A new threat stirs, cosmic undercurrents surge

The lights were still on, and the low hum of the equipment swirled around his ears like a mosquito's song. Ye Mo leaned back on the bench, his head tilted back, his eyes fixed on the rows of cold white light tubes on the ceiling. He had finally gotten the three-stage sequence right, his muscle memory was starting to form, and his nerves were slowly relaxing. But just then, he suddenly felt a soreness in his back teeth.

It's not from being tired.

It wasn't that he was hungry—there was no food at the base—but he was used to fighting on an empty stomach.

It's that indescribable feeling, like taking a shower when the water temperature is just right, and suddenly the water heater "clicks" and stops, but before you can react, you have to wait for the cold water to splash on your face to realize something is wrong.

He blinked, his consciousness still swirling within the Gene Spiral Tower. The three fragments —Fire Core, Wall Phasing, and Self-Healing —were rearranging themselves in a new rhythm, like a toddler learning to walk, stumbling but managing not to fall. He wanted to review the data flow again, but just then, a faint tremor came from the second floor at the bottom of the tower.

It's neither an ability activation nor a cooldown notification.

It's more like... resonance.

Ye Mo's brow twitched, and he immediately brought up the system interface. There were no red dot alarms, no voice prompts, nothing at all. But he knew this thing was always incredibly lazy, never speaking on its own, relying entirely on him to figure things out. The tremor just now felt like someone had gently tapped the tower inside his head with a thin wire.

He sat up straighter, closed his eyes, and focused his senses. First, he checked the Fire Core module: the temperature was normal, and the energy pool was stable; then Wall Phasing: the coordinates were locked and there was no deviation; finally, he glanced at the cell repair curve for Self-Healing and Regeneration —no problems there either. The internal systems were all green, indicating that it was neither a training side effect nor an overload of abilities.

That leaves only one possibility: it came from outside.

He slowly exhaled, placed his fingers on his knees, and with a slight exertion of his fingertips, began to spread the Perception Network outwards. Within a 300-meter radius, the geomagnetic readings around the base were normal; the iron gates were locked, the high-voltage warning signs were still swaying, and the wind was so regular it could be used as a metronome. Within 50 meters, the sandbags were stationary, the Force Field generators were on standby, and the current fluctuations of the lighting were within a safe range. In the 10-meter core area, Emma Frost's isolation pod had entered a low-power maintenance mode, the Mental Barrier was still operating, and the frequency was stable.

no problem.

But there's definitely a problem.

He took another deep breath, pushing his consciousness outward along his nervous system, through the earth's surface, through the clouds, and straight to the edge of the atmosphere. He had practiced this maneuver many times, originally to simulate an ability adaptability test in a space environment, but now, he genuinely wanted to find something.

The moment my consciousness touched the ionosphere, the tremor returned.

It's clearer now.

It was neither sound nor light, but a low-frequency, spiraling energy fluctuation, like some enormous object slowly rotating in deep space, stirring up the background radiation. It didn't attack, didn't invade, and didn't carry any emotion; it was like the crustal movement before an underwater volcano erupted—no one could see it, but it certainly existed.

Ye Mo's temples throbbed twice. He didn't rush to trace the source; instead, he first checked his own condition—his breathing was steady, his heartbeat wasn't accelerating, and his pupils weren't dilated, indicating that this wasn't a hallucination or a nerve backlash. He slowly extracted the waveform of that fluctuation, played it in reverse three times, and found that its frequency didn't match the fluctuations of Mutants abilities at all. Wade's Self-Healing was a high-frequency pulse, Shadowcat's Wall Phasing had a sawtooth wave, and Jean Grey's Mind Stone storm was a wide-frequency oscillation. But this thing was as smooth as a mathematical function, as clean as if it were emitted by a living being.

He frowned and began to reverse-engineer the sequence. Using the three faint signals remaining from the past twenty-four hours, he drew a triangulation to pinpoint the propagation path. The first signal appeared six hours ago, with an intensity barely enough to trigger the system's alert threshold; the second signal appeared two hours ago, with a position shift of 0.3 light-seconds and a doubling in intensity; the third signal appeared just ten minutes ago, its direction locked onto the edge of the Orion, with an estimated speed of sub-light at 0.17c, approaching in a straight line.

The goal is clear.

Earth.

His throat moved, but he didn't swallow—his saliva was too dry to swallow at all.

This wasn't the first time he'd felt this way. He felt the same way when he heard the news of Tony's kidnapping outside the cave in Afghanistan. First, he felt inexplicably panicked, then the system suddenly "dinged," alerting him to high-concentration palladium fluctuations nearby. Later, he learned that it was the Ten Rings initiating the armor recovery process. Another time, on the eve of the Battle of New York, he dreamt that the sky cracked open, and upon waking, he found the seventh level of the Gene Spiral Tower inexplicably heating up. Three days later, he indeed encountered Loki opening a portal.

The system doesn't speak, but it will "remind" you.

It wasn't ringing or popping up now, but the deep-seated discomfort felt more real than any notification. He knew that the system's early warning mechanism had been triggered, only in a more primitive and direct way—it no longer notified him of "enemies," but made him feel "something's going to happen" himself.

Ye Mo opened his eyes, his gaze falling on the row of reaction targets on the opposite wall. One of the targets still bore the scorch marks from when he Wall Phasing, its edges slightly curled, like a piece of paper scorched by fire. He stared at it for two seconds, suddenly remembering the days when he first transmigrated, huddled in a rented room in Queens, eating instant noodles. Back then, his biggest wish was to avoid trouble, preferably spending his life hiding in a corner, picking up scraps of other people's abilities, living a life of leisure and waiting to die.

What about now?

He can now perform Fire Dragon Jet in front of Thor, team up with Emma Frost to break through the Dark Elves's mental array, and even dare to detonate Fire Core in Malekith's chest. He still says he "just wants to live a peaceful life," but his body has long betrayed those words.

He slowly stood up, his legs still a little weak, but he managed to stand. He took two steps forward and walked to the center of the training area. The overhead light shone on his face, casting a long shadow that stretched all the way to the vacuum metal canister in the corner—inside which was sealed the last fragment of the Aether, its surface gleaming with a dark golden light.

He didn't touch the jar, nor did he turn on the communication.

He knew what to do next: find Emma Frost, tell her about it, and then keep an eye on the energy flow together. They needed to establish a monitoring protocol, set alert thresholds, and recalibrate all remote sensing devices. They might also need to contact the remaining S.H.I.E.L.D.. network to see if there were any other anomaly reports.

But he hasn't moved yet.

It wasn't hesitation.

It just... froze for a moment.

The last time he sensed a threat of this magnitude was when Thanos landed in New York with the Black Order. The time before that was when Hela tore open the Bifrost. Didn't each of these events begin with a feeling that "something's not right"? But every time he reported it, he only received Tony's teasing, Natasha's suspicion, or even Director Fury's question, "Were you drunk last night?"

If he reports it, he's afraid people will think he's crazy; if he doesn't report it, what if it's really something serious? He won't be able to live with himself.

He looked down at his hands. His knuckles were white, and the Vibranium fragment in his palm was still slightly warm—not from the training he had just done, but because it was also responding to the cosmic fluctuations. He had originally picked this up from Ulysses Klaue; it could sense Vibranium- level energy, but now its reaction pattern had changed, as if it were being synchronized with something else.

Ye Mo pursed his lips, then suddenly smiled, "Alright, if you're not calm either, then I'm not the only one who's nervous for no reason."

He looked up, his gaze piercing through the ceiling, as if he could see the approaching spiral trajectory deep in the night sky. He knew that this force didn't know who it was or what it wanted. But one thing was certain: it was moving, and getting closer and closer.

He turned and walked towards the isolation pod, his pace neither quickening nor slowing, just a normal walking speed. Halfway there, he stopped again and glanced back at the consciousness projection of the Gene Spiral Tower —the three ability fragments were still spinning quietly, showing no signs of unlocking or upgrading. The system remained the same, silent, offering no help, and urging him on.

But he no longer wanted to wait for it to speak.

He took a deep breath, raised his hand to touch the miniature communication node behind his ear, his finger hovering over the activation button, but he didn't press it.

The next second, he withdrew his hand and stood still.