Tony Stark's Doubts
"Ah!!!" Pepper Potts, who had just come downstairs in time to witness the final moment, let out an earth-shattering scream. Ignoring JARVIS's attempts to stop her, she rushed straight to Tony Stark.
Tony Stark looked even worse than Xia Yu had after he finished loading the Yijin Jing. He was covered from head to toe in black filth, some of it blood and some toxins. Some had come out at the beginning, and some in the final moment, so parts of it had already stuck to his clothes. His hair and beard were covered in it too.
"Oh my god, Tony, what did you do to him?" Seeing Tony like this, Pepper Potts lost her composure and shouted at Xia Yu.
"Calm down, Pepper, calm down. Tony's fine; he just looks a little worse for wear. I'll wake him up, and you can ask him yourself." Xia Yu quickly reached out and tapped Tony awake.
"Oh my god, Tony, are you all right? Does anything hurt?" Pepper Potts held Tony and began asking how he was as soon as he opened his eyes.
"Oh, damn, what happened? What's all this stuff on me? I'm fine, sweetheart. Don't cry, I'm fine." The moment Tony saw Pepper Potts crying, he panicked a little.
"I just helped clean out the inside of Tony's body. That's an easier way for you to understand it, so some dirty stuff came out through his pores. I suggest you two go take a shower first, and we can figure out what happened over breakfast. Honestly, there's nothing romantic about the two of you hugging like that. Pepper, can't you smell Tony? Doesn't he smell like a sewer pipe that's just been taken out?" Xia Yu said with a smile.
Only then did Pepper Potts catch the smell and look down at what had gotten on her. "Ah!" She screamed again and fled. Tony frowned and threw out, "Xia, I'll settle this with you later," before hurrying away.
As the richest man in America, and even the richest man in the world on paper, Tony Stark naturally had a large bathroom attached to his bedroom. He had just spent a full half hour in the shower before he managed to wash the grime off his body, especially his hair. Now he was soaking naked in a round bathtub that covered a good four or five square meters.
"JARVIS, play the footage from the lab earlier," Tony Stark said to the air.
"Yes, sir." As JARVIS answered, a completely transparent screen rose from the foot of the bathtub. On it was the footage of Xia Yu performing Marrow-Cleansing and Meridian-Washing on Tony in the lab.
"Whoa! That's so cool! What is that? Some kind of superpower?" As the footage played, Tony let out an exaggerated shout, especially when it reached the part where Xia Yu lifted him into the air with internal energy.
"Check my physical condition," Tony Stark said again.
As soon as he finished speaking, a sheet of light swept over the entire bathtub from front to back, even beneath the water. After a brief pause, JARVIS's remarkably human voice sounded again. "Sir, the scan results show no change in your physical strength, but all your organs and muscles are in perfect condition. I mean, your body is extremely clean now, just like a newborn baby's."
Tony Stark understood perfectly well what that meant. As a person grew from birth, their body gradually oxidized. Breathing air and eating all kinds of food also produced various impurities in their organs, and even in their blood vessels and bone marrow. For JARVIS to say his body was as clean as a newborn's was quite a claim.
"One more thing, sir. Your current metabolic rate is roughly the average for a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old," JARVIS added. Tony ignored what JARVIS had said and asked, "Did you detect anything about Xia's physical condition?"
"There are no specialized diagnostic instruments in the laboratory, sir. I could only detect that, while Mr. Xia was treating you, there was energy activity of considerable density inside his body. It was unlike any currently known form of energy," JARVIS said.
"That's not how Pepper described it," Tony Stark murmured to himself. Tony Stark trusted Pepper unconditionally, of course, but a man with a special ability, or a superpower, had shown no intention of hiding it the first time he treated him. What exactly did he want?
With the system, Xia Yu received a +30 favorability bonus from story characters. This was not a percentage; it was simply +30. Even Xia Yu himself might not have realized just how heaven-defying this function was. To put it this way, the maximum favorability was 100, and that level was unlikely to occur between two humans. A score of 100 meant you liked everything about someone, which was unlikely for relatively independent human individuals. Generally, lovers deeply in love had a favorability score of 70 to 85. The higher the score, the harder it was to raise, because there was always something about another person that you disliked or disagreed with.
For example, two complete strangers might gain 10 favorability by exchanging a smile when they met. If they ate a meal, had a drink, and got along well in conversation, it might reach 30. But even after eating together for a month straight and hanging out every day, their favorability might not reach 50. So the higher the score, the harder it was to raise. The system's bonus for Xia Yu, however, was separate. For example, if Xia Yu met Natasha, she would have the system-granted 30 favorability toward him right from the start. But if Xia Yu then ate a meal with her and they had a pleasant conversation, he could still gain another 30 directly. For ordinary people, it was perfectly normal to make a friend at a gathering and reach 30 favorability, but with Xia Yu's extra 30 from the system, he could reach 60 in one go, which was impressive. To put it bluntly, some married couples whose relationships weren't very good only had a favorability score of 60.
So after Xia Yu had eaten a meal and had a drink with Tony Stark, their favorability was already very high. Although Stark felt something was off, he didn't suspect Xia Yu of having any bad intentions. First, the favorability brought trust. Second, judging from the footage JARVIS had played, if someone with Xia Yu's abilities had wanted to hurt him, he wouldn't have waited until now. As for whether Xia Yu had some purpose in getting close to him, the favorability affected that thought first, and second, Tony couldn't think of a purpose for the time being. If it was for money, sorry, but Tony Stark really didn't care. If money let a person do as they pleased, Tony Stark could do so to the point of making people hate him. In fact, that was exactly what he had done before becoming Iron Man.
For all those reasons, Tony Stark played the footage of the two of them in the lab in front of Xia Yu over breakfast. Pepper Potts cried out in surprise when she finished watching it. When she had entered the lab, her mind had been filled with the sight of blood spraying from all over Tony's body, and she had completely overlooked the fact that he was floating in midair. Perhaps there had also been too many tables in the lab blocking his legs, so she hadn't seen it clearly.
"What is this? A superpower? Or a special ability?" Tony asked, getting straight to the point.
Xia Yu wasn't surprised. Having seen the movies, he naturally knew what JARVIS was capable of, not to mention that Tony had specifically introduced JARVIS to him yesterday. For that very reason, Tony felt that since Xia Yu hadn't been at all evasive, it was better to be direct.
"This is a kind of Chinese martial art. Kung fu—you know the word, right? You cultivate a kind of energy inside your body!" Xia Yu said.
"Of course I know kung fu. Bruce Lee. I even studied Wing Chun for a while, but it didn't seem that amazing. I thought it was just a fighting technique," Tony Stark said. (Bruce Lee appeared on one of Iron Man's T-shirts in Avengers: Age of Ultron. The reference to Wing Chun is because Robert Downey Jr., Iron Man's actor, studied Wing Chun in real life. Imagine it that way.)
"That's only the beginner stage: practicing moves and forms and learning how to use your muscles. At a more advanced level, you absorb energy from food and air to transform and strengthen your body, store energy, and use it in different ways. You can think of it as magic, except it manifests differently. That'll make it easier for you to understand."
Tony nodded after listening. "That's a detailed description. I understand exactly what you mean, but why did you show me an ability that doesn't readily appear before the world without any reservations? Even though we got along very well, and I admit I feel a different kind of fondness for you—not that kind, of course, don't misunderstand. I still like beautiful women. What I mean is, even though we hit it off, that doesn't change the fact that this is our first meeting. It doesn't seem like you should have shown me that ability of yours. As far as I know, you didn't use what you call martial arts when you treated Pepper or anyone else."