A Little Display of Skill

"Jack, hand Tony over to me, will you?" Obadiah stood not far away, not daring to get any closer, ready to use his silver tongue to achieve his goal.

As he spoke, he also operated the Iron Monger to calibrate its weapons, locking onto Chen Changsheng. This tactic of repeating a previous trick was quite logical.

"Tony?" Chen Changsheng feigned difficulty, pointing to where Iron Man lay prone. "Hand him over to you? That's difficult. Given our relationship, I won't just hand him over because you asked."

"Hmm?" Obadiah was puzzled. What relationship do you two have? You two have no relationship at all. "Jack, do you think I don't know what you've been doing behind the scenes? Buying up so many shares of Stark Industries, you can't just be after dividends. If you hand Tony over to me, Stark Industries will have a share for you."

As the executive director of Stark Industries, Obadiah was nothing like Tony, the hands-off boss. Obadiah had studied Stark Industries' equity and stock trading information. Anyone paying attention could notice Chen Changsheng's large-scale buying and selling.

This was rather awkward. Chen Changsheng's private acquisition of Stark Industries stock was merely to make some money for Dr. Otto's nuclear fusion research.

He had originally intended to avoid Tony, to prevent any awkwardness for both of them if his friend found out. But Obadiah had just blurted it out so brazenly. This was truly embarrassing.

"Obadiah, I think you've misunderstood. Tony and I are kindred spirits, like finding a soulmate. We're inseparable, except for our wives. Our relationship won't suffer any cracks over such a trivial matter." Despite the awkwardness, Chen Changsheng remained focused on the issue, defending himself.

"Cut the crap, Jack. I know exactly what you want. What relationship in this world is more important than money? If there is one, it's only more money. Someone like you, do you still care about your feelings for Tony?" Obadiah was speechless at Chen Changsheng's words. You and Tony have only known each other for a few days, and you're already talking about feelings? I, Obadiah, raised Tony from childhood, shouldn't that make us like father and son?

"No, no, no, Obadiah, you've misunderstood. Tony is my dearest kin, my brother. You want me to give him up... it'll cost extra." Obadiah's words made Chen Changsheng unconsciously slip into a meme-like response, wondering if Obadiah would get the reference.

Obadiah's face visibly twitched. He truly hadn't expected Chen Changsheng to say something like that. My dearest kin, my brother, is only worth a price increase? People really can't trust each other at all.

"Jack, if you leave now, I'll give you 5% of the shares. That will make you the largest shareholder besides myself." As he spoke, Obadiah prepared to launch his attack.

Obadiah didn't know much about Chen Changsheng, but ultimately, he didn't want to give Chen Changsheng anything. This was all just a pretense; Obadiah's priority was to deal with Tony first.

Just as Chen Changsheng was about to continue their verbal sparring, a faint sound came from inside Tony's Iron Man armor.

"Loading complete. Engaging defensive mode." It was Jarvis's self-check completion voice prompt.

Through Jarvis's voice, Chen Changsheng gauged the armor's current status and slowly backed away to avoid friendly fire.

Chen Changsheng's movement exposed Tony Stark, clad in the Iron Man armor.

Chen Changsheng wanted to see what the Iron Man armor looked like at 100% combat power under the control of the artificial intelligence, Jarvis.

Chen Changsheng didn't entirely approve of Tony stuffing himself into the Iron Man armor. Besides looking cool, Chen Changsheng felt Tony was lowering the armor's combat effectiveness. However, if he had it, he'd wear it too – for the coolness factor alone.

Chen Changsheng's retreat made Obadiah think Chen Changsheng had been swayed by his offer. The finger poised to press the launch button moved away.

Obadiah, controlling the Iron Monger, walked step by step towards Tony Stark on the ground. Seeing Chen Changsheng still standing there, waiting, Obadiah sneered inwardly. This is fine too. After I'm done with Tony, it'll be his turn.

Reaching Tony Stark, Obadiah extended a hand, grabbed the Iron Man helmet, and lifted it. He shook it hard, but the Iron Man armor remained unresponsive. Obadiah was now certain Tony was dead.

Looking at the motionless Tony Stark in his hand, Obadiah felt a pang of sadness. After all, he had watched Tony grow up. Although Obadiah had always intended to bring Tony to his demise, now that the moment had arrived, he felt a sense of reluctance.

Before he could dwell on his emotions, the Iron Man armor's helmet began to flash red. Anyone could tell this was a bad sign.

Obadiah was no exception. Seeing the threatening red light, he wanted to throw Tony Stark away immediately.

But before he could act, flames erupted from the rocket thrusters under Iron Man's feet, and a repulsor blast shot from his palm.

The blast hit the Iron Monger's faceplate directly, temporarily blinding Obadiah.

Obadiah hastily raised his arm to protect his head, and his grip on Iron Man loosened. This gave Jarvis, controlling the armor, an opportunity to instantly create distance from the Iron Monger.

Obadiah used this opening to quickly cover his faceplate.

According to Jarvis's logic, creating distance from danger was the best course of action. However, at this moment, Jarvis clearly hadn't grasped the relationship between theory and reality.

Having created distance, Obadiah gradually regained his vision within the Iron Monger. Seeing the Iron Man armor flying up again, Obadiah was bewildered.

Who was it that was lying there like a dead dog, unresponsive no matter how you poked it? And now it's fully revived in just a moment?

Obadiah felt his brief moment of sadness was entirely wasted. Feeling deceived, Obadiah quickly raised his arm and began a long-range attack with the weapons on it.

Under the storm of bullets, Jarvis skillfully piloted the Iron Man armor, dodging the incoming projectiles.

Due to Tony's previous extensive use of laser weapons in his fight with Obadiah, the Arc Reactor inside the Iron Man armor was now running low on energy.

After firing two repulsor blasts, Jarvis immediately changed tactics, flying in a wide arc before rapidly closing in on the Iron Monger, preparing for close-quarters combat.

Currently, while the Iron Monger had an energy advantage, its external armor was more severely damaged than his own. It shouldn't be difficult to dismantle it if he found the right approach.

A head-on collision between the two Iron Man armors was much more exciting than laser fire and stray bullets. Jarvis executed a series of combos with the armor, graceful and powerful, but the effect was rather underwhelming, like scraping away at it.

After a combo against the Iron Monger, it was like hitting a rock with a hammer – completely ineffective. Fortunately, the Iron Monger's helmet had been damaged, impairing its sensors and vision.

The armor controlled by Jarvis fared even worse, completely losing power and going offline.

When Jarvis's Iron Man armor charged forward, Obadiah was startled, thinking Tony was going all out. In reality, that combo had been effective. The Iron Monger's shock absorption wasn't that strong. Under the powerful attacks of the Iron Man armor driven by Jarvis, critical weak points of the Iron Monger were hit everywhere.

Obadiah, inside the Iron Monger, felt like life was worse than death. He felt that the series of heavy blows he'd taken today had definitely given him a concussion.

He opened the Iron Monger's faceplate, and the moment Obadiah's face was revealed, he spat out a mouthful of blood, clearly suffering internal injuries.

After a moment to recover, Obadiah finally had the capacity to check Tony's condition. Seeing him lying motionless on the ground, Obadiah fell silent. Without hesitation, he raised his hand and fired a grenade at Tony. Without the armor's assisted aiming, this grenade went wildly off course.

A fierce explosion erupted not far from Tony Stark, creating a fireball. The Iron Man armor, devoid of power, remained unresponsive.

Learning from his mistake, Obadiah didn't move forward. He prepared to continue bombarding the downed Tony Stark with grenades.

Seeing Obadiah squinting one eye and beginning to manually aim, Chen Changsheng no longer hesitated. At this moment, the Iron Man armor had no power, and Jarvis certainly couldn't record any videos.

This was Chen Changsheng's opportunity to shine.

Quickly transforming his arm into a whip, Chen Changsheng lashed out, wrapping around the Iron Monger's arm as it was about to fire the grenade. With a strong pull, Obadiah missed again.

The grenade whizzed past Iron Man and flew into the distance. Obadiah looked up in anger, only to see Chen Changsheng looking at him with a harmless smile.

But Obadiah wasn't an idiot. With Tony Stark down and out, there were only three people here. Who was Jack trying to fool?

Without a word, Obadiah fired a cannonball directly at Chen Changsheng. This time, it didn't miss, hitting Chen Changsheng dead on.

As Chen Changsheng turned into a ball of fire, Obadiah turned and walked away coolly. If you ignored Obadiah's shiny bald head, he really did have a dashing air about him as he turned his back.

The flames dispersed, and Chen Changsheng was still standing firmly in place. His ordinary clothes had transformed into a high-strength biological armor. While it lacked the technological feel of the Iron Man Armor, the dark chitinous armor was covered in mysterious patterns, emitting a faint, almost imperceptible luster that gave it a truly mystical aura.

"Crunch, crunch," Obadiah, who was walking towards Tony Stark, didn't notice the anomaly behind him. Chen Changsheng stretched his limbs and then charged towards Obadiah with large strides.

The immense commotion Chen Changsheng made as he ran immediately caught Obadiah's attention.

However, the distance between them was only fifty meters, which was just a few steps for Chen Changsheng. Obadiah, turning to check, saw a tall, dark figure charging at him. The inexplicable sense of pressure made Obadiah freeze for a moment, unable to act.

Once Obadiah reacted, he only had time to raise the grenade launcher on his arm and fire a few shots at the charging figure.

But because he didn't aim properly, most of the shells grazed Chen Changsheng's body. Those that did hit Chen Changsheng were batted away one by one by the large blade that materialized from Chen Changsheng's arm.