Lu Mingfei doesn't want to be a superhero

“You have a locator on you, on your back, just below your neck,” Natasha’s gaze swept over Lu Mingfei’s back. “It’s a miniature camouflage locator that changes color to match the color of the clothing it’s attached to, so I didn’t notice it at first, but I did when you turned around. Snipers will use the locator as a target for precise shots, and hitting it will be fatal to you.”

A locator?! How could this be...?

Lu Mingfei was startled at first, then immediately realized—Elena must have secretly placed it on him during their intimate contact. That woman is definitely suspicious!

"How can you be sure this is a locator?" Lu Mingfei asked Natasha in her ear.

“I saw it once during a mission before and brought it back to S.H.I.E.L.D. for analysis. Because it was very technologically advanced, I found it quite memorable,” Natasha said. “That locator monitors changes in the surrounding environment, including temperature and voltage. If you use abilities like ice, fire, or lightning, you’ll probably be attacked the moment you activate it.”

"Wait, if the sniper can't see us directly, then why did you hug me?" Lu Mingfei suddenly realized, "You're not trying to take advantage of me, are you?"

Natasha smirked, "What kind of time is this to be joking around! I hugged you because there might be surveillance cameras in the room. The sniper is waiting for the best moment to strike, and if we act too strangely, he might make his move prematurely."

"It's just a sniper rifle," Lu Mingfei said. "It doesn't seem like much of a threat, does it?"

In Tony's world, his chilling aura would be even more powerful, capable of stopping not only sniper bullets but also grenade launchers.

“Since they’re using this method to assassinate you, they must know your abilities. They’ll probably use some kind of powerful firearm,” Natasha said.

Hearing Natasha say this, Lu Mingfei also felt a little uncertain.

“They might accidentally hurt me then,” Natasha added.

Lu Mingfei: ...

The next second, Lu Mingfei suddenly picked up Natasha and rolled her off the sofa.

In an instant, it was as if a blinding meteor had shot in through the window, instantly melting the glass and burning through the curtains. Lu Mingfei, who had just moved, was hit by the attack in mid-air.

Strangely, Lu Mingfei was not knocked away; he merely shifted a short distance in the air before landing steadily with Natasha.

After setting down the still-shaken Natasha, Lu Mingfei casually tossed out the locator from his back. Then, he raised his hand, and an ice shield with flowing silver threads inside flew to his front. A bullet over ten centimeters long was embedded in the ice shield, severely deformed. Its red-hot, glowing surface rapidly cooled and turned black.

“It seems they underestimated your strength,” Natasha said. “Even ice created in an instant would be enough for you to block this bullet.”

Lu Mingfei shook his head and remained silent.

In reality, the ice created in an instant was not enough to withstand the power of the bullet. However, when he condensed an ice shield behind him, he used a principle similar to adding fibers to concrete to increase its strength, causing the Silver Oak Sword to become thread-like and fuse into the ice. This greatly improved the defensive performance of the ice shield, allowing him to easily block the bullet. Otherwise, he would probably have been brought to the brink of death again.

Lu Mingfei looked up at the hole in the window and curtains, squinting slightly.

“I’ve already reported to S.H.I.E.L.D., but the sniper should be quite far away,” Natasha shook her head. “He’s probably already started to evacuate, so it’ll be difficult for us to attack him unless we also have sniper rifles that can hit him a kilometer or two away.”

"A sniper rifle?" Lu Mingfei was stunned for a moment, then realized what was happening. With a flick of his wrist, the ice shield shattered, and the threads of the Silver Oak Sword wove into a longbow in his hand.

With a push, the glass curtain wall window shattered in the biting wind. Ice condensed in front of Lu Mingfei, forming a large telescope. Looking in the direction the bullets came from, Lu Mingfei saw a masked person rapidly packing up a large sniper rifle on a rooftop.

Lu Mingfei reached out again, and the biting cold wind was compressed into a long arrow. Lu Mingfei drew his bow and pointed it at the rooftop.

At the same time, the longbow formed from the silver oak sword emitted a faint golden glow—the power of multiplication was activated!

The amplified power does not increase the range, but rather enhances the power of the cold air.

A deep blue arrow, tinged with a faint golden glow, pierced the night sky and flew towards the rooftop, but it didn't aim at the rooftop; instead, it flew slightly higher than the rooftop.

As the arrow flew over the rooftop, it shattered with a deafening roar. The triple-strengthened chill transformed into a blizzard that swept across the rooftop, instantly freezing everything inside, including the masked man who hadn't had time to escape.

P.S.: The next chapter should be before dawn.

154. Chapter 153 The Winter Soldier, Bucky?

Alexander Pierce's office on the top floor of the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters building.

The bald man in a well-tailored suit respectfully reported to the person behind the desk: "We have sent a Winter Soldier to assassinate him, and equipped him with the most advanced experimental weapons."

“Well done, Hitwell,” Pierce nodded. “Only by getting rid of these troublemakers can we resume stable development.”

Pierce looked like a serious but kind old man, but at this moment his brows were filled with gloom.

"Assassinating Stark Industries' major shareholder and second-in-command, and even Captain America, isn't that a bit too conspicuous?" Sitwell touched his bald head, somewhat uncertainly.

"It is indeed a bit ostentatious, but the big shots at the top will be happy to see it happen. The upper echelons do not want America's spiritual totem to move from the altar into the political arena. If this totem becomes a real 'totem,' the only motivation for those big shots to investigate will be to hope that the act of 'finding the killer of Captain America' can bring them more public support and votes. So as long as we push out a scapegoat, they will be satisfied to announce that they have found the killer, and no one will dig any deeper."

“S.H.I.E.L.D. will naturally be able to extricate itself from this damn storm and no longer be watched by so many people,” Pierce shook his head and said. “They can only blame themselves. We don’t care who is the president of the United States, but the more forces are watching S.H.I.E.L.D., the greater the chance that we will be discovered hiding among them. If Captain America hadn’t come to S.H.I.E.L.D. for cooperation, or if that idiot Fury hadn’t agreed to cooperate, we wouldn’t have had to resort to such risky methods now.”

"But... what I don't understand is, why did you agree to Fury's request to suspend the research on the Cosmic Cube?" Sitwell asked, puzzled.

“The Cosmic Cube has been studied for many years. Although there have been some results, they are not significant. At least the technologies and weapons developed so far cannot create a qualitative gap with modern weapons,” Pierce said. “This research has consumed a huge amount of our financial and human resources. We have been persisting in this research because we believed that it would pay off sooner or later. But now that we have a project with a higher return, isn’t it good to be able to divert some of our human and financial resources from the bottomless pit of the Cosmic Cube to do more practical research?”

“You mean… Deadpool?” Sitwell asked.

“Although our Lizard Professor was killed by the heavens just a few days after his birth, he left us a huge legacy,” Pierce said excitedly. “The Deadpools we have developed can now be controlled through brainwashing. Even the weakest of them can rival an armored vehicle and a whole truckload of soldiers.”

“I was just about to report to you,” Hitchwell said. “According to the guards who are holding Professor Connors captive, Professor Connors’s Dr. Lizard personality and abilities do not seem to have truly disappeared; there are still signs of them returning.”

"Even Tony Stark's technology can't fully restore him?" Pierce was somewhat surprised.

“Yes, perhaps we underestimated Professor Connors’ technical capabilities before,” Hitchwell said.

“I’m leaving this to you,” Pierce said immediately. “Find a way to reawaken our ally and get back to work with him. Although the current Deadpool training methods are practical, they’re still too inefficient. At this rate, we don’t know when we’ll be able to build an army. This professor might be able to help us speed things up a little.”

“Yes,” Hitterville said, bowing his head.

……

Northwestern suburbs of Los Angeles, above Universal Studios Hollywood.

Golden-red and silver-black steel suits streaked across the night sky, with the silver-black suit carrying a slender red-haired beauty.

"Can't you be a little gentler and give a lady a princess carry or something?" Natasha complained, her belt being held by Lu Mingfei in mid-air in a "へ" shape.

Even though speaking would result in being force-fed a bellyful of the cold night wind, Natasha couldn't help but complain.

“It’s so convenient to carry it like this, and it frees up one hand to deal with unexpected situations,” Lu Mingfei said. “What? Doesn’t Natasha feel uncomfortable carrying it like this?”

"Yes, it's very uncomfortable. The belt is so tight it hurts my stomach and I can't breathe," Natasha quickly replied.

"Why are you being so pretentious, you professional agent?" Lu Mingfei complained.

Natasha: ...

As they spoke, they had already approached their target—a rooftop that had been frozen in ice.

After freezing the enemy with arrows, Lu Mingfei quickly called Tony and Steve to tell them the current situation.

Natasha immediately reported to Fury, who told her to keep quiet and stay with Lu Mingfei and the other two to deal with the problem.

Steve was going to arrive a little later because he was on foot, but Tony had already prepared two sets of Iron Man suits for emergencies at his villa. So he rushed over with Lu Mingfei's suit as soon as possible. After Lu Mingfei put on his suit, he took Natasha and Tony and flew to the scene.

After reaching the airspace above the frozen rooftop, Lu Mingfei and Tony slowed down and landed. Lu Mingfei then released Natasha, who shivered in the cold wind.

Although she had changed into her combat uniform before arriving and put on an extra layer of clothing for warmth, the biting cold air permeating the rooftop still made her shiver a little.

Lu Mingfei looked up and saw that everything on the rooftop was covered by a thick layer of ice, including the masked assassin on the edge of the rooftop and a high-tech sniper rifle.

In reality, a single ice arrow wouldn't have such an exaggerated effect, since a single ice arrow can only carry a limited amount of cold air, even if the power is amplified.

But... no one has ever said that this thing can only fire one shot.

After the first ice arrow, Lu Mingfei noticed that the frozen assassin was still trying to break free from the ice, so he decisively fired a few more arrows, freezing him completely.

If he weren't worried that freezing the other person to death would prevent him from extracting any useful information, Lu Mingfei would have liked to fire a few more arrows.

“Jarvis, check for vital signs on the target,” Lu Mingfei said.

“The target appears to have undergone special human modifications. His physical condition is relatively stable, and his core body temperature has not dropped significantly. He is not in immediate danger,” Jarvis said. “In addition, I scanned one of his arms and found that it is a modified robotic arm.”

"Then freeze him a little longer, so that he won't still have the ability to move after thawing and try to escape or anything like that," Lu Mingfei said.

Natasha walked up to the frozen assassin and could roughly see the masked face through the ice.

"The Winter Soldier?!" Natasha exclaimed.

“What Winter Soldier?” Lu Mingfei walked over and complained, “What we need right now for Natasha is her real identity information, like her codename, which faction she belongs to, etc. Giving her a nickname on the spot won’t help. You can’t just call her ‘Winter Soldier’ because I froze her, that’s not accurate or rigorous enough. If that’s the case, who would the Winter Soldier’s superior be? The Snow Queen or Aokiji? If you ask me, it would be better to call her ‘Snowman’ or ‘Iceman’, that would be more vivid…”

Natasha's face darkened: "This isn't about giving a nickname. I've fought this guy before and looked up his information. His codename is Winter Soldier. His affiliation is unknown, but he's definitely a top-tier killer and assassin. I still have a scar on my stomach from the penetrating gunshot wound I got from fighting him. I'll never be able to wear a bikini again."

scar?

Lu Mingfei subconsciously thought of the "scar removal cream" that Susie had gotten from the equipment department back in Portugal so that she could wear a bikini on vacation.

“I might develop a drug in the future that could help with your scars,” Lu Mingfei said.

He suddenly realized that selling scar removal cream was also a highly profitable business.

"Is it a scar removal medicine?" Natasha asked with some anticipation. After all, she was facing two super geniuses. Maybe Lu Mingfei could really do it?

“Hmm…” Lu Mingfei thought for a moment and said sincerely, “It could be a scar removal medicine, but… it could also be a combustion aid.”

A question mark appeared above Natasha's head.

"Aid in...combustion?" What does that mean? Is this scar removal medicine? This is clearly gunpowder!

……

On the rooftop, the Winter Soldier that Natasha mentioned had been thawed by Lu Mingfei, but due to the damage caused by the previous low temperature, it was estimated that it would be difficult for him to wake up in a short time.

Lu Mingfei had him lie on the ice, removed his mask, and had Jarvis take a picture of the target's face and archive it.

"Wow! He's actually quite handsome!" Lu Mingfei remarked. "He's quite good-looking, so why did he choose the wrong profession and become an assassin? Wouldn't it be more lucrative to be a movie star?"

“He’s just average-looking,” Tony said from the side. “He looks like an average person.”

Natasha covered her face with her hands—the two men were commenting on the Winter Soldier in the same tone a buyer would use at a pet stall to discuss whether a rabbit was pretty or not.

Please, these are vicious assassins! Can't you guys be a little more careful?!

Just as Natasha was about to complain, the door on the rooftop, which had been closed and frozen, was suddenly slammed open.

Steve, holding a shield, walked out of the door: "Sorry I'm late. I came here as soon as I got the call, following the location Jarvis gave me. If I were a car, I'd probably be speeding..."

As Steve approached, joking around, his gaze fell on the face of the assassin lying on the ground. He froze instantly, his eyes widening.

“Bucky?!” Steve exclaimed.

155. Chapter 154 Hulk and the Winter Soldier (laughs)

Outside the operating room at a private hospital affiliated with S.H.I.E.L.D.

Lu Mingfei, Natasha, Tony, and Steve stood outside the glass wall of the operating room, where they could clearly see Bucky undergoing a thorough physical examination.