"A house... a home with Logan."
Jean Grey whispered the words as if they were a sacred mantra. In her eyes, the golden fire of the Phoenix didn't just represent destruction; it flared with a sudden, intense yearning for a domestic life she had never been allowed to have. She had spent years as a repressed telepath, a student, a soldier—but never just a woman. The idea of a quiet street, a front door, and Logan coming home after a long day at the martial arts school hit her harder than any psychic blast could.
She looked down toward the ground, her gaze searching for that rugged, cigar-chomping silhouette. But then, a flicker of doubt crossed her face. For all her cosmic power, she looked surprisingly vulnerable. "But... would Logan even want that? He's a wanderer. A loner. Would he really be willing to settle down with someone like... this?"
Huang Wen saw the conflict in her eyes. It was a fascinating sight: the most dangerous entity on the planet worried about whether she was "house-wife material." He chuckled softly, his voice carrying a reassuring warmth.
"Look at you, worrying about the small stuff," Huang Wen said. "Uncle Wolf might act like a lone predator, but the truth is, he's a man who has lost everything so many times that he's forgotten how to hope. He's been running from the idea of 'family' because it usually ends in blood for him. But with you? You're not someone he has to protect from the world. You are the world. That changes the math for him."
Jean's eyes shimmered, the doubt being incinerated by a new, more powerful fantasy. She wasn't just thinking about a house anymore; she was mentally picking out curtains and deciding where the training room would go.
"Damn it! Huang Wen, I'm going to kill you!"
The roar didn't come from a monster, but from a man who had reached his absolute breaking point. Cyclops was shaking, his fists clenched so hard his knuckles were white. He was the official boyfriend. He was the one who had stayed by her side at the school. Yet here was this "Master Huang," acting like a matchmaker for his girl and a hairy Canadian brawler.
The sheer disrespect was too much. Scott couldn't bring himself to lash out at Jean—his "simp" nature ran too deep for that—so all that toxic, concentrated heartbreak was channeled directly at the man in the white robe.
"The secret to loving someone is knowing when to let them be happy," Huang Wen said, looking at Scott with a level of pity that was actually more insulting than a slap. "Seriously, Scott, take it easy. Think of it as a selfless act of blessing. Besides, it's not like you can do anything to stop her."
"SHUT UP!"
Scott screamed, and the visor on his face seemed to groan under the pressure. A beam of ruby-red kinetic energy erupted, wider and more concentrated than anything he had ever fired before.
Whoosh!
Huang Wen didn't move his body; he moved his hand. In a flash of light, a long, elegant sword appeared in his grip. This was the Peerless Sword (Wushuang), the legendary blade that had come with the "Sword Saint" character template. The sword itself seemed to hum with a high-pitched, vibrating excitement, its spirit sensing a worthy challenge for its debut.
Huang Wen swung. A crescent of silver sword qi met the red beam mid-air.
CRACK!
The ruby blast was sliced clean in half, the energy dispersing into the clouds like a shattered red diamond. However, Huang Wen's expression didn't show triumph. Instead, he frowned, his grip tightening on the hilt. He felt a faint, worrying vibration through the handle.
Is it... trembling? Huang Wen channeled a surge of his own internal sword qi into the blade, reinforcing its structure. He was slightly annoyed. This was supposed to be a "legendary" weapon, yet in its very first clash against a high-tier mutant, it felt brittle.
The truth was, the Wushuang Sword—while a masterpiece in its own world of martial arts—was facing a different kind of physics here. It was a blade of the "Four Great Horrors," meant to cut through steel and flesh, but it lacked the conceptual "indestructibility" of something like Mjolnir or the Snow Drinking Blade. It had a heart, but its "body" was still just divine ore.
Buzz! The sword let out a faint, wounded whimper in Huang Wen's mind. It felt like a loyal dog that had tried to bite a tank and chipped a tooth.
"What kind of toy is that?" Cyclops spat, not even pausing to process how his beam had been cut. He was too far gone. He didn't just fire again; he charged.
Huang Wen raised an eyebrow. "Melee? You're an optic-blaster, Scott. Stay in your lane."
Cyclops didn't listen. His body, now bulked up and infused with a strange, shimmering energy, closed the gap with surprising speed. He threw a punch that carried the weight of a freight train.
Huang Wen didn't use a complicated technique. He used Sword Nineteen. The blade moved in a blur, a geometry of lethal lines that once again carved through Scott's desperate energy field. As the Wushuang Sword made contact with Scott's chest, Huang Wen felt a strange resistance—like cutting through layers of industrial rubber and kevlar.
He put a bit more "oomph" into the stroke.
Slash!
The blade bit through. Blood—bright and hot—sprayed into the air as Cyclops was knocked back several meters.
"How...?" Scott gasped, looking down at the red gash across his tactical suit. "I can take a direct hit from a 50-caliber round and not even bruise. That sword... it shouldn't have touched me."
Huang Wen watched as the wound on Scott's chest began to knit itself back together. It wasn't as fast as Logan's instant-healing, but it was visible. Within seconds, the bleeding stopped.
He's like a mini-Superman now, Huang Wen thought. Flight, durability, healing, and the beams. Phoenix really did a number on his DNA. Too bad it didn't give him a personality to match.
"That's enough, Scott."
Jean's voice was cold. The "future-home" fantasy had been interrupted, and she was clearly annoyed. She looked at Cyclops not with hatred, but with a weary, clinical detachment that was far more devastating.
"There is no 'us' anymore. There hasn't been for a long time," Jean said. Her words were like ice picks. "You need to stop pretending this is about love. It's about your ego. Go back to your school. Lead your students. But stay out of my life."
"Jean... please," Scott whispered, his face turning a ghostly pale. "We have history. We have the dream. Charles always said—"
"Charles is gone, and so is the girl who followed his rules," Jean interrupted, her voice gaining a sharp, metallic edge. "Even back then, you were just the safe choice. The one I held onto because I was afraid of what I really felt. You were a cage, Scott. And the cage is broken."
Scott looked like he had been hollowed out. All the extra muscle and cosmic power couldn't hold up his spirit. He hovered there, a "superman" who looked like a lost child. Denying their future was one thing, but Jean had just retroactively erased their entire past, calling it a mistake.
Huang Wen shook his head. Yikes. Just kill the guy next time, Jean. It's more merciful.
He turned his attention away from the heartbreak in the sky and looked down at the valley below. The dust was settling.
"Looks like the big guy is finished," Huang Wen noted.
Down on the broken earth, the battle of the titans had reached its inevitable conclusion. The Hulk was no longer the size of a man; he was a towering emerald mountain of pure, concentrated fury. He had one massive foot planted firmly on the Abomination's chest, pinning the boney monster to the ground.
Blonsky was a mess. His armor was cracked, his protruding spines were snapped off like dry twigs, and his face was swollen beyond recognition. He had tried to fight, tried to use his veteran skills, but you can't out-skill a hurricane. The Hulk hadn't just beaten him; he had systematically dismantled his will to fight.