Stark Tower, top-floor workshop.
Tony Stark stood in the middle of a “city” constructed of holographic projections.
Beneath his feet lay layers of overlapping, crisscrossing blue lines, resembling the capillaries of the city—the complete underground pipe network and sewage system of Queens, New York.
“Jarvis, run a simulation on the effect of deploying an infrasonic pulse generator at the Jefferson Reservoir based on our hydrodynamic models.”
Tony ordered as he swiped his hand through a stream of blue data.
This was the first solution he had thought of utilizing high-frequency vibrations.
Simple, brute force, and in line with Stark Industries’ usual style.
“Sir, the simulation is complete,” Jarvis’s voice spoke up.
“Considering the massive volume of the body of water and the complexity of the piping system, a single pulse source cannot generate effective high-frequency vibrations across the entire area in a short period of time.
It is estimated to take at least 72 hours to affect ninety percent of the water.”
“Three days?” Tony waved his hand irritably, dispersing the holographic model.
“By the time my sound waves travel there, half the population of Queens will be throwing a party in a psychiatric ward.”
He paced back and forth in frustration, Leon Hall’s diagnostic results continuously circling in his mind.
[High-frequency Vibration] and [Intense Light].
Vibration offered wide-area damage, but it took effect too slowly.
Then…
light?
“This thing is a light source itself.” Tony instinctively tapped the reactor on his chest.
But the problem remained.
Those invisible Whispering Leeches were scattered throughout the water supply of entire Queens; this was a surface-level contamination, not a point target.
He couldn’t exactly replace all of New York’s water pipes with fiber optics, could he?
The cost was too high, and it was ridiculous.
He needed a bait.
A bait that could draw all the leeches together, and then…
wipe them out in one fell swoop.
This train of thought had already surpassed the realm of pure physics.
Tony stopped, a flash of annoyance in his eyes, but he still picked up the encrypted phone.
For professional matters, it was best to ask a professional.
The call was picked up almost instantly.
“Mr.
Stark, has your engineering mind hit a bottleneck?” Leon Hall’s voice was calm and tranquil, as if he had been waiting for this call.
“I prefer to call it a technical bottleneck breakthrough,” Tony cut straight to the chase.
“I can make light, and I can make vibration.
But your ‘leeches’ are free-roaming.
I need a way to gather them up for a massive bonfire party.”
“A correct line of thinking,” Leon Hall agreed.
“They are spiritual creatures, so they are naturally drawn to intense ‘spirituality’.”
“Spirituality?” Tony raised an eyebrow.
“Speak English.”
“You can think of it as a ‘mental signal’.
Every person they contaminate emits a faint signal, which serves as their scattered food.
But if…
a signal source amplified ten million times appears, it would be like dropping a whole cake in front of a swarm of ants that were only sniffing breadcrumbs.”
“They’ll swarm over, right?” Tony understood instantly.
“Can you make that ‘cake’?”
It requires a Spirituality Amplification Ritual.
I will select a suitable location, set up the ritual, and act as the sole bait.”
Leon Hall’s voice paused, turning solemn.
“And your task, Mr.
Stark, is not to fight, but to purify.”
“Forget your missiles and bombs.
This time, what you need is pure light.”
Pure light…
Tony’s gaze fell upon his chest once more.
The small Arc Reactor radiated a faint blue glow, stably outputting a massive amount of energy.
This was his proudest invention, the future of clean energy.
And wasn’t its most fundamental form light and heat?
“I know what to do.” Tony hung up, a fanatical and confident smile unique to geniuses appearing on his face.
He stopped obsessing over combat and returned to his area of greatest expertise—creation!
“Jarvis!” His voice was filled with irrepressible excitement.
“Pull up the backup blueprints for the miniature Arc Reactor.
Adjust the energy output mode to ‘broad-spectrum intense light irradiation’, and give me the parameters closest to the solar spectrum!”
“Link up the mobile chassis of the heavy engineering robot ‘Hercules’!
Strip away all armor and weapon systems!
I only want the chassis and the energy core!”
“Mount a 360-degree rotating focused irradiation platform on it!
I want that damn place lit up brighter than Times Square!”
“Sir, are you suggesting we build a large mobile searchlight?”
“No!” Tony’s eyes gleamed.
“We aren’t building a searchlight.
We’re building a mobile ‘Sun’!”
“Notify engineering.
I’m coming down in half an hour.
I want to see this machine in the underground of Queens before dark!”
Meanwhile, at the Jefferson Reservoir.
Several black Chevrolet SUVs silently pulled up outside the cordon.
The doors opened, and a group of grim-faced men and women in black suits stepped out.
Leading them was Phil Coulson.
He showed his credentials, and the police commander who had blocked Tony earlier saluted immediately and cleared the way.
“Sir, we have taken over the scene,” Coulson said in a gentle but indisputably authoritative tone.
He put on specialized goggles and stepped onto the scene.
“What is the situation?” he asked into the communicator on his wrist.
“Agent Coulson, the energy field readings here are very strange,” a technical agent’s voice came through.
“No ionizing radiation, no gamma rays, but…
there is a very faint yet extremely ‘orderly’ energy fluctuation lingering in the area.
Especially in this zone, where the residue is most pronounced.”
The technical agent pointed right at the empty ground where Leon Hall had previously established his [Wall of Spirituality].
Coulson squatted down, brushing his hand lightly over the ground.
His fingertips felt nothing, but in his perception, the air here seemed…
“cleaner” and “purer” than the surroundings.
“Gather all surveillance footage and eyewitness testimonies from when Mr.
Focus the analysis on every move made by that Asian youth.”
Coulson stood up, looking out at the shimmering reservoir.
“Additionally, report to Director Fury immediately.
Tell him we have discovered a brand-new, unknown energy event in Queens suspected to be related to Stark Industries.
The source of the energy…
is unidentified.”
Night fell.
Queens, underground, Area B-7 Wastewater Treatment Hub.
This was the junction of several main sewage pipelines, a massive, empty, circular underground chamber.
Foul-smelling wastewater gushed from elevated pipe openings around the perimeter, draining into the deep central channel with a rumbling roar.
Leon Hall stood right in the middle of this filthy place.
He retrieved some simple materials from his backpack: a piece of custom chalk mixed with silver powder, and a few bottles of herbal essential oils emitting a strange scent.
He bent down and, with himself as the center, meticulously drew complex and mysterious symbols and lines on the damp ground.
As the final stroke fell, the diagram seemed to come to life.
Buzz—
An invisible wave erupted from the diagram as the center, violently rippling outward!
In the spiritual world, this was no different from detonating a signal bomb in the silent deep sea!
Deep within the slowly flowing wastewater, something was disturbed.
At the exact same time, inside a speeding van.
Coulson was staring intently at the energy fluctuation chart on the screen in front of him.
The curve representing the energy index had, in just a fraction of a second, spiked vertically from a flat baseline, directly tearing through the screen’s maximum range!
“Oh my God…” the technical agent beside him gasped.
“What is he doing?
Did he light up a signal tower?!”
“Notify all field units to pull back two kilometers immediately!” Coulson ordered decisively.
“Maintain surveillance, and do not make any contact whatsoever!
Patch the real-time feed through!”
The screen switched, and infrared footage captured by a drone from a high-altitude ventilation shaft appeared.
In the footage, Leon Hall stood quietly in the center of the diagram, eyes closed, chanting under his breath.
In the reality unseen by the surveillance feed, countless tiny, translucent, distorted shadows were converging from all directions in the surrounding wastewater.
Packed closely together, their numbers were enough to make anyone with trypophobia collapse on the spot.
Like a pack of sharks smelling blood, they rushed frantically toward that tempting spiritual lighthouse.
On the other side, Tony Stark stood in his workshop, the screen in front of him displaying the same energy monitoring feed.
His encrypted phone sat to the side on speakerphone.
“The stage is set, Mr.
Stark,” Leon Hall’s voice came through the phone, clear and steady.
Tony didn’t answer.
Instead, he pressed a red button on the console.
“‘Project Helios’, initiate.
Start the freight elevator, and let our ‘Sun’…
go down to find where it needs to shine.”
“Tell the transport team on the ground they have ten minutes.”
On the other end of the line, Leon Hall’s voice sounded once more.
“Your sun is ready to rise.”