Wasteland

Chapter 141: Wasteland

In this wasteland shrouded in yellow sand, all civilization had nearly regressed to a chaotic, lawless Dark Age.

When hope had been extinguished by despair, gangs and monsters rose amid the chaos, claiming mountains as their domains and burning, killing, looting, and plundering. Countless ordinary people had long since lost ownership of their own lives. The weak could only sink into endless grief, becoming neither human nor ghost.

Old Hawkeye’s departing figure was utterly desolate. Though he had done his best to straighten his back and reclaim the fearless courage of his youth, everyone knew this was a rugged, difficult road of no return.

He vanished alone at the end of the road, pursuing that tiny spark called "hope" that he firmly believed still existed, buried in the ashes of history.

"Was it cruel?"

Zhang Ye took a deep breath, then slowly let it out.

"Perhaps."

Kara and Pietro withdrew their gazes and looked at Zhang Ye. They knew he had not finished speaking.

"Everyone wants the shelter of shade, but someone has to stand in the sunlight. This is his battle, a battle that began forty-five years ago. The war isn’t over yet. He has prepared for forty-five years. I believe he’ll succeed."

"What if he fails?" Pietro looked grim. He did not believe a man in his seventies could face criminals that ordinary people could not handle. To him, it was no different from seeking death.

"He’ll succeed," Zhang Ye said calmly but firmly.

"But he failed back then." Kara frowned, worry clear between her brows.

"But that doesn’t mean he’ll fail this time," Zhang Ye replied.

"So…" Kara pondered for a moment, and her frown gradually eased. "We’ll help him, right?"

"…We will, but not now."

Zhang Ye spoke seriously.

"I left something on him. It’ll keep him alive, but only that. We have more important things to do."

Zhang Ye could see Kara and Pietro’s worry and urgency. They wanted to do their part too. Like Old Barton, they wanted to personally wipe out all the evil in this world.

Perhaps it had something to do with their experiences and their age. Young people always wanted to reshape the world with their own ideas, but it was nowhere near as simple as they imagined.

If the Ruined Universe where Pietro had been born was madness and distortion before the nuclear war, then this Wasteland Universe was the complete destruction of civilization and collapse of morality after it.

In this world, savagery and violence had run rampant, becoming the dominant colors of human society. Countless sins lay hidden within the endless deserts and ruins. This was not something that could be solved through violence, revenge, and murder.

Destroying a castle was easy, but rebuilding one was far harder. It might require the efforts of many like-minded people, perhaps even several generations.

But only two kinds of people remained here: survivors and desperadoes.

There were still some surviving superheroes like Old Hawkeye in this world, but most had disappeared from public view. Perhaps they too knew that their own strength was no longer enough to contend with this world.

After the night the supervillains won their overwhelming victory, the order of the entire world had been destroyed. Red Skull and the other villains divided up the world, trying to establish a new form of government according to their own ideologies.

But visibly, they had "failed."

These people, evil to the bone, had indulged in the pleasures of victory. They had never understood the rule of law, much less the meaning of society’s existence. They knew only one thing: on their turf, their word was law!

Expecting a group of people who treated criminal sentences as résumés to build a new society was impossible from the start.

The more inferiority someone harbored deep down, the more they wanted others to bow before them. They wanted even more to see others lose everything and have their glory fade away. And the more someone fawned over the strong, the more brutally they would abuse the weak.

They were patients, a group of sane madmen.

They had once been under the watch of superheroes, but things were different now.

Red Skull had parceled out the land, dividing every territory and handing them over to the criminals he had recruited. But he had clearly misjudged these "allies."

Though he was the nominal "leader," he could no longer control the lands held by the others!

Hulk had taken away his cousin, She-Hulk, and turned her into a breeding machine. In this world, only someone with abilities like his could preserve Hulk’s bloodline. And only She-Hulk’s resilient body could withstand his coercion.

Now, the Hulk Gang had become the largest gang on the West Coast. Their territory was desolate and barren, but filled with the poor. Those with Hulk’s blood flowing through their veins never regarded humans as their kin. In the minds of these products of incest, humans were nothing more than food, no different from animals.

Meanwhile, in Magneto’s former territory, the second Kingpin had risen in revolt. He poisoned Magneto, who already had one foot in the grave, then led countless thugs in a brutal slaughter of Magneto’s mutants. As for those captured alive, they were thrown into arenas for entertainment.

This was only what Zhang Ye had "seen" from the shattered fragments of Eyeball Man’s soul when he killed him. As for the other places, Zhang Ye could not even imagine the conditions ordinary people lived in.

Even Eyeball Man’s commercial chain had been built entirely for gangs of every size. No matter how difficult the lives of ordinary people were, no matter whether they could survive until the next dawn, here—

Eyeball Man’s nightclubs were always brightly lit!

In an era already starved of resources, the world had gradually become even more rotten and putrid in the hands of criminals immersed in the joy of victory and concerned only with indulgence.

When more and more people realized that surviving required taking someone else’s resources—everything spiraled out of control.

Red Skull could no longer truly rule this world, because it had long since become a living hell.

If you could not survive without robbing others, and even if you did not rob others, they would come rob you, then civilization had already begun to decay.

Gangs of every kind sprang up like mushrooms after the rain. They committed every evil imaginable—murder, arson, and worse—while exploiting the pitiful people at the very bottom.

Ordinary civilians had to endure the oppression of several gangs at once, and could even die inexplicably in their own homes.

Everything had changed.

It had become even worse.