American comics: Damn it, I’m surrounded by those who worry about their fathers!.

Chapter 1010 The Collapse of Firestorm, Peter's Last Appearance!
A chilling sensation seeping from the depths of his bones awakened Ronnie Raymond's consciousness.

His eyelids were heavy, and his vision finally opened with difficulty, barely managing to slit open a crack.

The blurry light and shadow flickered for a moment before finally focusing.

What came into view was a very familiar-looking tiny crack on the ceiling.

Ronnie recognized the crack.

This seems to be the laboratory where I turned into a firestorm.

But how did I get here?

Ronnie covered his head and looked around. There was an unfamiliar smell in the air, like the faint, pungent smell of ozone.

His gaze swept rapidly across the room.

The walls are made of a grayish-white material with a faint metallic sheen, and the lines are exceptionally simple.

Chaotic fragments of memory began to surge violently deep within Ronnie's consciousness.

His last memory was of blinding blue light engulfing everything, and the excruciating pain of his body being torn apart.

But now, he sits here unharmed.

Did I not die?

"you're awake."

The next second, a voice rang out without warning.

Without warning, the air in the center of the room distorted, and Dr. Manhattan appeared in the center of the room.

Dr. Manhattan hovered a few inches above the ground, calmly "watching" Ronnie.

Ronnie's breath caught in his throat, and his heart pounded wildly in his chest.

Fear and anger intertwined and surged to the top of his head.

Wasn't I torn into a pile of minced meat?
Could it be that this bald blue guy has resurrected himself?

He sprang up abruptly from the cold mat, staggering before regaining his balance.

"what did you do to me?"

Ronnie asked in a hoarse voice.

He tried his best to maintain the last shred of dignity belonging to "Firestorm" in front of the blue-haired bald man, but his voice still trembled slightly, "Where is this? What do you want?"

Dr. Manhattan tilted his head slightly at an almost imperceptible angle.

He seemed to be "looking" at Ronnie, or perhaps he was looking through him, gazing at the wall behind Ronnie.

“Time,” Manhattan began, his voice still calm and even, “is what you understand as a chain of cause and effect, but to me, it’s more like… an open book, which you can turn the pages of and reread any page.”

His gaze refocused on Ronnie's face.

“I’m bringing you back, Ronnie Raymond, back to the night you became ‘Firestorm,’ back to where it all started.”

"why?"

Ronnie practically roared it out.

He felt like an insect being manipulated by an invisible giant hand.

Why did you bring me to this godforsaken place? To relive that damn nightmare?

The disaster that devoured his ordinary life and turned him into a walking nuclear reactor is the scar he least wants to touch.

Dr. Manhattan did not answer directly.

He slowly raised a hand that emitted a faint blue light and pointed to the smooth metal wall to Ronnie's right.

“The truth,” Manhattan’s cold voice rang out again, “is often buried deepest at the starting point. You need to see it, you need to understand… why you exist.”

As he finished speaking, the seemingly indestructible metal wall silently became transparent.

Then the view outside the wall flowed into Ronnie's field of vision without any obstruction.

The place outside suddenly became a place etched in his memory—the corridor of the physics laboratory at Hudson University.

The corridor ceiling lights emitted a stark white glow, illuminating the gleaming tiled floor and the tightly closed laboratory doors on either side.

At the end of this corridor, near the stairwell, a figure stood with his back to Ronnie.

The man was wearing a faded brown corduroy jacket, and his figure was slightly thin. His gray hair was neatly combed, and even under the dim corridor lights, he exuded a scholar's neatness and focus.

He was holding a telephone receiver, his head slightly bowed, and whispering into the microphone.

Ronnie's blood seemed to freeze in that instant.

He recognized the figure from behind; it was Professor Martin Stein!
His future partner, the mentor he regarded as his spiritual father, became the only partner who could understand him and support him on this inhuman path after "Firestorm".

What is Professor Stein doing here?

A profound sense of confusion, along with an indescribable unease, gripped Ronnie.

He subconsciously took a step forward, his body almost touching the transparent wall.

His eyes were fixed on that familiar back, trying to glean some information from the slightly swaying shoulders and the lowered head.

"...Yes, the one about the critical energy threshold of particle accelerators..."

Professor Stein's voice came through clearly, no longer the gentle and rational tone he remembered, but with a tense, almost fanatical quality that Ronnie had never heard before.

Ronnie held his breath, his heart pounding heavily in his chest.

"You've read my latest report, haven't you?"

Stein lowered his voice, with an urgency to share the secret, "Combining data on the origins of other superhumans, I repeatedly verified the model... The results are crystal clear: there is a significant positive correlation between the intensity of the incident and the strength of the superpowers that ultimately manifest; the more intense the incident, the more powerful the result!"

"The more intense the competition, the more powerful the outcome."

Upon hearing this, Ronnie was stunned.

It sounds like Professor Stein already knew about the fusion into Firestorm all along?
Before the accident even occurred, the other party was already confidently stating to an unknown person over the phone how to become a firestorm.
Ronnie felt dizzy and instinctively reached out to try to support his swaying body.

My stomach churned, and a chilling fear crept up my spine.

Stein's voice continued.

"...As for the target candidate, Ronnie Raymond...his situation is ideal. The psychological evaluation report shows that the emotional loss caused by his mother's early death is significant, and his relationship with his father...to describe it as 'tense' would be an understatement. Deep down, he has an almost instinctive desire for a stable, wise, and authoritative 'father figure'."

Upon hearing these words, Ronnie felt his breath catch in his throat.

He felt the muscles in his cheeks twitching uncontrollably.

These words... these words exposed the most hidden and vulnerable part of his heart.

His childhood, his mother's departure, the cold and insurmountable chasm between him and his father... these deeply buried wounds were calmly analyzed by Stein on the phone with an almost cold tone to a certain "collaborator".

“This emotional need,” Stein continued calmly, “will be the strongest adhesive for the spiritual bond after the fusion. He needs me, and this ‘need’ itself is the key variable that ensures the stable existence of the ‘Firestorm’ complex.”

He paused, seemingly listening to the words on the other end of the phone, and then uttered a sentence that instantly froze Ronnie's blood:
"Yes, fusion is the core of the plan. I will merge with him, and we will become one superhuman. What other way can we understand the essence of their power better than becoming one of them?"

"Two become one?!"

Upon hearing this, Ronnie staggered back a step.

His back slammed heavily against the cold metal wall behind him, making a dull thud.

For seven years, everything that had sustained Ronnie—the pain and confusion brought about by the all-consuming particle accelerator disaster, the deep dependence and trust built with Stein's consciousness through countless battles and crises—collapsed at this moment.

That was not an accident.

That was never a damn accident!

He, Ronnie Raymond, is not some pathetic creature tormented by fate.

He was a carefully selected experiment!
A perfect goal meticulously designed by the man he regarded as his father, in order to satisfy his cold scientific thirst for knowledge and to "understand the superhuman".

"Do not……"

Ronnie's body slid down the cold wall and curled up in the corner.

He clutched his head tightly with both hands, his fingers digging deep into his fiery red short hair, tearing at it forcefully.

"It can't be real... This is impossible... The theory of superhumans is true?!"

“Professor…Martin…Father…”

At that moment, an overwhelming sense of betrayal swept over Ronnie like a tsunami, instantly overwhelming all reason.

It turns out that the "self" he knew, the "relationships" he cherished, and the "fate" he experienced were all an elaborate deception!

So it turns out I really was created by superhuman theories!

It turns out that my birth was not an accidental explosion, but a deliberate design by Professor Stein!
At this moment, Dr. Manhattan was suspended in the center of the room, with blue light flowing through his body.

He watched Ronnie's breakdown silently, like an detached recorder, coldly witnessing the experimenter's reaction after learning the truth.

The next second, the transparent wall, the replica of the Hudson University corridor outside the wall, and Professor Stein's silhouette, all distorted and rippled violently like the reflection of a stone thrown into water.

The corridor lights stretched and distorted, shattering Stein's figure into countless spots of light. All the scenes seemed to have been wiped away by an invisible giant hand, dissipating into nothingness.

The field of vision was brutally altered.

Ronnie finds himself back on Mars.

An enraged Ronnie abruptly raised his head, his bloodshot eyes instantly locking onto Dr. Manhattan's figure.

It's him!

It was this cold, time-manipulating monster that dragged him into that hellish truth, making him witness firsthand how his entire life had been a meticulously designed deception.

He tore open this bloody wound!
An unprecedented and destructive rage erupted from the depths of Ronnie's soul.

"what!!!"

With that roar, Ronnie's body suddenly erupted with a blinding white light.

The intense light instantly evaporated the crimson dust within a radius of tens of meters into a brief vacuum.

The air was ionized by the extreme heat, producing crackling sounds and a pungent ozone smell.

Ronnie transformed into a blazing white torrent that pierced through the heavens and earth.

Wherever the light stream passed, space twisted violently, emitting a tearing sound as it struggled to withstand the pressure, leaving behind a vacuum trail burning with plasma flames.

Time seemed to be infinitely stretched at this moment.

The gaze of all the heroes on the battlefield was captured by this sudden burst of blazing white light.

"boom!"

The next moment, a powerful energy blast struck the location where Dr. Manhattan was.

After the intense light dissipated, the explosion that had engulfed Dr. Manhattan left only a huge, charred crater.

"Is it over?"

The eagle girl asked in a dry, hoarse voice, her face showing disbelief.

Hal straightened up, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the deep pit, trying to catch any sign of anything unusual with his senses.

There was no heartbeat, no energy fluctuations, no molecular motion... nothing at all.

That perpetual, oppressive blue aura vanished.

Hal's taut jawline relaxed slightly, and a hint of relief, born of extreme exhaustion, was about to creep onto his brow.

Great, it worked this time!
But in that instant, the air froze.

It's not a metaphor; it's solidification in a physical sense.

All the floating dust, the howling sandstorm, and even the white breath exhaled by the heroes were frozen in place for a moment, forming an eerie still image.

Immediately afterwards, the space above the pit began to weave without warning.

First, a few fine, shimmering blue fluorescent threads appeared out of thin air, like the most intricate biological nerve bundles, outlining themselves and intertwining and extending.

Then there are the same blue-glowing, translucent tubular structures—blood vessels—that begin to grow and branch along the framework of the nerve bundles, forming a network.

Within the blue light grid where nerves and blood vessels intertwine, bones begin to form, and then muscle fibers attach to the bones as if they were living things.

Then a beating heart instantly coalesced within the framework of the chest cavity, followed by lungs, liver, kidneys... all the internal organs were generated synchronously within the neurovascular skeleton in a terrifying way that transcends human understanding.

Finally, there's the skin covering the entire body, and the brain inside the skull.

Time seemed to have passed in just a second or two, yet it also felt as if it had frozen for millennia.

When that flawless blue body was once again fully suspended above the crater, the entire Martian battlefield instantly fell into a deathly silence.

Dr. Manhattan, who was subsequently resurrected, slowly opened his eyes.

His pupils calmly swept over each frozen face of the heroes below.

There was no anger, no mockery, but rather a sense of indifference.

An atmosphere of despair began to spread among the many superheroes.

Zatanna's face was filled with disbelief.

This blue bald guy can actually be resurrected like this?

Is even the concept of "death" ineffective against it?

How are they going to fight this monster?

Instinctively, Zatanna grasped the grains of sand Peter had given her.

Even if I die here, I will send the news of what happened here to Peter.

In this way, one's death is not meaningless.

Perhaps sensing something, Dr. Manhattan's gaze finally fell on Zatanna.

Then he slowly raised his right hand.

A soft yet irresistible blue halo, like ripples on water, silently spread out from him.

Wherever the halo of light swept, the space itself seemed to groan under its own weight.

Among all the superheroes, Black Adam was struck as if by an invisible giant hammer. He groaned, the red light in his eyes went out instantly, and his massive body crashed straight backward.

Big Badah's knees buckled, and she collapsed heavily to the ground.

Constantine fell forward like a puppet with its strings cut.

The golden Speed ​​Force lightning around the Flash vanished abruptly, like a candle flame being extinguished, and he collapsed limply.

The light from Green Lantern's ring went out completely, and he was instantly sent flying backward by the impact of the blue light.

Captain Atom maintained his last standing posture, and in the instant the blue light swept past, he collapsed with unfocused eyes.

The raging light emanating from Firestorm (Ronnie) vanished instantly, like flames being extinguished, and he collapsed in horror.

With just a sweep of blue light, the heroes who were just moments before panting and celebrating their victory fell silently to the crimson sand like stalks of wheat swept by a sickle, without a sound.

Dr. Manhattan hovered in the air, watching the fallen superheroes, before slowly extending his hand.

As Dr. Manhattan reached out his hand, a powerful energy locked onto the numerous superheroes.

Just when Zatanna thought the group was about to be wiped out, an extremely faint footstep, almost drowned out by the wind, rang out from the edge of the battlefield.

"Da da!"

The sound wasn't loud, but it pierced through the frozen air with exceptional clarity and reached Zatanna's ears.

For the first time, Dr. Manhattan's gaze paused very subtly.

He slowly turned his gaze toward the source of the sound.

At the edge of the battlefield, a figure was walking steadily, step by step, across the rust-red sand towards the center where the gods had fallen.

"gentlemen?!"

Zatanna froze when she saw Peter approaching.

The other superheroes also stared in shock at Peter, who appeared last.

Compared to the fallen heroes with divine powers around him, Peter looked like an ordinary person who had stumbled into the battlefield.

Peter, dressed in a dark trench coat, without any flashy uniform, simply showed up at the scene.

To the superheroes, Peter's steps were not fast, but unusually steady, with each step carrying a peculiar rhythm.

Moreover, that face looked young, with strong features and a high nose bridge.

His eyes are the most striking feature.

It was an extremely rare, empty azure blue. At this moment, there was no fear in those eyes, no bewilderment in the face of a deity, only an almost cold and hard calmness.

Peter walked to a spot about twenty meters away from Dr. Manhattan and stopped.

This distance was enough for him to clearly see the perfect body of the suspended blue bald head and feel the omnipresent sense of oppression.

This was enough for Dr. Manhattan to see Peter clearly.

Peter then looked up and met Dr. Manhattan's eyes.

A very, very subtle change appeared on Dr. Manhattan's perpetually calm face.

His pupil-less eyes were focused on Peter's face like never before.

"It seems I'm not too late."

Peter shook his head at Dr. Manhattan, then glanced at Zatanna.

Zatanna immediately felt the restraints on her body disappear, and she was instantly filled with power.

Once freed from her bonds, she excitedly flew to Peter's side.

(End of this chapter)