Chapter 323: Chapter 323: The Instincts of a Child of the Void
Owen Reece slumped on the couch, clutching his head with both hands. His body was still trembling slightly.
Thirty years.
A full thirty years.
For the first time, the violent energy raging inside him had truly quieted down.
It wasn’t suppressed. It wasn’t sealed.
A part of it had genuinely disappeared.
It felt as though someone had drained molten lava from his veins and replaced it with a gentle stream of water.
He looked up at the infant sleeping peacefully in his mother’s arms.
The little boy’s eyes were closed, a faint smile lingering at the corners of his mouth, as if he had just enjoyed a delicious meal.
Owen shuddered.
He knew exactly what had just happened.
That baby—that harmless-looking little thing—had just treated the Beyonders’ energy, the kind that could blow up an entire universe, as a snack.
Standing by the window, Chu Hang’s eyes glowed with intertwined gold-red and silver-white light.
He could clearly sense the changes within Adam.
The fragments of the Beyonders’ power that had been devoured hadn’t vanished. They had been completely broken down by the Void Origin and transformed into something purer, more stable.
Like a process of alchemical refinement.
The impurities had been removed.
The essence remained.
Adam’s Void Origin was steadily growing stronger, becoming increasingly solid and complete.
Wanda lowered her head and stared at her son in silence, complicated emotions filling her eyes.
She could feel the Void energy within Adam growing stronger again.
The increase wasn’t dramatic, but the way it happened left her both relieved and worried.
Relieved because her son now possessed a power capable of opposing the Beyonders.
Worried because of the nature and source of that power.
Void Origin.
As its name implied, it was a concept centered on nonexistence itself.
It could devour all existence and reduce it to nothingness.
Such power was terrifyingly effective against enemies.
But if it ever lost control...
She didn’t dare continue that line of thought.
Chu Hang turned around and walked over to her, gently stroking Adam’s forehead.
The little boy rubbed against his father’s palm in his sleep and let out a contented murmur.
"He’s fine," Chu Hang said calmly. "The Void Origin is his innate power, not some external corruption. He instinctively understands its boundaries. He knows what should be consumed and what shouldn’t."
Wanda bit her lip, still uneasy.
"But—"
"I know what you’re worried about," Chu Hang interrupted. "But that’s not the priority right now."
He turned toward Owen.
"The energy inside you has only been partially consumed by Adam. The rest is still unstable. The seals I’ve placed on it are only temporary. If something strong enough triggers it, those seals could collapse at any time."
Owen looked up, fear flashing across his face.
"Then... what am I supposed to do?"
Chu Hang fell silent for a few seconds before making a decision.
"You can’t stay on Earth anymore."
Owen froze.
Chu Hang continued.
"The entire multiverse is looking for you right now. Especially one person—Rabum Alar."
"He’s already hunted down more than a hundred Molecule Men across parallel universes. It won’t be long before he finds this place."
"If you stay on Earth, you won’t be the only one who dies. The planet goes with you."
Owen’s face turned deathly pale.
Wanda’s Chaos Magic surged instinctively, forming a crimson barrier around Adam.
She looked at Chu Hang.
"Then we’ll take him back to the Void Fortress?"
Chu Hang nodded, then shook his head.
"We have to bring him back. But not directly."
He raised a hand and summoned a glowing projection displaying the energy traces scattered throughout the Denver area.
"Owen has lived here for thirty years. His energy signature is embedded into every corner of this place. Any competent tracker could follow those residual traces straight to him."
He paused.
"More importantly, the Molecule Men are connected through a quantum-entanglement-level network. I’ve severed Owen’s connection to the Beyonders’ sensory system, but the act of severing it is itself an anomaly."
Owen stiffened immediately.
His voice trembled with despair.
"You mean... no matter where I hide, they’ll find me?"
"Not they."
Chu Hang corrected him.
"Him."
"Rabum Alar is a fanatic. But he’s also a genius. He doesn’t track people through the Beyonders’ technology. He tracks them through his own predictive calculations."
The projection vanished as Chu Hang walked toward the center of the room.
Golden light gathered in his palm before splitting into countless threads that shot into the walls, floor, and ceiling, forming intricate law-runes.
Wanda’s eyes widened slightly.
"You’re setting a decoy?"
"A trap."
A cold smile appeared on Chu Hang’s face.
"A convincing trap. An irresistible trap. And a deadly one."
Using alchemical techniques, he extracted the tiny residue of Beyonder energy that had leaked out when Adam consumed part of Owen’s power.
The trace was unimaginably faint.
But for a tracker, it was more than enough.
Chu Hang used it to construct a false energy node, one that perfectly mimicked Owen’s presence, making it appear as though he was still inside the apartment, sound asleep.
Then he layered three traps around it.
The first was a Time Trap.
Anyone approaching the node would be dragged into a distorted temporal field where one second of real time became an hour inside the trap.
The second was a Space Trap.
If someone broke through the temporal distortion, spatial laws would activate and imprison them within an infinite Möbius loop.
No way forward.
No way back.
The third was a Cognitive Trap.
The most vicious of the three.
Using Mental Laws, Chu Hang implanted a cognitive distortion field into the node’s core.
Anyone analyzing it would see exactly what they most wanted to see:
A weakened, defenseless, easily captured Molecule Man.
But the moment they struck, the distortion field would retaliate, reflecting their attack back at them with double the power.
Owen stood nearby, completely dumbfounded as Chu Hang completed all of it with effortless precision.
Was this even something a human could do?
It had taken less than a minute.
Three multilayered traps.
As for whether they could actually stop a multiversal powerhouse...
Even Chu Hang wasn’t sure.
Wanda hugged Adam and asked calmly,
"How long can those traps hold Rabum Alar?"
Chu Hang withdrew his hand.
The runes faded into the underlying structure of space itself.
"They can’t."
The answer was immediate.
Wanda blinked.
Chu Hang turned around, gold-red light flickering in his eyes.
"Rabum Alar isn’t an ordinary tracker."
"He’s Doctor Doom."
"One of the few beings in the multiverse capable of standing on equal footing with me."
"These traps might delay him for ten minutes at most before he sees through everything."
He shrugged.
"But ten minutes is enough."
Raising a hand, he tore open a spatial rift.
Golden light flowed along its edges, forming a stable passage.
Beyond it lay the Void Fortress, suspended between the cracks of the multiverse.
Owen stared at the opening and swallowed hard.
He knew he had no choice.
Stay on Earth and die.
Or follow this terrifyingly powerful stranger into the unknown.
The answer was obvious.
Unable to hold back any longer, he finally asked:
"Why are you helping me?"
Chu Hang paused and looked back at him.
"Because you’re a chess piece."
His voice remained calm and emotionless.
"The Beyonders turned you Molecule Men into bombs."
"Rabum Alar treats you as threats that must be eliminated."
"But in my eyes, you’re the key to countering the Beyonders."
He glanced at Adam.
"My son just consumed part of your Beyonder energy and digested it perfectly."
"That proves the Void Origin can suppress the Beyonders’ power."
His voice grew colder.
"So your value isn’t merely staying alive."
"You’re also nourishment that can make Adam stronger."
Owen shivered.
He immediately understood.
This man wasn’t rescuing him out of kindness.
He viewed him as a useful resource.
And strangely enough, Owen wasn’t angry.
Nor was he afraid.
Instead, he felt relieved.
At least the man was honest.
No fake morality.
No comforting lies.
Taking a deep breath, Owen nodded.
"Fine. I’ll go with you."
Chu Hang stepped into the rift.
Wanda followed with Adam in her arms.
After a brief hesitation, Owen gritted his teeth and followed them.
The spatial rift closed silently behind them.
---
The moment the rift vanished, the sky above Denver darkened.
It wasn’t sunset.
Nor was it a storm.
It was a deeper kind of darkness.
As though an invisible hand had torn open the heavens, exposing the terrifying void hidden beyond.
Pedestrians stopped and stared upward in confusion.
Yet moments later, they forgot what they had seen.
An invisible psychic wave swept through the district, gently altering everyone’s memories.
Life continued as though nothing had happened.
On the rooftop of the apartment building, a figure slowly appeared.
A man clad in a green cloak.
A metal mask covered his face.
The cloak fluttered despite the absence of wind.
Only two narrow eye slits were visible, revealing eyes as cold as frozen steel.
Rabum Alar.
Doctor Doom.
Floating in midair, he raised his right hand.
A dark green sphere of energy emerged from his palm.
The energy expanded into a vast tracking network that spread across all of Denver.
Seconds later, an anomalous energy node appeared at the apartment’s location.
Rabum Alar narrowed his eyes.
He landed outside the apartment.
His metal boots struck the floor with heavy thuds.
Dark green energy flowed from his body, forming a massive scanning matrix throughout the room.
Every node within the matrix flashed as it analyzed every lingering trace of energy.
Walking to the couch, he looked down at the fake node still emitting faint Beyonder energy.
"Interesting."
His voice emerged from behind the mask with a metallic resonance.
A blade of dark green energy formed in his hand and slowly descended toward the node.
Just before it touched—
He stopped.
The fluctuations of the Time Trap.
The structure of the Space Trap.
The essence of the Cognitive Trap.
All three were transparent to him.
He could see straight through them.
Rabum Alar withdrew the blade and straightened up.
"The one behind this..."
His voice grew heavier.
"...is at least a multiversal-level existence."
"This matter is far from over."
Raising his left hand, he summoned a complex predictive matrix.
Countless streams of data flowed through it.
Each represented a possible future.
Moments later, the calculation produced a result.
Rabum Alar’s gaze deepened.
"A being capable of devouring Beyonder energy..."
"Could it be that legendary—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
After one final glance at the false node, he turned and left.
His cloak left behind a streak of green light as he vanished into the night sky, heading toward the deeper reaches of the multiverse.
The apartment returned to silence.
The false energy node continued emitting its faint glow, patiently waiting for the next victim to take the bait.
---
Void Fortress — Isolated Chamber
Chu Hang stood inside a room constructed entirely from Origin Power.
The walls consisted of golden energy barriers layered upon one another, each covered in countless runes.
These runes were more than seals.
They were isolation measures.
They severed causal connections themselves.
Only then could Owen be considered relatively safe.
Standing in the center of the chamber, Owen stared at the dazzling array of symbols around him and finally felt a trace of security.
Chu Hang walked over and pressed a finger against Owen’s forehead.
A golden mark appeared and immediately sank beneath his skin.
"This is a Law Mark," Chu Hang explained.
"It will monitor the condition of your internal energy at all times."
"If anything abnormal happens, I’ll know immediately."
Owen nodded.
His voice was hoarse.
"Thank you."
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