The captain of the colossal Aircraft, witnessing the impossible sight of a man holding his aircraft mid-descent, performed the only sensible act: he cut the remaining active engines.
That thrust, once life-giving, was now a destructive distraction, placing asymmetrical stress on the hull and generating unnecessary airflow that complicated the Knight's stabilizing efforts.
With the engines silent, the massive aircraft settled into a precarious, suspended equilibrium. Zhou Yi, his form pressed against the belly of the plane, was still applying the entirety of his phenomenal kinetic and telekinetic power, maintaining altitude and fighting the persistent, irresistible pull of gravity. He was the only thing preventing the airframe from disintegrating under its own compromised weight.
While all his focus needed to be on his titanic task, his mind was forced to split its attention. The woman was safe in his arms, but the R-variant flesh-mind still lurked within the damaged engine housing. He couldn't risk the creature remaining inert for long.
He was desperately conserving the energy needed for the final, brutal act of destruction, knowing any preemptive strike now might cost them the necessary energy for the gentle water landing.
His distraction, subtle though it was, did not escape the passenger he held. Women—especially women of discerning intellect and acute observational skills—are exceptionally adept at sensing shifts in a man's focus, particularly when their life depends on it.
"You're still looking at the source of the chaos, aren't you?" the woman murmured, her voice a low contralto that managed to cut through the high-speed whistling wind. She had composed herself, her initial terror replaced by a cold, analytical curiosity.
"I am," Zhou Yi confirmed, his voice vibrating deep in his chest. "If you require justice after this landing, the responsible party is unfortunately beyond human jurisdiction. He committed a crime, and then he became a biological catastrophe."
"A catastrophe?" she questioned, her disbelief momentarily challenging her composure. Throughout her cushioned existence in the First Class cabin, she had heard only hushed whispers of a super-powered brawl—a scenario that, to her mind, spoke of high-level terrorism or structural failure, not folklore.
"You truly believe this catastrophe reeks of some kind of monster? An entity of flesh and blood hiding in an engine, like a myth?"
Zhou Yi began to speak, intending to explain the truth—the horror of the collective will, the parasitic nature of the R-variant. But the moment of peace was violently ruptured.
The silence of the shut-down engine, which Zhou Yi had hoped would pacify the creature, had the opposite effect.
Deprived of the engine's rotational force and its deafening sound, the creature's chaotic cluster-will registered one overriding fact: the prison was weak. Its energy reserves were dwindling, and its instinctual mandate—forage for food—overrode all caution.
The flesh-mind, having no strategic memory, had already forgotten the terrifying white-armored figure and the scorching flames. It only sensed the frantic, nearby psychic pulses of the hundreds of terrified humans trapped within the fuselage.
With a series of horrifying, grinding sounds, the monster—now a thickened, flattened plate of biological armour within the engine casing—began to reactivate.
Massive, blunt tentacles, visibly reinforced with shards of ingested, twisted metal from the turbine blades, shot out. They punched through the thick engine's aluminum armour with sickening ease. The engine housing, already compromised, began to split open like an overripe fruit.
The flesh-monster pulled its disgusting bulk free, emerging from the smoking cavity. It was smaller now, its mass drastically reduced by the sacrifices it had made to the flames, but it was denser, the metallic fragments lending it a grotesque, glittering quality.
It moved with renewed purpose, slithering across the underside of the wing root toward the fuselage, drawn by the psychic distress beacon of the crowded cabin.
A fresh wave of shrieks erupted from inside the plane as the terrified passengers saw the terrifying, regenerating mass reappear before their narrow, frosted windows. Panic, raw and unconstrained, flared like a sudden explosion, illuminating their fear.
To the psychic sensors of the R-variant, this was the equivalent of a dinner bell—a clear map leading it directly to its prey.
"Damn it!" Zhou Yi swore, a rare burst of genuine fury breaking his calm. He was utilizing his full, available strength simply to hold the gigantic aircraft stable. He had no spare mental bandwidth, no reserve kinetic energy to fight the creature that was now actively moving toward the breach.
The woman, held securely against his chest, felt the raw anxiety radiating from him—a palpable tension that tightened her grasp around his neck. Her lake-blue eyes, however, did not reflect the panic of the passengers.
They darted quickly across the landscape: the still-burning, shredded engine, the massive wing stretching away uselessly, the empty sky, and the endless sea. Her expression became intensely focused, the look of a strategist recognizing a flaw in her own plan.
Suddenly, a flash of pure, cold wisdom crossed her face. She had found the necessary tactical window.
"Can you still project the beam?" she yelled, her voice remarkably clear, demanding his attention. The power of the high-altitude airstream forced her to shout, abandoning any pretense of gentle speech. "I'm talking about the focused thermal ray—the one that cuts through steel!"
Zhou Yi hesitated. He knew the public knew about his heat ray—the beam that could disintegrate anything—but its use was always his last resort due to its massive, uncontrolled collateral damage. He had planned to save it for the final act of destruction.
"It would—the collateral damage would be catastrophic to the fuselage!" he started to explain, the force of his words straining against his stabilizing field.
"Listen to me!" she interrupted, startling him with her authority. "
The engines are already dead. Those massive wings are now just dead weight—unnecessary mass and leverage that is making your job exponentially harder! If you shear them off, you reduce your load by nearly two hundred tons! Cut them behind the damaged area! You'll cause minimal harm to the cargo hold, and the passengers are still confined to the pressurized central tube! More importantly," she finished, her voice dropping to a fierce, logical whisper, "the creature is on the wing. If the wing goes, it goes."
Hearing her sharp, ruthless assessment—a solution rooted in pure aeronautical logistics and engineering—Zhou Yi immediately executed a simulated stress assessment using his AI supervisor. The woman's logic was flawless.
The risks were outweighed by the massive reduction in weight and, crucially, the opportunity to eliminate the monster without having to sacrifice his stabilizing force. The eight-meter-thick wing root of the A380 was a massive, dead appendage that was actively working against his efforts to glide.
With the decision made, he retracted a fraction of the immense psychic energy he was pouring into stabilizing the plane, consolidating it into a singular, devastating weapon.
A dazzling, blinding beam of pure thermal energy erupted from the center of his helmet. It was a thigh-thick column of light, utterly silent at its source, yet terrifyingly loud at the point of impact. The concentrated heat, which Zhou Yi knew exceeded 100,000 degrees Celsius at the core, instantly touched the wing root.
The so-called "aviation metal"—advanced aluminum alloys and composites—could not even offer the slightest resistance. The beam cut through the primary spars, fuel lines, hydraulic systems, and wiring harnesses easier than a hot knife through paper.
The light streak instantly penetrated the aircraft's lower armor and then sheared horizontally along the wing roots.
To the terrified passengers looking out, the spectacle was blinding. Two massive, luminous streaks of light flashed across the plane's sides, and as they vanished, the enormous, graceful wings—carrying the engine and the horror atop them—suddenly slumped downward.
The R-variant, its collective will fixated on reaching the cabin, was oblivious. It was driven solely by instinct and hunger, lacking the capacity for foresight or understanding of its sudden change in momentum.
It continued to crawl forward, convinced it was advancing toward its goal, completely unaware that it was now in freefall, drifting rapidly away from the massive airframe and toward the terminal abyss.
As the massive wings separated from the fuselage, tumbling and spinning toward the dark sea hundreds of meters below, Zhou Yi unleashed the ultimate, absolute weapon.
He unleashed the full, destructive power of his mental anguish and righteous fury. An invisible flame—a silent, colorless torrent of heat exceeding 30,000 degrees Celsius—engulfed the entire port and starboard wings.
At that temperature, a clean vaporization was guaranteed. The colossal wings, made of highly dense metal, did not burn or melt; they simply turned into superheated gas. The beast atop the wing, already falling, had no chance of survival.
It was eliminated in an instant, without even a scream, its collective will fractured and dissolved before it could register the pain. The creature and its metal prison vanished without a trace, turned into a rapidly dissipating cloud of plasma and sterile ash.
The humans inside the plane could not see the colorless inferno, but they felt it. A searing, intense wave of heat radiated outward for a fraction of a second, causing a stinging sensation in their eyes and minor surface burns.
Fortunately, the distance and the air resistance had dissipated the worst of the energy, but many suffered varying degrees of thermal damage and temporary vision impairment.
Zhou Yi immediately retracted the heat, his telekinetic field now entirely devoted to shielding the plane from the lingering thermal radiation. He adjusted his stance and gently wrapped the woman in his arms, his body acting as the final, absolute barrier against the scorching aftermath.
The woman smiled—a genuine, deep smile of gratitude—even though she felt the raw, penetrating heat outside his armor.
The Dawn Knight's cloak, a thin layer of specialized material, covered her face, but she felt his focus, his dedication, and his protection.
Just as she was about to speak, her words were preempted by a grave command.
"Be careful. We are about to land."
Instinctively, she looked up, seeing the deep blue sea rushing toward them. Less than two hundred meters from the surface, Zhou Yi performed the final, most dangerous maneuver.
He instantly retracted his telekinetic powers. The gigantic aircraft, still heavy despite the loss of its wings, suddenly lurched downward, falling under its own weight for the last two hundred feet. This loss of lift was deliberate.
In the fraction of a second the plane was falling, Zhou Yi gathered his entire remaining physical strength. The plane's overall mass was now manageable—reduced to roughly 400,000 pounds—which was within the extreme limits of his biological capability.
He shifted his stance from stabilization to pure, titanic lift. He lifted the massive airframe like the mythical Hercules supporting the heavens, and with the last vestiges of his strained power, he cushioned its impact, gently setting the enormous, wingless body down onto the surface of the sea.
The immense force and volume of the landing were unleashed upon the ocean, creating a tremendous, guttural roar.
Hundreds of tons of seawater were violently displaced, turning into massive, rolling waves that crashed across the azure surface. Layer upon layer of surging whitecaps slowly spread across the sea, a silent testament to the raw power of the impact.
On the distant, golden horizon, bathed in the growing light of the rising sun, an English naval fleet was already racing toward the wreckage.
Everyone on the plane was safe. Truly, definitively safe this time.
But this time, there was no immediate sound of cheers. A collective, profound silence settled over the hundreds of survivors. They ran to the narrow, remaining windows, peering out through the broken cabin sections, silently searching for the man who had performed the impossible.
Where was the hero? The question hung heavy and terrifying in the air. The joy of survival was meaningless without the sight of their savior.
As if responding to their desperate, silent prayers, a dark figure suddenly broke the surface of the still, roiling sea and ascended into the sky.
The golden light of the morning sun struck his form, vividly highlighting the insignia on his shoulders and the long, flowing blonde hair of the woman securely cradled in his arms.
A thunderous, guttural cheer finally erupted from the plane—a sound of profound relief and gratitude that filled the massive, silent expanse of the morning sea.
Zhou Yi, holding the woman, slowly descended to the buoyant top of the floating fuselage. As his feet touched the slick metal, a wave of debilitating dizziness crashed over him.
The total depletion of his mental energy, the physical strain of the arrest, and the shock of the collateral damage to his body momentarily stunned his brain. He nearly collapsed, but the slight, involuntary shift of the woman in his arms brought him back from the edge of unconsciousness.
He gently set her down, releasing his grip, and looked at her with a genuine, strained smile that he could not hide—a smile of victory and relief.
"Thank you," he said, the words hoarse but sincere. "That was… an excellent piece of strategic analysis. It saved us all."
The woman rubbed her reddened palms; the pain from her thin hands being pressed against his shattered, hard helmet was sharp but quickly forgotten.
She was looking at him, not just with gratitude, but with an intense, captivating scrutiny. She carefully untied the thin, high-tech cloak that had covered her body—the cloak he had given her to shield her from the cold—and offered it back to him.
"I should be thanking you," she replied, her voice steady and warm. "But I will take your advice about the souvenirs." She kept the cloak. "I'm certain I'll require something to remind me that men of myth exist, even in the middle of the Atlantic."
Zhou Yi paused, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. She hadn't treated him as a costumed vigilante; she had seen him as a force of nature. He gave her a final, brief nod.
"Keep it," he reiterated, his smile deepening. "It still has meaning. Now, I have matters to settle elsewhere."
With that, he rose into the air and flew toward the eastern horizon, toward the other side of the ocean, the rising sun casting his powerful, diminishing shadow behind him.
The woman watched him go, raising a hand as if to stop him, but catching only empty, cold air. She wrapped the cloak tightly around herself, shielding her face from the wind, her lake-blue eyes closed for a moment. But what she saw, branded on her memory, was the gleam of gold peeking through the pulverized remains of his black armor, a silent promise of a return.