Chapter 4767

Although the temperature in the cave is high now, when Shiler said that, everyone shivered. Polaris rubbed her arms and said: "Don't scare me. Who's wailing?"

"Not a person, but some kind of mental entity." Shiler took a deep breath and said: "I'm not a mutant; I don't belong here. So I can't hear clearly; you must calm down and feel the connection between this island and yourselves..."

Polaris was about to open her mouth to complain, but how could she calm down in this situation? But she also knew complaining was useless, so she said to the Ice Man: "Cool me down, I'll try."

The Ice Man exhaled a breath of cold air toward her, fearing the cooling wasn't sufficient, and also made a frost cover, putting it over her. Polaris took a deep breath; her ability was restricted, she couldn't turn into a magnetic field form, so she held her breath and focused, concentrating her spirit.

At this moment, she suddenly felt she had connected to some vast consciousness. It was somewhat like accessing Professor X's mental world, but not quite. Because Professor X has a human primary consciousness, while this one does not. It's more like suddenly falling into an empty space.

Here she heard faint wailing sounds. More precisely, it was a painful emotion. This emotion kept flowing into Polaris's mind, making her also feel sad, but she still struggled to stabilize her mind, trying to communicate with this emotion.

After a while, she withdrew and then said: "It's Clark Atum. To be precise, it's this island itself. He doesn't want the volcano to erupt, but he can't control it..."

"Who exactly!" the Ice Man cursed: "He not only wants to hurt us, but also wants to destroy Clark Atum!"

"Clark Atum is in great pain now." Polaris said anxiously: "We need to find a way to soothe him; this might help weaken the earthquake."

"Leave it to me." Shiler sighed, looked at Strange, and then said: "Give everyone a mental barrier."

Strange naturally knew what he wanted to do. So he directly put a shield around everyone, simultaneously isolating their minds from the outside world, ensuring they wouldn't be contaminated.

When Shiler turned into a mist state and the Nameless Mist descended upon Clark Atum Island's sky, all living beings, due to indescribable terror, became stagnant in their own mental worlds. This also included Clark Atum's soul. In an instant, the earthquake weakened.

The people underground first noticed this. And the group above ground also couldn't escape the outer god's intimidation, nearly falling into the volcano crater. Fortunately, the gray mist immediately withdrew its power. Otherwise, what the volcanic eruption didn't take away, he also took away.

Shiler didn't return underground but came to the volcano crater. At this moment, the volcano crater was belching thick smoke; it could be said the volcano had already erupted, only the lava hadn't surged up yet. Just this smoke and mist was unbearable for ordinary people.

"Can you swallow the smoke?" Shiler asked.

"Yes. Should I store it or break it down?" the gray mist asked.

"Store it for now; it might be useful later." Shiler turned into mist form again, directly covering the entire volcano crater, swallowing all the thick smoke. The originally smoke-filled sky over Clark Atum Island cleared up again.

And as the earthquake weakened, the two Iron Men finally managed to remove the engine's outer casing. The power core looked completely fine. But soon the local Iron Man discovered the problem, saying: "Someone injected too much energy inside, causing overload. This thing has become a huge cylinder. No wonder it caused such regular tremors. We need to figure out how to drain the energy inside."

The local Iron Man thought for a moment, then said: "My armor can't bear much force; I must have you help me do this. But this situation might directly detonate our armor. Even if only for a moment exposed to such a high-temperature environment, we might..."

He didn't continue, but everyone could imagine: Tony Stark's physique is that of an ordinary person, absolutely unable to withstand such a high-temperature environment, even for a moment. Even with mutant and mage escorts, their bodies are still too fragile. If even a slight accident occurred, they'd probably meet their end here.

"There's another way." The local Iron Man said: "Absorb power until the armor is completely overloaded; then only one person is needed. This is entirely my responsibility; I'll do it."

After saying that, he was about to open the energy channel on his gauntlet to absorb energy from the engine. But before he touched the engine, Stark shoved him aside. He still wanted to say something, but Stark gave him an impatient look and directly pulled out the energy core from the chest arc reactor.

He pulled out a wire from beneath the energy core, plugged it into the engine. Almost instantly, the engine stopped beating and gradually calmed down. That terrifying shockwave and tremor also stopped accordingly.

All the energy inside the engine was drawn into the energy core. And the energy core showed no change at all, not even lighting up slightly, before Stark reinserted it back into his chest.

But after doing all this, he could no longer stand, and fell straight backward onto the seat. Strange quickly reached out and steadied him. Stark looked gloomily at the local Iron Man and said: "You better not be the culprit."

At this moment, Shiler returned, using gray mist to support Stark as they flew outward. His current physical condition wasn't suitable for using a teleportation portal. Strange opened a portal, bringing the other mutants back to the surface.

Discovering the volcanic eruption had stopped, the surface mutants also came down from the volcano crater. Seeing their group, Apocalypse flew over first and asked: "How is it? Resolved?"

"Let's talk later." Strange now had no mood to explain; he kept staring at the local Iron Man, seemingly gauging the possibility of him tampering. But no matter what, he couldn't be separated from involvement.

The local Iron Man certainly knew this too. He now looked almost ashen-faced, realizing he might have been framed. The person who acted had created a perfect framing trap, and now he was utterly unable to defend himself.

Designing the water diversion system was their proposal; the water diversion system was their design, and also their installation, with no involvement of others throughout. If there's a problem, it must be them who did it.

What's worse, this plan was discussed internally within the Avengers. So who exactly leaked this information?

The other party must have obtained the information very quickly and accurately, to be able to devise such a plan and successfully execute it. This means both the mutants and the local Avengers have serious internal problems.

When returning to the Central Imperial Court, the local Iron Man also had some difficulty standing. He leaned on the chair armrest and sat down, beginning to carefully consider which link went wrong. And the returning mutants looked at him with unfriendly eyes. It can be said that if not for Charles having just given them a round of comfort, the local Iron Man might already have been surrounded and beaten by mutants.

The impact of this matter is truly enormous, and the consequences are too severe. Although nothing happened in the end, almost all countries' ambassadors except the Divine Spear Bureau and Wakanda have begun to resign. And the hot spring banquet had just started; they hadn't even gotten to the main topic yet.

Meanwhile, Clark Atum was already sanctioned, and international opinion was unfavorable. After this incident, it will only get worse. Mutants will surely be condemned again; the goodwill accumulated through the Clark Atum flower will probably be wiped out in one wave.

Mutants internally will also suspect each other, all thinking the other side leaked information. Originally not united, the various mutant factions will now be even more split.

Moreover, mutants and the local Avengers are very likely to break ties completely. Not interacting again would be good; worse, they might go to war. The best outcome is mutants no longer fighting for Earth, leaving only ordinary human governments and S. H. I. E. L. D. to deal with the extraterrestrial soldiers still in the solar system.

The more everyone thought about it, the more they felt this was truly a poisonous plot, truly deserving of being called a one-arrow-multiple-hits scheme. Whoever could come up with this method is simply evil and ruthless beyond bounds.

"This is indeed my responsibility." The local Iron Man said somewhat lost in thought: "No matter what, I didn't expect the engine to have problems. Even if I didn't do it intentionally, this responsibility lies with me."

The Avengers members also fell silent. They really had nothing to argue with, because there really was no room for excuse. Even if they didn't do it intentionally, failing to supervise is hard to deny. Their original goodwill gesture was completely ruined, not only harming themselves but also dragging down the mutants.

"Now is not the time to talk about this." Charles suddenly walked in. He had previously not shown up, seemingly staying in the anti-gravity lab doing something. After entering, he said: "I'm willing to believe you didn't do it intentionally. But you also must admit that the Avengers have internal problems. You need to study exactly where the problem occurred."

"We are the same; mutants also need self-examination. If there's no insider, even with a plan it couldn't be so easily carried out. After all, the person who actually carried it out being an outsider is very unlikely; it must definitely be someone on the island."

After he said this, the mutants erupted in protest. Wolverine stood up and asked: "Could it not possibly be Iron Man who tampered during installation?"

"If it were really him doing it intentionally, he wouldn't need to rush in to rescue. Even if it were for show, the risk would be too high. Moreover, he succeeded in rescuing and caused no disaster."

Although some mutants still doubted, most accepted this explanation, after all, the local Iron Man's performance after the disaster was evident to all. To put it plainly, an ordinary person in an iron shell daring to rush into such a place is simply playing with his life.

Not to mention the high temperature in the cave, the geological structure is full of randomness. Such earthquake intensity, the cave could collapse at any time. And this cave is over a hundred meters underground; if it collapsed, there would be no possibility of escaping; one would be crushed to death.

Moreover, volcanic eruption isn't just from that one mouth. Nearly all underground structures would be destroyed by turbulent magma. If somewhere a crack opened, lava would rush straight to the surface, and that iron shell absolutely couldn't withstand it.

If the local Iron Man truly could involve himself to this extent, mutants would have no choice but to accept it. But according to common sense, this is unlikely. Based on their understanding of the mainstream universe Iron Man, this guy doesn't play scheming plots; he's always openly annoying people, and is confident and righteous, not like someone who would do such things.

And upon hearing Charles say this, the Avengers also breathed a sigh of relief; the mutants themselves took on half the blame, at least they wouldn't start fighting right then.

But the more Charles said this, the guiltier the local Iron Man felt. He struggled to compose his emotions, then said: "I will definitely find the mastermind behind this; I promise."

But Charles shook his head and said: "The investigation probably needs to be put off for now. We need to first solve the current dilemma. The upcoming situation will be even more unfavorable for Clark Atum Island; we need to find a way to turn the tide."

"Rest assured." The local Iron Man firmly looked at him and said: "Stark Industries will help, and the Avengers will too. No matter what Washington wants to do, we will stop them."