Queens, inside the Divination Parlor.
Leon Hall hung up the phone.
His fingertips tapped absentmindedly on the old wooden table, his inner state far less calm than his outward appearance.
He needed to translate the clue about the “Lava Octopus” into something Tony Stark could comprehend.
This clue, named the “Ancient Ballad of Homecoming,” sounded like a melody.
However, Leon Hall knew that in essence, it was more like a special key, or rather, a unique signal.
Its purpose was not to call out to the target but to provide a “spiritual stimulus” once near it, making the extraordinary creature agitated and forcing it to expose its location.
Explaining such an abstract “mystical concept” to a die-hard scientist was like playing a lute to a cow.
Time was of the essence; he did not hesitate.
Leon Hall grabbed a pen from the table and swiftly drew a series of bizarre symbols and Hermes runic letters on a piece of parchment.
This was not a sheet of music, but an instruction manual on how to construct that “special signal.”
Having written the final character, he leaned back in his chair, feeling thoroughly exhausted.
He dialed Tony’s encrypted phone directly.
“Stark, I’ve got the principles of the ‘ballad.’ But it’s not an audio clip; it’s a complex set of rules.
Trying to brute-force a solution using science will waste a lot of time.”
Leon Hall’s voice carried a hint of urgency; his promotion could not wait.
“Give me a day and some specific materials, and I can craft a temporary ‘ritual item’ that can emit the required signal directly.
That’s the fastest way.”
Silence reigned on the other end of the line for a few seconds, followed by Tony’s chuckling, filled with deep interest.
“A ‘ritual item’?
No, no.”
Tony’s voice was full of that unquestionable arrogance unique to geniuses.
“I never use a ‘black box’ that I don’t understand.
Advisor, send me your ‘instruction manual.’ I want its ‘source code,’ not a compiled program.”
“But…” Leon Hall frowned.
“No buts,” Tony interrupted him, his tone brooking no argument.
“If it is a set of ‘rules,’ then it must be deconstructible.
If my science can’t even translate your ‘instruction manual,’ then why on earth should I believe it can lead me to a non-existent octopus?”
“Don’t underestimate science, and definitely don’t underestimate me.
Send it over.”
Leon Hall fell silent.
“…Fine.” He hung up, snapped a photo of the parchment, and sent it over.
…
Malibu, inside the workshop.
Tony looked at the “gibberish” on the holographic screen, which radiated a mysterious aura.
Instead of confusion, an unprecedented frenzy burned in his eyes.
“Excellent!
Now this is interesting!”
Over the next few days, the atmosphere in the workshop grew extremely heavy.
“Tony, this is impossible!” a white-haired physicist said, throwing the data pad in his hand onto the table in frustration.
“These symbols violate all known logical information entropy!
It’s not code, it’s not a language—it’s just a bunch of completely random graffiti!”
Another cryptography expert turned pale.
“We’ve tried every decryption model from ancient Hittite to modern quantum encryption algorithms, and the results are all gibberish.
This thing wasn’t written for humans at all.”
Tony Stark stood in their midst, saying nothing.
He didn’t refute them because he knew they were stating the truth.
Under the current framework of science, this thing was indeed a pile of garbage.
“Enough,” he waved his hand, his voice hoarse.
“You can all go home.
Your vacation starts early.”
He didn’t lose his temper, but the unwillingness and frustration in his eyes had almost materialized.
He needed a spark that could keep up with his train of thought, not a bunch of repeating machines that could only say “impossible.”
When the last expert left with a sympathetic look and the heavy alloy door slowly shut, the entire workshop fell into a dead silence.
He was left alone, his eyes bloodshot, staring intently at the parchment.
He had failed.
“Damn it…” Tony leaned back in his chair exhaustedly.
The workshop was in shambles, with coffee cups and energy drink cans piled high, and the holographic screen flashing countless glaring red error codes.
He was nearly driven mad by this divine book.
Just as he was about to give up and pick up the phone to “surrender” to that Eastern charlatan, his gaze accidentally swept past a coffee-stained paper at the corner of the table—a thesis he had written during college, titled *On the Non-locality Conjecture of Bell’s Inequality Under Faster-Than-Light Entanglement*.
Entanglement…
non-locality…
These two terms were like bolts of lightning, instantly splitting open his chaotic mind!
He sat up straight abruptly, staring intensely at the symbols on the mysterious parchment.
resonating upward…'” he muttered to himself, as if conversing with another self.
“What if…
what if this ‘spiral’ isn’t a physical trajectory, but quantum spin transitions across different energy levels?!”
“‘The illusion of deception’…
is not an optical illusion, but…
the observer effect!
Yes!
The observer effect!
Forcefully intervening before the outcome occurs to collapse the wave function in the direction I want!”
He had found an absurd yet uniquely viable way to “translate” it!
“Jarvis!” He jumped up abruptly, a terrifying light bursting from his eyes.
“Abandon all acoustic models!
Switch to the quantum physics simulation framework!
Define every single symbol of the ‘ballad’ as an independent quantum state!
I want to use brute-force computation to calculate their resonance probability!”
After another night of frantic calculation.
“Sir…
synthesis…
is complete.”
With trembling fingers, Tony pressed a start button.
There was no sound in the workshop.
However, on the most precise oscilloscope, strange, unprecedented, seemingly living invisible waves were emanating from the device and dispersing into the outside world.
Success.
He had actually used science to construct a “signal transmitter” that only existed in myths.
Tony stared blankly at everything.
He plopped down on the floor, and then burst into hearty, crazed laughter.
Once his laughter subsided, he slowly stood up, an unprecedented fervor and pride burning in his eyes.
He grabbed his jacket and walked straight to the elevator, but he didn’t contact Triton to prepare for departure.
“Happy, get the car ready,” he said into his communicator.
“We’re going to Queens.”
He was going to personally see the person who had given him this “divine book.”
He was going to tell him that his mysterious, high-and-mighty “rules” had been completely cracked by none other than Tony Stark, using the language of science.