Duval looked at Coulson’s innocent face, feeling that the man lacked any real sincerity.
“Coulson, we might not be friends, but at the very least, I hope you won’t use such terrible rhetoric to fool me.” Duval looked at Coulson with a strange expression.
“You’re SHIELD—a global organization with an ancient history whose actions have directly shaped human history, not an agency formed just last century like the rumors claim…
So, do I really need to spell it out for you?” Duval had researched this world.
If Mutants didn’t exist, it would be simple enough.
But with Mutants involved, matters tied to Eternals and Deviants became far more complicated.
Looking across the Multiverse, the origin of Mutants was almost always the same: Deviants.
Unless this was an extremely rare exception, Duval had every reason to deduce that the Mutants of this universe shared the exact same origin in those long-extinct Deviants.
The Celestials conducted experiments on countless living planets, creating two opposing races—Eternals and Deviants—and conducting judgments at regular intervals.
Races that passed survived; those that failed were wiped out.
A prime example was the Skrulls.
As a branch of Deviants on their homeworld, they wiped out their planet’s Eternals, passed the Celestials’ judgment, and grew into one of the three great star empires dominating the galaxy today.
Then the Skrulls got arrogant.
They and their Skrull deities tried to do to the Kree what the Celestials had done to them, but it backfired completely.
With their unwitting help, the Kree rose at an astonishing speed and became their greatest enemy.
Earth’s Eternals and Deviants were no different, both created by the Celestials.
Long before Ikaris and his group of Eternals, there was an even older batch of Eternals and Deviants who ruled Earth long before humanity, establishing a powerful civilization twenty thousand years ago that directly shaped Earth’s history!
Many years ago, when humans were still primitive, the Celestials selected Earth as a massive test site.
They created Eternals with perfect genes—Thanos’s ancestors—and Deviants with infinite mutation genes, who served as the distant ancestors of Mutants.
Twenty thousand years ago, Earth was an era where Eternals and Deviants ruled everything.
Back then, Deviants were intelligent beings capable of developing technology, building cities, and constructing starships—nothing like the wild-dog-like “Deviants” that Ikaris and the eleven Eternals fought later.
The two races fought a war for supremacy over Earth.
The outcome was strikingly similar to the Skrulls: the Deviants with infinite mutation genes won.
The Eternals with perfect genes lost and fled Earth to Titan.
During their migration, they were attacked by the Kree Empire, one of the galaxy’s three major empires.
Many were dissected on operating tables for live experiments, giving birth to another human offshoot—the Inhumans, now residing on the Moon under the leadership of the Skyfather-level powerhouse Black Bolt.
The Deviants won a Pyrrhic victory, but before they could enjoy the fruits of conquest, the Celestials judged them a flawed product and wiped them out.
Though the Deviants were exterminated, their mutation genes survived by chance in the feeble humans of that era.
Passed down through generations, they eventually became Mutants.
This was a monumental event twenty thousand years ago that altered the course of Earth’s history.
Without it, Mutants wouldn’t exist today.
Conversely, as long as Mutants existed, it meant this world must have once had extinct Deviants with infinite mutation genes.
As for the chain of events that followed—such as the void left by the destruction of both races allowing the high demon Zarathos to invade Earth; to fight the demon, numerous Spirits of Vengeance rained down from the sky in a shower of fire, one of which bonded with a motorcycle rider years later to become Ghost Rider…
Major events like the rise of the Mutant Apocalypse, the gods of Yggdrasil uniting a thousand years ago to face a squad of Celestials, Zhang Heng of the Eastern Han Dynasty delivering a Celestial baby, Leonardo da Vinci forging solar armor to launch into the sun and drive off a juvenile Celestial, and SPEAR splitting from SHIELD—all traced back to the conflict between Eternals and Deviants.
And Thanos slaughtering Titan, nearly wiping out the Earth-originated Eternals, was even more so.
Therefore, when Duval learned Mutants existed on Earth in this universe, he was already prepared.
He continuously gathered data, looking for traces hidden in history’s corners.
How could SHIELD—one of the two main branches of the Brotherhood of the Shield, a global superhuman organization established by Zhang Heng back in the Eastern Han Dynasty—know nothing about Deviants?
Fine, even if SHIELD didn’t understand the main branch of Deviants wiped out by Celestials twenty thousand years ago…
after all, few knew humans were once lesser beings under Eternals and Deviants…
didn’t they know about the low-grade, wild-dog-like Deviants unleashed on Earth by Arishem over the past few thousand years?
These eleven Eternals were manufactured tools, repeatedly memory-wiped by Arishem and used as weapons against low-grade Deviants.
Could SHIELD really have failed to detect them, leaving no records at all?
Don’t make me laugh.
At this, Coulson’s expression completely changed.
“This isn’t right.” Coulson frowned, staring into Duval’s eyes.
“I don’t understand.
We checked all our records and confirmed you’re just an intelligent scientist.
There’s no way you could access information at this level!” “Why?” “Because of platforms.
You’ve never stood on a platform that high.
There’s no reason you could obtain things buried deep in history.” “Then, Coulson, is it possible that everything you found about me was simply what I *wanted* you to see?” Duval gave a faint smile.
Coulson fell silent.
He still believed Duval was talking nonsense, but that logically conflicted with the fact that Duval possessed secret information.
After a moment, Coulson concluded he couldn’t dig Duval’s secrets out of his mouth, so he shifted his probing toward the Deviants: “If I’m not mistaken, Fly-Boy isn’t one of those giant reptilian Deviants?” “If you mean the Deviants that appeared over the past few thousand years, then no, they’re not the same thing,” Duval replied in a way that seemed puzzling.
But Coulson understood instantly, a look of immense shock surging in his eyes.
Absurd!
Duval actually knew about the Deviants that once briefly ruled Earth?!
That was twenty thousand years ago—even SHIELD, with its ancient heritage, knew very little about that period!
“I will report our conversation truthfully.
So this is part of your confidence.
I just wonder: do you have a reliable intelligence source, or did you personally live through many major events in human history?” Coulson was thoroughly intrigued by Duval.
He decided to comb through SHIELD’s archives upon returning, searching for any subtle traces of Duval in historical records.
Yes, he suspected Duval was a historical figure who possessed extreme longevity and had lived into modern times.
This wasn’t unheard of.
For example, Azazel, the demonic mutant valued by Magneto, was an old fellow who had lived five or six thousand years, from the era of Apocalypse all the way to the present day.
Duval shrugged and made a gesture for him to do as he pleased.
Coulson weighed his words carefully: “Since Fly-Boy isn’t a Deviant, that’s the best outcome.
Otherwise, things would get troublesome.
You know what I’m talking about, right?
The true Deviants of ancient times are extinct; the ones over the last few thousand years were just reptilian creatures—let me call them ‘Deviants’ for convenience.
That’s fine.” Duval nodded in understanding.
If Fly-Boy was truly an ancient, intelligent Deviant with infinite mutation genes from twenty thousand years ago, it would be a massive problem.
Don’t forget, there was a group of dangerous Mutants on Earth who were also tracing their origins to prove they were superior to humans, and they might have already found some clues.