Facing Tony Stark’s burning gaze—looking for all the world like a kid begging an adult for a new toy—Leon Hall didn’t even blink.
Turning around, he pulled a palm-sized glass bottle from an ancient wooden box beneath the counter.
Inside was a pinch of fine, ash-like black powder.
In the dim light, it possessed no luster whatsoever, resembling a black hole that swallowed light.
This was precisely the Whispering Leech ash he had gathered after the “Moving Sun” Plan.
Leon pushed the bottle across to Tony, its base scraping softly against the aged wooden counter.
“Here’s the sample you wanted.” He paused, his tone offhand.
“A friendly word of advice, Mr.
Stark: this stuff is a bit noisy.
When you’re low on energy, you’d better not get too close to it.”
“Noisy?” Tony raised an eyebrow, flashing his trademark cynical smirk.
“Oh?
Is it going to sing to me?
Rock or opera?”
As he spoke, he picked up the glass bottle.
The glass was cool, feeling no different from any ordinary bottle.
He held it up to his eyes, examining it closely against the moonlight.
The black powder lay quiet at the bottom, emitting no energy fluctuations or abnormalities whatsoever.
But in Tony Stark’s world, the single greatest anomaly was an inability to explain something.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Consultant.” Tony tucked the small bottle carefully into his inner suit pocket like a prize, gently patting it through the layer of expensive fabric.
“My payment will arrive on time.
I hope the next time we meet, I’ll already have a complete analytical report telling you what kind of cosmic trash this pinch of ash actually is.”
Before his voice even faded, he had already turned around and strode away with the confidence of an apex predator.
Leon watched his retreating back, the corner of his mouth curving up into an almost imperceptible arc.
An analytical report?
When the time comes, I’m afraid it’s your worldview that’s going to get analyzed.
***
Over the next thirty-six hours, Tony Stark barely closed his eyes.
He locked himself in the top-floor Grade-A biochemical lab of Stark Tower.
The lighting inside made everything as bright as day.
Outside the panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows, New York’s nightscape glittered like a river of stars, but Tony didn’t spare it a single glance.
His entire world was condensed into the tiny sample dish in front of him.
He didn’t start off with his world-ending equipment right away.
For a true scientist, the first step in exploring the unknown was always fundamental analysis.
“Jarvis, begin Phase One analysis.
High-precision mass spectrometer.”
“As you wish, sir.”
A massive robotic arm precisely picked up a microscopic particle of ash and fed it into the instrument’s vacuum chamber.
Tony picked up a cup of coffee with supreme confidence.
In his worldview, everything in existence was composed of elements, without exception.
Ten minutes later.
“Sir, the analysis results…
have produced an unresolvable anomaly.” For the first time, Jarvis’s voice bore a trace of confusion.
Tony’s brows knitted tightly.
“What anomaly?
Recalibrate the instrument.”
“Instrument self-check normal, sir.
However, the data stream returned by the sample exhibits an…
irregular state of chaos.
It does not match the atomic mass or spectral characteristics of any known element.
In other words, it does not exist anywhere on the periodic table.”
“Impossible!” Tony slammed his coffee cup down with a clatter and strode up to the screen.
For several hours straight, he took hands-on control, constantly tweaking and testing, swapping between three mass spectrometers operating on different principles.
The result was identical every time—chaotic, unknown, undefinable.
It felt less like he was analyzing a material substance and more like a mathematical paradox mocking modern chemistry.
“WTF…” Tony muttered under his breath.
Far from being discouraged, his eyes burned with an even hotter fire.
He shifted from analysis to testing.
He tried dissolving it, but water, concentrated acids, and even aqua regia left it completely unaffected.
He tested its electrical and thermal conductivity; the result was an absolute zero.
It was like a ghost existing entirely outside all physical laws.
He cut off Pepper’s concerned calls and ignored Jarvis’s health warnings.
Continuous failure and hitting theoretical brick walls again and again finally wore down Tony’s patience.
“If I can’t understand you, then I’ll master you!”
An engineer’s wild instincts overwhelmed a scientist’s rigor.
“Jarvis!
Ready Robotic Arm Three!
Prepare a titanium alloy melt, Model A-7, for a micro-fusion experiment!”
“Sir, the risk assessment…”
“Do it!”
Under the precise manipulation of the robotic arm, a small pinch of ash was dropped into the titanium alloy melt heated to thousands of degrees.
No explosion, no smoke—the ash blended right in with effortless ease, as if returning to its old home.
Soon, a silver-gray module integrated into a gauntlet was 3D-printed and cooled into shape.
Tony secured the gauntlet to the test bench, his eyes filled with a fanatical anticipation.
“Activate the automatic sentry gun.
The sentry gun’s muzzle lit up red, but the next instant, its smooth targeting motion suddenly wavered as though it were drunk, swaying back and forth without locking on.
“Warning: target data stream corrupted,” Jarvis said, his tone growing serious.
“I can see it, but I cannot target it.
Its signature signal is jumping randomly and erratically.”
“Cognitive interference?” Tony blinked, then burst into laughter.
“Ha!
Making the enemy miss!
I love it!”
Switching to manual mode, he aimed at the gauntlet module himself and pulled the trigger!
*Bang!*
The bullet hit the module, leaving a dent.
Physical defense hadn’t improved.
Just as Tony felt a wave of disappointment, he suddenly realized how eerily quiet his surroundings had become.
“Jarvis, did you mute the ambient audio?”
“Sir, the laboratory is currently in absolute silence.”
Tony froze.
Because he could hear a sound, plain as day.
A sound that didn’t seem to pass through his ears, but buzzed directly inside his mind—an extremely faint, rustling whisper.
Like static noise when tuning an old radio.
He shook his head, and the sound vanished once more.
“A hallucination?
Am I that exhausted…”
But when he focused his eyes on that bizarre gauntlet again, that damned rustling static returned, faint and ghostlike.
An indescribable restlessness surged up from deep within him.
Snatching up the black encrypted phone, he dialed Leon Hall’s number.
“I’ve finished examining your sample,” Tony’s voice was hoarse, yet infused with an unprecedented mix of relief and feverish excitement.
“I admit it.
My teacup can’t hold your ocean.”
He paused, dropping his voice as though confirming a secret.
“And…
it really is noisy, isn’t it?
Like a beat-up radio that can never tune into a station.”
Without waiting for Leon to reply, he pressed on, his voice laced with desperate madness.
“Okay, Leon.
I’m ready.”
“In three days, my research vessel, the *Triton*, sets sail!
That octopus you mentioned—I’m bringing back a ship full of them to dump into my lab!”