The sound of his expensive handmade leather shoes striking the cold floor—'tap, tap, tap'—was like a faulty metronome, grating on the nerves.
"Jarvis, report." His voice carried a trace of suppressed irritation.
"Sir, external surveillance on Mr. Obadiah Stane has been ongoing for seventy-two hours," the AI butler's voice echoed in the workshop. "No encrypted communication records with suspicious armed groups in the Middle East have been detected. All external fund flows are within the scope of normal business activities. Conclusion: no direct evidence."
"No evidence again." Tony suddenly stopped and muttered a curse under his breath.
He walked over to a holographic console and swiped his hand.
A folder materialized out of thin air, containing only one email from an abandoned port he had designated as the highest threat level.
—[Obadiah is your enemy.]
—[He wants the 'heart' in your chest.]
This prophecy was like a thorn stuck in his flesh—not painful, but a constant reminder of those three months of hell.
Since the Queens incident, his attitude toward Lin Huai's "prophecies" had shifted from simple doubt or curiosity to viewing them as an intelligence source that must be taken seriously and verified.
He believed Lin Huai's "diagnosis," but Obadiah, that old fox, was simply too good at covering his tracks.
Decades of friendship, an uncle-like figure, a founding elder of Stark Industries.
If the content of that email was true, then he was facing a massive shadow that had been lurking in the heart of Stark Industries, operating for decades.
Such an enemy would not leave such easily caught traces on the outside.
It was like chasing a ghost; you knew it existed, but you couldn't even grasp its shadow.
This feeling of powerlessness left Tony intensely frustrated.
He wasn't a Police officer or an Agent. His domain was creation, solving problems. And now, he was stumped by a purely "human" problem.
"A consultant who holds the script of the future..." Tony rubbed his temples and murmured to himself.
In the end, he picked up the unmarked black encrypted phone.
Perhaps it was time to hear that "professional's" opinion again... Queens, Divination House.
Lin Huai was sitting behind the familiar old wooden desk, meditating with his eyes closed.
He was digesting the subtle feedback from playing the "Fortune Teller" these past few days while also waiting for the "big fish" destined to take the bait.
He knew Tony would come to him again.
A self-assured genius accustomed to crushing everything with technology—when he found his "crushing" utterly ineffective against a certain matter, his sense of defeat would be stronger than anyone else's.
The encrypted phone rang, right on time.
"It seems your investigation has hit a dead end, Mr. Stark," Lin Huai answered the phone, his tone calm.
"I prefer to call it a technical bottleneck," came Tony's slightly weary yet still defiant voice from the other end. "It's like I'm chasing a ghost, one that hides itself in the mist. I can't find its trail."
Lin Huai did not answer immediately.
In his mind, he clearly offered his "question" to that boundless gray mist.
A chill rose from his spine, accompanied by a sense of glimpsing the underlying rules of the World.
A few seconds later, he opened his eyes and slowly spoke in a tone that seemed to state an absolute truth:
"Mr. Stark, your method is wrong."
"You can't catch the ghost because you've been chasing the shadows it leaves outside its Nest. It cleans its footprints with every step it takes."
Tony fell silent on the other end of the line.
Lin Huai continued in that emotionless, detached tone, as if an outsider:
"The Beast in the Nest is using its tongue to slowly lick away the bloody paw prints. You should go see what's inside its den, something it didn't have time to clean up properly."
"Its... den?" Tony's voice held a barely perceptible tremor, a sign of a sudden flash of insight.
"Your eyes are looking too far away." Lin Huai calmly gave the final guidance.
With that, he hung up the phone, giving Tony no chance to ask further questions.
It's better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish.
Lin Huai understood that his role was not to be a simple information broker, but an expounder of "rules," a guide of "methodology."
Only in this way could he firmly bind his value to Tony Stark, a core figure in Earth's future.
Upgrading from a "Prophet" who could solve problems to a "strategic consultant" who could provide direction—that was what he wanted... Malibu, inside the workshop.
Tony stood frozen, holding the disconnected phone.
"Nest... den..."
"Cleaning footprints..."
"Looking too far..."
He chewed over these phrases repeatedly, and suddenly, a burst of light flashed in his eyes!
That's it!
He had been investigating the outside all along! Communications, funds, interpersonal relationships... These were all "shadows" that Obadiah could easily disguise and clean up!
Where was his real "den"?
It was his office at Stark Industries, his personal server, the internal network he thought was absolutely secure!
A Beast is at its least vigilant inside its own den!
"Jarvis!" Tony's voice instantly became excited and sharp. "Cease all external surveillance!"
"Now! Immediately! Change the investigation direction for me!"
He rushed to the holographic console, eyes wide open as he stared at the screen, his hands moving incessantly. Streams of information flowed before his eyes, reflecting in his increasingly bright gaze.
"Jarvis, abandon tracking all external data streams! Direct all computing power to Stark Industries' internal servers!"
"Target locked—Obadiah Stane's personal system permissions! Dig deep into his hard drive! Peel it back layer by layer! Restore all deleted, overwritten, formatted data for me!"
"I don't care if it's his privacy. Right now, I want to see what dirty secrets this old fox is hiding in his den!"
"As you wish, sir."
Jarvis's voice responded immediately. The lights in the entire workshop dimmed for a moment—a sign of the computing core allocating all power to a single task.
A massive data stream cascaded like a waterfall across the screen before Tony.
Jarvis began penetrating the database of that theoretically "equal-level" account, which shared the same system, with unprecedented depth.
Time passed minute by minute.
Ten minutes.
Half an hour.
An hour.
Tony stood there, motionless, staring fixedly at the rapidly flashing code on the screen.
Finally.
"Sir," Jarvis's voice sounded again, this time with a touch of "certainty" after data processing, "encrypted file fragments that have been repeatedly overwritten and deleted have been discovered in the underlying physical sectors of Mr. Obadiah's personal server."
"Seventy-three percent data restoration complete... Initiating three-dimensional model reconstruction."
The next second.
A massive blueprint of a mechanical suit, filled with violent aesthetics, abruptly appeared in the holographic projection before Tony.
It was much larger and cruder than Tony's Mark II, packed with bulky hydraulic rods and aesthetically unpleasing weapon mounts, like a bloated and ferocious steel Beast.
And in a corner of the design drawing, a project codename was scrawled—
"iron monger."
All expression vanished from Tony's face in that instant.
No roar of anger, no shocked questioning.
Only a cold, Abyss-like silence.
His gaze slowly shifted from the crude suit to the small, blue-glowing arc reactor on his own chest.
On the iron monger design, the chest position also featured a large, circular hollow reserved for installing a reactor.
—[He wants the 'heart' in your chest.]
Prophecy, evidence, motive.
At this moment, they formed a perfect closed loop.
The workshop was so quiet he could hear his own heartbeat.
Tony slowly closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the last trace of hesitation and warmth had completely disappeared, replaced by a chill capable of freezing steel.
He picked up the black encrypted phone and dialed Lin Huai's number.
His voice was steady, betraying no emotion, as if nothing had just happened.
"The Beast in the Nest, I will handle it personally."
"Now, let's talk about your payment."
He paused, each word seeming to be squeezed out from between his teeth.
"Give me that 'Ancient Ballad of Homecoming'."
"The[poseidon]can't wait any longer."