Chen Mo plunged into the East River like a heavy torpedo, the bone-chilling current instantly enveloping his entire body.
To him, this feeling was not only not uncomfortable but actually as intimate as returning to the womb.
Underwater, he didn’t need to control his breathing as cautiously as he did on land, nor did he need to feign that sickening heroic smile.
He sliced through the waves, his figure like an arrow released from the string, heading straight for the coordinates only he knew.
Ten minutes later, he arrived under a hidden pier at the dock.
In the crevice of a reef covered in barnacles, he reached out, his fingertips touching a cold, hard metallic sensation.
It was the “trophy” he had secretly hidden before, a vial of Compound V in a waterproof bag.
“Hey, old pal.” A faint, high-frequency sound rang in his ears.
A round porpoise swam over nimbly, affectionately rubbing its forehead against Chen Mo’s shoulder.
It was a regular in these waters and Chen Mo’s most loyal sentry in the sea.
Chen Mo patted the porpoise’s slippery skin, a sincere smile appearing on the corners of his mouth.
“Keep an eye on this place for me, buddy.
If anyone gets close, remember to signal me.” The porpoise flicked its tail happily and dove into deep water.
Chen Mo carried the box, propelling himself at full speed along the seabed, his body as light as a blue bolt of lightning.
He avoided the busy shipping lanes and the bottoms of cargo ships with surging undercurrents.
Relying on instinct and the precise underwater map in his brain, he bypassed the complex water systems of Manhattan in less than an hour and returned to the quiet harbor located on the edge of the Montauk Peninsula.
With a splash, he climbed ashore from the steep rocks behind the gray stone house.
The sea breeze was still cold, but Chen Mo’s heart was burning hot.
He carried the heavy waterproof bag and walked quickly into the lonely building.
“Caw!” A plump seagull had already been waiting on the second-floor windowsill.
Seeing him enter the room, it immediately flapped its wings and landed on the old wooden table in the living room, staring at him with that self-righteous look.
It was Fries.
“Got it, plenty for you.” Chen Mo casually tossed an energy bar he had swiped on the way.
Fries caught it precisely and chirped twice in satisfaction.
He didn’t bother to change out of his wet quick-dry bodysuit and walked straight to the small south-facing bedroom on the second floor.
He had set this place up as a simple experimental area.
He took a deep breath, calming his breathing that was slightly labored from the rapid swimming, and then solemnly opened the waterproof bag.
That deep blue Compound V, emitting an eerie and charming glow in the dark, lay quietly in the pressure-resistant tube.
“Whether I become a god or ash, it all depends on this one shot.” Chen Mo gave a wry smile.
He knew that this stuff was essentially highly toxic, the kind with a very low survival rate, otherwise Vought wouldn’t use it on newborns in the intensive care unit.
But he also knew that the “trickling” Telekinesis in his brain was extremely hungry for this violent fuel.
He took out a clean syringe he had prepared long ago, his hand as steady as a statue.
The needle pierced the rubber stopper, slowly draining that tube of deep, profound blue.
Chen Mo sat on the creaky wooden chair and placed his left arm flat on the table.
He tore open his skin with his hand, blood streaking down his arm and dripping onto the floor, splashing up.
The needle pierced his vein, and he pressed the cold plunger all the way down.
Boom!
Only three seconds later, an indescribable, agonizing pain, like ten thousand ants devouring his heart, instantly swept through his entire body from his veins.
That was the sound of his genes being violently dismantled and reorganized.
Chen Mo’s pupils changed from their original deep blue to an eerie bright purple in an instant, the veins on his forehead bulging, and his blood vessels seemed about to burst through his skin.
“Ah!!!” He couldn’t help but roar in a low voice.
The severe pain receded like a tide; it came fast and went just as fast.
Chen Mo’s fingers, which were gripping the edge of the wooden table tightly, slowly loosened, his nails leaving five deep marks on the solid tabletop.
He gasped for breath, sweat mixed with salty seawater dripping from his chin onto the floor.
The “tap, tap” sound was particularly jarring in the dead-silent stone house.
“Hoo…
hoo…” He closed his eyes, sinking into his mind with high expectations.
He had expected to see a collapsed dam or a tsunami of Psychic Power.
He was even prepared to accept it even if this power caused his brain to crash.
However, when he tried to mobilize that Psychic Power again, his expression froze.
Drip, drip, trickle, trickle.
That Telekinesis was still like an old man with an enlarged prostate, squeezing out slowly and unhurriedly from a narrow crevice.
There was no overwhelming force, no earth-shattering power.
Even the purple pupils that had been agitated by the pain just moments ago faded back to their original light blue within a few short seconds.
“What’s going on?” Chen Mo stood up abruptly and grabbed at the air with his right hand.
A chair not far away wobbled twice and floated up slowly, the speed of its movement no different from before he injected the serum.
“This shouldn’t be…” He looked at the empty test tube in his hand, somewhat incredulous.
This was highly pure Compound V, enough to instantly turn an adult into a monster or ash.
But apart from the near-fatal pain just now, his body hadn’t evolved at all, and there wasn’t even a noticeable increase in physical fitness.
You have to know, even if Superhumans inject Compound V again, they will experience a short-term strengthening of their body.
But he felt like he had filled a supercar with a full tank of top-grade aviation kerosene, only to find that the engine’s air intake was only as big as a pinhole; he had the energy, but it couldn’t burn.
“Caw.” Fries hopped on the table, tilted its head to look at him, then looked down at the empty tube, and let out a mocking caw.
“Shut up, Fries.” Chen Mo sat back down on the chair dejectedly and wiped his face.
He suddenly realized a terrifying fact: The current Compound V was useless to him.
Perhaps his current body had already undergone a transformation because of The Deep’s ability, or perhaps it was the uniqueness caused by his transmigration.
This low-spec version of Compound V had too low a purity and simply couldn’t break the locked restrictions in his genes, let alone widen that narrow psychic channel.
If his Telekinesis were compared to a nuclear reactor, then the current Compound V wouldn’t even count as a match.
“If that’s the case…” Chen Mo’s eyes gradually became deep.
He thought of V24, that forbidden potion with a mortality rate of 995 per thousand.
Compound V is not immutable; the current mass-produced version sacrifices too much of its upper limit for the sake of stability and control.
And in this world, there is another thing called V24.
That was the original solution that Frederick Vought first developed in a Nazi concentration camp, the mother of all power.
Homelander became several times stronger than other Superhumans because of it; that was the truly uncastrated “god’s blood” capable of reshaping life.
Chen Mo stood up and walked to the broken window.
The sea breeze howled into the room, ruffling his hair, which was dampened by sweat.
Although his Telekinesis hadn’t undergone a qualitative change, he keenly sensed a slight abnormality in his body.
He looked down at his left arm.
The wound he had torn open with his own hand to find a vein had already completely closed, leaving only a line of light pink new flesh, which disappeared completely within a few seconds.
Chen Mo was stunned for a moment, then helplessly mocked himself: “Looks like this thing didn’t help me become a Superman, but it did strengthen my self-healing ability?
Fine, at least when I get slapped to death by Homelander in the future, I can hold on for two more seconds.” CREATORS’ THOUGHTS Noct_Veyr Enjoying the story?