Both start in hell: but their talents are multiplied a hundredfold.

S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, Deep Quarantine Module.

The air here was much colder than elsewhere, and a thin layer of white frost condensed on the metal walls. The lights were deliberately dimmed, with only a pale blue emergency light strip around the cage emitting a cold glow.

The cage designed to confine the Hulk was suspended in the center of the cabin, with four thick hydraulic supports lifting it three meters off the ground.

The cage is reinforced with high-strength alloy, so even a real behemoth would have to lie still inside, let alone Loki.

Loki sat calmly on the metal chair in the center of the cage.

His hair was somewhat disheveled, and there was still a trace of dried blood at the corner of his mouth.

He heard the sound of many people's footsteps.

Loki tilted his head slightly, keeping himself in a relatively comfortable position, and watched the hatch open.

Fury walked at the front, his single eye blazing with fury.

He was holding a tablet in his hand, on which a video was playing on a loop: atop Stark Tower, a beam of pale blue light tore through the clouds and shot straight into the sky, creating a hole in the heavens.

Thor followed closely beside him, Mjolnir clutched in his hand.

His long, golden hair was still covered with dust and metal scraps from his bet with Shen Jue, but his gaze remained fixed on his younger brother in the cage.

Shen Jue walked at the very back, his hands tucked into his sleeves, his face still bearing that enigmatic, gentle smile.

He looked like he was just taking a walk.

Natasha and Steve followed behind Shen Jue, followed by the three members of the Xavier's School and several fully armed agents.

The hatch slammed shut behind them with a dull metallic clang.

Fury stopped in front of the cage and looked up at Loki inside.

Without saying a word, he simply held up the tablet, screen facing Loki.

"What is this?"

Fury's voice was low, suppressing some emotion that was about to explode.

In the footage, the blue beam of light above Stark Tower continues to expand, and the clouds are swirled into a huge vortex, with a dark, expanding hole at the center of the vortex.

"Tell me, what is this!"

Loki looked at the screen, and the corners of his mouth slowly curved into a smile.

That smile was like seeing a carefully wrapped gift being unwrapped beforehand.

He leaned forward slightly, and the chain made a crisp sound on his wrist.

"That is..." Loki's voice trailed off, carrying a dramatic pleasure.

"A door to the unknown."

Thor took a sudden step forward, slamming his hammer into the energy barrier of the cage, creating a blue ripple.

"Loki! What are you doing?! That's the Tesseract! Do you know what you're doing?!"

Loki turned his head to look at his brother, a fleeting, complex emotion flashing in his eyes, but it vanished in an instant, so fast it was almost nonexistent.

"I know," Loki said softly. "I know everything."

Fury slammed the tablet down on the control panel next to him. The image on the screen was still playing on a loop, the blue beam of light like a spear piercing the sky, silently mocking him.

"You opened a portal over New York?" Fury boldly guessed. "What are you planning to put in?"

Loki didn't answer him. Instead, he looked past Fury and at Shen Jue standing behind him.

Although he was confident in his plan, Loki felt uneasy about Shen Jue's presence.

He was unsure whether the army he had summoned would be able to cause trouble for this unknown god.

Even though Shen Jue was watching the spectacle with amusement, Loki still decided to put on a show.

"You want an answer?" Loki turned to Fury, his voice soft and elegant.

"Alright, I'm willing to give you the answer. Anyway, the portal has already been opened, and you can't stop it now."

He slightly raised his chin, a gleam of pride in his eyes.

"You think you're facing just an army?" Loki chuckled softly.

"No, I brought the Chitauri."

"Their master is a being in the vast universe whose name you are not even worthy of knowing."

"And that being gave me an army, a scepter of the mind, and the key to open the portal."

He leaned forward slightly, the chains rattling.

"I want to rule your world, is that so hard to understand?"

"You ant-like lives on Earth, crammed into these steel jungles, crushing and consuming each other."

"You are destined to need a God to enable you to realize your true value."

"And I am destined to be that god!"

Unlike the original Avengers storyline, Loki did not choose to sow discord among Fury and the others this time.

He knew that his plan could not succeed as long as Shen Jue was present.

Loki was certain that none of these humans on Earth could last more than a second against Shen Jue.

Thor closed his eyes, veins throbbing on his forehead: "You're insane, Loki!"

"You've been used by him!"

"Use?" Loki's voice suddenly rose, then fell back down, regaining its deliberate composure.

"No, dear brother. It's cooperation. I give them a world, and they give me a throne."

"This is a fair trade."

When he said this, his eyes flickered for a moment, as if he himself did not completely believe this explanation.

Shen Jue sighed softly from behind, the sound extremely faint.

But Loki heard it, and his fingers twitched almost imperceptibly.

Fury didn't respond to Loki's words. He stared at the God of Mischief in the cage for a few seconds in silence, then decisively turned around, his gaze sweeping over the people behind him, finally settling on Jean Grey.

"Jean." Fury's voice was very low.

"Try to read minds. We need to know what he's hiding."

"When will the portal be completed at Stark Tower? What are the Chitauri's battle plans? Does he have any other plans?"

"Now!"

"The aircraft carrier is heading to New York at full speed!"

Jean Grey stepped out from among the three from Xavier's School and stood directly in front of the cage.

Loki tilted his head slightly to look at her, his bruised and swollen face still bearing that ambiguous smile.

"Oh," he said softly.

"A telepath? You guys really go to great lengths..."

Qin did not respond. She closed her eyes, raised her hands slightly, and her fingertips shimmered with a very faint, almost transparent luster.

Her consciousness, like a thread, passed through the gaps in the alloy, extending into the depths of Loki's consciousness, before crashing into a wall.

That wall does not exist on a physical level.

The moment Qin's consciousness touched it, a chaotic ocean of runes appeared in her mind.

She couldn't understand any of those runes. She felt that her consciousness was as insignificant as a speck of dust in front of that golden ocean, and that it could be crushed at any time if the other party wanted to.

Qin suddenly opened her eyes, took a step back, and breathed rapidly.

A fine layer of cold sweat seeped from her forehead, and strands of hair clung to her cheeks.

"How is it?" Fury pressed.

Qin shook her head, her voice trembling almost imperceptibly: "No, there's a force protecting his mind. A very powerful force..."

"I can't break in."

"If he's a professor, maybe it's possible."

Thor's face showed a complex expression upon hearing this.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end he just gripped the hammer tighter.

Fury narrowed his one eye: "What do you mean? Whose power?"

Jean took a deep breath, trying to calm herself: "I'm not sure, but it wasn't Loki's own power."

"That was a protection of consciousness and mind imposed on him by someone else."

Natasha frowned: "So he's being controlled?"

"No." Qin shook her head. "Someone has set up a door deep within his consciousness, a door that can block out malice and threats."

Steve stepped forward, shield in hand, and looked at Loki, who remained composed in the cage: "Who could do something like this?"

The cabin was silent for a few seconds.

Shen Jue lightly brushed off non-existent dust from his cuffs and said softly, "Who else could it be?"

"Of course, it was Odin, the father of the two brothers Thor and Loki, who did this."

All eyes turned to him.

"The father of the gods, the guardian of the nine realms, the king of Asgard. He is Loki's adoptive father." Shen Jue paused.

"He has nurtured Loki for thousands of years."

Even though Loki was exiled, rebelled, and committed heinous crimes, Odin still left a barrier in his mind.

Shen Jue tilted his head, thinking about something interesting.

"This barrier cannot be broken unless the power of the Mind Stone is used, or Professor Charles himself intervenes." He looked at Jean and smiled slightly.

A flicker of resentment flashed in Fury's single eye: "So we're just going to watch him? Watch that portal open wider and wider over New York?"

Shen Jue shrugged and smiled, "It seems this is the only way."

"Or should I go to Asgard and fight Odin right now?"

After saying that, Shen Jue propped his chin up with his hand, seemingly considering the feasibility of the idea.

Everyone was speechless for a moment, feeling as if the myth was right before their eyes.

"Tony Stark is trying to close that portal."

"He discovered Barton and the Doctor," Fury reported.

"But a special force field hindered Tony's actions."

"Once we reach it, we will attempt to break through that force field."

At the top of Stark Tower, a blue energy beam had grown so thick that it swallowed the entire outline of the building.

The stream of particles erupted from the Cosmic Cube, carving a dark hole hundreds of meters in diameter above the clouds.

A pale blue halo swirled around the edge of the cave entrance, like a slowly opening eye, coldly gazing upon the planet.

Tony Stark hovered around the edge of the beam of light, while dense streams of data pulsed continuously on the mask of his Mark armor.

His palm cannon had been bombarding for seventeen minutes, and the energy reserve of the chest reactor had dropped to sixty-two percent.

Each time the energy beam hits that damned force field, it is evenly dispersed, refracted, and dissipated, without even a sound.

"One more time!" Tony said through gritted teeth.

The three unmanned combat suits behind him simultaneously raised their palm cannons.

Four energy beams struck the same point in the force field at the same instant, ionizing the air into a dazzling purple, and even the glass curtain wall beneath their feet cracked with spiderweb-like patterns as it vibrated.

The force field remained completely still.

"Jarvis, I have good news for you."

"I'm afraid not, sir."

"The energy output of the force field is stable on a continuously increasing curve, and it has now exceeded my measurement range."

Tony cursed.

"Clint!" Tony shouted as he landed at the edge of the force field, through the invisible barrier.

"Did you hear me, Dr. Selvig? You still have time to shut down the device!"

Barton gave Tony a cold look.

Fury's voice came through Tony's communicator: "Stark, the aircraft carrier will be above you in three minutes."

"Three minutes is too long!"

Tony stared at the expanding hole, its edges already extending above the streets on either side of Stark Tower, the dark interior beginning to flicker with dark red dots in a regular pattern.

The dots of light are arranged in a neat array, approaching from afar.

"Jarvis, activate the anti-gravity thruster overload protocol. I'm going to try crawling in from below."

"Sir, with the current strength of the force field, forcibly breaking through may cause the armor structure to disintegrate."

"I'm in charge."

The Mark armor's thrusters unleashed maximum thrust, propelling Tony upwards like a cannonball. The armor's nano-coating rubbed violently against the force field surface, emitting a sharp metallic hiss.

He felt as if he had crashed into a steel planet. The outer shell of his armor began to peel off, and the armor plate on his left arm shattered and flew off. Warning lights flashed wildly inside his visor.

He was bounced away.

Tony tumbled four times in the air before regaining his balance, a plume of black smoke billowing from the thruster on his right shoulder.

He glanced down at the damage report on his armor and uttered the most offensive curse he had ever heard.

"Nuclear bomb," he said.

"I'm talking about nuclear weapons. Fury, do you have any usable ones? Even tactical ones will do."

"Destroy that force field and the portal together!"

"Are you crazy, Stark?! That's over Manhattan!"

"Then tell me what other options there are!" Tony roared.

"I'm almost out of ideas, Fury. We can't break through this force field, and the hole is getting bigger and bigger. I can see those things!"

His voice suddenly stopped.

Inside the cave entrance, the dark red dots of light were close enough to make their outlines discernible.

They were countless slender, metallic-looking flying machines, like a swarm of locusts emerging from the abyss, densely packed on the other side of the portal.

They haven't come out yet, but they're already very close.

Tony looked at the aircraft, his voice turning somber: "Furry, we don't have three minutes left."

At that very moment, the massive shadow of the aircraft carrier descended from the clouds and hovered over New York.

The roar of the engine shook the entire neighborhood.

It was at this very moment.

The portal was fully opened.

In an instant, the pitch-black opening transformed into a complete, smooth, and enormous circular crack.

The edges of the crack stabilized, and the pale blue halo disappeared.

The Chitauri, extraterrestrials with technology far exceeding that of the average human, have arrived on Earth.