
Ye Mo rolled his eyes. "I understand that one of you is overloaded and the other is under mental spam attack. But what I'm more worried about is the coordination rhythm—we missed three opportunities to attack together. For example, you used electricity, and I wanted to start a fire, but you attacked half a second too early, and before my fire could even ignite, the air was all scorched."
"That's because your signal was too vague," Thor shrugged. "You said 'ready,' but every time you said 'ready,' you were actually three seconds too late."
"Because I'm afraid that if I speak too late, I'll hold others back."
"Then you might as well say 'Three seconds left,' 'Two seconds left,' 'Release!' That way I'll understand."
Emma Frost interjected, "I can also optimize information transmission. In the next battle, I'll compress the mental signals, only transmitting key coordinates and threat levels, instead of pushing the full video stream, to reduce interference."
Ye Mo nodded. "Okay, the communication mechanism can be upgraded. But there's an even bigger problem—we rely too much on improvisation. There are no contingency plans, no standard procedures, we rely entirely on instinct. We got lucky this time, but what about next time?"
"What do you want to do?" Emma Frost asked.
"Create a battle log." Ye Mo tapped his fingers on the armrest. "Record the time, cost, side effects, and synergistic effects of each ability use. I don't expect the system to generate reports for me, but I can accumulate data myself. In the future, I'll be able to tell at a glance which ability combinations are useful and which have pitfalls."
Thor stroked his chin. "Sounds like doing homework."
"It's just homework," Ye Mo grinned. "And it's a required course. You think charging Mjolnir is something you're born knowing? I bet you've been practicing for years, haven't you?"
"Of course, I started swinging the hammer when I was five years old."
"Look, even gods need training, so why should we mortals just lie around doing nothing?"
Emma Frost looked at him and suddenly said, "Didn't you always say 'Just being alive is enough' and 'Don't cause any big trouble'? When did you start thinking so far ahead?"
Ye Mo paused for a moment, looking out the porthole at the Earth getting closer and closer.
"Before, I thought I'd just live one day at a time. Who would even know me after I transmigrated? I couldn't even afford food, let alone save the world!" He chuckled. "But things are different now. I'm not carrying this alone; there are people standing back-to-back beside me. If I accidentally blow myself up one day because I'm not good at operating the controls, and you all get wiped out, wouldn't I be a sinner?"
Thor stood up, walked over, and slapped him on the shoulder. "I like hearing that. But don't take it too seriously. We're not a perfect match. I can be impulsive sometimes, you can be too calculating sometimes, and she... well, too calm, like a human computer."
Emma Frost scoffed, "At least I can tell when to attack and when to retreat."
"But we're all willing to listen to each other," Ye Mo continued. "That's enough. As long as we can still sit together and talk about these issues, it means we haven't let victory go to our heads."
The spaceship gave a slight jolt, and a green light appeared on the control panel: progress 87%, approximately nine hours remaining.
"After we get back to Earth," Ye Mo, looking at the two of them, "We need to arrange systematic training. Not just casual sparring; we need a plan, goals, and to identify and address weaknesses. Reaction delays, energy waste, and coordination gaps—all of these need to be corrected."
Thor crossed his arms. "Why don't you get us a whole set of uniforms while you're at it? Print ' Avengers Preparatory Class - Combat Training Group' on them?"
"I can't stop you from wearing pink," Ye Mo shrugged. "But training has to get going. There will definitely be bigger events in the future. Who knows, Thanos- level figure might come knocking on our door again someday. We can't rely on miracles to turn things around every time."
Emma Frost finally smiled slightly, "I can be responsible for developing psychological stress simulation programs. For example, we can incorporate high-intensity, multi-threaded battlefield interference to test the stability of decision-making under extreme conditions."
"Are you trying to make us experience a mental breakdown?" Thor frowned.
It's to get you used to chaos.
"I'm used to it. There's a constant arguing and fighting in my family."
Ye Mo chuckled and leaned back in his chair. "Anyway, the direction is set. The first thing we'll do when we get back is find an open space, disconnect from the internet, stop making calls, turn off all support options, and the three of us will start from scratch to work out our new strategy."
"Aren't you going to invite anyone else?" Emma Frost asked.
"No need this time." He shook his head. "There are some things we need to clarify within the team first. Once we can coordinate our movements with an error margin of no more than half a second, then we can consider bringing others in."
Thor stretched. "Sounds tiring."
"That's quite interesting, isn't it?" Ye Mo squinted. "After all, who doesn't want to become stronger?"
The cabin was silent for a few seconds.
The Earth's halo streamed through the porthole, illuminating the three faces and reflecting different expressions: one was lost in thought, one was indifferent, and one carried a hint of eager excitement.
The battle is over.
But another one is brewing.