The Door slid open slowly, and a figure dressed in extremely gorgeous, vintage Joker attire stood in the Darkness behind the Door. He tipped his hat elegantly and bowed deeply toward them.
In his mouth, he held a delicate, dripping red rose.
Lin Huai's pupils constricted suddenly.
This outfit was identical to the figure he had seen performing in a strange city square in the fragmented images that had just flashed through his mind!
The figure slowly raised its head, revealing a stiff wooden face painted with comical Joker makeup. It wasn't human at all, but a Puppet the size of a Zhenren (Immortal)!
When those wooden eyes with exaggerated eyeliner saw Lin Huai, its stiff neck tilted with a bone-chilling "creak-creak" sound, as if it were remembering something.
"Hello?" Coulson offered a tentative greeting, his hand already on the grip of the gun at his waist. "We mean no harm."
The response he received was an instantaneous burst of movement from the Puppet Joker!
Its body crouched low, its Wooden Clogs clicking sharply against the floor. Like an arrow leaving a bow, it charged straight at Lin Huai!
"Fire!" Coulson's expression changed drastically as he roared!
Tony's Palm Cannon lit up immediately, a searing beam of light instantly tearing through the air!
"Swish, swish, swish—"
"Vrrr—"
Dense bullets and energy beams wove into an airtight net of Fire, but the Puppet was as agile as if it weren't made of wood! It dodged and maneuvered on that small stage, sometimes performing backflips, sometimes sliding with an exaggerated split. All the attacks only grazed its clothes, leaving gruesome craters in the walls and floor!
"Damn it! Its movement patterns can't be analyzed or predicted!" Tony cursed, continuously adjusting his attack angle, but he just couldn't aim properly.
Lin Huai did not panic. At the moment the Puppet flipped through the air, he caught a fleeting opening, calmly raised his gun, and pulled the trigger!
Bang!
A bullet imbued with spirituality, like a silver meteor, shot precisely toward the center of the Puppet's forehead!
But the scene that followed made everyone's skin crawl.
Facing this certain-hit shot, the Puppet performed an unbelievable move mid-air—it actually used its left hand to lift off its own head, which was still holding the rose and painted with comical makeup!
The spirituality bullet whistled through its empty neck and struck the wall behind it!
The Puppet landed steadily, holding its own head. On that wooden face that should have been expressionless, those painted eyes actually revealed a clear, human-like sense of "disbelief"!
This scene was more hair-raising than any of the eerie sights from before.
The Puppet's "expression" shifted rapidly from disbelief to disappointment, and finally into pure rage! A "creak-creak" sound, like wood being forcibly snapped, emanated from its chest.
It slammed its head back onto its neck and then charged at Lin Huai again, much faster than before!
"Keep firing! Don't let it get near Mr. Lin!" Coulson roared, continuing to pour out a hail of bullets alongside the Female Agent, despite the immense psychological pressure.
This time, the Puppet launched a counterattack!
It plucked four petals from the rose! With a flick of its wrist, the four petals flew out like throwing knives, whistling through the air as they shot toward Coulson and the Female Agent!
"Watch out!" Lin Huai shouted a warning.
The Female Agent reacted extremely quickly, dodging two petals with a tactical roll. But Coulson, after all, was not a front-line combatant; he barely managed to twist his body to avoid one petal aimed at his vitals, but another petal, like a sharp blade, pierced precisely through his left ankle!
"Aaah!"
Coulson screamed and fell to the ground. Enduring the intense pain, he raised his pistol to retaliate. But at that moment, another "creak" sounded in his ear. He felt as if his joints had instantly rusted; although he used all his strength, the finger on the trigger simply would not press down!
The Puppet let out a few "creak-creak" low chuckles, sounding like mockery. Without sparing Coulson another glance, it continued its charge toward Lin Huai.
"Your opponent is me, little Puppet!"
Tony roared, abandoning his ineffective long-range attacks. He activated his thrusters and, like a red-and-gold cannonball, slammed head-on into the Puppet, intending to crush it with the weight and power of his armor!
But every one of his heavy attacks was easily dodged by the Puppet with unimaginable, boneless, supple movements! It was like a specter dancing around a clumsy Iron Can, occasionally tapping on Tony's armor with a "clang-clang" of mockery.
Seizing the moment while Tony kept the Puppet occupied, Lin Huai immediately pulled a Rune Talisman engraved with runes from his pocket and threw it hard toward the fallen Coulson!
"Tony! Whatever you do, don't let it touch you! Especially that rose!" he shouted, then whispered an incantation.
"Calmness!"
The Rune Talisman struck Coulson squarely on the forehead, making his head spin, but the eerie force controlling his joints dissipated, and he could move his body again!
"Th-thank you!" Coulson panted, quickly retreating.
Seeing this, the Puppet Joker's painted wooden face turned a furious crimson!
It suddenly ducked, dodging Tony's grapple with an incredible Iron Bridge movement, and then, as elegantly as if performing a magic trick, it removed the rose from its mouth.
Using the slender stem of the rose, it made a light slash across Tony's breastplate!
"Screeech—!!!"
A sound so piercing it made one's scalp tingle rang out. The breastplate, strong enough to withstand large-caliber bullets, was actually sliced open with a gash deep enough to see the bone! The gold-and-red plating peeled back, revealing the silver-white alloy beneath!
"Fuck!" Tony exclaimed, unable to believe his eyes. "My armor! That's impossible!"
Another "creak"! Tony felt the power joints of his armor lock up instantly. He froze in place, still in his attacking posture!
"If you're hit by the rose, it will take away your body's control! Watch out!" Lin Huai's expression changed as he shouted.
Without looking, he threw another prepared Calmness Rune Talisman toward Tony's back!
"Calmness!"
"Clang!"
The Rune Talisman struck Tony's helmet accurately with a crisp sound.
However, Tony's armor remained motionless. In his bright eyes, the distorted and angry wooden face of the Puppet Joker was reflected, drawing closer and closer.
"Hey, Lin, why is this? The armor is still out of control! Jarvis!"
"Si...r..., I feel... very strange. My computing power is... slowly... being lost."