The moment they returned to Stark Tower, Tony immediately headed for the laboratory and put on his Iron Man Armor.
He was starting to think he seriously needed to design a suit he could carry with him at all times.
Only after the armor had fully assembled around him did Tony finally relax.
Then he walked slowly back out of the lab.
Yang Chen was sitting on the sofa playing his handheld console, while Gawain was busy examining his own armor nearby.
The sight was strangely reassuring.
Even if someone tried some kind of decapitation strike against him, they’d still have to get through those two first.
After Tony’s raid on Hammer Industries, the weight that had been pressing on his chest had eased somewhat.
But what Yang Chen had said earlier about the Great Calamity had put it right back.
Even someone as powerful as Yang Chen, and whatever force stood behind him, treated this so called Great Calamity with extreme caution.
Yet Tony knew absolutely nothing about it.
That kind of uncertainty was unbearable to him.
Maybe he needed to learn more about this Eight Desolations Realm.
With that thought, he decided to ask Yang Chen directly.
“Can you tell me more about the Eight Desolations Realm?” Tony opened his faceplate and sat down across from Yang Chen.
Yang Chen looked at Tony, then at Gawain.
“Gawain never told you?”
Gawain, who had been fiddling with his armor, walked over with a helpless look.
“Ever since I arrived in the Eight Desolations Realm, I’ve either been carrying out missions or fighting. How am I supposed to know as much as an actual native like you?”
Yang Chen paused.
Just as he was about to answer, he sensed a gaze secretly observing them.
It was extremely subtle.
But Yang Chen was no ordinary Sub-Skyfather Tier (𝐈𝐕) combatant, and he still managed to notice it.
After thinking for a moment, amusement flickered through his mind.
So the Ancient One still has doubts.
Fine.
Then I’ll play along.
Far away in Queens, Evan received Yang Chen’s warning.
A moment later, he sent one of the bubbles produced by the Dreamscape Bubble Machine directly to Yang Chen.
Evan hadn’t exactly been sitting around doing nothing all this time.
Ever since he’d drawn the Dreamscape Bubble Machine, he’d been constructing scenes of the Eight Desolations Realm.
Now they were finally coming in handy.
Back on the top floor of Stark Tower, Yang Chen set down his handheld console.
He raised both hands and traced a circle through the air, releasing a stream of magical power.
The energy flowed around the Dreamscape Bubble and enveloped it.
Tony watched as energy gathered between Yang Chen’s hands, eventually forming something that resembled a translucent bubble.
While maintaining the effect with his magical power, Yang Chen began explaining.
“The Primary Plane of the Eight Desolations Realm is made up of countless floating islands. The smaller islands are roughly the size of this planet beneath our feet. The larger ones can be tens of thousands of times bigger.”
He paused briefly.
“And the four largest Core Islands are impossible to measure, because they’re growing every moment.”
As Yang Chen spoke, the scene in front of Tony continuously changed.
It unfolded almost like a documentary.
He saw a few smaller islands.
Then a few larger ones. Get faster updates on g.com.
As the perspective kept pulling farther and farther back, Tony finally saw four colossal islands at the heart of the entire archipelago.
Looking closer, he could even see those islands expanding in real time.
Because of the unique properties of the Dreamscape Bubble, Tony felt almost as though he were actually standing there.
His exclamations came one after another.
“Oh, wow. Okay, this is incredible. Completely insane, scientifically offensive, but incredible. How does a world like this even exist?”
Tony didn’t take his eyes off the projection.
“J.A.R.V.I.S., record everything.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tony kept muttering to himself as he watched, clearly overwhelmed by what he was seeing.
Even then, he didn’t forget to have J.A.R.V.I.S. preserve the footage.
[Emotion Points from Tony +160]
[Emotion Points from the Ancient One +240]
[Emotion Points from Nick Fury +60]
[…]
Seeing the numbers appear on the system interface, Evan’s lips curved upward.
All the time he’d spent preparing these scenes hadn’t gone to waste.
If this could deepen the Ancient One’s belief even a little, it was worth it.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
At a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility elsewhere, Nick Fury was practically boiling over with frustration.
According to what they’d picked up through their surveillance equipment, Tony was clearly discussing something extremely important with the powerhouse named Yang Chen.
Worse, there seemed to be some kind of visual display involved.
Whatever Tony was seeing almost certainly had something to do with the Eight Desolations Realm.
The thought that he was missing information this important made Fury’s expression darken even further.
He immediately ordered several translators to transcribe everything they could hear and make sure they didn’t miss a single word.
At the same time, he dispatched agents to Stark Tower with instructions to find some way to spy on whatever Tony was seeing.
Preferably by climbing somewhere they shouldn’t and getting eyes on the top floor.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Regardless of how shocked the Ancient One and Nick Fury might have been, the images within Yang Chen’s bubble continued to change.
Yang Chen paused briefly, then resumed.
“Outside the islands lies endless Spatial Turbulence. New planes are sometimes born within those turbulent regions. Some of those planes are quite large. A few are even bigger than the largest floating islands.”
“The beings living within those planes occasionally invade the inhabitants of the islands. Some especially powerful planes can even drag entire islands into themselves.”
Within the projected scene, scar like fissures appeared between the islands and in the surrounding void.
Some of the beings within those fissures appeared gentle and peaceful.
Others looked savage and vicious.
And some planes contained nothing but absolute, deathly silence.
All kinds of strange planes flickered past Tony’s eyes.
Among them, he even recognized a group he’d already become somewhat familiar with.
Nether Abyss Demons.
The scene shifted again.
Everywhere they passed, living beings suffered catastrophic slaughter.
Then Tony saw something worse.
After an enormous demonic altar was erected, the entire floating island seemed to be swallowed whole.
It plunged into a massive fissure filled with an overwhelmingly evil presence.
Tony stared at the crack in growing alarm.
Just as panic began to creep into his expression, the image changed again.
Now countless floating islands marked with the character for “human” filled his vision.
These human controlled islands were slowly expanding outward in every direction.
Human territory even occupied significant portions of two of the Core Islands.
Viewed from a larger perspective, Tony noticed something strange.
The floating islands controlled by humanity seemed to faintly resonate with one another, almost as though they were linked into a single vast network.
Yang Chen continued.
“Humanity has firmly established itself in the Eight Desolations Realm. There are many powerful humans. Quite a few are stronger than I am, and even more are around my level.”
“There are even several Supreme Beings.”
“However, the Supreme Beings of the various races keep one another in check, so humanity’s Supreme Beings rarely appear.”
By now, Tony was staring slack jawed.
Between the overwhelming visual spectacle and Yang Chen’s explanation, the existence of the Eight Desolations Realm had become far more tangible in his mind.
[Emotion Points from Tony +250]
[Emotion Points from the Ancient One +260]
[Emotion Points from Nick Fury +160]
[…]
Yang Chen looked at Tony and spoke softly.
“Next comes the Calamity I mentioned.”
Tony immediately snapped back to attention.
His entire focus locked onto the bubble.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Far away in Kamar-Taj, the Ancient One was equally focused on the surveillance spell before her.
Previously, she’d only partially believed Yang Chen’s claims.
But after returning to Kamar-Taj, she had considered the still chaotic Timeline.
Now, after secretly observing all of this, she had become convinced that such a world truly existed.
And that made one question more urgent than ever.
What exactly was this so called Great Calamity?
Because of that, she paid even closer attention to her spying.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
“Oh, motherf—what the hell are they looking at?!” Inside a S.H.I.E.L.D. office, Nick Fury was growing even more agitated.
Whatever they were about to discuss was obviously going to be even more important.
And he had absolutely no way to see the images.
The agents he’d sent out had all reported the same thing.
The top floor of Stark Tower was covered by some kind of strange spatial effect.
Anyone who entered that area couldn’t hear anything and would quickly become hopelessly lost.
From farther away, the top floor couldn’t be seen clearly either.
It was as though the entire level had been swallowed by a dense veil of fog.