When people faced a threat to their lives, they usually unleashed extraordinary potential. For example, one mother had lifted a car off her son with her bare hands to save him after it had trapped him underneath.
Although she had plenty of traitors like Kaecilius and Baron Mordo under her command, the Ancient One knew how to teach people—though few could ever reach her level.
While studying at Kamar-Taj, Doctor Strange Stephen Strange had been unable to master the spell for opening portals because of the limits of his preconceived ideas. The Ancient One had simply tossed him onto a snowy mountaintop, where the cold and thin air tormented him, forcing him to surpass himself if he wanted to survive.
Driven by necessity, Doctor Strange had broken through his perceptual barriers. Not only had he made it back to Kamar-Taj, he had also advanced by leaps and bounds in the mystic arts, ultimately earning the right to inherit the title of Sorcerer Supreme.
The tactical beating Wei Xiuming had just taken had achieved the same result.
The all-out fight and brush with death had played a crucial role in his growth. Before this, he had merely learned the martial arts techniques synthesized by a supercomputer; he hadn't mastered them. With the power of Magnetic Field Rotation, and having faced practically no opponent who could last even one round in the few fights he'd had, he'd never had the chance to train properly.
He couldn't claim he could beat the version of himself from half an hour ago, but Wei Xiuming was confident that if the two of them fought, his present self could kill his past self at the cost of injuries he could recover from.
"Thank you, Sorcerer Supreme." Wei Xiuming bowed.
"Kamar-Taj's doors will always be open to you. All our books and knowledge are yours to study." The Ancient One returned the bow, then opened a portal and stepped through to a distant location.
Wei Xiuming was left standing there, stunned. You said I was welcome at Kamar-Taj. You could've at least given me the address.
When he turned around, he saw a sheet of paper on the desk in his dorm room. It had an address written on it—the Sanctum Sanctorum, tucked away in a corner of New York.
The next morning, Wei Xiuming was already waiting in a room in an office building in the industrial park. He had long since replaced sleep with cultivation. After reviewing everything he'd learned from fighting the Ancient One, his experience had grown considerably, and the power of Magnetic Field Rotation within him had increased as well. Without a suitable way to measure it, though, he couldn't say by how much.
Beside him stood Norman Osborn, whose grasshopper genes had been fused into his body. Even with just one hour of sleep a day, he remained just as energetic as ever. After all, at the genetic level, he was no longer human.
The two top executives of the Osborn Group were waiting here because today was the day the military's personnel would arrive. The first candidates for the Knight System had been chosen. They would undergo physical enhancement and a series of follow-up training sessions in the industrial park, until they could operate the Knight System—priced at 620 million dollars per unit—without injuring themselves.
The number of candidates selected was still unknown. Even the groundbreaking B-2 bomber had been so expensive that the U.S. military had been wary of ordering too many. And the Knight System's pilots needed to undergo physical enhancement as well. The military had no idea how much funding it could spare for that process, let alone for subsequent maintenance and repairs.
After taking a phone call, Norman Osborn's expression darkened. "Dr. Kent, the military's candidates for the Knight System... There are only five. One of them is Lieutenant Sonon."
Five was far below what he'd expected. He didn't know the full cost of developing the Knight System, but the company's books showed more than ten billion in actual R&D expenses. He'd been counting on a big military contract to cover the shortfall and turn a profit on top of that. With only five candidates, he could forget about it.
Wei Xiuming waved a hand, the gas mask still covering his face and preserving his air of mystery. "This isn't much of a problem. If the Knight System doesn't make us much money, we can take the opportunity to launch another product. The big companies and U.S. government agencies are already struggling with the insectoid threat. If the Knight System isn't widespread enough to solve the problem, we can sell them a way to expose the insectoids' disguises."
At present, insectoids were generally identified using specialized, large-scale medical equipment. Setting aside the price—and whether every household could afford it—the equipment required trained professionals to operate and had to be installed in designated isolation zones. There were also concerns over whether the tiny amounts of bodily damage caused by repeated use might lead to cancer over time. All these factors hindered efforts to identify insectoids.
If the Osborn Group quickly launched an inspection device and sold it to major companies and government agencies, it would fly off the shelves. It would be harmless to the body and easy to use. As for the high price putting it beyond the reach of ordinary people, well, the United States was a country of "freedom and democracy." The people who could be mimicked and replaced by insectoids were the powerful and the wealthy—and their replacement would cause far more trouble than some ordinary nobody being taken over.
Compared with Dr. Erskine, who was a more pure scientist, Wei Xiuming was closer to a businessman. For one thing, he was better at releasing a basic product first, then gradually rolling out a series of upgrades. And he was certainly better at reading and managing customers.
They put a scrawny man into a coffin-shaped machine, injected him with the prepared enhancement serum, and supplemented it with radiation energy. That was all it took to complete the enhancement. A beanpole had become a strapping six-foot-tall muscleman, so well-built that even the female officer couldn't resist reaching out to touch his pecs.
The only twist was that the subject cried out in agony as his body underwent drastic changes. The softhearted experiment leader had wanted to stop the procedure, but the subject had gritted his teeth and endured it, his willpower astonishing. In the end, he had emerged transformed... It was all a bit too Hollywood.
It was like getting tested for an infectious disease. A medical worker swabbed your tonsils and sent the sample off for testing. The whole process took less than two seconds, and all you had to do was go home and wait for the results.
Among those being tested, there would always be someone who thought that such a quick and easy test couldn't possibly be worth 180 yuan. Then they'd maliciously project their own experience onto the entire population, completely ignoring equipment wear and tear, labor costs, and all the other necessary expenses.
It was like some relative's spoiled kid, who spotted your Gilgamesh figure and limited-edition Bandai Amazons belt. The parent generously tossed down 200 yuan, expecting his son to walk off with both items—and that 200 yuan was supposed to include compensation for his son breaking the half-assembled Strike Freedom Gundam model, too.
In his mind, they were just some little plastic figures and a plastic belt. What could they possibly be worth? Two hundred yuan was already more than enough.
He completely ignored everything that went into making "just a little plastic figure": licensing, design, mold-making, materials, packaging, warehousing, shipping, and a necessary profit margin, to name just a few.
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