He left behind two "audience members" whose worldviews had completely collapsed.
One was the "Hell's Kitchen Vigilante," standing on the rooftop, facing the evening wind, unable to calm down for the longest time.
Matt Murdock discovered for the first time just how small and powerless his prided superhuman senses were in the face of that "divine wind."
The other was a S.H.I.E.L.D. observer hiding in a building several kilometers away, who had witnessed everything from start to finish through high-powered binoculars.
With trembling hands, he set down his binoculars and picked up his communicator.
He felt that the report he was about to deliver might cause Director Nick Fury to polish his bald head to a mirror shine overnight.
"Calling... calling HQ..."
"Target Traveler encountered armed conflict in Hell's Kitchen."
"He... he just... blew a breath."
"And then... and then... the whole world went quiet."
"Repeat... he blew a breath, and then... the wind hung everyone from the lampposts."
"Over."
Ever since he'd directed a "Divine-Level Urban Management Art Exhibition" in Hell's Kitchen at the cost of one can of cola, Cloud found his surroundings had grown even more peaceful.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s surveillance tails had completely withdrawn.
He knew this wasn't surrender—it was a deeper level of "reverence."
They were like villagers living near a dormant volcano: too afraid to approach, too afraid to leave, reduced to setting up an observation station at a safe distance, burning incense and praying daily that the volcano would never erupt.
Cloud was quite satisfied with this non-violent, non-cooperative surveillance approach.
He could finally enjoy the earthly pleasures of this world like a truly retired Sovereign, without any worries.
He visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stood before Van Gogh's Starry Night for ages, and finally concluded: "This guy had real talent. He wasn't painting the night sky—he was painting the flow of cosmic laws. Too bad he didn't have a good teacher. Otherwise, he might've been able to conjure a real galaxy out of thin air."
He went to Broadway and watched Cats. While everyone else applauded the dazzling stage and moving songs, he was seriously pondering a question: "If I brought Mature and Vice here, which one would be better suited to play Grizabella?"
He even made a trip to Chinatown, had a bowl of Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles that he deemed "passably authentic," and gave the noodle master's virtuoso technique high praise: "Quite reminiscent of Chin Gentsai's Drunken Fist style."
Days passed in this leisurely routine filled with divine-level commentary.
The System within him was also slowly but steadily analyzing this world's laws. The progress bar had crawled up to 8%.
Still quite slow, but Cloud wasn't in a hurry.
He was enjoying this "back to the starter village" feeling.
However, peaceful days were always short-lived—especially in New York, this "disaster-prone" city.
One day, Cloud was sitting in a tastefully decorated café, savoring a cup of what was supposedly top-grade hand-dripped Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee.
Suddenly, his brow furrowed.
He sensed a surge of chaotic, sorrowful energy rapidly spreading from a nearby district.
This energy was quite peculiar.
It bore some resemblance to Otoma=Raga's reality-altering law power, yet was filled with disorder, contradiction, and instability.
Like a rookie programmer trying to modify a massive system's base code, only to create a mountain of bugs.
"Interesting..." Cloud set down his coffee cup, a spark of curiosity in his eyes. "A natural-born law manipulator? Or a later mutation?"
He placed payment for the coffee plus a generous tip on the table, rose, and walked out of the café, heading unhurriedly toward the epicenter of that energy eruption.
...
Queens, New York. An ordinary residential street.
Except it was no longer ordinary.
A visible crimson energy field, like the glow of sunset, had completely engulfed three entire city blocks.
Within the field, reality was being twisted in an absurd, surrealist manner.
A yellow taxi had suddenly sprouted colorful butterfly wings and was clumsily flapping through the air.
A row of streetlamps bent at the waist like cancan dancers, kicking their legs, their bulbs flickering with an eerie, irregular glow.
An apartment building's walls had turned soft and transparent like jelly, clearly revealing the people inside—frozen in various poses of shock like insects trapped in amber, completely motionless.
The entire world had become a phantasmagoric nightmare.
Outside the field, sirens, screams, and helicopter rotors blended into a cacophony.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s perimeter had been pushed back several kilometers.
The Avengers had also arrived on scene.
"Stark! Have you identified the energy source?" Captain America Steve Rogers raised his shield, face grim as he surveyed the demonic red force field.
"Working on it, Capsicle!" Iron Man Tony Stark hovered in the air, every sensor on his armor flashing red warning lights. "Damn it! This energy doesn't match anything in our database! It's... it's rewriting the laws of physics! I fired my repulsor and it turned into a... rainbow?!"
"Same here!" Thor hefted Mjolnir, his expression equally ugly. "My lightning, after entering this zone, transformed into a flock of singing blue birds!"
The heroes felt utterly powerless.
Their powerful physical attacks, facing an opponent who played by different rules entirely, were like a musclebound strongman trying to punch his own dream—completely useless.
"It's that girl—Wanda Maximoff."
Natasha had locked onto the center of the field through high-powered binoculars.
There, a slender figure in a red leather jacket with long brown hair was curled up on the ground, clutching her head, trembling violently, emitting pained whimpers.
Her face—which should have been full of youthful vitality—was now etched with sorrow and confusion. Beautiful doe-like eyes brimmed with tears, and in the depths of her pupils, uncontrolled energy flickered.
...
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