Beating Up the Iron King

On the night of the full moon, it was time for the final battle.

The Sahara Desert lay beneath a high full moon, its cold radiance illuminating this lifeless, desolate wasteland that had been silent for millennia.

Zhan Liu hovered in the stratosphere, sweeping his gaze across the ground below, but he unexpectedly failed to find any trace of Magneto.

Could this bastard have chickened out?

Or did Raven cancel the challenge?

He descended through the stratosphere and into the troposphere, then hovered around two or three hundred meters above the ground. Drawing on his energy, he shouted, his voice carrying for a hundred miles.

"Iron King! You damned bastard! What the hell are you doing?! I’m already here, so get your ass out and come die!"

His voice rolled outward like thunder. Even the various venomous insects beneath the desert were frightened, fleeing in all directions.

The magnificent scene from Zhan Liu’s battle with Carol reappeared. Swarms of venomous insects fled the area in panic like a surging tide.

As the sound waves spread, Zhan Liu sensed a faint fluctuation in the distance suddenly becoming violently intense before shooting toward him at high speed.

Zhan Liu looked up and saw, as expected, an old man with a hooked nose and a face full of wrinkles. Wearing a metal helmet and standing on a metal plate, he came floating through the air.

Magneto flew up to Zhan Liu, his face full of anger, and shouted:

"Boy, do you have no sense of time at all? I’ve been waiting since morning! I thought you didn’t dare come!"

"Bullshit! You birdbrain! Since this is a martial contest, of course it has to be held beneath a full moon. That makes it romantic!"

Zhan Liu raised his middle finger at the old man who understood nothing of Eastern culture and began cursing him without the slightest restraint.

"Looks like you’re Iron King?"

"How dare you! Boy, you actually dared to incite Raven and try to split the Brotherhood. I won’t tolerate it. Today, Charles isn’t here to protect you!"

Erik was especially displeased with Zhan Liu.

Not only was he a non-Mutant who could manipulate magnetic fields almost as well as Erik himself, he had even trained other disciples capable of controlling magnetic fields.

Scarcity made things valuable. Once an ability that everyone possessed became commonplace, it lost its deterrent power. For the leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants, this was a devastating blow to his prestige.

Magneto was supposed to be unique. How could there suddenly be Magnetos everywhere?

Thus, Erik had long since developed murderous intent toward Zhan Liu.

Moreover, this bastard had brought it upon himself. No one knew what kind of drug he had fed Raven, but she had actually dared to betray Erik, return, and claim that the Mutants should follow the "Path of the Martial God." She had even tried to persuade Erik to cooperate with this brat.

After Erik rejected her, Raven had still dared to promote her ideas within the Brotherhood of Mutants, talking about how the Mutants should take a "third path."

She was blatantly trying to split the Brotherhood of Mutants. It was unforgivable!

However, Raven had been his younger sister for many years and was also a core member of the Mutants. Naturally, Erik had to pull her back from this mistaken path.

He had placed Raven under house arrest and come to the battlefield. Once he killed this man, he would take Zhan Liu’s head back with him. That would surely bring Raven back to her senses.

Zhan Liu had plenty of experience with people like him.

Those who believed only in supreme martial power needed only to be subdued by force.

At once, he threw his head back and laughed. "Iron King, today I’ll teach you the proper way to use magnetic fields!"

"Heh, what an outrageous boast. Aren’t you afraid the wind will be strong enough to cut your tongue?"

Erik activated his magnetic field, using the steel plate beneath his feet to rapidly pull his body away. At the same time, he waved a hand, causing vast amounts of iron-rich sand and rock in the desert to surge upward from the ground like a tornado, wrapping around Zhan Liu and grinding against him repeatedly.

Zhan Liu hovered motionless in the air, watching the iron-sand storm outside his Protective Astral Energy as he sneered.

"Every single one of you only knows how to fight from a distance. Who taught you that bad habit? Tony learned his lesson after suffering once, but it looks like you haven’t experienced the beatings society has to offer yet!"

He gathered his energy and, without using any technique, shot toward Erik like a cannonball. The tornado of iron sand swirling around him was pierced like paper, failing to impede him in the slightest.

Zhan Liu’s speed had already far surpassed the speed of sound. In an instant, he arrived before Erik, and the distance Erik had opened for safety had accomplished nothing.

"Damn bastard! Taste the fist of Magnetic Field Rotation!"

Zhan Liu brought his fist down. Erik hurriedly pulled the steel plate up to block it, but the specially designed alloy steel plate he had prepared was as flimsy as gauze, pierced by the punch.

The fist struck Erik in the chest. A series of cracking sounds rang out as who knew how many of his bones broke. He was sent flying and only crashed to the ground several miles away.

"Bullshit! What a weak body!" Zhan Liu curled his lip.

If he had not held back at the last moment, that punch would probably have reduced Erik’s body to powder.

Erik was decent enough as a long-range mage, and the power of his magnetic field was indeed formidable. But once someone got close, he was as fragile as paper.

Zhan Liu had no idea where he got the confidence to call himself Magneto.

Perhaps it was all thanks to the other members of his profession?

Zhan Liu immediately thought of the fact that Magneto’s name came from the comics. The Magneto in those comics truly deserved the name, but the films could not reproduce such grand scenes, so they had weakened him.

"Tsk, how boring!"

He flew over leisurely and looked at Erik, who was struggling to get up from the ground. He mocked, "Iron King, do you understand how magnetic fields should be used now?"

Erik’s rage and frustration overwhelmed him, and he spat out a mouthful of blood before collapsing to the ground, unable to get up.

Lying limp on the ground, his face filled with disbelief, he asked in shock, "How did you do that?"

"What a stupid question! Do you even need to ask? This is the Path of the Martial God!" Zhan Liu hovered in the sky, looking down at him.

"No matter how powerful the universe’s great magnetic field is, it remains something external. Only after transforming it into your own Life Magnetic Field can it truly belong to you."

"The power of Magnetic Field Rotation naturally strengthens the body. A Magnetic Field Rotation Adept should be like a warrior, throwing punches that hit flesh and fighting at close range!"

"How about it? Have you learned how to use the power of Magnetic Field Rotation?"

Erik’s face was filled with despair as he sighed:

"I never imagined that I, who claimed to be Magneto, had actually taken the wrong path from beginning to end. Things have come to this, and there’s no point saying more. Kill me. Tell Raven that she was right. I’ll leave the Brotherhood to her."

"Shut up, you damned bastard!" Zhan Liu flew into a rage, pointing at his nose and cursing him.

"How precious is my time? Did you think I came all the way here just to kill a useless piece of trash like you?"

"You lose one fight and want to die? You really are useless!"

"What you need to do now is comprehend the power of Magnetic Field Rotation as quickly as possible, then come back and defeat me!"

"Watch carefully. I’ll demonstrate it for you once more. If you still can’t learn it, then be a useless nobody for the rest of your life!"

Thanks to book friends JOJOers, Ye Shang Kong Ming, and Rampaging Black Bear for the rewards!