bsaa (Part 1)

"Truly worthy of the Stark Industries Expo." After leaving Stark, Shen Fei didn't immediately leave the expo but wandered around for a bit.

He had to admit, watching online and being there in person were completely different experiences.

There was plenty of technology he wouldn't have believed if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. No wonder they said high-tech companies made money—that much was true.

"Howard left his groundwork here back then. Truly impressive." The entire Stark Industrial Park was actually a gift Howard had left for Tony—a brand-new energy particle, an isotope of the Tesseract.

"So this is the Arc Reactor." Besides checking out various tech and the occasional beauty, Shen Fei also saw the giant Arc Reactor on display by the Stark Group.

The Stark Group's entire power supply came from this massive reactor. By showing it off, Stark Group was demonstrating their technological prowess.

It was also a major source of income for Stark Group. Even though the Arc Reactor hadn't been miniaturized yet, plenty of people still bought it—like the Department of Defense, S.H.I.E.L.D., and some big corporations.

Thanks to all kinds of black-tech energy, electricity bills in New York weren't too high.

New, highly efficient energy sources were always a focus of research. Basically, any company with real strength wouldn't give up on this field. Stark Group studied the Arc Reactor, while Oscorp researched tritium energy—if successful, it would be known as an artificial sun.

But compared to the Arc Reactor, everyone else's research either had an absolute gap in energy level or was extremely unstable. Take Oscorp's tritium research—it seemed like it not only failed but also ended up creating a Doctor Octopus.

"I can't understand most of this. Maybe I should study physics—then I might be able to build a mini Arc Reactor before Stark does."

Standing next to the giant Arc Reactor, Shen Fei directly used the Op-Op Fruit to probe its structure. But that was just a random thought.

After all, judging from the current situation, biochemical knowledge could better leverage the power of the Op-Op Fruit.

The most intuitive manifestation of the Op-Op Fruit's ability was painless cutting. In surgery, this was practically invincible—because even if he casually sliced open someone's brain, nothing would go wrong. Heart transplant surgery was a piece of cake for Shen Fei. Forget swapping hearts—he could even swap consciousness.

Just thinking about that was terrifying. What defined a person's individuality? The body? Of course not—it was consciousness, or the soul. Being able to freely swap consciousness meant he could swap anyone's soul. That meant he could transfer a dying person's consciousness into a young body.

This practically meant a person could keep living until their soul decayed.

If Shen Fei dared to reveal this ability, every wealthy person in the world would kneel before him. People feared death—especially those with money and power but aging bodies.

Claims like "living too long means watching all your loved ones die, which is painful" were just self-comfort from those who couldn't achieve immortality.

Maybe after experiencing a long life, someone might think that way. But before experiencing it, 99.9% of people wouldn't want to die young.

The reason he didn't say 100% was that there were always some exceptions among humans.

The Ancient One had lived long enough. And just as Shen Fei had guessed, she might not really die. After all, she was so powerful that even if she died and her soul went to Hell, the Hell Lord probably wouldn't dare do anything to her.

To the Ancient One, Hell was just another special dimension. To ordinary people or common mages, Hell was terrifying. But to the Ancient One, going to Hell was just going to another dimension.

Many doubted the Ancient One's strength because she died at Kaecilius's hands so casually. But Shen Fei wouldn't make that mistake. Earth—or rather, Midgard—had its current special status entirely because of the Ancient One.

As the ruler of the Nine Realms, did Asgard really forget about Midgard? Was Odin really that easygoing? Frost Giants invaded Midgard, Odin came with his army, defeated the invaders, and then left without a word—was that possible?

Look at other realms—whenever something happened, Asgard sent troops directly. But Midgard didn't even know Asgard existed and treated it all as mythology.

And even so, Asgard still protected Midgard as one of the Nine Realms.

The Ancient One mainly defended against dimensional monsters. As for real-world problems, unless someone blew up the planet, she wouldn't bother. That was mostly Asgard's job.

This was a world full of aliens. Star-Lord was taken off Earth by the Ravagers. That meant Earth's coordinates weren't exactly a secret in the universe.

For a planet that hadn't left its own star system, it was a favorite target for Ravagers. Forget resources—just the population alone was enough to make them come plunder. Underground slave trade was rampant in the universe.

Even someone like Yondu had been sold as a slave, and his planet had already entered the interstellar age.

Earth was protected too well. Not only did it have constant internal conflict, but there were also idiot scientists constantly broadcasting Earth's coordinates into space.

Little did they know Earth's coordinates had long been no secret. It was just that powerful guardians kept anyone from causing trouble.

Of course, Earth's guardians weren't just Asgard. There was also Captain Marvel.

"Forget it. Let the tall guys worry about the sky falling. I'll take care of myself first. Speaking of which, the Op-Op Fruit being worth only five billion is completely unreasonable. Five hundred billion, five trillion—that would still be too cheap."

Shen Fei shook his head slightly. Law had used the Op-Op Fruit quite well, but he hadn't fully developed its potential. Of course, that might also be because Law hadn't studied the relevant knowledge.

"If things go smoothly with Stark, I can move to the next step. Too bad Ada didn't leave a contact method. Otherwise, I could use her abilities for some things."

Ada was a top agent. She definitely had her own intelligence network—exactly what Shen Fei lacked most right now. Some things couldn't be fully uncovered even by a hacker.

"Speaking of which, where is that Berserker Staff hidden? It seems to be in a book." That was Shen Fei's next target. Luckily, he still remembered some things from the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents series. Even with the Umbrella Corporation added to this world, it probably wouldn't affect that.

"And was that an Asgardian doctor or professor? I should have watched more episodes before coming to this world." As for why he wanted the Berserker Staff, it wasn't because the staff itself was powerful. He wanted to use it as an opportunity to study Asgardian technology—or rather, magic.

When technology reached a certain level, it was essentially no different from magic. Similarly, magic could, to some extent, be considered technology.

"New York really is a mess." Hearing the distant sirens, seeing three police cars speed by, and catching occasional gunshots, Shen Fei shook his head helplessly as he rode his motorcycle.

Queens, New York. The name sounded impressive, but it was actually one of the poorer districts in New York. Its public safety was probably only slightly better than Hell's Kitchen. No wonder Spider-Man was so busy all the time—there were just too many criminals here. It was okay during the day, but at night, especially after eight o'clock, aside from a few main streets, nowhere was safe.

Robbery, rape, murder—they happened all the time.

After glancing at something happening in an alley, Shen Fei left immediately. From what he saw, it was probably a few people robbing someone. He wasn't Spider-Man, so he naturally wouldn't get involved in that.

"The latest Hollywood blockbuster. Who says you can't watch pirated movies in America?" After getting home, Shen Fei skillfully logged into a website and projected the movie onto the large screen TV on one side.

America's protection of copyright was indeed thorough. But that only applied to ordinary people. For some, it was no obstacle at all—namely hackers. Especially those who operated under the guise of sharing. Pretty much any movie could be found on hacker websites.

For Shen Fei now, it wasn't that he looked down on legitimate copies. It was just too boring to go to the cinema alone. So he had bought a luxury home theater system at home.

It was a bit pitiful, really. Having been in the Marvel world for a few years now, Shen Fei strictly only had two friends: Rebecca and Sherry.

Through Rebecca, Shen Fei had met Sherry a few times via video call.