Professor X thought for a moment and said, "Do you know how he managed to obtain the power of a million stars?"
"It's obvious, isn't it? He compressed a million stars."
"How could it be so simple?"
"It's exactly that simple. I saw him do it," the young man said with conviction. "Although I don't know the specifics, the power of a million stars is exactly that—the power of a million stars."
Professor X suddenly realized a problem. He said, "How much of that potion did you drink at that time?"
"Just a sip."
"A sip and you had the power of a million stars?!"
"In fact, it's a good thing I only took a sip, or I would have exploded already," said the young man.
"The fact that you didn't explode after taking one sip is also quite miraculous," Dr. Beast interjected. "To ordinary humans, what's the difference between the power of a million stars and ten million stars?"
"No, that's not it," the young man said. "That professor told me that I was special to begin with. Nothingness didn't appear because I had power; it's always been there. Perhaps it's precisely because of its presence that I didn't explode on the spot."
"How much of that energy does that professor have?"
"At least, from what I've seen, he has a whole planet's warehouse, and it's filled with that potion. He calls it 'Tears of the Sun.'"
Professor X and Dr. Beast both inhaled sharply at the same time. The young man suddenly spoke again: "This liquid energy probably isn't its final form. He must be refining and compressing them further. I've heard him mention wanting to create a 'Sun Crystal.'"
"No wonder there's an explosion," Dr. Beast said. "This is madness! I've always said the Soviets are crazy!"
Yet Professor X was thinking, this guy actually brought such a dangerous thing to Earth. It's good that this guy called Nothingness didn't explode on Earth, or wouldn't that have been the end of everything?
"Wait, why would he bring this thing to Earth?"
Professor X asked his own question, to which the young man replied, "It seems like he wasn't trying to bring it to Earth but was conducting some experiment near the Sun. Since Earth is quite close to the Sun, he probably just left it here as a matter of convenience."
"Is this something you can do on a whim?!" Dr. Beast roared, his scalp tingling at the thought of once cohabiting a planet with so many dangerous substances.
"Conducting experiments near the Sun... an enormous amount of energy... precision weapons..." Professor X murmured to himself.
"Where did he get so many stars?" Dr. Beast posed his question, saying, "According to you, a bottle of potion must contain the energy of several billion stars. A whole planet's warehouse must hold over a hundred billion bottles of this energy, right? There are only 200 billion stars in the Milky Way; even if all are converted into energy, there wouldn't be that much. How many star systems must have been destroyed?"
"Are you dumb?" the young man retorted. "Why stick to just this universe? Run through a few universes, and you can gather enough."
Dr. Beast was stunned.
But Professor X suddenly realized something—this plan felt familiar, wasn't it similar to that Life Fusion Plan?
So this was the real nature of the Life Fusion Plan? It wasn't about stealing lives from other universes but stealing stars?
Could it be that this guy was using the M'Kraan Crystal to steal stars from other universes??
And what about the Cosmic Abstract Entities? Wasn't there anyone to intervene??
Professor X thought again, if just a few stars were stolen from a universe, it indeed wouldn't attract the notice of Cosmic Abstract Entities.
But the problem was, if it were so, the man must have traveled countless times throughout multiple universes. If he truly used the power of the crystal, then he must have accumulated a terribly frightening curse upon himself.
The M'Kraan Crystal is the heart of the universe, the converging point of all realities. It's not some Divine Artifact, but merely an entity, as much a part of existence as the universe itself.
It could indeed serve as a channel for traversing the Infinity of solitary universes and the Multiverse, as every universe contains one such entity. However, this function is almost forbidden to use, for if the Mutants could use the crystal so easily, they would have done so long ago.
The reason is, once the crystal is used, an extremely terrifying curse is encountered.
This curse doesn't cause death or injury, but it makes the cursed become "unfortunate."
Unfortunate means that everything they do will inevitably lead to the worst possible outcome. In human terms, it means bad luck, bad luck, and more bad luck.
This curse isn't a one-time ordeal, but it can accumulate over repeated uses—the more it's used, the unluckier one becomes.
Most people simply don't have the strength to use it a second time, as they're likely to have fallen victim to bad luck after the first.
If this man called Anatoli, in order to collect an endless number of stars, had used the crystal countless times to travel through various universes, how much misfortune had he accumulated? How unlucky could he get?
Professor X could not entertain the notion because the curse of the crystal was only a legend. Those who owned it were doomed to bad ends, and Mutants dared not conduct such experiments.
It seemed unlikely that this guy was still alive, Professor X thought. If he were to still be living, then their universe might become as unfortunate as it was lucky to have Shiller in it. They already had enough misfortune... or luck, as it were. It would be better not to add another such figure.
At that moment, Professor X thought of another question and asked, "If you only have the power of a million constant stars, how did you manage to destroy an entire star system?"
"Typically, a star system contains hundreds of billions of stars," he continued. "Using the power of a million stars should not be enough to affect such a vast area. Yet that prosperous star system was indeed obliterated, and it remains very dangerous to this day. How did he manage that?"
"The power of nothingness," the young man replied honestly. "To tell you the truth, I don't know how he did it, but anyway, nothingness combined with the power of a million stars results in that."
It seemed this guy was not going to be easy to deal with, Professor X thought. That made sense—if he were easy to deal with, it wouldn't have come to him. That fellow could even compress countless stars; he was powerless against him. Could he really handle it?
"I think you should be able to solve my problem," the young man suddenly said. "I heard about you when I was little; they said you are the strongest mind reader. Maybe you really can root out the nothingness."
"I'll do my best, child," Professor X instinctively reassured.
"I'm not a child," the young man said with a hint of amusement in his tone. "The Skrull Empire that the Professor took me to dates back thousands of years. Although I've been in slumber all this time, I am still thousands of years old."
Only then did Professor X remember that the Old Skrull Empire was a thing of the distant past. If the young man was born later than him, then he certainly would have traveled through space-time.
But that Anatoli fellow couldn't be an Earthling from thousands of years ago. If he was a Soviet, then he, too, would have had to travel through time. But what did he go back for?
Suddenly, the Skluer Interstellarism Republic came to the Professor's mind. It sounded an awful lot like the Soviet Union, didn't it?
Could it be that the fellow went back to revive the Soviet Union?
While it wasn't impossible, Professor X realized as he looked at the returning Magneto, the crazy Soviets were capable of anything. He had lived through that era; how could he not understand what these desperate beasts could do in a corner?
He speculated that a desperate idealist might have developed some sort of time-traveling device, but it malfunctioned, not sending him back a few decades but several thousand years to the Skrull Empire.
At that time, the Skrull Empire was ruled by nobles, and a frustrated Soviet lands a couple of punches, becoming the founder of the Skruel Republic.
Then, like some crazed Soviet scientist, he might have thought he could calculate and create a super invincible doomsday weapon that directly affected the rules of the cosmos. And so began the long road to refining the power of a star.
But he probably didn't know about the side effects of the Crystal, hence accumulating too much misfortune, which ultimately led to a series of inconceivable misfortunes and the collapse of the Skruel Republic.
Professor X had read interstellar history; in his opinion, the late Skruel Republic was indeed too unlucky. The explosion caused by the young man from the sleep pod was a complete disaster that couldn't be influenced by human effort at all—no one would believe it wasn't associated with bad luck.
Indeed, the gifts of fate had already been secretly priced. No one could avoid paying the cost.
"May I start the treatment now?" the young man was quite cooperative as he said, "And could you brief me on the current international situation? Has a hot war broken out between the US and the Soviet Union?"
Upon hearing this, Professor X sighed again, but still, he said, "No, and the Cold War has also come to an end."
"It's over? Who won?"
"Neither... no one won."
In the Psychic Battlefield, everyone gathered, now in their finest battle forms, far from ordinary, ready to fight.
But now they were having a meeting to dissect their failure.
Indeed, they hadn't even fought yet. Let alone fight Shiller afterward, they hadn't even beaten Helada.
Wanda was right, as always, it wasn't that they lacked strength, but their form of existence was too inhibiting.
To perform any action, they had to verbalize it first. Even to throw a punch, one had to declare, "I'm going to punch now." This wasn't a movie shoot; everyone had to shout out the names of their moves, a complete waste of time.
For example, if a Helada tentacle whipped towards you, you had to describe how you dodged it. If your reaction or description was too slow, you'd be hit directly.
It wasn't impossible to take a hit, but you'd have to explain why. For example, Stark had to declare that his Mecha was made from a certain alloy, highly durable. The Scarlet Witch had to say she was the power of Scarlet itself, impervious to physical hits.
But by the time they finished speaking, they would have been flung miles away.
"This won't do," Stark complained. "These rules are too preposterous. Who plays like this?"
"I've been quite merciful," Dream Power Doctor Strange said expressionlessly. "Your spoken words are on team voice chat; the enemy can't hear you. If you don't like it this way, I can make some changes."
"No, we'd rather not!" Wanda quickly declared. If they were getting thrashed like this already, what if Helada understood their communications? That would be terrible!
Stark was about to instigate rule changes when he saw Shiller, arms crossed, smiling at him.
Stark was irked. He had just confidently declared they'd beat Helada and then move on to Shiller, but now, they couldn't even overcome the appetizer, and he was the one being served up.
"We'll fight," Stark said. "Let's have a tactical meeting to figure out what to do! Come over..."
At that moment, Dream Power Doctor Strange approached Shiller, who was aside, glanced at him, and then whispered,
"Why do you insist on making me draw the Eclipse Card for Nick?"