dmims Page 44
Page 44
Steve gave Chu Hang a deep look, and in those dark eyes he saw absolute confidence and a sense of control. He had no more doubts.
"Everyone, stand back!"
He gave a low shout, then silently took several large steps back, giving himself enough space to exert his strength.
He removed the shield from his arm and gripped it tightly in his hand. The muscles, enhanced to the limits of human capabilities by the super-soldier serum, bulged instantly beneath his tactical uniform, like a cheetah poised to pounce.
Twist your waist, engage your core, and transfer the power through your spine to your arms, making your entire arm feel like a giant bow being drawn to its fullest extent!
The bowstring snapped open the next second!
The red and blue circular shield instantly transformed into a phantom that was almost impossible to see with the naked eye. With a piercing shriek that tore through the air, it drew a perfect arc of death in the air, spinning and howling, before crashing down hard into the seemingly soft but actually deadly glacial waterfall!
Everyone present, including Logan, instinctively held their breath, their eyes fixed intently on the swirling afterimage.
In their minds, the shield would pass through the water curtain without any obstruction, at most splashing a few water droplets, and then "plop" into the deep pool behind the waterfall, creating a ripple.
However, what happened next was like a heavy hammer from God, shattering all the knowledge they had built up over the past few decades.
clang--! ! !
A deafening, ear-piercing metallic clang, unlike anything that should exist on Earth, exploded without warning throughout the entire canyon!
The sound wasn't the dull thud of a shield hitting ice or rock; it was a... purer, harder, and more terrifying tremor! It was like the cosmic lament of two neutron stars from outer space colliding violently at the speed of light!
Steve's vibranium shield, powerful enough to smash through a tank, was like a speeding truck crashing into an invisible, divinely forged barrier the moment it touched the waterfall's curtain of water!
It was violently bounced back by an unimaginable, extremely violent force, with a faster speed and a stronger momentum than when it came!
At the very point where the shield struck, the once surging, seamless waterfall curtain, that perfect holographic projection, experienced an instantaneous and extremely violent energy disturbance!
The waterfall footage in that area looked like an old, kicked television set, flickering and distorting wildly, filled with static and garbled data.
In that brief, less than one tenth of a second of flashing time, a huge, pitch-black, non-reflective metal wall with a mirror-like smooth surface flashed past behind the waterfall!
Although it was only a fleeting glimpse, the cold, inhuman, and lifeless metallic texture, as well as the huge and ferocious Hydra emblem engraved on the wall surface, which seemed to be mocking everything in the world, were clearly captured by everyone's retinas!
"My...my God..."
Over the communicator, Howard Stark's voice sounded like it was being gripped tightly by an invisible hand, reduced to a lisp, filled with the bewilderment and horror of a shattered faith. "That...what kind of material is that...that energy reaction...impossible...absolutely impossible..."
The members of the Roaring Commando Team were as if they had been looked at by Medusa and collectively petrified. They stood frozen in place, their expressions shifting from initial shock to horror, and finally to a deep, almost worshipful, awe of Chu Hang.
The way they looked at Chu Hang had completely changed.
This can no longer be explained by "good luck" or "accurate intuition".
This is an absolute miracle! It's a prophet!
Steve sidestepped and caught the shield as it flew back. The immense force of the impact sent a slight tingling sensation through his well-trained arm. He glanced down at the edge of his prized shield; it was completely undamaged, without a single scratch.
He slowly raised his head and looked again at the waterfall, which had returned to normal and seemed as if nothing had happened. His eyes were extremely solemn, as if he wanted to see through it.
"How did you know that?" he asked Chu Hang in a deep voice. This question represented the unspoken thoughts of everyone present.
Chu Hang uttered two words without batting an eye, while silently watching the system panel frantically refreshing its notifications.
[Ding! You've received +100 Shock Points from Steve Rogers!]
[Ding! You have received 500 points of Faith Collapse from Howard Stark!]
[Ding! You have gained +999 points of respect from the Roaring Commando!]
Seeing everyone's frustrated expressions—"I don't believe you, you old geezer, you're really bad"—but not daring to refute them, Chu Hang was secretly overjoyed.
Steve: "..."
Everyone: "..."
Okay, you're awesome, boss. Whatever you say is right. We'd believe you even if you said your family built this door.
"Alright, gentlemen, stop standing here like wooden posts, lost in thought." Chu Hang clapped his hands, breaking the awkward and eerie silence. "Now we're 100% certain that this thing is a door. So, a new question arises..."
He paused, then turned his gaze to Falsworth, the explosives expert in the team.
"How do I get in?"
Farsworth was jolted awake by his gaze and snapped back to reality. He practically scrambled to the waterfall, pulled out a bunch of strange and unusual detectors flashing various indicator lights from his backpack, which was more magical than a magic bag, and frantically scanned the spot where the shield had struck, muttering a string of data that no one could understand.
A few minutes later, he turned off all the instruments, turned around, and his face was even more ashen than the millennia-old ice at the bottom of the canyon.
"Captain..." His voice was dry and hoarse, tinged with despair, "It's over. It's all over."
"Just now, my vibration sensor, metal density analyzer, energy spectrum analyzer... all went off the charts. According to the system's preliminary estimate, the thickness of this door... is at least thirty meters. As for the material... I don't know what that thing is, but its atomic density and structural strength are hundreds, even thousands of times greater than any known alloy in my database."
He took a deep breath, as if using all his strength, and uttered the most despairing conclusion.
"Don't even mention the little bit of C4 we brought, Captain. Even if you moved all the Allied explosives depots in the European theater and bombarded it for a year, you still wouldn't be able to blast a decent crater in it."
The spark of hope that had just been ignited by the discovery of the truth was instantly extinguished by this cold and harsh reality.
Yes, the door has been found.
But this is a door that they simply cannot open from a physical standpoint.
What's the difference between this and staring blankly at an entire mountain wall?
All eyes, once again like a dozen high-powered searchlights, focused on Chu Hang. The message in their eyes was clear: Boss, stop pretending, keep up the act!
Chu Hang felt like these people were burning a hole in his forehead with their eyes.
"Hey, hey, hey, don't look at me like that," he spread his hands exaggeratedly, looking completely innocent. "I can only solve riddles, I can't pick locks. It's not my specialty."
Although he said that, he had already started walking slowly along the edge of the huge "waterfall gate".
As he walked, he reached out and pretended to feel around on the cold, frost-covered "wall," his brow furrowed and muttering to himself, looking exactly like a charlatan trying to "seek spiritual guidance."
On the surface, this place is no different from the surrounding rock walls, covered with the same thick layer of ice, unremarkable and inconspicuous.
"Hmm? Here..."
Chu Hang stretched out his finger and gently tapped the ice surface, producing a crisp "knock-knock" sound.
"What's wrong?" Steve, like a loyal bodyguard, immediately followed, fully alert.
"I don't know." Chu Hang shook his head, a hint of confusion on his face. "It just feels like... the sounds here are a little different from other places."
Logan also came over, his nose, more sensitive than a police dog's, sniffed the air hard, then frowned and shook his head at Steve: "Nothing special."
"let me."
Without uttering a single word, Steve stretched out his thick, gloved hand and began to vigorously scrape the ice in that area.
The super soldier's strength made it as easy for him to do this as it was for an ordinary person to scrape paint off a wall.
Soon, large sections of the thick ice were scraped away, revealing the dark brown, wet rocks underneath.
The surface of the rock remained unremarkable.
Just when everyone thought Chu Hang's "divine intuition" had finally failed, Steve's fingers seemed to touch a very fine seam on the smooth rock surface.
He increased his strength, using his fingertips to pry and dig at the gap.
With a soft click, a thin sheet disguised as the surface of a rock fell off, revealing a palm-sized groove made of an unknown black metal.
At the center of the groove is a peculiar hydra symbol that emits a faint red glow. Below the symbol is a slot that is just big enough to hold a standard energy block.
"The entrance!" Dugan exclaimed excitedly in a low voice.
“No, this isn’t an entrance.” Fasworth examined the intricate groove and immediately offered his expert assessment, shaking his head. “It’s more like a… keyhole.”
Everyone looked at each other.
Where's the key? They couldn't possibly expect Hydra to be stupid enough to hide it under the rug by the door. They hadn't brought any Hydra base access cards with them on this mission.
Just then, Chu Hang, who had been silent and seemingly detached from the matter, slowly and as if by magic, pulled something out of his tactical pouch.
It was a dark blue energy block, seemingly with electricity flowing inside, emitting a faint glow, and full of futuristic science fiction.
It was the loot he had casually taken from the corpse of that unfortunate Hydra patrol squad leader.
"You said..."
Chu Hang shook the blue energy block in his hand, then looked at the slot that perfectly matched the size and shape of the energy block, and a bright, mischievous smile appeared on his face.
"Will this work?"
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Chapter 54 This is what you call professional
When Chu Hang, like a street vendor peddling counterfeit luxury watches on Wall Street, casually waved the dark blue energy block between two fingers in front of everyone, the air in the Death Valley of the Alps seemed to be instantly sucked into a vacuum by an invisible hand.
A deathly stillness even smoother and more suffocating than Nick Fury's bald head.
Bucky, Dugan, Jones... these tough guys from the Howling Commandos, who could shower with champagne amidst a hail of bullets, felt that their cerebral cortex had been completely burned into charcoal on a circuit board by tonight's series of magical events that even "Approaching Science" couldn't film.
What are values and beliefs? Can you eat them?
First, they discovered that the glacial waterfall that had been hanging for thousands of years was actually a holographic projection, a door.
Okay, high-tech, Hydra is awesome, they admit it.
Now, the most outrageous part comes. He actually pulled out a "key" from his four-dimensional pocket that looked exactly like the original, guaranteed to be genuine!
This is no longer war! War, at least, has some logic and tactics!
This is clearly watching a man named Chu Hang star in a personal superhero show titled "I Write My Own Script, You Just Shout '666' and You're Done It." And they, these battle-hardened elite soldiers, are just the background audience members who don't even know how to tip and can only drool with their mouths open.
"No...no...it's impossible!"
Over the communicator, Howard Stark's voice wasn't just trembling; it was like a late-stage Parkinson's patient on a rollercoaster, every syllable a lament of shattered worldview. His proud scientific worldview, built upon the laws of physics and mathematical formulas, was, in this moment, utterly destroyed by Chu Hang's seemingly casual gesture.
"That's Hydra's standard energy cube! MK-3! I swear I've studied the wreckage of that thing over a hundred times! I can recite its energy output curve, internal crystal structure, and outer alloy composition backwards! How do you have this?! And a brand new, intact version at that?! And... and why the hell are you carrying it around in your pocket like a lighter?! This thing is standard equipment! It's a Hydra soldier's second life! What are you carrying it for? To use as a hand warmer in winter?! Answer me! Chu Hang!!"
Howard's roar exploded in everyone's ears like a string of lit firecrackers.
However, no one could answer him.
Because everyone present, including Steve Rogers, wanted to deliver every single word Howard said right back to Chu Hang.
The way they looked at Chu Hang was no longer that of a comrade-in-arms, nor that of a freak. It was that of an alien in human skin, a time-traveling anomaly from the future, a walking, breathing "why."
"Oh, you said this."
Faced with a question that could make any lie detector explode on the spot, Chu Hang simply weighed the energy block in his hand with a nonchalant air, his tone as if he were saying, "Ah, I just picked up a penny on the roadside."