"Very good," said Professor X, seeing his students had finally understood and accepted his decision. He breathed a long sigh of relief.
"Logan, go reassure the students outside, and don't spread what happened today for now."
"Yes, Professor." The three answered and left the office respectfully.
When the door closed, only Professor X, Lucci, and Hulk remained, and the atmosphere fell silent.
Professor X wheeled himself over to Lucci, his face showing hesitation, expectation, and deep... plea.
"Prince Lucci..." he began, his tone solemn. "I have... a reluctant request. In this school... there has always been a great threat that could explode at any time. For years, it has tormented me, and I have done everything possible to suppress it... I don't know... Do you have a way to solve it?"
His eyes were full of hope. After witnessing Lucci's godlike powers, a spark of hope he had never dared hold before quietly ignited in his heart.
But before he could specify what the "threat" was, Lucci's indifferent voice had already sounded.
"You mean... Jean, right?"
Boom—
This sentence hit Professor X's mind like a nuclear bomb! His whole body stiffened instantly; his wheelchair froze. He looked up at Lucci in shock.
"How... how could you possibly know?" he cried out. The "thing" inside Jean's body was one of his greatest secrets—and his greatest fear. To protect Jean and the world, he had used his powerful psychic abilities to build layer upon layer of spiritual barriers in Jean's consciousness, sealing that force away. Only he himself knew about it!
But now, Lucci had revealed it so lightly, in just a few words. How... how did he know?
Professor X's expression was almost too shocked to bear. Lucci smiled and slowly extended his right hand.
Buzz—
A wisp of golden-red flame, seemingly made of the purest light and heat, quietly burned in his palm. This flame wasn't hot, but warm and peaceful, filled with boundless vitality. Yet deep within that vitality was the ultimate power of destruction, capable of burning everything and ending the universe itself! Life and death, creation and destruction—these two opposite laws were unified perfectly within this tiny wisp of flame!
The moment Professor X saw this flame, his soul trembled uncontrollably! In front of it, his psychic power felt like ice and snow before a blazing sun—instinctively, deeply... afraid! He could feel that if this flame wished, it could erase his soul and psychic presence from the universe in an instant!
While Professor X was still stunned by this uncontrollable power, Lucci's voice sounded slowly.
"The reason you can't release the force inside her is because you never truly understood it. But I..."
Lucci gazed at the pulsing Origin True Fire in his palm, speaking lightly, "As it happens, my true form... is the Phoenix."
"!"
Professor X's mind blanked out. The Phoenix itself? He stared at the divine golden-red flame in Lucci's hand, sensing the same source as the Phoenix Force, but purer, older, more absolute. The only answer that made sense floated through his mind—Lucci was telling the truth!
A wave of stronger ecstasy and excitement swept through Professor Charles Xavier. "Then... you really can solve Jean's problem? You... you can save her?"
Lucci put the Origin True Fire away and nodded indifferently. "Let's go try. You'll see."
…
On the Lawn
From afar, Professor X and Hulk stopped at the lawn's edge, all eyes focusing on the red-haired girl quietly reading on the swing alone. Her face was delicate and beautiful, her temperament quiet and melancholic—like an elf untouched by the fireworks of the world.
Yes, it was Jean Grey.
Lucci approached alone, walking slowly toward Jean on the swing. Sensing someone approaching, Jean looked up to see a man with an unearthly aura. She didn't know him, yet for some reason, the moment she saw him, she felt not the slightest wariness, but rather an inexplicable intimacy, as if a tired bird had returned to its forest, a fish to the sea.
She was drawn to him, as if by fate.
Lucci stopped before Jean and gazed at her silently, his eyes as deep as a cosmic sea. In his perception, a grand cosmic epic was unfolding within the girl's body. Deep at the core of her spiritual consciousness, inside a labyrinth of psychic barriers, he "saw" an immense, tyrannical, primal being full of life and destruction... sealed away—a strange existence! It was a divine bird made of pure golden-red cosmic energy: the Phoenix Force! The embodiment of the universe's "life and emotion," the authority of "creation and destruction"!
At this moment, the force was sealed by Professor X's barriers, yet it still roared and clashed, making the barriers tremble violently. Lucci knew this suppression was just to buy time. As Jean grew, her emotions and powers would grow stronger, making the Phoenix Force ever more violent. One day, it would break free of all cages. By then, it would no longer be Jean Grey before the world, but—Dark Phoenix.
"This seal is truly exquisite," Lucci murmured, giving Professor X some credit. To build such a complex psychic prison without harming Jean's consciousness—Charles was indeed a supreme psychic master. It was a pity he knew only how to suppress, not how to guide.
Jean, a bit shy and uneasy at Lucci's deep gaze, curled up unconsciously, clutching her book. "Um... excuse me, do you need something?" she asked softly.
Lucci smiled gently, his smile like a spring breeze, instantly melting Jean's nervousness. "Hello, Jean Grey." His voice seemed to carry a strange magic, soothing Jean's soul. "Don't be afraid, I mean you no harm."
His eyes seemed to pierce through her body, staring directly at the flame deep within her soul. "Inside you... is a very interesting power."
Jean's mind went blank for a moment! She had a power? She didn't even know that! All her life, she'd thought she was just a slightly more sensitive girl than others, with no superpowers at all!
Seeing her stunned look, Lucci continued, "To protect you and the world, Professor Charles used his own power to seal that force inside you. But, Jean, you need to understand—sealing isn't the best solution."
His confident gaze invited her soul to accept, "Would you like... to truly learn to control it? To let it become a part of you, not a prisoner locked in your body?"
These words left Jean completely confused. She unconsciously looked to the familiar figure at the lawn's edge—Professor X. In response to her puzzled gaze, Professor Charles smiled with encouragement and nodded heavily. That confirmed it.
Most of Jean's doubts melted away. She turned back to Lucci, feeling the warmth and kindness radiating from him, as if embraced by a flame. Unknowingly, an unprecedented courage rose in her heart.
She wanted to know what was inside her. She wanted to know what it would feel like to control that power.
Under Lucci's calm gaze, the girl who'd lived in confusion and repression for so long, for the first time, followed her inner desire. She looked at Lucci and nodded solemnly. "I... I want to try."
A satisfied smile appeared on Lucci's lips—at that very moment!
Extraordinary comprehension—activate!
Lucci's consciousness instantly traversed the material dimension. He didn't rudely break Professor X's psychic barriers. In his current, infinitely vast mind, there were no secrets inside that "wall" of pure psychic power. His divine thought easily pierced through the complex psychic labyrinth, delving directly into Jean's spiritual consciousness!
There, he directly contacted the sealed, most primordial, pure, and violent... Phoenix Force! An endless sea of golden-red energy flames—full of anger, destruction, the will to burn everything, and majestic life force to create and birth all things. This was the Phoenix Force in its purest state—chaotic, contradictory. Any ordinary person, even a psychic master, would have been incinerated by contact with the core of this sea of flames!
But Lucci was no ordinary person. He was the Phoenix!
His infinite mind was on par with the universe itself. When this violent force contacted his deep, vast divine consciousness, not only did it do him no harm, it even began to reveal its core secrets to him, as if unconsciously drawn to a higher existence!
His comprehension soared at a terrifying speed!
In an instant, Lucci's consciousness was swept into a grand, epic fantasy world. He "saw":
From endless chaos and darkness, a singularity exploded and the universe was born! Countless nebulae converged and spun under the force of gravity, eventually igniting the fire of nuclear fusion to become the first bright star. Then a second, a third... Hundreds of millions of stars lit up the dark curtain of the universe with endless light and heat.
This was... creation!
He saw, again and again, the evolution of life: primitive organic molecules forming the first self-replicating life, from single-celled to multicellular, from ocean to land, from simple fungi to complex plants and animals. Life's flame on Earth evolved unstoppably, flourishing madly.
This was... life!
He witnessed massive stars reaching the end of their lifespan, swelling into red giants, devouring all nearby planets, and finally collapsing in a brilliant supernova, scattering heavy elements into space to nourish the next generation of stars and life.
This was... destruction!
He saw flourishing worlds wiped out by catastrophe, their surfaces covered in fire and ash, most species annihilated—yet, in the silence and ruin, stubborn new life survived, adapted, evolved, and rebuilt stronger than before.
This was... rebirth!
The birth and death of stars, the evolution and extinction of life, the expansion and eventual collapse of the universe!
Lucci's consciousness seemed to merge with the cosmos itself, experiencing the birth, rise, decline, and end—and then new beginnings! Endless cycles, with neither start nor finish!
"So that's... the truth..." Lucci's mind slowly returned from the grand vision, his eyes shining with the divine light of insight into the origin of all things!
He fully understood the essence of the Phoenix Force. It wasn't simply "power" or "energy"—it was the "herald" of the universe itself! The supreme authority born from the universe to maintain its own "activity" and "evolution"—the force that burns away the old and stagnant, and creates new, vibrant life on the ashes of destruction!
The "Terminator" and "Nourisher" of the cosmos!
And Jean Grey had, by chance, been chosen as the vessel of this cosmic authority—like a child without a driver's license forced into the cockpit of a cosmic warship. The result, naturally, was chaos and destruction.
Now that Lucci had penetrated to the origin of the Phoenix Force, controlling Jean Grey was as easy as turning his hand. After all, the core of his "Origin True Fire" method was purification and harmony—both methods being interpretations and applications of the cosmic laws of "life" and "destruction."
But the difference was—the Phoenix Force was the product of the universe's "natural" evolution: vast, primal, violent, and full of chaos and unpredictability. Lucci's "Origin True Fire Marvelous Art" was a "way" he had analyzed and created at the level of the Path, using his own supreme wisdom!
...
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