For Banner, the Hulk had always been the root cause of his current troubles, but Ethan was now telling him that the Hulk wasn't the problem, which made it completely impossible for him to accept.

"You can keep going back... How was the Hulk born?"

Fundamentally, the Hulk's birth was entirely caused by Dr. Banner's own experimental accident, just as Tony Stark said to Banner in the original plot: "That level of radiation could have killed you."

But not only did Banner not die, he was alive and kicking and possessed abilities many people only dreamed of. The Hulk's existence made Banner practically immortal, which held a fatal attraction for many.

"You mean, I caused all of this myself?"

"Pretty much."

Ethan gestured to Banner, and the two didn't stay there but went to Summer Beach, where they chatted while enjoying the cool sea breeze and watching the sun half-set.

"Actually, the Hulk is just another you. You should know that when some people are escaping reality, a new personality can emerge to control the body in place of the original one, right?"

This kind of scenario mostly happens in movies and TV shows, but there are real-life cases as well. However, Banner had never thought in this direction. In his heart, he had always seen the Hulk as a separate, distinct entity.

"You mean, the Hulk is actually my other personality?" Banner was somewhat incredulous. "That... how is that possible?"

"Why isn't it possible? Just because his appearance is accompanied by massive physical changes? But even if your body changes, it's still your body, isn't it?"

The Hulk didn't appear out of thin air, nor was he some other creature occupying Banner's body. Everything about the Hulk is based on Banner, and the physical changes aren't hard to understand. The gamma radiation caused some special mutations in Banner's body, just like the Fantastic Four mutated after being exposed to cosmic radiation. This is not at all strange in the Marvel universe.

And the Hulk didn't really have a true personality at first, he just felt Banner's own negative emotions. Unlike the core personality, Banner often chose to escape, while the Hulk would vent these negative emotions wildly. Just like a child who doesn't know how to hide their feelings, he simply acted according to instinct.

"Everything the Hulk does isn't something you don't want to do, but something you dare not do. If you can't face all of this squarely, then even I won't be able to help you."

The current Banner hasn't experienced the Avengers' numerous battles, hasn't gone to space to become a gladiator, hasn't been beaten badly by Thanos, and hasn't been sternly rejected by the Hulk, who has already awakened his self-awareness. The Hulk had had enough of the cowardly Banner, always making him solve things whenever trouble arose, which is why he refused to help Banner. This is also why the Hulk wouldn't appear in Avengers: Endgame.

It wasn't until that major battle reached its end that Banner finally began to bravely fight the enemy, no longer relying on the Hulk. Only then did he truly become an Avenger member, rather than a scientist who was part of the Avengers group because of the Hulk.

However, by that time, the Hulk had grown into an independent consciousness, and trying to merge the two would lead to unpredictable changes.

"It's different now. The Hulk is like a newborn baby, he doesn't understand anything, and his mental consciousness is unstable. At this time, you can fully accept everything about him, including the physical mutation, which isn't uncontrollable."

But Banner must face the fact that the Hulk is part of himself. If he continues to reject and refuse to acknowledge this in his heart, even if Ethan can help him assimilate the Hulk this time, it's not guaranteed that a new personality won't emerge again.

"I need to think about it carefully."

"You have plenty of time to think it over now."

With Ethan, Banner had no work to do. He had plenty of free time every day to think carefully about the relationship between himself and the Hulk, how he should treat the Hulk, or rather, should he really acknowledge, as Ethan said, that the Hulk is actually himself.

Everything that needed to be said had been said. Ethan didn't press further.

He could help Dr. Banner and was willing to lend a hand to resolve this minor issue for Banner. Banner's current situation was similar to that of the resurrected Howard and his wife. After getting new bodies, the spiritual energy in their souls needed to merge with the spiritual energy of the new bodies.

Banner's situation was slightly reversed. After his body mutated, coupled with his own personality traits, a new mental entity appeared. This mental entity was rejected by Banner himself and eventually became the Hulk.

If he was willing, Ethan could merge these two mental entities. Considering that the Hulk currently had no independent consciousness, after the re-merging, Banner would still be Banner, and even his personality wouldn't be affected at all.

However, if he delayed for too long, it would be hard to say. Once the Hulk developed a personal consciousness, even if they could merge, it would be difficult to tell if it was Banner or the Hulk, and a new personality might even be born.

Ethan had told Banner all these things. The situation was clear, how Banner chose to proceed was up to him.

Leaving Banner on the island to slowly contemplate his future, Ethan went to another cabin.

This teleportation room was specifically designed for group teleportation and had detailed detection and scanning functions. However, Ethan was now going to make some modifications, such as isolating some smaller teleportation areas for individuals to teleport separately.

With the intelligent system Luna and a warehouse full of freely moldable nanomachines, Ethan could easily modify the area according to his ideas.

In just half a night, he transformed the originally empty teleportation cabin into the form he had envisioned.

From then on, this cabin was divided into several areas. Personal teleportation pads, circular platforms less than a meter in diameter, with an operating interface next to each platform for users to make specific selections.

However, the teleportation pads were currently just for show and didn't have actual teleportation functionality.

According to Ethan's design, these personal teleportation platforms could also be used for simultaneous group teleportation, so even though everyone stood on different platforms, their destination would be the same.

Besides these, there was also a large circular platform, which was the teleportation pad Ethan was currently focusing on building.

This teleportation pad could ensure that everyone on the ship could stand on it without feeling crowded, and there was even extra space for packages or other items.

Compared to the other platforms, this large teleportation pad looked more like a magic Circle created with modern technological materials.

For now, this teleportation pad only led to one world, the Starship Troopers world. Ethan directly recorded the coordinates of that world into the teleportation magic Circle, so anyone on the ship could use this teleportation Circle to go to that world in the future.

The entire teleportation Circle didn't require Ethan to provide energy. Using the ship's own energy, after attribute conversion, it could perfectly activate the teleportation Circle. It could be said that Luna, as the intelligent system, could operate all these teleportation platforms.

"After simple testing, the teleportation platform is operating normally. Do you need me to relinquish control of this platform?"

According to Ethan's previous thinking, he would definitely have asked Luna to completely sever its connection with the platform. However, his ideas had changed now, so he retained Luna's authority over all equipment on the ship.

"No need. I need you to monitor all data on this teleportation platform for a long time. Notify me immediately if there are any abnormal fluctuations."

"Okay, sir."

Although the teleportation platform was ready, Ethan wouldn't immediately let the crew use it for travel. He wasn't sure about the platform's safety and needed to observe it for a long time to confirm there were no issues before personally using it a few times to see the actual effect.

Spatial teleportation was never a simple or casual matter, let alone this kind of cross-planar teleportation. No amount of caution was too much.

So, for the next period, everyone on the Artemis was busy with things to do, and life was relatively peaceful.

Nebula and Hill conducted a full-scale inspection of the spaceship.

Leah followed Evelyn, Sherry, and Laura to learn various necessary common sense knowledge. She also began to show her extraordinary talent. She quickly mastered some basic knowledge about spiritual power training that Sherry taught her. At this rate, within three months, Sherry probably wouldn't have anything left to teach her in terms of magic.

Seeing Leah's learning speed, the temporary teachers all realized how formidable Leah's talent was and understood why Ethan was willing to take Leah as his disciple.

It was also fortunate that Sherry was much older now, otherwise, it was hard to say if she could withstand this kind of shock... for the second time.

Banner was still struggling, but he borrowed a small gadget from Ethan. This gadget allowed him to interact with the Hulk more directly, similar to opening a chat room in his own mental consciousness world. Banner could now have a good face-to-face talk with the Hulk, although the Hulk on the other side had no independent consciousness at all and could only give some very instinctive feedback.

Meanwhile, Ethan stayed in the teleportation room for a long time. While observing the large teleportation platform, he also worked on perfecting the smaller personal teleportation platforms. By the time he had personally completed the construction of all the platforms, he had also basically confirmed that there were no issues with the large platform. So, he began to personally test it by traveling to the Starship Troopers world through this platform.

If there were no problems, he would need to start considering issuing specialized teleportation equipment to everyone, ensuring his crew could return here when needed.

(To be continued.)