"So, there really is a Russian out there swinging a hammer in a basement?" Tony Stark's voice dropped an octave, the levity from moments ago replaced by a sharp, calculating focus. He wasn't a fool; Huang Wen's casual dismissal of Ivan Vanko carried a weight that Tony couldn't ignore. If a man like Huang Wen—who treated gods like punching bags—bothered to remember a name, that name was a threat.
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Tony. You've got bigger fish to fry than a guy with a grudge and a car battery," Huang Wen said, standing up and brushing a stray tea leaf off his sleeve. "You wanted to see the future? You wanted to know if you were still the smartest man in the room? Well, let's go see if you can handle something that wasn't designed by a human."
"The spaceship," Tony breathed, his eyes instantly sparking with that manic, scientific hunger. "You're serious. You're actually going to let me open the hood on an alien craft."
"I'm going to let you look," Huang Wen corrected with a smirk. "Touching costs extra."
Instead of heading back to the original underground facility—the one where Bruce Banner currently resided in a state of perpetual gloom—Huang Wen led Tony to a nondescript warehouse on the outskirts of the industrial district. This was Base No. 2. Huang Wen wasn't about to give Tony Stark a VIP pass to his main headquarters. Tony was like a high-end cat; if you let him into the kitchen, he'd eventually find his way into the pantry, the safe, and the secret stash of catnip. Base No. 2 was a clean slate, a sandbox designed specifically for a genius with a penchant for snooping.
As they stepped inside, the air felt different—colder, more sterile. The floor was a seamless, dark composite material that didn't reflect light.
"Jarvis, give me a scan. Where are we?" Tony whispered.
"Checking, sir... Geolocation indicates we are twelve miles from the previous facility, however, my sensors are encountering significant interference. It appears the walls are lined with a vibratory dampening alloy," Jarvis replied.
"I never said I only had one clubhouse, Tony," Huang Wen said, walking to the center of the vast, empty room. "This place is for the things that don't belong on Earth. Consider it your new playground. But be warned: Dummy is the principal here. You play by her rules, or you get sent to detention. And my version of detention involves a lot of broken bones."
With a subtle mental command from Huang Wen, the center of the warehouse floor split open. There was no grinding of gears or hiss of hydraulics; the floor simply slid apart with an eerie, silent efficiency. From the depths, a sleek, iridescent craft rose on a levitation platform. It was the Mandarin's ship—a vessel that looked less like a machine and more like a polished obsidian seed, etched with glowing, cyan-colored runes.
Tony Stark stopped dead. He didn't say a word for nearly a full minute. He just stared at the hull, his mind clearly racing through a thousand different metallurgical and aerodynamic possibilities.
"Dummy," Huang Wen called out. "Show him what we've got. Don't be too hard on him; he's a bit of a slow learner when it comes to the supernatural."
A holographic projection shimmered into existence. Dummy's avatar—a stylized, glowing figure—appeared, floating next to the ship. "Initializing data dump for the billionaire guest. Processing research logs... Loading 'The Intersection of Quantum Mechanics and Mystic Arts.'"
Tony's eyebrows shot up so high they almost disappeared into his hairline. "Magic? You're using the M-word in a lab? Huang, I thought we were doing science here."
"The universe doesn't care about your labels, Tony," Huang Wen replied, leaning against a pillar. "The people who built this didn't see a difference between a circuit board and a spell. Energy is energy. They just figured out how to wrap it in a different package."
Tony walked toward the hologram, his fingers dancing through the air as he swiped through the data. "Wait... this power source... it's not using fusion. It's drawing from a localized dimensional tear? That's impossible. The energy output would be infinite, or it would collapse into a singularity."
"And yet, it flies," Dummy interjected, her voice carrying a hint of smugness. "Perhaps if you spent less time at galas and more time studying non-Euclidean geometry, you wouldn't be so surprised, Mr. Stark."
Tony glared at the holographic avatar. "Is she always this sassy? Did you program her to be a headache?"
"She learned from the best," Huang Wen laughed. "Anyway, I'm leaving you to it. Dummy has authorization to let you stay as long as you want, provided you don't try to hotwire the engine and fly it into the Chrysler Building."
"I make no promises about the Chrysler Building," Tony muttered, already lost in a sea of floating equations. "But I'm taking over here. You can go back to your punching bags, Huang. This is grown-up work."
Huang Wen shook his head, his body dissolving into shimmering light particles as he teleported back to the gym. He had a feeling Tony wouldn't be seen in public for at least a week.
Back at the Wing Chun school, the atmosphere was much more grounded, though no less intense. The sound of rapid-fire strikes on wooden dummies echoed through the hall.
Huang Wen sat in his usual spot, but his mind was wandering. He thought about the Space Stone—the Tesseract. It was currently sitting in a SHIELD vault, being poked and prodded by scientists who didn't understand they were holding the trigger to a universal shotgun. He had considered sending the Shadow Corps to scout it out, but he hesitated. The timeline was delicate. Thor hadn't dropped from the sky yet, and Loki was still playing the loyal prince in Asgard. If he moved too early, he might derail the events that would bring the heavy hitters together.
"Focus, Max. You're thinking about the office, not your hands."
Max, who had just rushed in looking frazzled and sweat-stained, jumped at the sound of Huang Wen's voice. "Sorry, teacher! It's been... it's been a week."
"You look like you've been struck by lightning, and not the good kind," Huang Wen noted, gesturing for Max to sit.
"The company is in chaos," Max sighed, wiping his brow. "Ever since the Mutant Autonomous Zone was officially recognized, half our specialized tech team just... quit. They weren't even loud about it. They just packed their desks and left for Utopia. I didn't even know they were mutants. One guy had been my cubicle neighbor for five years. I thought he just liked wearing gloves."
Huang Wen nodded slowly. The "Mutant Exodus" was something he hadn't fully accounted for. Magneto and Professor X's new sanctuary was acting like a giant magnet, pulling in every disenfranchised person with an X-gene. It was stabilizing the streets, but it was destabilizing the economy and the workforce.
"The world is changing, Max. People are finding where they belong," Huang Wen said softly. "But that's why you need to be here. When the world gets faster, you can't afford to be slow."
Max looked at the other side of the gym, where six students were moving with a fluidity that seemed almost superhuman. Their strikes were crisp, their movements leaving slight blurs in the air. These were the six who had reached the milestone first—the ones Huang Wen had rewarded with the 'Bone and Marrow Cleansing.'
It wasn't the Blood Bodhi—Huang Wen was saving those for his inner circle—but the process had purged the impurities from their systems, effectively resetting their physical potential. They were now at the peak of what a human could achieve without a super-soldier serum.