The battle in the sky had reached its crescendo, and the atmosphere was thick with the ozone of ionized air and the acrid stench of burnt scales.
"Bang!"
The sound wasn't a crack, but a heavy, dull thud that vibrated through the very bedrock of the Malibu coast. Just as the Mandarin was entering a trance-like state of self-hypnosis—forcing his alien-augmented Qi to surge to its absolute zenith to push back Huang Wen's ice and fire—Huang Wen simply stopped playing along.
In a flicker of golden light that bypassed the Mandarin's visual processing entirely, Huang Wen appeared directly above him. He didn't use a flashy technique. He used a simple, downward hammer-fist fueled by the pure weight of his Legendary-tier physical power.
The Mandarin was driven into the beach like a tent peg hit by a mountain. The sand around the impact site liquefied instantly, turning into a jagged crater of cooling glass.
"Man, talk about a cockroach," Huang Wen muttered, floating gracefully downward as his golden radiance dimmed just enough to see the carnage below.
He peered into the pit. The Mandarin was a mess of broken bones and ruptured organs, yet his chest was still heaving. "With those Dragon Arms, his raw output and vitality are actually hovering right around my level. If we were just measuring power levels like a video game, we'd be neck and neck. But the guy's a mess. He lacks a cohesive system. He's got all this power but no Indestructible Diamond Divine Art to weave his spirit, energy, and physical body into a single, unbreakable thread. He's a powerful engine in a cardboard chassis."
"Bang!"
Huang Wen noticed a twitch in the Mandarin's mangled fingers and casually dropped another punch into the crater. The shockwave settled the dust again. Yet, even as the Mandarin's ribcage caved in, a sickening squelching sound echoed. The dark, reptilian energy from the Dragon Arms was knitting the flesh back together at a visible rate. It wasn't the clean, cellular regeneration of someone like Wolverine; it was a forced, unnatural stitching of meat and bone powered by the malevolent will of the alien limbs.
"This is getting annoying," Huang Wen admitted, shaking his head. "The regen isn't as perfect as Logan's, but it's persistent. It's like those arms are refusing to let him die just so they can keep using him as a battery."
He didn't feel like getting his hands dirty for a third round. He reached into his storage space with a thought.
"Buzz!"
The high-pitched whine of metal slicing through air filled the silence. Floating beside Huang Wen's head were two gleaming slivers of silver. These weren't ordinary kunai; they were custom-forged Adamantium alloy throwing knives.
Huang Wen looked at them with a hint of regret. "I really should have practiced the Flying Dagger technique more. If I had Li Xunhuan's 'never miss' attribute, this would be a lot more poetic. Oh well, psychic power is a pretty good cheat code."
"Go."
With a flick of his mental intent, the two knives vanished. They didn't just fly; they accelerated until they were nothing but blurred lines of silver light.
Swish! Swish!
The blades didn't go for the Mandarin's heart or his throat. They struck the shoulders, severing the connection where the scaly dragon flesh met human bone.
The moment the Dragon Arms were detached, the "miracle" ended. A horrific transformation took place in the span of a heartbeat. The severed arms didn't bleed; they began to desiccate. The vibrant, dark scales turned a sickly grey, then a brittle brown, shriveling up until they looked like pieces of ancient, sun-dried driftwood. A second later, they collapsed into a fine, grey powder that the ocean breeze scattered across the waves.
The effect on the Mandarin was even more devastating. Without the alien limbs pumping him full of artificial vitality, the "bill" for his rapid healing finally came due.
His skin, once taut and muscular, sagged into a thousand wrinkles. His jet-black hair bleached to a snowy white in seconds. His eyes sank into his skull. It was as if a century of aging had been compressed into five seconds. The Dragon Arms hadn't been a gift; they were a loan with a predatory interest rate, and they had just foreclosed on his life force.
"No... I... don't..." The Mandarin's voice was a dry rattle, like dead leaves on pavement. He reached out with his bloody, stumped shoulders, his eyes fixed on the spot where the powder had vanished. He wanted to scream, to reclaim his power, but he no longer had the lungs for it.
"Time to wrap this up," Huang Wen said, his voice cold and devoid of pity.
He didn't care about the man's history or his tragedy. The Mandarin had come to his city, threatened his peace, and tried to kill his acquaintances. In Huang Wen's book, that was a one-way ticket to the afterlife.
"Crack!"
Huang Wen channeled the absolute zero essence of his Ice Palm. A wave of frost rolled over the crater, instantly encasing the withered remains of the Mandarin in a block of translucent, jagged ice. The old man's face was frozen in a mask of pure, unadulterated regret.
"Extraordinary Dragon... destroy... avenge..."
A faint, ghostly whisper echoed in the psychic plane—not a spoken word, but a final, desperate transmission.
"Boom!"
Huang Wen didn't wait to hear the rest. He snapped his fingers, and a pillar of white-hot Fire Palm energy erupted from the center of the ice block. The thermal expansion was so violent it shattered the ice and the corpse within it into a billion microscopic shards. The lingering flames then scoured the air, ensuring that not a single cell of the Mandarin's DNA remained.
Ding! Mission: Kill the Mandarin, completed. Reward: One Legendary Character Draw.
The system's cold, mechanical chime was the most beautiful sound Huang Wen had heard all night. It was the final seal. No "faking it," no hidden clones, no magical resurrections. The Mandarin was gone.
"Extraordinary Dragon, huh?" Huang Wen rubbed his chin, ignoring the system notification for a moment. "That sounded like a name. Fin Fang Foom? Or something else? Whatever it was, it wasn't a soul escaping—just a signal. I guess I've officially pissed off the neighbors."
"Wow. Talk about aggressive recycling. You really didn't leave a speck, did you?"
A metallic clank signaled the arrival of the Mark III. Tony Stark landed nearby, or rather, he stumbled to a halt, his armor sparking and his leg servos whining in protest. The faceplate retracted, revealing a soot-stained, exhausted, but intensely curious billionaire.
"For a guy like that? Leaving a body is just asking for a sequel," Huang Wen replied, turning to look at Tony.
Tony climbed out of the suit with a grunt of pain, favoring his left side. He looked at the empty crater, then at Huang Wen, and plastered on a smile that was about three shades too friendly. It was the "I'm about to ask for a huge favor" smile.
"You're a practical guy. I like that," Tony said, stepping over a piece of his own shattered roof. "Very efficient. Very... gold."
Huang Wen raised an eyebrow. The sudden shift from "get out of here, kid" to "let's be best friends" was jarring. "You want something, Stark. Just spit it out."
Tony's eyes lit up. He pointed a shaking finger toward the empty patch of sky where the massive alien vessel had once hovered. "That thing. The big, scary, floating horseshoe. Where did you put it? I know it didn't just 'pop' out of existence. Law of conservation of mass, buddy. It's somewhere."
Huang Wen crossed his arms. "And?"
"And?!" Tony laughed, a bit hysterically. "And I'm Tony Stark! I'm the guy who built a miniature sun in a cave with a box of scraps! You've got the hardware, I've got the brainpower. Think of the collaboration! We could decode the propulsion systems, the hull integrity—hell, we could probably solve the energy crisis for the next three centuries if we just peek under the hood."
"You mean you want to peek under the hood," Huang Wen corrected.
"I mean we!" Tony insisted, stepping closer. "With my resources, you'll master that tech in weeks. Otherwise, it's just a giant paperweight sitting in... wherever you hid it. Come on, don't be a gatekeeper for science."
Huang Wen looked at the desperate hunger in Tony's eyes. It was tempting to see what Stark could do with it, but he also knew that giving Tony Stark an alien spaceship was like giving a toddler a nuclear detonator. The man was currently a walking disaster.
"How about this, Tony? Before you try to conquer the stars, why don't you focus on why your house is a pile of rocks?" Huang Wen said with a smirk. "And maybe... take a closer look at your own health. You're looking a bit green around the gills. And I don't mean the suit."
Before Tony could argue, Huang Wen's body began to shimmer. In a burst of golden light particles, he vanished, leaving nothing but the sound of the waves crashing against the shore.
"Hey! Don't you walk—or teleport—away from me! I'm not done! I can be very persuasive!" Tony shouted at the empty air. He kicked a piece of debris and immediately regretted it as a sharp pain shot up his leg. "Ugh. Arrogant, powered-up brat. I'll find that ship. I don't care if I have to scan every dimension."
He slumped down on a piece of marble that used to be his kitchen island. "J.A.R.V.I.S., tell me he was just being a prick. What did he mean about my health? My blood pressure is fine. Probably."
"Actually, Sir," J.A.R.V.I.S.'s voice echoed from the discarded helmet nearby. "The internal sensors of the Mark III have been monitoring your vitals during the combat stress. There is a concerning trend in your blood chemistry. I've detected a creeping level of toxicity."
Tony's smile vanished. "Define 'toxicity'."
"The palladium core of the Arc Reactor is eroding, Sir. The ions are leaching into your bloodstream. The current concentration is 0.05%, but the rate of increase is exponential. If you continue to utilize the flight and combat systems of the Iron Man armor, it will become lethal within months."
Tony went very still. He looked down at the glowing blue circle in his chest—the thing that was currently keeping the shrapnel from his heart and keeping him alive.
"The thing that's saving me is killing me," Tony whispered, the irony tasting like ash. "Classic."
"Sir, I would suggest immediate cessation of Iron Man activities and a focused research path into a replacement element," the AI advised.
Tony looked out at the dark horizon where Huang Wen had disappeared. "The kid knew. Twice now, he's mentioned it. How does he know my blood better than my own computer?"
He leaned back, looking at the stars. The world was getting bigger, weirled, and much more dangerous. And for the first time in his life, Tony Stark felt very, very small.