Chapter Ninety-Five: Palladium

Waiting was a long and arduous business.

All the more so in this fevered moment. Whenever Peter heard the gunfire erupting from within the weapons research division, the cries of alarm, the shrill buzzing and screaming that drifted out to him, he felt as though he were sitting on pins and needles. Each time, he was almost unable to restrain himself, wanting to rush in and help Zhong Shenxiu.

But whenever he remembered the special instructions Zhong Shenxiu had given before leaving, Peter forced himself to suppress the urge again and again. He was afraid that a moment’s rashness on his part might ruin Zhong Shenxiu’s plan.

So together with Ivan, the two of them kept their eyes fixed on the chaos within the weapons research division, waiting anxiously for Zhong Shenxiu’s orders.

At last...

When the dense gunfire finally began to die down and slowly shifted farther away,

Zhong Shenxiu’s order finally came:

Move out!

At the sight of those simple words on the communicator, Ivan was instantly energized.

“Peter, buckle up!”

As soon as he finished speaking, Ivan moved with the force and vigor of a tiger, shifting gears with a power that seemed to wrench the lever from the very machine itself, then, eyes blazing, he slammed his foot on the accelerator.

The steel behemoth roared to life!

Boom—

It smashed straight through the iron gate of the weapons research division and charged directly inside.

Along the way, the ground was strewn with wreckage, blood flowed like streams, and the well-equipped security personnel looked no more resilient than the weakest refugees, rolling on the floor and howling in agony, while some had already sunk into a deep stupor... or even death.

Peter was no longer a child, and he understood perfectly well.

Every inch of ground he and Ivan now advanced over had been fought for by Zhong Shenxiu, step by step, through hardship and peril, and opened up for them.

Shenxiu... was truly terrifyingly strong!

Peter asked himself whether he could carve such a bloody path through such a ruthless encirclement.

He could not.

Soon, Ivan drove the truck directly beside the colossal arc reactor, and all the way there the two of them did not even encounter a single enemy. That only made Ivan inwardly marvel at how formidable Zhong Shenxiu truly was.

“Put on the hood, and don’t use the web-shooter,” Ivan reminded Peter once more.

“Mm.”

Peter nodded lightly and pulled on the pitch-black hood.

He was now wearing an all-black skintight suit, mainly because Spider-Man’s red combat suit was too conspicuous, so Ivan had prepared this outfit for him.

Ivan also pulled on a hood, dressed in black night gear, and stepped down from the truck.

He did not pause for even a moment in the Stark weapons research division, packed with high-tech equipment. Instead, following Zhong Shenxiu’s instructions, he walked straight toward that giant arc reactor glowing with blue light.

The control interface beside it was extremely complex, but after a little fumbling, Ivan quickly grasped the key to operating it.

Then...

Hiss—

This giant arc reactor, which had been operating continuously since the days of Howard, finally ceased its work. The anti-particle capacitor fluid within instantly lost its blue sheen.

Before Ivan could even call him, Peter sprang upward the moment the reactor stopped and leaped directly to its very top.

There was an entrance there.

It was the access point normally used to replace the palladium element in the reactor.

Peter moved like a nimble little insect, and before long he had poked his head out again.

At the same time, he lifted high above his head a silver-white metal block, flat and rectangular, as wide as his own body, and asked Ivan excitedly, “Is this metal palladium?”

“Yes, Peter. Hurry and carry it back to the truck.”

Seeing such a huge chunk of palladium, Ivan looked as though he had laid eyes on a priceless treasure, terrified it might be lost.

“No hurry... there are eleven more of the same inside.”

Peter set it down at the side and then ducked his head back into the arc reactor.

The same... there were eleven more!?

At those words, Ivan’s eyes widened at once, and he stood there somewhat dazed.

Stark Industries really had an enormous stockpile of palladium... Could this, too, have been foreseen by the boss in advance?

So much palladium... the gains from this run were far beyond Ivan’s imagination.

——

A little earlier, at Tony’s private seaside villa on Malibu Road, California.

Ever since Tony had escaped from the hands of the terrorists in the Middle East, in the brief span of a single month he had become increasingly anxious.

Zhong Shenxiu’s words—“I know even more, Tony. You are going to die...”—would surface in his mind whenever Tony closed his eyes.

Over and over, they reminded him:

Tony, like everyone else, death is never truly far away.

As a peerless genius and a reckless libertine, the arrogant course of his earlier life had meant he had never considered, nor even thought about, the question of death.

He had never wondered when he would die, nor how.

If it were simply old age and a peaceful end, he could accept that. But if it were...

Since that month ago,

everything had changed.

Tony had begun to realize that even if he regarded every person on the planet as fools, even if he were richer than nations themselves, none of it could change the fact that he was nothing more than flesh and blood.

A band of filthy terrorists, armed with a worn-out old gun, could kill him with ease.

Whenever he thought of that, Tony could not help wanting to change.

Just as he had once, with Ethan’s help, used scrap torn from all kinds of weapons to create the most powerful device that allowed him to escape alive from the terrorists’ encirclement, Tony now also wanted to make something else—something that could ease his anxiety about death, something that could change the fact that he was merely an ordinary mortal!

And so Tony began building his Mark Two.

Driven by anxiety, Tony worked harder than he ever had before, more diligently than at any time in the past.

At last, fortune favored the prepared.

In less than a month, Tony completed the Mark Two.

Once he put on this suit, capable of effortless ascents to heaven and descents to earth, all-powerful and beyond compare, Tony felt his anxiety vanish in an instant.

The suit’s formidable capabilities filled him with boundless confidence.

It made Tony understand once again:

He was still that gifted man, the one even heaven would envy!

“Jarvis, run another calibration on the Mark Two. Tonight we’re going for a spin!” With his confidence restored, Tony’s playful and witty spirit returned as well.

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis replied in his mechanical synthetic voice from somewhere unseen.

Tony sat behind the workbench, looking at the various parameters of the Mark Two displayed on the screen, while also thinking through improvements in his mind.

During yesterday’s test flight, he had felt the armor was a little too heavy, and when flying to higher altitudes, there was also the risk of icing...

Tony’s genius mind was racing at full speed.

Suddenly,

Jarvis warned, “Sir, I have just received an urgent internal Stark notice. The New York weapons research division has come under attack by unknown individuals!”