The Ten Rings compound sat in the mountains outside Hong Kong, a fortress disguised as a legitimate business complex.
But the warehouse at its heart was anything but legitimate.
Xu Wenwu stood at the entrance, surveying his investment with the patience of someone who'd lived a thousand years. Behind him, Shang-Chi and Xialing waited in respectful silence. The Death Dealer—Wenwu's most trusted lieutenant—stood to the left, hands clasped behind his back.
And inside the warehouse, stacked floor to ceiling in rows that stretched the length of three football fields, were stones.
Round stones. Approximately seven to eight centimeters in diameter. Collected over six months from quarries, riverbeds, beaches, and stone merchants across five continents. Each one purchased because it matched the general specifications of the Dragon Balls before their activation.
Tens of thousands of them. Maybe a hundred thousand. Enough to fill the warehouse completely, leaving barely room to walk between the stacks.
The cost had been astronomical. The manpower required to sort, catalogue, and store them all had pulled resources from operations across the Ten Rings network. But Wenwu had been adamant—if the Dragon Balls had once been ordinary stones before activating, then collecting every possible candidate gave him the best chance of possessing one when they transformed.
"Father," Shang-Chi said quietly, breaking the silence. "I can feel it. The Dragon Ball... it's speaking to me again."
Xialing nodded, her hand unconsciously moving to press against her temple. "Me too. Information flooding in. The Dragon Balls have reactivated."
Wenwu's expression remained perfectly controlled, but something shifted in his eyes. Hope, buried under a thousand years of discipline, rising to the surface.
"Open the warehouse," he ordered.
The Death Dealer gestured to the Ten Rings soldiers standing by. They moved to the massive doors and began unsealing them—industrial locks disengaging with heavy mechanical sounds.
The doors swung open, revealing the mountain of stones within.
"Begin sorting," Wenwu commanded. "Move them to the secondary warehouse. We'll identify the Dragon Ball through process of elimination."
The soldiers moved immediately, forming a chain to pass stones from one warehouse to the other. It was methodical work. Tedious. But necessary.
An hour passed.
The mountain of stones seemed to barely diminish despite dozens of soldiers working continuously. At this rate, the sorting would take days. Maybe weeks.
Wenwu's patience finally reached its limit.
"Stop," he said, his voice carrying absolute authority. "Everyone out."
The soldiers froze mid-task, then retreated from the warehouse without question. Even Shang-Chi and Xialing stepped back, recognizing the shift in their father's demeanor.
Wenwu walked into the warehouse alone.
The Ten Rings on his arms began to glow—blue light pulsing in rhythm with something ancient and unknowable. The artifacts had been with Wenwu for a millennium, granting him strength, longevity, and power beyond mortal comprehension.
Now he would use them to separate truth from deception.
The rings lifted from his arms, floating in the air around him like orbiting satellites. They moved with liquid grace, positioning themselves in a perfect circle. Then they began to spin.
Faster. Faster. The blue glow intensified until it was almost painful to look at directly.
The rings collided with each other in the center of the circle.
The resulting shockwave was invisible but devastating. It swept through the warehouse in a perfect expanding sphere, touching every stone simultaneously.
The stones exploded into powder. Molecular bonds shattered under the concentrated energy. In seconds, hundreds of thousands of carefully collected specimens ceased to exist as coherent objects.
Dust filled the warehouse. A beige-gray cloud so thick it obscured everything.
Wenwu recalled the Ten Rings to his arms with a thought. They flew back obediently, settling into place as if they'd never left. Then he sent them out again—this time to the warehouse's rear wall.
The rings punched through reinforced concrete like it was paper, creating a massive hole that let the mountain wind pour through. The breeze caught the suspended dust and began pulling it out into the open air.
Slowly, the cloud dispersed.
And there, in the center of where a hundred thousand stones had been, resting on a half-meter pile of compressed powder, sat a single orange sphere.
Wenwu walked forward, his footsteps leaving prints in the dust. He reached down and picked up the Dragon Ball, feeling its weight in his palm.
One red star floated inside the perfect sphere, visible from every angle no matter how he turned it.
The 1-Star Dragon Ball.
The moment his fingers made contact, information flooded his mind. Not the simple awareness from a year ago when Xialing had first touched a Dragon Ball. This was comprehensive. Detailed. Complete.
The nature of the Dragon Balls. The wish-granting ritual. The requirement to gather all seven. And most importantly—information about the tournament that would determine who received the wish.
Smith Doyle's doing, clearly. The system had embedded the tournament rules directly into the Dragon Balls this time, ensuring every holder understood the process.
Wenwu absorbed it all in seconds—a thousand years of experience making the assimilation trivial. Then he smiled.
"Yingli," he whispered to the Dragon Ball. "I will resurrect you. I swear it."
Behind him, Shang-Chi and Xialing had ventured into the warehouse, drawn by their father's silence.
"Father!" Xialing called, seeing the Dragon Ball in his hand. "You found one!"
Shang-Chi's expression showed relief mixed with concern. His father's obsession with resurrecting their mother had consumed the Ten Rings for years. Now, with a Dragon Ball in hand and knowledge of the tournament, that obsession would only intensify.
"Congratulations, father," Shang-Chi said, the words automatic. "You have a tournament entry."
Wenwu turned to face his children, the Dragon Ball cradled carefully in one hand. "This is only the beginning. One Dragon Ball grants me entry to the competition. But if I can acquire more before the tournament, my position strengthens."
He looked past them to where the Death Dealer waited outside. "Death Dealer. Issue new orders to our network."
The lieutenant stepped forward. "Yes, Master Wenwu."
"I want to purchase Dragon Balls. Spread the word through every channel we control—criminal, legitimate, everything. The price is negotiable. If someone can prove they possess a genuine Dragon Ball, I'll pay whatever they ask."
The Death Dealer's eyebrows rose fractionally—the most surprise he'd shown in years. "Master, the current highest offer on the dark web is thirty million dollars."
"Then make it a hundred million," Wenwu said without hesitation. "Per Dragon Ball. Cash, cryptocurrency, gold, territory—whatever the seller wants. Make it clear that price is not an obstacle."
Xialing couldn't help but react. "Father, that's six hundred million dollars if someone actually has all six remaining Dragon Balls."
"A trivial sum compared to your mother's life." Wenwu's voice carried absolute certainty. "The tournament rules are now clear. I could win through combat, or I could simply purchase victory. If spending money avoids the risk of losing in the arena, it's money well spent."
Shang-Chi understood the logic even if it made him uncomfortable.
"What if no one sells?" Shang-Chi asked.
Wenwu's smile didn't reach his eyes. "Then I win the tournament the traditional way. But I'm offering the option. Let the other holders decide if their wishes are worth more than generational wealth."
The Death Dealer bowed. "I'll spread the word immediately, Master Wenwu."
As the lieutenant departed to execute his orders, Wenwu turned back to the 1-Star Dragon Ball in his hand. The orange sphere seemed to pulse with its own internal light, the single star rotating slowly within.
One down. Six to go.
And Xu Wenwu had all the time in the world.
Three thousand miles east, in a warehouse outside Malibu that officially didn't exist, Tony Stark stood on a catwalk overlooking his own solution to the Dragon Ball problem.
Where Xu Wenwu had relied on brute force and ancient artifacts, Tony had applied technology and systematic thinking.
The warehouse was massive—repurposed aircraft hangar that Stark Industries had "lost" in the inventory system years ago. But instead of a chaotic pile of stones, Tony's collection was organized with obsessive precision.
Rows upon rows of industrial shelving units stretched across the warehouse floor. Each unit held hundreds of individual compartments. Each compartment contained a single stone resting on a motorized platform that could rotate 360 degrees.
And above each stone, mounted on articulated arms, were scanning arrays.
Multispectral cameras. Density scanners. Electromagnetic sensors. Even a modified Scouter designed to detect the unique energy signature Dragon Balls emitted when active.
The entire system was automated, controlled by JARVIS, scanning every stone continuously and logging the results to a database that would make most government agencies jealous.
Tony had been collecting for eight months. The final count sat at approximately 847,000 individual specimens, each one purchased, catalogued, and positioned for optimal scanning.
"JARVIS," Tony said into the silence of the warehouse, "status report."
The AI's voice echoed from speakers mounted throughout the space. "Sir, all scanning systems are operational. The Dragon Ball reactivation event was detected seventeen minutes ago when the energy signatures of previously inert stones began fluctuating."
"And?"
"Scanning Area X, Row 3, Position 5. The stone designated X-3-005 has undergone complete metamorphosis. Visual confirmation shows transformation from ordinary sedimentary rock to a Dragon Ball configuration. The internal star formation is clearly visible."
Tony allowed himself a satisfied smile. "Knew it would work. Science Bitch."
Ever since failure from the last tournament, Tony had been summarizing the reason for his failure and on the other hand, he is a little uneasy letting any random person getting the Dragon Ball and making their wish, even if the person had been check by Smith.
He felt it best for Smith to keep it himself and use it in an event that might destroy the world. But Smith decline.
So that is why he choose to participate this oncoming tournament. As for resurrecting his parents, Tony give that idea up after Smith explained the reason why the Dragon can't fulfil it.