A New World Beyond Imagination
"Uh…"
"No, no, I'm fine. What could possibly be wrong with me?" Su Xiu shook his head, fighting to maintain his composure as the stunning girl's enthusiasm washed over him like a tidal wave. His heart drummed against his ribcage, the unfamiliar sensation of being wanted—of being seen—still foreign to him after all these days of isolation.
"Hehe~" Gwen's laugh tinkled like wind chimes in a gentle breeze.
"If you're fine, then let's go out and walk around, yeah?" She stuck out her tongue playfully, a gesture that somehow managed to be both childish and captivating at once. The morning sunlight streaming through the apartment windows caught in her honey-blonde hair, creating a halo effect that made Su Xiu momentarily forget to breathe. "My dad said I should take you out to get familiar with New York. Can't have you cooped up in the apartment all the time. If you don't go, he's gonna blame me again~"
Before he could even formulate a refusal—before his brain could process the anxiety of stepping into an unknown world filled with threats he couldn't yet quantify—she grabbed his hand. Her fingers were warm against his skin, surprisingly strong despite their delicate appearance.
"Yaaah…" She tugged him toward the door with determined enthusiasm. "You'll grow mold if you stay in the apartment too long…"
Her soft voice kept ringing in his ears, the gentle cadence oddly soothing despite his reservations. The faint, pleasant scent emanating from her—something like vanilla mixed with spring flowers—was enough to make anyone's mind wander into dangerous territory.
But! Come on now!!
Would Su Xiu really be the kind of guy who loses his composure the moment a pretty face shows interest? He'd faced down hordes of the undead, navigated dimensional rifts, and survived a complete transplantation into a foreign universe. A charming smile shouldn't be his undoing.
Yet here he was, pulse quickening.
"Huh? So, big cousin, are you coming or not?"
Gwen tilted her head, her gemstone-like eyes—green with flecks of gold near the pupils—looking straight at Su Xiu. Her gaze seemed to pierce through his carefully constructed defenses, reaching the vulnerable core he'd spent years protecting. For a moment, he felt transparent under that earnest examination.
"Of course…" The words escaped before his rational mind could intercept them. "I'm coming!!"
Su Xiu replied decisively, immediately regretting how eager he sounded. A flush of warmth spread across his face.
Don't get it twisted~
He definitely wasn't being seduced by her looks or the way her nose crinkled when she smiled. He was just... well, bored. Going out was merely to kill time, to gather intelligence on this bizarre world of superheroes and villains. Nothing more.
The system was undergoing its second invasion cycle and couldn't be activated for now. Red Queen was still integrating data and working on global network coverage—she'd estimated another seventeen hours before completion. Staying cooped up in the apartment served no tactical purpose. He might as well take this chance to go out and reconnoiter, gather firsthand information that couldn't be gleaned from television or the internet.
Besides…
He hadn't really been outside at all since transmigrating! Three weeks of cautious isolation, observing this new reality from behind glass and screens.
Now that the T-virus enhancement had stabilized in his system, giving him the power to protect himself should trouble arise, it was time to go out and see this world with his own eyes. To touch it, smell it, understand it beyond abstract data.
He was curious about the dazzling world of Western superheroes that had previously existed only in fiction for him—now somehow his bizarre reality.
He couldn't just hide away in his apartment forever, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, fooling himself into thinking that ignorance would somehow equate to safety.
"Maybe…" The thought crystallized in his mind. "This is an opportunity."
With a new determination behind his eyes—a look that had made hardened soldiers step back in his previous life—Su Xiu stepped forward, almost like crossing a threshold into a new era of his existence.
"Aiyaaa~" The dramatic moment shattered instantly. "Big cousin, are you coming or not? We'll be late!" Gwen called from the doorway, one foot already in the hallway, her impatience evident in the rapid tapping of her sneaker against the floor.
"I'm coming, I'm coming…" Su Xiu muttered, a comedic black line of exasperation forming on his forehead as he wiped off imaginary sweat. So much for his moment of profound reflection.
After a clumsy scramble for his jacket and a final check that his new smartphone was in his pocket—the system might be offline, but basic communication remained essential—the two of them soon found themselves on the bustling streets of New York.
——
Neon lights. Excess and extravagance.
Though it was still daytime and not yet showing the full decadence of nighttime New York…
The towering glass buildings gleaming with multicolored reflections under the sun were impressive in their own right. Stark Tower dominated the skyline to the east, its distinctive architecture announcing the ego of its owner as clearly as any billboard could have.
Thanks to all sorts of advanced tech—quantum computing interfaces, holographic advertisements that responded to passers-by, self-driving vehicles that navigated with preternatural smoothness—the streets in this superhero-filled world had a futuristic edge that went beyond anything Su Xiu had seen in his original timeline.
Occasionally, he'd spot something truly extraordinary: a figure soaring overhead in what appeared to be experimental flight gear, or a street performer manipulating small objects with what could only be telekinesis. This wasn't just an alternate Earth—it was Earth with the cosmic difficulty settings cranked up to maximum.
Skyscrapers rose one after another, their glass facades reflecting clouds and neighboring buildings in a kaleidoscope of urban geometry.
And the streets teemed with people who seemed to have stepped out of fashion magazines—everywhere you looked, men and women who would have been considered exceptional specimens in Su Xiu's original world went completely unnoticed here. Was it something in the water? Genetic engineering? Or simply the statistical probability that in a city of millions, the beautiful would naturally congregate in its trendiest districts?
But honestly…
The most eye-catching pair among them all were the two sitting by the window in a upscale café on Fifth Avenue: Gwen and Su Xiu.
The girl had killer curves that her casual outfit—jeans and a simple blue top—did nothing to hide, fair skin that seemed to glow from within, mischievous eyes that constantly darted about taking in every detail, and an energetic beauty that made her look like a snow elf from Nordic mythology suddenly dropped into modern civilization.
And the guy beside her stood out even more prominently—
Not just incredibly handsome in that classical way that transcended cultural preferences, but also exuding a certain aura of controlled danger that made it difficult for people to look away. Something ancient and primal in human instinct recognized a predator in their midst, though a civilized one who chose to sip his coffee rather than hunt.
"Tsk~" Gwen's tongue clicked against her teeth in mock annoyance.
"Big cousin, so many people are checking you out!" She tapped her coffee cup with a spoon, creating a series of delicate chimes that matched her irritated rhythm. Her voice carried a subtle hint of jealousy she didn't even seem to recognize in herself—a possessiveness that had developed with surprising speed given their short acquaintance.
In just the thirty minutes they'd been seated,
Several attractive women had already approached their table under various pretexts—asking for directions, "accidentally" dropping something nearby, or simply being direct with phone numbers scrawled on napkins or business cards slid across the table with meaningful glances.
"Ahem…" Su Xiu coughed awkwardly, eyeing the small collection of contact information that had accumulated beside his untouched pastry.
He hadn't expected Americans to be this forward and friendly! In his original world, this kind of attention might have come from years of status-building or achievements. Here, it seemed offered freely, without the same social constraints he was accustomed to navigating.
The T-virus evolution, enhanced martial arts capabilities, and his mastery of the Navy Six Styles had caused Su Xiu to unconsciously emit an aura—one that drew attention wherever he went, like moths to flame.
It was the primal instinct buried deep in human genes: an attraction to more evolved, superior beings. The same instinct that caused people to gather around superheroes, even when it meant potential danger. Humans couldn't help but orbit those who represented the next step in their own potential evolution.
Only when Su Xiu deliberately suppressed his presence—a technique he'd learned for stealth operations in his previous life—did the attention subside somewhat. But even then, his striking features and the graceful economy of his movements marked him as someone extraordinary.
But when it came to bold women making direct moves, there wasn't much he could do without being unnecessarily rude. And rudeness wasn't strategic when trying to blend into a new environment.
"Oh yeah~" Gwen suddenly perked up, clearly searching for a new topic.
"Big cousin, what do you think… about the Dimensional Invasion?" She nodded toward the large screen mounted on the café wall, where footage from the recent incident was playing on repeat—Iron Man blasting through a horde of zombies, Captain America's shield ricocheting between undead attackers, the Black Widow executing ballet-like maneuvers while dispatching enemies with clinical precision.
Maybe trying to break the awkward tension created by the parade of admirers, she'd brought up what she knew would divert his attention. Smart girl.
And honestly—
The Dimensional Invasion was the hottest topic of conversation everywhere. Everyone was talking about it—young, old, male, female, superhuman, baseline human alike.
Just in the café, half the patrons were already engaged in animated discussions about it, and a good portion of the remainder were discussing how the aftereffects were impacting their work, their investments, their very sense of security in a world that had suddenly expanded to include other dimensions...
Not just in the café. Even on the streets they'd just walked through, snippets of conversation about the invasion had filled the air like a new form of ambient noise:
"Iron Man is just too awesome! Mowing down zombies like a boss—truly our superhero!" A college-aged boy in a Stark Industries t-shirt gushed to his friends, mimicking repulsor blast movements with his hands.
"Hero? Don't forget about the reward he got. That T-virus tech could cause the end of the world in the wrong hands. The military asked him to hand it over, and he literally took out a full-page ad in the Times to say no. Unreal…" His more cynical companion countered, pushing up wire-rimmed glasses.
"Hmph! Give me a break! Everyone knows what the military's like these days. Better in Stark's hands than theirs, honestly." A woman in business attire had interjected without breaking stride, clutching her designer briefcase like a shield.
"Who was that gorgeous woman who charged into the zombie horde alone with just two pistols?! That's my new goddess, no debate!" A taxi driver called out his window to a hot dog vendor, who nodded vigorously in agreement.
"Hey Carl! You sneaky bastard! You took a screenshot during the livestream? That was her shining moment! Send me a copy, now!" Two office workers in rumpled suits, huddled over a phone near a subway entrance.
"Biotech stocks are skyrocketing… seventeen companies just hit their daily limit. Buy them all, now!!" A Wall Street type barked into his Bluetooth earpiece, pacing frantically outside a brokerage firm.
Thanks to his T-virus-enhanced body,
Su Xiu's hearing had become almost superhuman in its sensitivity. He could catch conversations from hundreds of meters away, filtering and focusing on specific voices in the urban cacophony as easily as tuning a radio.
His brain processed everything rapidly, turning random chatter into a stream of clear, sorted intelligence—all about reactions to the invasion system. The patterns were emerging: fear mixed with excitement, opportunity intertwined with danger, humanity once again proving its remarkable adaptability in the face of paradigm shifts.
Good reactions or bad didn't particularly matter to him.
One thing was absolutely certain beyond any shadow of doubt:
The system had already brought irreversible changes to this world. No one—not governments, not corporations, not even the vaunted superheroes themselves—could ignore it or return to the status quo ante. The dimensional barrier had been breached, and with it, humanity's comfortable illusion of cosmic isolation.
"Dimensional Invasion? What do I think?"
Su Xiu's tone was deliberately cryptic, his eyes momentarily unfocused as he gazed beyond Gwen, beyond the café, into possibilities only he could see.
"Maybe…" He took a measured sip of his coffee, savoring the rich bitterness.
"It'll bring about an entirely new world—one far beyond our imagination!"
It was driving evolution forward at an unprecedented pace. Technology, biology, psychology—all the foundations of human civilization were being rewritten in real-time.
No one could predict how far these changes would go or where they would ultimately lead. The butterfly effect was in full force, each small adjustment causing ripples that would eventually become tsunamis of transformation.
To be honest, Su Xiu hoped the world would grow stronger through these trials. That superheroes could gain reward after reward from the invasions and keep leveling up their abilities and technologies. That would create a positive feedback loop: greater strength → tougher invasions → greater rewards → even greater strength again…
With his hundredfold boost from being the system's anchor point, he never worried about others gaining ground too quickly. The playing field might be leveling somewhat, but he'd always be steps ahead, able to win the most crucial battles while appearing to hardly try.
"A whole new world, huh…" Gwen muttered, her finger absently tracing the rim of her cup as she contemplated her own emerging superpowers—abilities she'd only recently discovered and had yet to fully control or understand. The invasion had awakened something in her that both thrilled and terrified her.
"To embrace that world, we need an entirely new mindset," Su Xiu continued, warming to the topic now. "We need to let go of outdated thinking patterns and step into something brand new, something that acknowledges that humanity is part of a much larger cosmic ecosystem. It's a chance like no other to redefine what it means to be human!"
"It's the best of times… and the worst of times." He concluded with a half-smile, the literary reference not lost on Gwen, whose eyes sparkled with recognition.
With that ice thoroughly broken,
The two began chatting more freely about everything from dimensional theory to the best pizza places in Queens. The atmosphere between them grew more lively by the second, the initial awkwardness melting away like morning frost under the sun.
Gwen's laughter rang out like silver bells, drawing appreciative glances from nearby tables. A few of Su Xiu's dry observations about superhero fashion choices—particularly Thor's cape and its impracticality in modern urban warfare—had her in stitches.
The two were getting closer—literally and figuratively. Gwen, laughing so hard she nearly toppled sideways, unintentionally leaned in toward Su Xiu until her shoulder pressed against his arm. The contact sent an unexpected jolt through him, a reminder of human warmth he hadn't experienced since his transmigration.
Uh?
Wait a minute!
Was this relationship progressing… a little too fast!?
Su Xiu's thoughts raced ahead, calculating possibilities and probabilities. Was this normal American friendliness, or was there something more at play? Was he misreading cultural signals? Or was there a genuine connection forming between them—something that could potentially complicate his mission in this world?
And more importantly—why didn't he mind the complication nearly as much as he should?