Daisy moved the dragon mark to her back to keep the Phoenix company—a divine dragon coiling in the highest heavens, and beneath it the Phoenix, gathering its strength, poised to spread its wings and soar. She could keep it hidden most of the time and glance at it now and then, gauging the balance between the two within her body.
A slight channeling of chi, and a layer of flame wreathed her fist. This was K'un-Lun's unique technique: the Iron Fist.
Unlike the golden chi of the Iron Fists before her, her chi was still the red, fiery chi of flame.
She privately calculated the extent of her own enhancement. The boost from this chi wasn't as large as the Inhuman enhancement or the Heart-Shaped Herb. It was more like a key, opening a door for her that had been sealed shut for ages.
Just as Daisy had analyzed long ago: the people of K'un-Lun practiced chi, studied chi, and tried through chi to attain a higher tier of life—what the East commonly called the unity of Heaven and Man. There was nothing wrong with this path.
It was only that, limited by aptitude, lifespan, and other factors, no one had ever been able to reach that tier.
Take K'un-Lun's Yu-Ti—bound by so many conditions, he had clearly walked right up to the threshold yet simply couldn't take that one step. The moment he crossed it, he would be an immortal of the East, a god of the West.
The earthly gods of the Marvel world were not the gods of religious scripture. No one had ever heard anyone refer to Thor or Odin with the reverential divine pronoun reserved for deities. They were neither omnipotent nor omniscient—just a label ordinary people applied to lifeforms of a far higher tier than their own.
K'un-Lun's method was to accumulate, bit by bit, until one reached that realm. This method was highly scientific. Why the Yu-Ti had been so slow to take that final step, Daisy didn't know. But she did know the chi had begun a slow self-evolution of her genes.
Inhumans were different from mutants. Mutants were like the tides, rising and falling—unstable in numbers, unstable in their descendants, and lacking any fixed organization, they had never formed a culture or technology of their own.
Inhumans were different. Inhuman technology was inherited from the Kree, and that lineage had never been broken.
Thirty thousand years ago, they could already reach the moon through technological means. Humanity had only just entered the field of genetic research—and the Inhumans? There was a thirty-thousand-year gap between the two.
The strongest Inhuman, genetically speaking, was without question Black Bolt. His genes had been calibrated to their strongest state before he was even born. By a forced definition, Black Bolt could be considered a super-Inhuman.
Daisy, who had developed outside any such system, couldn't compare at all. She'd had a whole Terrigen crystal to herself for her enhancement, which made her exceptionally privileged among ordinary Inhumans. But to Black Bolt, born royalty, a Terrigen crystal was merely standard issue—and his enhancement had likely involved other supplementary methods besides.
The two had started from entirely different lines.
By PERIL's calculations, her Inhuman cells—already enhanced to their own peak, with nowhere further to go—had now received the nourishment of chi. The cells had regained their momentum. The progress was arduous, but they had genuinely begun a new evolution according to some pattern.
Even the genes of the Eternals—that race like stars in the night sky, visible but untouchable—had opened a sliver of a crack to her. The crack was almost imperceptible, but amid all the layers of obstruction, it let her glimpse a thread of hope.
With recovery, refinement, and one final push, she might well be able to break through that great door someday after all.
She pressed her palms together and bowed to the two. "Thank you both for your help. I will remember K'un-Lun's kindness for the rest of my life."
"Are you preparing to leave?" Lei Kung asked.
Daisy thought it over. More than half a month on the road, a little over two months in K'un-Lun—she'd been gone nearly three months. She had no idea what the house looked like now. She hoped those few troublemakers hadn't torn her villa down…
Before she could speak, the Yu-Ti said languidly, "The spirit of divination tells me that a great calamity is about to befall the outside world. Terror will descend from the heavens. Perhaps this is the Iron Fist's mission."
Whatever the Iron Fist's mission was, Daisy didn't know. All she knew was that the President was about to start the vote, after which her Deputy Director post would also be in hand, and from there she'd ascend to the peak of life. Terror descending from the heavens? Did he mean the Chitauri?
With her current strength, those aliens were small fry. There was nothing to fear, really.
"I'll rest one night and leave tomorrow."
Back in her room, she changed into clean clothes and mooched another meal off K'un-Lun.
She studied the warp engine by the roadside—as big as a guest room, now treated as an abandoned warehouse—lost in thought.
"How about I modify it for you?" she asked Lei Kung. "From now on, you could return to Earth even before the ten years are up. What do you think?"
In the way of martial arts, Lei Kung could talk for three days straight. But science, he didn't understand at all.
He asked curiously what she meant, and after two minutes of explaining to this complete scientific illiterate, Daisy declared defeat. She couldn't get it across at all.
"K'un-Lun right now is too passive. If an enemy breaks into this world, what then? You'd have nowhere to run. Let me adjust this machine for you, and you could flee to Earth instead of being wiped out all at once."
Daisy laid out her intent. She recalled that K'un-Lun had been wiped out by someone, hadn't it? Having an escape route was never a bad thing.
Lei Kung figured that with him and the Yu-Ti around, even if an immortal descended from heaven, he'd kill them himself! He feared no enemy. But thinking of K'un-Lun's considerable number of ordinary people, he still nodded and agreed to let Daisy refit it. After all, this thing Daisy called a "warp engine" had long been abandoned.
Alien tech products were entirely different from Earth's—no nuts, no rivets, none of that. Daisy popped out her now slightly sharper nails and sliced up, down, left, and right, exposing the core. She connected PERIL to assist with the atomic cutting, thinking and observing and calculating as she examined the warp engine.
The craftsmanship was incomprehensible, the materials nothing she'd seen before, and the power source completely drained. An ordinary person couldn't repair this thing at all.
But Daisy had powers, which made a lot of the work far easier.
The completely ruined sections she forcibly cut away by brute force. Some salvageable spots she could repair with flame—a ball of fire on her fingertip was handier than a welding torch.
At first Lei Kung watched with great interest. Later, when she even brought out a long sword—stabbing, flicking, hacking, slashing—his heart wavered a little. You're repairing equipment? Why does this look to me like sword practice?
Daisy wiped the sweat from her forehead, her heart full of the thrill of acquiring knowledge. She had recorded every design specification of this warp engine. She'd take it back and let old Pym or comrade Reed study it, and humanity's technological level could take another big step forward.
Having dismantled nearly half the components, the small room-like structure that had looked like an abandoned, broken storeroom was now cleared out. The space could hold several single beds now!
Lei Kung looked at the parts she'd cleared out, scattered all over the ground, his heart full of doubt. You've cleared out this much—can this thing still run? Even without understanding mechanical principles, Lei Kung knew that if a person had half their organs removed, they'd basically be done for!
It didn't take long. Daisy completed all the refitting work. She shook the dust off her body and surveyed the fruits of her labor.