In the middle of the Texas wasteland, Huang Wen stared at the scorched earth, his mind racing through the catalog of powerhouses capable of this level of destruction.
"Could Jean Grey have resurfaced already?" he muttered, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the horizon. "No, that doesn't fit the pattern. If the Phoenix had truly awakened, she'd be busy rewriting the laws of physics or hunting down Scott Summers to settle some cosmic debt. Why would she be out here in the middle of nowhere, playing tag with Logan and Yuriko?"
He paused, a dark thought crossing his mind. "Unless the Phoenix Force remembers Logan's... wandering hands from her previous life and decided to file a very violent restraining order. But even then, why take out the watches? Why leave a burn mark like a ritual site?"
His internal monologue was cut short. Despite the silence of the desert, his heightened Spirit and Martial Arts Comprehension picked up a ripple in the air. Someone was watching him.
Huang Wen didn't move his head. Instead, he projected his telekinesis outward, a silent, invisible wave that mapped every grain of sand and every scrub brush within a half-mile radius. In a small gully about fifty yards to his left, he sensed a small, huddled figure.
A child?
Huang Wen's first instinct was to relax, but he quickly caught himself. His telekinesis revealed that the child's heart rate was unnervingly steady. Most kids, seeing a man appear out of thin air and ignite the ground with his hands, would either be screaming or hyperventilating. This one was breathing like a seasoned assassin in a meditation trance.
"I was being a bit too jumpy," Huang Wen whispered, though his smile didn't reach his eyes. "But in this world, 'just a kid' usually means 'impending disaster'."
Without a sound, Huang Wen's body blurred. He didn't just move; he displaced the air, reappearing directly behind the crouched figure.
"What's so interesting about the dirt?" he asked, his voice low and friendly.
The boy jumped—or at least, he performed a very convincing startle. He spun around, his eyes wide with a practiced innocence. "Whoa! Uncle, you just... you popped out of nowhere! Are you an angel? An envoy of God?"
Huang Wen chuckled, crossing his arms. "That's a solid performance, kid. Really, the wide-eyed wonder is a nice touch. But unfortunately for you, I saw your face before you turned around. You looked about as impressed as a guy watching a toaster. Want to try a different script, or should I just peel back the mask for you?"
The "child's" face didn't just drop the act; it dissolved.
"Hmph!"
A sound of shifting flesh and cracking bone filled the air. Huang Wen expected the blue skin and red hair of Mystique, but the transformation stopped halfway. The figure grew taller, his muscles swelling into a wild, untamed physique. His hair stood up in jagged, unruly tufts, and his skin took on a hue similar to Mystique's, but his eyes... his eyes were pure Logan.
This was Raze—the son of Mystique and Wolverine, a cocktail of two of the most annoying survival traits in the mutant world.
"So, you're the famous Huang Wen?" Raze sneered, his voice a gravelly rasp. He looked Huang Wen up and down with blatant disrespect. "My mother talks about you like you're some kind of god. Teleportation, poking people's pressure points... I've been watching. I've already figured out your little 'acupoint' trick. It won't work on me."
"Is that so?" Huang Wen smiled.
Snap!
Huang Wen's finger flicked forward, faster than the eye could track, striking Raze squarely on a major nerve cluster in the shoulder. Raze's body jerked from the impact of the physical force, but his limbs didn't lock up. He remained standing, a triumphant smirk spreading across his blue face.
As I thought, Huang Wen mused. The more 'inhuman' the biology, the less effective standard pressure points become. This kid's internal structure is as fluid as his mother's. I can hit the spot, but the spot just isn't there a second later.
"See?" Raze crowed, his confidence reaching a fever pitch. "You're just a one-trick pony! My mother and the others overestimated you. You're nothing without your parlor tricks!"
With a metallic shing, bone claws erupted from Raze's knuckles. They weren't coated in adamantium, but they were sharp, jagged, and dripping with aggressive intent. "I don't think your teleportation is infinite. Let's see how many times you can jump before I gut you!"
Raze didn't just run; a pair of leathery, bat-like wings tore through the back of his shirt, flapping with a sudden, violent force that propelled him forward. He was a blur of blue skin and white bone.
Crack!
Raze's bone claws slammed into Huang Wen's chest. The impact was enough to shatter the ground beneath their feet, but as the dust cleared, Raze's expression turned from predatory to horrified.
Huang Wen hadn't moved. He hadn't even activated the Indestructible Divine Art. His natural Essence, bolstered by the legendary vigor of the Rulai Divine Palm integration, was like a wall of solid diamond. Raze's bone claws hadn't pierced skin—they had snapped in half against Huang Wen's ribcage.
"You... what are you?" Raze gasped, his wings fluttering frantically as he tried to back away.
"I'm the guy you shouldn't have poked," Huang Wen said. He reached out with a hand that moved like a strike of lightning, seizing Raze by the wrist.
Raze tried to shift his arm, turning it into a rubbery, elastic substance to slip out of the grip—a trait likely mimicked from his encounters with others—but Huang Wen's grip was absolute. He didn't just hold the wrist; his Qi acted like a vice, pinning Raze's molecular structure in place.
"That's a neat trick," Huang Wen noted, examining the shifting blue skin. "A bit like Reed Richards, but without the IQ to match. Now, listen carefully. Since you're technically Wolverine's kid, I'm not going to kill you today. But my patience is about as long as those broken claws of yours. Where is Logan?"
"You think I'll tell you?" Raze spat, his bone claws already beginning to knit back together thanks to his inherited healing factor. "You can't kill me anyway! I'm a survivor, just like my old man!"
"Kill you? No, that's too easy," Huang Wen's voice dropped to a whisper. He raised his free hand, and the temperature in the desert plummeted. The few nearby cacti and scrub trees were instantly encased in a thick, jagged layer of frost.
"I can't kill you, but I can freeze you. I can fly you to the center of the Antarctic, bury you under three miles of ice, and leave you there. You won't die. You'll just be alone, in the dark, frozen solid for the next ten thousand years. Do you have any idea what that does to a mind? After the first century, you'll be begging for a heart attack that will never come."
Raze looked at the frozen trees, then back at Huang Wen's eyes. He saw the cold, detached truth in them. The bravado he had inherited from Logan evaporated instantly.
"Wait... wait!"
Huang Wen didn't give him a chance to lie. He used his Spirit to project a hypnotic suggestion into Raze's ear, his voice becoming a seductive, irresistible command. Under the dual pressure of terror and mental suggestion, Raze's eyes went dull, and the truth began to pour out.
The story was messier than Huang Wen had anticipated.
It turned out that Mystique's original plan—using Logan to get Huang Wen to unseal Magneto—had fallen apart the moment Huang Wen left Chinatown. With Magneto still powerless and the X-Men's students becoming increasingly hostile toward the man who had nearly destroyed their world, Mystique had staged a breakout.
She had taken the powerless Erik Lehnsherr into hiding, but without the Brotherhood to back them, they were vulnerable. That was when they stumbled upon the wild card: Jean Grey.
But it wasn't the Jean Grey from the X-Mansion. It was a Jean who had been wandering the wilderness, her mind a shattered glass of repressed memories and cosmic echoes. Mystique, ever the opportunist, had tried to manipulate Jean, hoping to use her power as a shield.