“First, shut down the wormhole. I’ll study it later.”

Clutching the Mind Scepter, Rowan descended onto the rooftop of Stark Tower.

Near the platform where Tony usually parked his suits, an older man in his fifties lay unconscious. His thinning hair and disheveled clothes marked him clearly.

It was Erik Selvig.

Selvig, a scientific consultant at Kroll Industries, was someone Rowan had seen several times before.

Rowan’s eyes narrowed. A wave of mild psychic energy rippled out. Selvig stirred, groaning softly as he woke.

“Uh…” His eyes blinked open, unfocused, then widened in recognition. “Boss?”

“Selvig, get out of here. I’m shutting down the portal you built. It’s not safe for you to stay.”

“Oh, right.” Selvig scrambled to his feet, rubbing his temples as he staggered toward the stairwell. Halfway down, he looked back. “Boss, just jab the scepter into the core of the device. That’ll close the portal!”

Then he hurriedly vanished down the steps.

Rowan stepped forward, standing before the towering energy beam.

At its center, the Tesseract spun slowly, radiating immense cosmic power.

“Selvig really is a genius,” Rowan murmured.

For a mere human to engineer a working space portal using the Cube was no small feat.

“With this, I’ll have both the Mind Stone and the Space Stone.”

His pulse quickened at the thought.

These two Infinity Stones would be the key to surpassing Luo Feng in the later stages of cultivation.

Rowan extended a hand toward the Cube, attempting to seize it.

A shimmering blue barrier sprang up instantly, blocking his fingers no matter how much strength he applied.

He frowned. “Looks like only the Mind Stone can break through.”

Tightening his grip on the scepter, Rowan thrust it into the energy field.

The barrier rippled, resisting with a violent recoil. Energy pushed back hard against his arm, but he endured it, forcing the scepter deeper until it pierced the base of the device.

In a flash, the blinding energy beam collapsed.

The wormhole above Manhattan began to seal rapidly.

One of the massive Chitauri warships was caught mid-transit, its body sliced clean in half as the portal snapped shut. Burning wreckage plummeted into the city below.

“It’s closed!”

“Rowan did it!”

The Avengers erupted in relief, their cheers mixing with the astonished cries of soldiers and civilians below.

In the command rooms of world governments, council members nearly wept with joy. They immediately ordered the recall of a fighter jet that had been carrying a nuclear missile toward New York.

Thank God Rowan had moved quickly.

On the rooftop, Rowan allowed himself a faint smile.

Whether the portal stayed open or not didn’t really matter to him. Given enough time, he could have slaughtered the Chitauri himself.

But there was no point in playing exterminator.

“Hm? The soldiers are still alive?”

He noticed that many Chitauri remained active on the streets, still wreaking havoc.

In the original timeline, when Tony guided the nuke into the mothership, every Chitauri soldier had shut down instantly.

Apparently, cutting off their signal wasn’t enough. Unless their commander died, they wouldn’t self-destruct.

Rowan shrugged. “Not my problem. The Avengers can handle cleanup.”

His gaze shifted to the Tesseract, now lying in the shattered base of the device.

Reaching out, he lifted it into his palm.

A heartbeat-like thrum pulsed from within, radiating through his hand.

Rowan felt it an ocean of infinite cosmic energy, vast beyond comprehension.

If normal cultivation drew cosmic energy like raindrops, then the Cube held a sea. No… more than a sea, a boundless universe.

“The Space Stone is mine.”

A grin spread across his face.

Summoning his blades, Rowan reduced the remains of Selvig’s device into useless shards.

Then, carrying both the scepter and the Tesseract, he flew back to Kroll Industries.

“Boss, the alien ship has been secured,” came Shuri’s voice through comms as soon as he landed. “I moved it to your coastal villa. I think we should excavate a base beneath it, connect it to the sea, and keep it hidden as a private facility.”

Rowan nodded. “Good idea. That ship is top priority. Work with the team and crack it within six months. I want to be able to fly it into space by then.”

“You got it, boss!” Shuri’s voice was full of excitement. To her, dissecting alien technology was like the ultimate puzzle.

Ending the call, Rowan turned his attention to the scepter in his hand.

“This thing only channels a fraction of the Mind Stone’s power. It’s little more than scrap metal.”

Without hesitation, Rowan pried the glowing gem free with brute force.

The scepter clattered to the floor, discarded like trash.

The golden gem pulsed warmly in his palm.

Closing his eyes, Rowan sank his consciousness inward.

At once, his spiritual sea trembled. What had once been calm, filled with soft golden mist, was now in turmoil.

Waves of psychic energy surged through him, flowing from the gem into his body, racing along his arm and neck before pouring into his mindscape.

The foreign energy was so pure that it merged seamlessly, dissolving into golden mist without any need for conversion.

Rowan’s eyes lit up in wonder.

Normally, cultivating psychic power required painstakingly absorbing cosmic energy and converting it step by step. But the Mind Stone delivered pure mental force directly, bypassing all limitations.

As expected, the stone was a treasure beyond compare for a telepath.

“And this is just what it leaks on its own. What if I draw from it actively?”

At that thought, the gem floated up to his brow.

A golden arc of light stretched out, linking the stone to his mind.

“Boom…”

A torrent of psychic energy poured into his consciousness like a floodgate opening.

The golden mist inside his mind swelled rapidly, filling the space until it condensed into droplets of dark-golden liquid.

His heart skipped. “Psychic liquefaction… I’ve reached the God of War threshold?”

Only God of War level psychics could condense their mental energy into liquid form.

And the flood didn’t stop. The energy kept pouring in, more and more droplets forming.

Minutes turned into hours. Rowan’s skull ached, his mind stretched to its limits, as though his very consciousness were bloated and overflowing.

“Could it be… I’ve hit the limit of what my body can contain?”

Psychic strength was always constrained by physical cultivation. A warrior’s spirit could only advance two levels higher than their physical realm.

He was currently at the peak of Advanced Warlord. That meant his psychic power could, at most, reach mid-tier God of War.

Eventually, the golden arc faded, the torrent subsiding.

Rowan opened his eyes, exhaling heavily.

The power inside him was overwhelming, beyond anything he had ever known. With a thought, he felt as though he could level mountains and tear apart oceans.

He had truly become a God of War level psychic.

“The Mind Stone… priceless.”

Rowan tightened his grip on the gem, reluctant to let it go.

With this, he would never again worry about cultivating psychic strength.

“Wait. If the Mind Stone strengthens the spirit, would the Power Stone strengthen the body?”

The realization sent a thrill through him.

If he could acquire the Power Stone, then his warrior cultivation would no longer be a bottleneck either.

All he would need to do was break through each major realm. Once he did, the Stones could elevate him instantly to the pinnacle.

Rowan smirked. “Interesting. At this point in time, Star-Lord hasn’t found the Power Stone yet…”

The plan was clear. Once the alien ship was operational, he would head into space and claim it first.

“As for whether the Mind Stone can temper my will… that will have to wait until I reach planetary level.”

Pocketing both treasures, Rowan leaned back in satisfaction.

For now, he had the Mind Stone and the Tesseract. The rest would follow in due time.

Outside, the Avengers had finished mopping up the remaining Chitauri with help from the military. Even a few aliens had been captured alive.

Though New York had suffered greatly, government leaders were almost giddy. Alien weapons and corpses promised breakthroughs in science and defense.

Of course, none of them mentioned Kroll Industries or Rowan.

Not one dared.

Rowan’s strength had already eclipsed any nation’s power. He had saved New York. He could also level it in an instant.

Better to leave him unprovoked.

So while the Avengers were investigated and Fury was punished, Rowan was left entirely untouched.

What none of them realized was that Rowan’s butterfly effect had already reshaped the future. Hydra, for instance, abandoned their grand “Insight Program” after realizing their floating carriers would be nothing but toys against someone like him.

Instead, they poured everything into Baron Strucker’s enhanced human experiments, desperate to create beings who might rival Rowan.

But Rowan knew nothing of their schemes.

He was too busy cultivating.

One month later, in the virtual training world of Swallowed Star.

Inside Jiangnan Pavilion’s training chamber, Rowan stood before a force-testing machine.

He clenched his fists, muscles coiled like springs.

“Let’s see if this time… I’ve truly reached the threshold of God of War.”

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Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep