Chapter 336 S: Glorious Event (16)_2

Polaris closed her eyes, and after a few seconds, she said, "I found it."

Then, the mutants looked at each other, and Polaris asked, "How should I describe the point I found to you?"

Stark held his forehead, but Banner was a bit more patient. He said, "Do you know about locating methods? We can adopt one of the simpler ones…"

"...What locating method?"

Banner looked at Polaris and said, "It's the point location method. You don't know about it? It's about identifying three points…"

Banner was about to explain, but then he realized that to explain the three-point location method, he would have to explain what a triangle is, and to explain the triangle, he would have to touch on triangle identities and trigonometry, which would inevitably lead to the mention of trigonometric functions…

Banner also sighed, looked at Blink and said, "Even if we give you a complete map now, you can't locate, right?"

"Actually there's another way. You just need to give me a direction, then I take you guys to teleport bit by bit. We are bound to cross the South Pole because the planet is round. Isn't it?", Blink shrugged and said.

Stark was almost suffocating. If there was one thing he had learnt from the initial landing, it was never to put hope on others, especially not on mutants.

But one must admit, what Blink proposed was indeed a method. The limit of Blink's ability to teleport is the distance from Earth to the Moon, and the diameter of Mercury is two-fifths that of Earth. Therefore, even with piecemeal teleportation, it wouldn't take too long to make a round trip. As long as they got close to the South Pole at some landing point, Polaris would sense it, and they could land at the South Pole…

But Stark never dreamt that he would have to resort to the exhaustion method to determine a location.

Blink, with the crew, worked half a day and finally landed at the South Pole. At this point, Banner and Stark were a bit dizzy. As ordinary humans, they were a bit uncomfortable with rapid teleportation.

But at least they reached the destination. This time, it was Quicksilver's turn. At the South Pole of Mercury there is Ring Mountain. Quicksilver needed to create a downward tunnel here and then proceed with exploration.

The reason why machines were not used for this task was because the density of Mercury is very high. To go deep underground, exploration drills can only be made of vibranium or adamant alloy, and the wear and tear would be very significant. To save cost on Earth, Stark chose cost-free mutants instead.

But it is proven that in this world, nothing is free. Quicksilver's ability is indeed formidable. He can move freely in space without having to wear a Mecha, and he can also absorb solar energy and convert it into shock waves.

The only problem is, he doesn't quite understand the mapping drawn by Stark. He flew into mid-air holding the map, glanced at the drawing, then at the ground, then at the drawing again, and then at the ground. After looking for a while, he still didn't start working. Instead, he flew back and asked Stark, "Why isn't there a Ring Mountain on your map?"

"No Ring Mountain?... Isn't it here?" Stark walked over and pointed at the drawing, "Look here, see these numbers? You have to follow these…"

"What are these numbers?... And what is this?"

"This is the scale, see this dot I drew? You have to draw a perfect circle at a scale of 1:1000, and at the same time, you have to create a tangent that is half the depth here, and here…"

Half an hour later, Quicksilver flew back into mid-air, then shot out a hot beam with his arms. Stark stood on the surface of Mercury with his hands on his hips, watching the patterns on the ground and yelling, "Stop! You've gotten it wrong!! What's that in your hand? That's a map, follow the map!!!"

"I did follow the map!!" Quicksilver yelled back.

"But I wanted a perfect circle, what shape is that you've cut? A slice of bread?!"

"But I'm controlling manually, how can I be that accurate?!"

Half an hour later, Stark and Banner once again sighed. Banner patted Stark's shoulder and said, "Let's leave it at that. After all, it's just preliminary exploration. As long as we get inside the Ring Mountain, it's enough."

Stark didn't say anything and simply walked towards the pit made by Quicksilver.

Quicksilver had made a hole in the middle of Ring Mountain. When Blink teleported several people down, Bruce screamed, falling and landing on his bottom, because there was a protrusion at the place he landed which knocked him down.

Stark turned around to look and sighed again. To Quicksilver, he said, "Don't you understand the importance of safe operation?"

Before Quicksilver could retort, Stark continued, "Here, blast a tunnel this way."

Then he turned again, dragged Iceman over and said, "While he's blasting a tunnel, you use your ice making ability to create support structures to prevent the tunnel from collapsing."

Stark took out a map again, this time before Iceman could say anything, Stark looked at the map then threw the map behind him saying, "Forget it, you can't understand it anyway. To put it simply, when he is blasting a tunnel, you make something to brace the tunnel so we can get in."

"Okay, no problem." Iceman nodded.

Quicksilver produced a thinner beam and slowly started cutting out a tunnel, with the tunnel gradually appearing in front of them.

Iceman crouched down, touched the ground with his hand, and ice started spreading along the tunnel in an instant. At this time, Banner stopped his next move and said, "This kind of support structure won't work. If you go further forward, it will collapse. According to structural mechanics, you have to create a support point here, and here, which need to bear weight…"

Even though Iceman didn't understand, he was more patient than the others. He did whatever Banner said. After being delayed for a few hours, they finally got into the tunnel.

Then came repeated tasks, with Stark sifting through possible ice layers underground, while also recording the structure of the underground rock layers.

After half a day of adjustments, the team's coordination was pretty good. But when Banner and Bruce were collecting data in an underground cave, Quicksilver, Polaris, and Iceman began to argue fiercely.

Not long ago, they had a quarrel. If Charles and Magneto hadn't temporarily come to an agreement and ordered them to carry out the mission together, the three of them would still be in a cold war.

As for what happens when folks in a cold war are forcibly stuck together, it doesn't need saying. Quicksilver suspected Iceman of stealing his woman, Polaris thought Quicksilver was being unreasonable, Iceman stood up for Polaris and this made Quicksilver think they both betrayed him…

Stark was collecting rock samples when he heard a big "Boom!" behind him. Then, the icy columns supporting the underground structure began to collapse layer by layer. In an instant, Blink appeared next to the two of them and teleported them to the surface with a "Whish".

The moment they landed on the surface, a loud rumble sounded in front of them. The center of Ring Mountain collapsed completely with a loud "Boom".

Quicksilver, Polaris, and Iceman crawled out covered in dust and dirt. Facing them was the dark, grim face of Stark.