Steve's tone wasn't high, but every word struck the hearts of everyone.
"Save people first."
"Then, the reckoning."
These calm and decisive words quickly reconsolidated everyone's anger into a will to fight.
"Right you are, Old Ice Pop." Tony Stark deactivated the energy hand shield in front of him, letting the outside gunfire ripple against the reinforced glass.
"Those HYDRA rats in the gutters thought they were playing some grand game of chess, but they ended up losing their pants and catching fire." Tony walked to the center of the team, his armor's metal faceplate retracting to reveal a face full of exhaustion and irritation. "Now, it's our turn to clean up their mess!"
Steve Rogers immediately took command. Pointing at the chaotic sky and ground outside the window, he began assigning tasks quickly.
"Natasha, you and I take the ground! I see many S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents evacuating civilians and engaging the aliens. Pierce's people are definitely mixed in there. While evacuating, keep a close eye on them! Don't let them pull any stunts behind our backs."
"Thor, Banner!" He looked up at the two strongest combatants. "The Leviathans and those large warships in the sky are yours. Drag them down from the heavens for me!"
Finally, his gaze fell on Tony and Lin Huai.
"Tony, Lin, you two stay here. The top floor is the only place to close the portal. You must find a way as quickly as possible!"
"Copy that," Lin Huai and Tony said in unison.
Thor roared at the sky, Mjolnir spinning at high speed, carrying him out of the building like a bolt of lightning. Hulk, with his black claws, followed closely behind. He kicked off the floor, leaving a massive crater, brutally smashed through the glass, and traced a green parabola in the air, pouncing accurately onto a Leviathan circling above the city.
Natasha and Steve also moved immediately, rushing toward the emergency passage leading to the ground floor.
The communication cut off, and the top-floor lab returned to its clamor. Only Lin Huai and Tony Stark remained, facing the Singularity Engine that continuously pulsed with blue light.
"Jarvis! Analyze all the shield data for me!" Tony paced quickly around the shield, his armor's arms constantly projecting blue analysis beams.
On the screen, countless complex data streams flashed by.
"Sir, analysis failed." Jarvis's voice sounded somewhat powerless for the first time. "The shield's energy structure isn't purely physical; it's bound to the rules of space itself. Every attack is treated as a new energy input, which actually strengthens its stability."
"Damn it! I knew it!" Tony cursed irritably.
Lin Huai walked up to the shield, reached out, and touched the rippling blue light film in the void.
"It uses the power of the Tesseract to 'carve' a small piece of space out of our reality, turning it into an absolutely isolated 'Rule Domain'," Lin Huai said.
"Then we have to deal with it in an unreasonable way!" Tony's eyes turned fierce. He looked up and shouted at Thor, who was high in the sky, locked in a fierce battle with a Chitauri Capital Ship. "Hey! Big guy! Do you hear me! Give me a hard hit! Use every ounce of strength you've got! Strike my armor directly!"
"Are you sure?" Thor looked at him like he was an idiot.
"Just do it!"
"Fine! You strange mortal!"
Thor raised mjolnir high. Above, the clouds swirled, and a massive pillar of lightning, dozens of times thicker than any before, tore through the night sky. With World-destroying power, it accurately struck Tony's Iron Man armor!
"Zzzzt—!!!"
"Jarvis! Direct all energy to the chest reactor! Set energy output to four hundred percent! Fire!!"
A beam of white energy, brighter than the Sun, blasted from Iron Man's chest, slamming hard against that thin energy shield!
However, the shield only flickered violently, creating a larger ripple, and the entire energy beam was completely swallowed by it without making a sound. After absorbing this massive amount of energy, the blue light on the shield's surface became deeper and more stable.
"Shit!" Tony looked at the motionless shield, completely dumbfounded. "It ate all the energy! Is it having a buffet party?!"
Physical means failed, energy attacks failed. They seemed to be in a stalemate.
"Science doesn't work... physics doesn't work..." Tony paced back and forth, feeling completely powerless for the first time. "Unless a nuclear bomb falls from the sky right now, no one is closing this thing!"
Watching Tony's frantic state, Lin Huai instead gradually calmed down.
He took a deep breath and took out a simple, ancient-looking silver mirror from his pocket.
"If science doesn't work, then we use an unscientific method."
"Arrodes," he infused spirituality into the mirror and whispered, "tell me, what is the key to closing this portal?"
On the mirror's surface, blood-red light swirled like liquid, forming lines of twisted, ancient language.
"Respected Master, your servant Arrodes is at your service. According to the rules, we must ask each other questions. If you answer incorrectly or are unwilling to answer, you will be punished."
"The answer is as follows: a perfectly timed Singularity Collision."
Immediately after, the words on the mirror changed rapidly.
"It is my turn to ask. Great Master, please answer, why do you show such extraordinary concern for that black-haired 'god of mischief'?"
Lin Huai felt a chill in his heart. He fell silent for two seconds and answered calmly:
"Because I promised his father that I would look after his two sons."
The mirror flashed, seemingly satisfied with the answer.
Then, a rapidly flashing image replaced the text. In the image, the USB-shaped Shutdown Key was successfully inserted into the engine core. But at the same time, another equally massive but qualitatively different destructive energy slammed into the shield from outside the portal!
The two energies collided violently, and the indestructible energy shield flickered and vanished for a split second in that ten-thousandth of a second collision!
The image ended there.
Tony leaned in to take a look. Although he couldn't understand the cryptic text, he understood the image.
"What kind of divine gadget have you got now?"
"Wait! This is... energy collision?" His eyes widened. "You mean, to invalidate the administrator password, we have to make the whole computer system blue-screen from an overload?!"
Lin Huai nodded and explained with a serious expression, "Exactly. We need an external, equally powerful 'Singularity Event' to collide violently with the Tesseract's energy. Only then can we create a few seconds of a window!"
"An external Singularity Event? Where do we find one?! Build a nuke on the fly? That would take a week! Right now, the whole World couldn't scrape together a high-yield weapon that can be detonated immediately!"
Just as Tony was in complete despair, a red emergency communication request suddenly flashed on all the large screens in the lab.
It was Nick Fury.
Tony immediately connected the call.
Fury's one-eyed face, wrapped in bandages, appeared on the screen. His voice was somewhat hoarse from extreme anger and anxiety.
"Lin! Stark! Listen! No time to explain!"
"Those fools in the World Security Council sitting in their offices! They bypassed all my authority. It was Pierce! He pushed this decision through!"
He paused, as if using all his strength to squeeze out the remaining words through his teeth.
"They... have launched a Nuclear Missile!"
"Target: Midtown Manhattan!"
The entire lab fell into absolute silence in an instant.
Only the red dot on the screen, representing death and destruction and rapidly approaching New York, pulsed silently.
Tony Stark froze in place, his expression hardening.
Lin Huai was also stunned.
An external... Singularity Event... a powerful... energy source... Their eyes met in mid-air, both seeing a crazed realization mixed with horror and absurdity in the other's gaze.
"Jarvis," Lin Huai suddenly spoke, his voice terrifyingly calm, "after Pierce's communication ended earlier, did a very brief encrypted signal appear on our channel?"
Jarvis was silent for a second and then replied, "Yes, sir. The signal source is unknown; it fled a second before Director Fury connected."
Everything clicked.
Lin Huai slowly spat out a few words.
"He really is an old fox."