47: Chapter 47 Gluttony!

Inside the shattered office two floors below, Tony Stark struggled to push away the broken glass on his body and raised his head.

"Jarvis... how much time is left on the countdown?" Tony's voice carried a hint of despair.

"Sir, the nuclear missile detonation countdown is fifteen seconds."

Fifteen seconds.

Tony looked at the figure in the black shirt at the edge of the rooftop above. That person had just kicked him away, but now stood calmly in front of the nuclear missile capable of destroying millions of lives.

"What is he trying to do? Dismantle a nuclear missile with his bare hands?" Tony gritted his teeth, attempting to restart the armor's flight system, but the damage was too severe, and the thrusters only sputtered a few electric sparks.

On the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.

Nick Fury and the five Security Council members on the holographic screen were also staring intently at this scene through high-altitude satellites.

"He actually stopped the nuclear missile..." one council member exclaimed in shock.

"It's useless. The detonation sequence is physically locked. As long as the countdown hits zero, Manhattan will still be reduced to ashes. Along with that monster!" another council member said through gritted teeth.

Everyone was waiting for that all-destroying white light to ignite.

On the rooftop.

Lynn looked at the massive metal cylinder in front of him, listening to the faint mechanical countdown coming from inside the missile.

"Three megatons of nuclear fission."

Lynn twisted his neck, a flash of madness and violence in his black eyes. "This appetizer is a decent size."

His right hand released the guidance of the Tesseract's space energy.

"Boom!"

The unconstrained nuclear missile, like a wild horse breaking free, rushed straight toward Lynn's chest with terrifying kinetic energy!

At that very instant.

Lynn's left hand slammed heavily onto the dial of the crimson blood watch.

"Click!"

A blinding red light, like a blood-colored Sun exploding on the rooftop, instantly engulfed both Lynn and the massive nuclear missile.

Within the red light, there was no sound of bones snapping, only the bone-chilling sound of flesh tearing and rapid proliferation.

[Alien Gene Activation: Gluttony Taotie (Devourer Variant)!]

"Squelch!"

A huge, bloated, terrifying mountain of flesh, entirely abyss-dark red, took form on the rooftop with a boom.

It had no eyes, no limbs. Its entire body was one gigantic stomach. And directly in front of its body was an abyssal maw that occupied almost eighty percent of its surface area!

Inside the giant mouth were densely packed tens of thousands of barbed fangs, extending deep into the unseen darkness.

This was the eighth form, an abyssal monster born purely for devouring—Gluttony Taotie.

Just as the nuclear missile was about to collide with it.

Taotie's terrifying abyssal maw, in a way that completely defied the laws of physics, suddenly split backward and expanded to a horrifying degree.

"Snap."

The several-meter-long heavy nuclear missile, without even a chance to spark an explosion, was swallowed whole by this giant mouth.

The upper and lower jaws slammed shut! The sharp fangs locked together like a guillotine.

"Gulp."

Accompanied by an extremely muffled swallowing sound, the three-megaton nuclear missile slid directly down Taotie's bottomless esophagus into its massive, bloated stomach.

The wind stopped.

The rooftop fell into a deathly silence.

Only the faint humming from the wormhole echoed.

"The countdown... is over?"

In the floor below, Tony Stark stared blankly at the radar screen. The signal from the nuclear missile had completely vanished the moment it entered that dark red mountain of flesh.

"Sir, the detonation time has passed." Jarvis's voice was also filled with a rare sense of confusion.

In the Helicarrier command hall, Nick Fury and the council members' brains collectively crashed.

What did they just see?

The ultimate weapon capable of destroying a supercity was... swallowed alive by that monster as if it were a candy bean?!

But a nuclear explosion is a law of physics.

Swallowing it doesn't mean it won't explode.

"Boom—!!!"

An extremely muffled, terrifying roar, as if coming from the depths of the Earth's core, exploded within Taotie!

The three-megaton nuclear fission reaction released instantly inside this abyssal beast's stomach! The temperature of tens of millions of degrees and a shockwave capable of destroying everything frantically tore at Taotie's internal organs.

"Roar..."

Taotie's bloated, dark red body expanded rapidly at the moment of the nuclear explosion, like a hot air balloon being frantically inflated!

Its body surface was illuminated by the extreme heat from within.

The blinding white-blue light of the nuclear explosion shone through the thick blood vessels and muscle textures on its surface, making it look like a blood-colored Sun ready to burst at any moment.

The terrifying radiant heat emanated through Taotie's body, directly melting the concrete floor of the Stark Tower rooftop into glowing red lava.

"He's going to be blown to pieces!" Tony gripped the nearby broken wall tightly, his heart in his throat.

Once that monster is blown apart, the power of the nuclear explosion will still sweep through all of New York.

However.

Taotie's body, expanded to its limit, held firm against this cataclysmic internal explosion.

The barbed stomach walls inside it were constantly vaporized by the tens of millions of degrees of heat, only to be instantly regenerated by the unreasonable, perverse restorative power of the Bloodtrix.

[Warning: Ultra-dangerous level nuclear energy eruption detected!]

[Core Devouring Engine operating at full power!]

[Energy suppression in progress... Assimilating... Purifying...]

The Bloodtrix's cold, mechanical voice frantically scrolled through the depths of Taotie's consciousness.

This abyssal monster was not blown to pieces; instead, it acted like an ultimate energy converter, absorbing every bit of radiation, light energy, heat energy, and kinetic energy generated by the nuclear explosion!

Gradually.

The blinding white light shining through Taotie's body began to dim. Its body, expanded to the extreme, also began to shrink slowly, like a receding tide.

The violent nuclear fission energy was forcefully compressed and domesticated, eventually gathering deep in Taotie's throat, turning into a ball of dark golden high-energy plasma radiating an aura of destruction.

"Burp—"

Taotie opened its abyss-like, fang-filled maw and let out a human-like burp carrying the high heat of nuclear radiation.

A spark sprayed out, instantly burning a Chitauri craft in mid-air to ashes.

Crisis averted.

The most absurd, most violent way to avert it.

The red light flashed again.

The bloated mountain of flesh vanished, and Lynn stood once again on the rooftop melted by the high heat. His black shirt was completely undamaged, but from his chest, a faint, extremely bright, and terrifying dark golden light shone through.

Lynn slowly raised his head.

His black eyes locked firmly onto the Chitauri mothership still hovering behind the wormhole in the sky.

"The appetizer is finished."

Lynn stroked his burning chest, feeling the compressed nuclear energy within him capable of destroying a continental shelf, and a crazed, violent grin spread across his face.

"Now, it's my turn to spit a nuclear warhead."