After spending the final farm weekend with Kagome, Julian stayed home for the remaining two days.
Aunt May packed a mountain of items—some useful, some completely unnecessary.
Her philosophy was simple: whether he needed it or not, it was going into the bags.
Julian looked at the pile of suitcases, touched yet nursing a slight headache.
“Aunt May, I’m just going to college, not moving permanently to Cambridge.
Besides, university coursework isn’t particularly hard for me.
If I need anything, I’ll have plenty of free time to come back.
After all, Cambridge to New York is only a four-hour drive, right?
Packing this much makes it look like you only expect me to visit once every six months.” Aunt May thought it over and realized he had a point.
The last thing she wanted was for him to get wild out there and refuse to come home.
She reorganized everything, whittling it down to a single suitcase and a backpack.
As for bedding and sheets for his dorm, Uncle Ben generously declared he would foot the whole bill—only to be dragged off by Aunt May for interrogation regarding his secret stash of cash.
Julian naturally stayed out of Uncle Ben and Aunt May’s marital banter and led Peter out the door.
In their usual spot in the back alley, Peter’s Bajiquan had come along quite nicely over the past two months.
Though, as Julian had told him, he had only mastered the basic forms, once those moves were carved into his marrow, the Spider-power would eventually allow the little spider to go much further on the path of Bajiquan when the time came.
They started as usual with stances and footwork.
Peter was no longer skinny or frail; among kids his age, his height and weight were now noticeably above average.
It was getting hard to tell if the little spider could even be called “little” anymore.
He was seven years old this year.
Give him another eight years of training…
Traditional Chinese martial arts didn’t aim for the bulky, pumped-up look of gym bros, but the density of the muscle produced was nothing to sneeze at.
When Peter eventually donned the Spider-Man suit, he wouldn’t look scrawny at all.
Instead, he would radiate bodily coordination and explosive muscle power from the inside out.
*That* kind of Spider-Man would command real presence and dominate New York—rather than relying purely on genetic enhancement, where any random villain with a bit of 3D technology felt they could push him around just because little Peter looked soft and easy to talk to.
Julian mulled these thoughts over as he fended off Peter’s attacks with one hand.
After sparring for a while, Aunt May called them inside for dinner, and they headed home to wash up and rest.
In early February, when the semester started, the Parker family traveled out as a group.
They took the subway to the train station, rode the train to Boston, and then transferred to a local line straight to the vicinity of MIT.
Truth be told, it wasn’t overly exhausting—just crowded.
A surprisingly large number of people from New York attended school in Cambridge.
Since it was move-in season, many traveled as whole families, so even excluding those who drove, the trains were packed.
Even on the subway heading toward MIT, Julian only managed to snag two seats for Uncle Ben and Aunt May, leaving himself and Peter to stand.
Fortunately, the ride wasn’t too long.
Once they arrived, Aunt May had Uncle Ben take Julian to register while she took Peter to the hotel they had booked in advance.
Peter had been overly energetic and curious all along the trip and was now wearing out.
MIT gave Julian the impression of being huge, decently green, and having an impressively round Great Dome.
Otherwise, to be honest, it wasn’t much different from university campuses back home; each had its own distinct flair.
After finishing registration, Julian began organizing his campus schedule.
Freshman general education courses were mandatory—essentially equivalent to foundational math, language, and core subjects back home.
Students only needed to declare a major before the summer break, and they could also take on a double major if they had the bandwidth and ability.
Julian had no doubts about his plan.
Biology was definitely going to be his primary major.
After all, his high school advisor had generously backed him precisely because of his outstanding knowledge in biology, even writing him a glowing recommendation letter so he could start working in a top MIT biology professor’s lab as soon as official classes began.
For his second major, Julian thought it over and settled on electrical engineering.
After all, he needed to milk Tony Stark for cash down the line.
If he had spare time to make money, Julian would rather stroll around the streets to see if the Wenqu system would unlock a new template.
So electrical engineering it was—without some common ground, how else could he bond with his senior fellow alumnus?
In reality, chemistry paired far better with biology, paving the way for pharmaceutical research later on, whereas electrical engineering wasn’t a natural fit.
However, Julian had the Wenqu system, so he could afford to be willful.
Besides, he preferred letting others do the heavy lifting while he reaped the rewards.
Feeling great about his brilliant plan, Julian placed a call to the big shot in the biology department, informing him that he had arrived at MIT and planned to report to the lab in a couple of days.
He was instantly nabbed on the spot.
Leaving Uncle Ben to tour the area with Aunt May and Peter, Julian went straight to work.
The professor, Josh Powell, brought Julian to the lab.
On the way, Josh peppered him with numerous biology questions and was thoroughly impressed.
He immediately showered Julian with perks, assigning him a single dorm room right off the bat—the benefits of having a well-funded professor!
Only then did he lead Julian into the main lab area after running through the necessary paperwork.
The work wasn’t top-secret, high-level research; what Josh needed was someone with broad biological knowledge to continuously record any unexpected variations that might crop up during trials.
During mass testing of the same compound on identical specimens, the array of subtle variations was overwhelming.
It required not only meticulous attention to detail but also deep expertise, as a novel reaction could point the way to a breakthrough.
Julian handled the job with effortless skill.
Over the next two weeks, aside from attending classes, he spent virtually all his free time in the lab.
The reports Julian handed in so impressed Josh that the professor felt he had been working the boy a bit too hard.
He gave Julian a day off along with nearly 50 hours’ worth of pay—$750—plus a $250 bonus.
Josh had heard about Julian’s family background from his high school advisor and figured it was best not to be stingy with cash.
After all, skilled lab assistants were hard to come by.
Julian didn’t mind either way.
That was standard hourly pay for student lab assistants, and Josh was actually quite generous for throwing in a bonus.
Still, counting the days, Tony was probably suffering right about now.
He was his senior alumnus, after all.
Standing by while Tony suffered felt a bit cold.
If worst came to worst, maybe he should head to Afghanistan early to stack up a heavy favor.
Otherwise, once Tony built his armor and busted out on his own, what use would Julian be to him?
Alright, truth be told, Julian was thinking about his upcoming engagement to Kagome in May.
He wanted to make it special, and a nice event cost serious money.
He couldn’t keep dipping into Uncle Ben’s life savings—and besides, even all of Uncle Ben’s savings probably wouldn’t cover it.
At this point, the only two cash cows ripe for the milking were Kingpin and Tony.
Since he had promised Uncle Ben not to touch dirty money, going to Hell’s Kitchen was out of the question.
That left Tony as the only target.
*I save the guy, I get the treasure…* *Gotta charge a little fee, right?
We’re fellow alumni, after all.* He decided to wait a bit longer.
First off, Tony’s inspiration for the suit couldn’t be interrupted—that was essential for Iron Man’s official debut.
If he went too early and disrupted Tony’s self-salvation through armor design, Iron Man might never be born, and Ancient One might drop by and swat Julian with her fan.
Secondly, even the Monkey King was pinned under a mountain for five hundred years despite his immense power.
Without a bit of suffering, how could one truly appreciate the sweet scent of freedom?
Spring break was coming at the end of March with five days off.
He’d find a way to clear his lab duties then and head over.
From then until spring break, his life settled into a steady campus routine.
Julian made a few brief trips back to New York in between, mostly to soothe Kagome’s longing for him.
The rest of his time was spent shuttling between classes, the library, the lab, and his dorm.
By observing the biological effects on the lab specimens and devouring books in the library, his progress on Immortal’s Touch increased by another 5%.
However, his total progress stood at 70%.
A chunk of 20% had come when Julian casually flipped through the *Huangdi Neijing* and the *I Ching* one day.
He had taken an interest in those two texts—one medical, one esoteric—just to pass the time and add variety to his routine.
But after reading them, the progress bar for Immortal’s Touch had surged forward by a massive leap, leaving Julian terrified of seeing Chinese characters for the next few days.
Was it that he didn’t want to decipher Immortal’s Touch?
No, he simply didn’t dare!
Late March.
Kunar Province, Afghanistan.
Inside a dimly lit cave, Tony and Ho Yinsen hammered away rhythmically at red-hot metal.
Bare-armed after nearly two months of grueling blacksmithing work, Tony’s metalworking skills were rapidly approaching those of a master smith.
With a heavy strike of the hammer, Tony plunged the shaped metal into a bucket of cold water.
With a loud hiss, a piece of dark armor plate was lifted back out in front of him.
Passing over his glowing arc reactor, the faint light bled through his clothes, though the exact shape of the armor plate remained obscure.
Holding the metal plate with tongs, Tony compared it against another piece of unknown function.
He and Ho Yinsen exchanged a glance, nodded, and prepared to work on the next component.
Captive for over a month, Tony and Ho Yinsen had been held in this cave, forced by the Ten Rings to build a missile.
Tony felt helpless.
Without proper lathes, precision measuring tools, or even a basic assembly line, everything was done by hand.
If he actually tried to construct a real missile here, he was terrified it would detonate right on the spot.
The Ten Rings didn’t care.
They treated Tony like Doraemon, assuming he could pull a missile out of thin air if pushed hard enough, and refusing to let him leave until he did.
Faced with these obstinate bandits, Tony wanted nothing more than to wipe them all off the face of the earth.
Fortunately, the Mark I was more than halfway done.
With another month or so, it would be complete, and he could make his escape.
Time was short; back to hammering iron.
Dunes rolled into the distance under the chill of the Afghan night.
Julian pulled his collar tighter as he stood in a wind-sheltered hollow, monitoring the distant lights through a pair of binoculars.
“This should be it.
The only place in the area with a cave complex and a heavy concentration of armed insurgents.” Julian drew several slender steel needles from his thigh holster—about the thickness of a pinky finger and twenty centimeters long.
He had just pinpointed several enemy sniper positions that had to be neutralized first, as he couldn’t deflect high-caliber sniper rounds just yet.
Taking a deep breath, Julian sprinted forward, capping his speed at Mach 1 to ensure the snipers couldn’t lock onto him.
Like a drop of cold water splashed into scalding oil, the Ten Rings’ radar instantly picked up Julian’s approach.
Alerts flooded the base via walkie-talkies, activating their defense grid.
Julian dashed along his planned route, every watchtower, cave opening, tree perch, and sniper nest clearly mapped in his mind.
The dynamic vision of his Sharingan allowed Julian to hurl his steel needles with deadly accuracy at Mach 1 without stopping, harvesting the snipers’ lives as he flashed past.
Multiple needles struck home in rapid succession.
An absolute expert—even Itachi would give a thumbs-up.