The cool ocean breeze of the California coast was choked with the smell of burning jet fuel and pulverized concrete. Tony Stark, encased in a Mark III that was currently screaming more warnings than a panicked air traffic controller, struggled to maintain altitude.
"Hey, kid! Be careful! This guy isn't playing by the rules—he's got some kind of kinetic output I can't track!" Tony's voice crackled, sounding genuinely worried. Despite his ego, he wasn't about to let the guy who just saved his life get blindsided by a lizard-man with space magic.
"Boom!"
A sonic boom ripped through the air before Tony could even finish his sentence. The Mandarin, his eyes glowing with a sickly, reptilian yellow, slapped the air in Tony's direction as if he were shooing away a persistent mosquito. To the Mandarin, the armored billionaire was nothing more than an irritant—a noisy fly that refused to stay swatted.
"Bang!"
This time, Tony couldn't get out of the way. Even with J.A.R.V.I.S. overlocking the thrusters, the strike was simply too fast. The invisible hammer of force caught the Mark III's left shoulder and torso. Metal groaned, servos snapped, and Tony was sent spiraling like a discarded soda can, skipping across the rocky shoreline before coming to a halt near the base of the cliff.
"Armor integrity at 15%," J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice was a flat, digital monotone amidst the chaos. "Power levels critical. Combat systems offline. Sir, I strongly recommend an immediate tactical withdrawal. Flight systems are the only functional utility remaining."
Tony winced, the taste of copper in his mouth telling him he'd bitten his tongue on impact. He groaned, forcing the heavy, dented armor to its feet. "Not yet, J.A.R.V.I.S. Just... just keep us airborne. I want a front-row seat for this. That's an alien spaceship up there—or, well, it was up there."
He looked at Huang Wen, his eyes gleaming with the manic curiosity that made him a genius. He didn't want to miss a single second of how a human being was going to fight a monster that could swat a fighter-jet-equivalent out of the sky.
High above, the Mandarin ignored the "fly" in the suit. His entire world had narrowed down to the golden, radiant figure of Huang Wen. The Mandarin was no fool; he had felt the bone-shattering power of the Indestructible Diamond Divine Art before. He knew that the gold skin wasn't just for show—it was a literal fortress.
The Mandarin's heart pounded against his ribs. He had come here to vent, to crush Stark and regain some semblance of pride. He wasn't supposed to face the "Ghost of Chinatown" so soon. But with his ship gone—his only way off this rock swallowed by some impossible spatial trick—he was a cornered animal. And a cornered animal only has one move: kill or be killed.
"RISE!" the Mandarin bellowed.
He thrust his scaled arms downward. Below them, the debris of Tony's multi-million dollar mansion—slabs of marble, shattered glass, and jagged rebar—trembled before flying upward. Hundreds of tons of wreckage swarmed toward Huang Wen like a cloud of angry hornets. The Mandarin didn't expect this to kill him; he just needed to block Huang Wen's line of sight for one heart-stopping second.
"Stop."
Huang Wen didn't even move a muscle. He simply projected his will. The air in front of him solidified as his telekinetic power met the incoming debris. The bricks and stones froze in mid-air, suspended in a silent, jagged wall. For a master of his level, this was a trivial expenditure of energy.
But the Mandarin was already moving.
"I refuse to believe your 'Golden Bell' can withstand the Ultimate Dragon Claw!" the Mandarin roared, his voice distorted by the power surging through him.
He didn't fire beams this time. He closed the distance in a blur, his scaled, elongated arms coiling with a dark, draconic energy. He thought he was being clever, using the debris as a screen. But he had forgotten one thing: Huang Wen didn't need eyes to see. His sensory perception was a sphere that extended in all directions, mapping the Mandarin's every heartbeat.
Sizzle!
The Mandarin's claws, sharp enough to rend tank armor, collided with Huang Wen's raised fist. The sound was like a circular saw hitting a diamond. Sparks showered the night sky, and the shockwave cleared the air of smoke for a hundred yards.
The Mandarin's eyes widened in horror. His "Dragon Claws," the pride of his new alien-augmented form, were struggling to even scratch the golden surface of Huang Wen's skin. Meanwhile, the force of Huang Wen's counter-pressure was making the scales on the Mandarin's arms crack and bleed.
"This is impossible!" the Mandarin hissed, his voice cracking. "How can a human body be this dense?!"
Huang Wen looked at the hideous limbs and sighed. "To be honest, I'm disappointed. You went and got these ugly lizard arms, and somehow you're even easier to hit than before. You traded your versatility for raw power, but your power still isn't enough."
Huang Wen didn't wait for a rebuttal. He leaned into a Bajiquan-inspired step, his weight shifting with the grace of a falling mountain.
"Bang!"
His punch buried itself in the Mandarin's chest. The impact sounded like a wrecking ball hitting a damp mattress. The Mandarin was launched backward, skipping across the surface of the ocean before crashing into a sea stack.
Huang Wen didn't immediately follow. He stood in the air, looking down at his hands. A thought crossed his mind—a realization that had been nagging at him since he achieved the Legendary realm.
"I've hit a ceiling," Huang Wen muttered to himself.
After consuming the Blood Bodhi, his stats were off the charts. His mental power was conceptual and vast. His physical strength was beyond measure. His speed was lightning-fast. But as he looked at the Mandarin, who was stubbornly climbing out of the water, Huang Wen realized his "toolbox" was starting to feel a bit empty.
He was a master of close-quarters combat. Wing Chun, Bajiquan, Indestructible Diamond Divine Art—all of them required him to be within arm's reach. His internal energy was a vast ocean, yet he had no way to "pour" it effectively over a distance.
The Acupoint-striking techniques were great for control, but lacked lethality against high-tier monsters. The Ice and Fire Palm was more of an elemental ability than a true martial art. He was a Legendary warrior fighting with the techniques of a mortal master.
"If only I'd drawn a high-tier Wuxia character in the lottery," he thought. "Someone like Cheng Shifei or Gu Santong. I need techniques that can turn this ocean of Qi into a storm."
The Mandarin erupted from the water, his Dragon Arms glowing a fierce, pulsing crimson. He wasn't dead, but he was desperate.
"I'll show you!" the Mandarin screamed.
Huang Wen didn't give him the chance. He decided to test something he'd been working on. He raised both palms, swirling his internal energy. On the left, a frost so cold it turned the humidity into snow; on the right, a heat that turned the air into a shimmering haze.
He thrust his hands forward. "Ice and Fire Palm: Twin Heavens!"
Instead of two separate blasts, Huang Wen forced the energies to intertwine. They spun around each other in a double-helix of destruction, the cold and heat not canceling out, but reacting violently to create a vortex of thermal shock.
"Boom!"
The blast caught the Mandarin as he tried to shield himself with his claws. A massive explosion of steam and fire lit up the Malibu coastline. The ground beneath the Mandarin began to melt and shatter simultaneously as the thermal stress tore the environment apart.
The Mandarin screamed, his Dragon Arms groaning under the pressure, his feet digging deep furrows into the cooling lava of the beach.
"Hold on!" the Mandarin's mind hissed, a hypnotic desperation taking over. "He can't kill me! I am the Mandarin! I have the Dragon!"
He poured every ounce of his alien-augmented Qi into his arms, his muscles tearing and reforming in real-time as he fought to hold back the tide of ice and fire.