Marx's words struck Professor X like a heavy hammer on his chest, and it took a long while for him to recover.
However, Professor X's tightly furrowed brow soon relaxed, giving the impression of immense relief.
Professor X, no, Professor Charles now, leaned back against his chair, reached for the teacup on the table, and took a sip. "Good tea, but Marx doesn't like tea."
Marx, sitting opposite Charles, was stunned for a moment, but quickly reacted, smiling and shaking his head. His body then changed, revealing the appearance of Bai Qi.
"After all, I am not the real Marx, and your memory of Marx is quite limited. All I can do is to minimize any mistakes, but I didn't expect you to see through the disguise in the end."
Charles said, "I understand now. My past ideas were too extreme. Whether it's humans, mutants, or zombies, they are all results of natural selection. None is nobler than the other. What we should do is to maintain the balance between the three."
It was evident that after undergoing mental torment, Charles's mind had recovered. Although his views still sounded somewhat peculiar, at least he no longer held the extreme ideology of promoting zombies as the ultimate evolutionary end for humanity.
"You should be able to transform zombies back into humans, right? Coupled with my ability to grant intelligence to zombies, let's join forces and create a world where humans and zombies can coexist peacefully."
It was clear that as Charles uttered the words "peaceful coexistence," his eyes gleamed.
However, what Bai Qi said next was like a basin of cold water, dousing his fiery passion.
"Who told you I was going to save this world?"
"What?"
Bai Qi's expression changed so rapidly that Charles couldn't react in time.
"Whether it's humans or zombies, it's your world's own affair. Even if this world eventually perishes, it's of no concern to me."
"Don't joke around, saying you..."
Charles stopped midway through his sentence, his eyes fixed on Bai Qi, who was smiling at him. Cold sweat poured down his face. He instantly understood Bai Qi's meaning and realized that this monster before him was not a creature of this world. The teacup in his hand fell to the ground and shattered. Simultaneously, Charles slammed his hand on the table, and his powerful mental energy surged towards Bai Qi.
This time, Charles unleashed twelve percent of his strength. In order to inflict even the slightest damage on this monster, even a moment's pause, was enough.
Having witnessed the vast gap between them, Charles never believed he could defeat Bai Qi. What he wanted was to transmit the information he knew during a momentary lapse in the opponent's defense. Through his still-connected psychic link, he wanted the X-Men outside to know the magnitude of the crisis this world was about to face.
Unfortunately, Bai Qi would not give him the chance.
Charles's full-force attack, let alone causing any damage to Bai Qi, was like a thin layer of paper in Bai Qi's domain. It did not affect Bai Qi's actions in the slightest. Even before Charles could send a message to the zombie X-Men outside, Bai Qi had already launched his attack.
Blistering flames reduced Charles's mental form to ashes almost instantly.
After dealing with Charles's mental form, Bai Qi, in the real world, looked at Charles's burning physical body and sighed helplessly.
Originally, Bai Qi intended to obliterate Charles's mental form in the mental world. He did not expect that by chance, he had helped Charles regain his original self. It was a pity, however, that Charles had misjudged Bai Qi from the start. Bai Qi was by no means a great saint dedicated to benefiting the world. On the contrary, Bai Qi's fundamental purpose for coming to this world was plunder.
Given Charles's disposition, he would never cooperate with Bai Qi. Even if Bai Qi used his temporal manipulation to twist Charles's perception, with his powerful mental strength, it was impossible to guarantee that Charles wouldn't detect the flaws.
To ensure one hundred percent safety, Bai Qi ultimately eliminated the troublesome Charles.
When a person's mental form is damaged, their physical body suffers the same degree of damage. Perhaps Charles had been a zombie for too long. After his mental form was turned to ashes by Bai Qi, his physical body in the real world did not disintegrate immediately. Instead, it took over three minutes of intense burning before finally turning to ash.
Charles's death effectively cut off the shortcut for zombies to awaken their intelligence. Those zombies whose intelligence had already been awakened under Charles's intervention would not be affected. However, those who had not yet awakened their intelligence would likely have to spend a long time trying to do so.
Furthermore, the zombies outside controlled by Charles instantly lost their control upon his death.
It was relatively easy for the super zombies who had awakened their intelligence. After all, Charles's control over them was mostly psychological suggestion. Even with Charles gone, they could temporarily suppress their innate desire to feed with their own intelligence.
However, this was not the case for the ordinary zombies who had not awakened their intelligence.
Ordinary zombies were brainless and acted purely on instinct. They had gathered here solely due to Charles's forceful manipulation.
Just as Bai Qi had predicted, as soon as Charles's cremation was complete, the roars of zombies could be heard from outside.
The most unfortunate one was Derek. While Bai Qi was dealing with Charles, Derek had to fight his former comrades to buy time. Now that Charles was dealt with, he, as the only living human, had to face the charging zombie horde. Fortunately, the super zombies who had broken free from Charles's control extended a helping hand, otherwise, fighting two battles consecutively would have exhausted Derek to death, even if he hadn't died in battle.
However, even with that, facing such a large number of zombies, coupled with significant stamina loss, Derek was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain his ice form.
In such a situation, if he were to break out of his ice form, even the super zombies who were helping him could accidentally scratch him, becoming the culprits for infecting Derek.
Yet, despite the dire situation outside, Bai Qi still showed no intention of going out to help.
As for the reason...
Bai Qi approached the ashes left by Charles's burning body, rummaged through them with his hand, and then a button-sized chip appeared in Bai Qi's hand.
"This is interesting now."
To be honest, if Bai Qi didn't have the habit of cleaning up the battlefield, he would have really been fooled by this brat this time.