Kryptonians: Man of Steel

Chapter 1490 Reverence as if they were gods
This latest type of tactical nuclear weapon does not produce shockwaves or leave behind radioactive contamination, but the neutron flux it releases can penetrate any known protection in a millionth of a second, completely pulverizing the DNA chains within living organisms.

"She couldn't possibly be able to cut through neutron radiation!"

An officer gritted his teeth and growled, his fists clenched white.

"This violates the fundamental laws of physics."

However, just as the missile was about to reach its target area—

Saeko slowly raised the katana in her hand.

Her movements were not fast, but rather elegant, as if she were simply rehearsing a kendo performance.

But strangely, the air visibly distorted wherever the blade passed, as if space itself had been cut apart by her psychic energy.

"Finally, they're getting serious?"

Saeko murmured softly, a near-fanatical smile playing on her lips.

Her body was still suspended in mid-air, surrounded by a lingering aura of psionic energy.

The moment the neutron bomb detonated at the predetermined altitude, the entire world turned black and white.

There was no mushroom cloud, no fireball, only a blinding white light that cleaved the sky like a god wielding a sword.

Immediately afterwards, an invisible wave of death poured down—a torrent of more than 10^14 fast neutrons per square centimeter, enough to kill all life within a two-kilometer radius in an instant.

"Biological lethality confirmed..."

The technician's voice suddenly stopped.

The radiation monitoring charts on the screen showed incredible fluctuations.

The neutron flow, which should have diffused uniformly, exhibited a noticeable deflection when it approached a certain point on the ground.

The Geiger counter at the observatory suddenly started screaming like crazy, and the pointer hit the maximum value.

Physicist Dr. Anderson's glasses reflected a stark white light: "My God, she actually..."

In the center of the battlefield, Saeko's movements were as graceful as if she were performing a Noh play.

Where her blade sliced ​​through, the air twisted and distorted in eerie waves, as if space itself had been torn open with a rift.

Even more chilling is that those neutron flows, which should have been formless and intangible, have now manifested as physical entities under the interference of psionic energy—they are frozen in mid-air like a frozen galaxy, and upon closer inspection, they are found to be countless silver-white filaments as thin as hair.

The detector showed that the neutrons, which should have traveled in a straight line, were now being reflected precisely, like light colliding with a mirror!

"This is impossible..."

The nuclear physics consultant's notebook fell to the floor. "She altered the trajectory of the neutrons? That requires manipulating the strong interaction..."

"This is finally starting to get interesting."

Saeko's lips curled into a dangerous smile.

She suddenly flipped her wrist, and the blade flashed like a crescent moon.

Where the sky-splitting strike passed, the solidified neutron stream was neatly sliced ​​apart like a mirror!

The severed light filaments trembled violently, emitting a high-frequency hum that was beyond the range of human hearing.

The screen in the command center suddenly started flickering like static.

"What's going on?" Howard jumped to his feet. "Switch to the backup surveillance immediately!"

But it was too late.

In the final, clear footage, they saw the neutron stream that had been cut open undergo an incredible deflection, as if it were light encountering a black hole—it was flowing backward along the trajectory of the blade!

The "tamed" neutron stream began to return along the missile's original trajectory.

It was no longer a spreading cloud of mist, but condensed into a dazzling beam of light, moving even faster than before.

The air along the way was ionized, forming a blue-purple plasma channel that traced an eerie path across the twilight sky.

Dr. Anderson's notebook was filled with hastily written formulas, which had already reached the fifth page.

"This is not scientifically sound."

His pen nib pierced the paper. "Neutrons are uncharged, how could they be affected by a magnetic field? Unless..."

His pupils suddenly contracted. "She transformed psionic energy into some kind of force field that we don't yet understand!"

Reality is more terrifying than theory.

The rebounded neutron streams exhibited a strange organization; they were no longer randomly scattered radiation, but rather formed a torrent of energy with a clear direction.

Even more terrifying is that each neutron carries Saeko's psionic properties, like an enchanted bullet, retracing the missile's original trajectory.

At the launch site 20 kilometers away, the radar operator suddenly noticed that all the dots on the screen were jumping irregularly.

"Sir, our electronic equipment..."

He didn't finish his sentence. Suddenly, a blinding spark erupted from the control panel, and all the displays shattered in the same second.

The sentries outside the base watched in horror as a silvery-white beam of light descended from the sky and struck the ventilation shaft of the underground launch silo with pinpoint accuracy.

There was no explosion, no flames.

But everyone who witnessed this scene was horrified—the soldiers standing in the open suddenly stiffened, their skin turning grayish-white at a visible speed, and then peeling off in pieces like weathered plaster statues.

Inside the facilities, the technicians operating the equipment were unaware of their impending death; their neural synapses had all snapped the instant trillions of neutrons passed through their brains.

Three minutes later, when the emergency response team entered the base in heavy protective suits, they were greeted by a surreal scene: all the equipment was intact, and even the coffee cups on the control panel hadn't tipped over.

But each human has been transformed into a bizarre gray-white sculpture, retaining the last pose they were in before death.

An unclosed surveillance camera captured an even more horrifying detail—when the rescue team's boots gently touched the ground, the "sculptures" collapsed like sandcastles, turning into fine dust.

Lieutenant General Howard sat motionless in his command chair, the base icon on the tactical screen in front of him now a glaring red. Only static crackled through the communication channels.

He mechanically turned to Anderson: "Doctor, please tell me in the simplest terms, what exactly did we just witness?"

He pointed to the physics-defying image on the screen, exclaiming, "What the hell is that?!"

The physicist removed his shattered glasses, his voice dry and hoarse like sandpaper: "She changed the rules of physics, General. Around that woman, our common sense in science is as ridiculous as Stone Age witchcraft."

He pointed to the last frame on the screen—Saeko was slowly sheathing her katana, with a silver torrent cascading back into the sky like a waterfall behind her.

The head of the physics department, Anderson Lightman, was in worse shape than anyone else present.

This genius, who was once nominated for the Nobel Prize, is now piecing together his broken glasses with trembling hands, his gaze through the cracks in the lenses carrying a kind of religious reverence.

(End of this chapter)