Who would win, bio-zombies or alien creatures? How many rounds could Ultraman and the Saiyans fight? If the heroes of Dota faced off against the characters from Honor of Kings, who would dominate?
Questions like these could probably only ever end in arguments and insults.
Luo Xia had just finished an argument on a forum. They'd been discussing whether the AllSpark from Transformers or the high-tech inventions in Marvel were more powerful.
A few die-hard Mutants fans had barged into the discussion halfway through, insisting that technology was nothing compared to Mutants. The two sides had traded hundreds of posts without reaching a conclusion, but they had successfully given Luo Xia an entertaining afternoon.
Life after leaving the military was so leisurely that he had to kill time with these pointless activities.
Just as Luo Xia was about to shut down the computer and go eat, a dialogue box suddenly appeared on the screen.
"Are you tired of those unreasonable idiots throwing tantrums? Do you want to stuff logic and hard evidence into the mouths of people who can only curse? Then why not use facts to prove your point?"
Beneath the dialogue box were two options—Yes and No.
A virus? Whatever. It's a cybercafé computer anyway. Driven by curiosity, Luo Xia clicked the button.
Immediately, the world spun around him. Everything before his eyes stretched and twisted like the reflection in a funhouse mirror, making him feel sick.
In a daze, Luo Xia heard someone say, "What interesting things might the pinnacle of mechanical civilization accomplish in the Marvel Universe? Give me a little surprise."
As soon as the voice fell silent, Luo Xia felt a ball of searing energy seep into both his hands.
Before he could examine the sensation, his body suddenly sank. Then everything shook again.
He shook his dizzy head and finally got a clear look at his surroundings.
Endless yellow sand stretched as far as the eye could see. Luo Xia's hands were tied behind his back, and he was sitting in the back of a truck among a group of armed men.
These men looked like Middle Eastern militants, and Luo Xia's heart tightened.
"You're finally awake. I thought I'd have another patient on my hands. You're Asian, so what are you doing in a war zone like this?" A thin Middle Eastern man sitting opposite Luo Xia spoke to him.
"Who are you?" Luo Xia thought the man looked familiar, but he couldn't quite place him.
"I'm Yinsen, a doctor. You were knocked out by the shock wave from a rocket explosion. You were lucky. He wasn't so lucky. Shrapnel went into his chest, and I had to use a magnet to keep it from moving. If it reached his heart, he'd be done for." Yinsen pointed to a man lying on a stretcher in the middle of the truck bed.
The man looked to be in his thirties or forties, with a thick beard and a large metal device on his chest. That was probably the magnet that had saved his life.
The moment Luo Xia saw him, he recognized him.
"Tony Stark?"
"Oh, you know him too?" Yinsen asked curiously.
Luo Xia hardly had time to answer. His mind was already racing.
The unconscious man was Tony Stark, the most famous superhero in the Marvel movies: Iron Man. That meant he had actually transmigrated into the Marvel Universe.
Judging by Tony Stark's condition, Luo Xia had arrived at the beginning of Iron Man, when Tony was kidnapped by criminals. It was also the beginning of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Luo Xia had barely figured out where he was when the truck came to a stop.
The others and Luo Xia were roughly forced off the truck and marched toward a cave.
As he climbed down, Yinsen whispered to Luo Xia, "They only keep people they can use: rich people, technicians, and women."
At first, Luo Xia didn't quite understand what he meant. But when everyone was forced into a line, he realized what was about to happen.
A man who looked like the leader of the criminals picked up a list and began calling out names one by one.
"Horakov, wasn't your entire family slaughtered a few days ago?" the leader said to a timid-looking, middle-aged captive.
"No. I still have sports cars and a villa in the United States. I can use them as collateral for a loan. Just let me go, and you can have them all," the man pleaded.
"Sorry. We don't have time to wait."
Gunfire rattled. The man was shot full of holes.
At the sight of the bloody scene, one of the captives broke down. Ignoring the criminals guarding them, he went berserk and tried to run.
He didn't get far before a machine gun shot him in the leg, and he fell to the ground. Worse still, the criminals didn't put him out of his misery. Instead, they released several vicious dogs to tear him apart alive.
The poor man was ripped to shreds by the dogs, but he continued howling for a full minute before finally falling silent.
These monsters had no shred of humanity. Luo Xia clenched his fists, condemning them to death in his heart. If he got the chance, he'd kill every last one of them without hesitation.
"Next. Who are you, yellow monkey? An Asian tourist? Or a smuggler?" The criminal pointed his gun at Luo Xia and demanded an answer.
"I'm an engineer," Luo Xia replied calmly.
His military experience helped him keep his emotions under control. With more than a dozen guns pointed at him, all he could do was buy time and look for an opportunity to strike back.
"An engineer? Go fix that car for me. Just get it running." The leader pointed his gun at a badly damaged desert off-roader beside the cave, his face twisted into a mocking grin.
"I'm not a mechanical engineer," Luo Xia explained.
He'd learned how to repair cars in the military, but that off-roader looked as if a rocket had blown half of it away. It was ready for the scrapyard. There was no way to repair it.
But the criminals gave him no room to negotiate. One of them pointed his gun at Luo Xia's head. "I said, fix the car!"
Luo Xia understood that they saw him as a toy to amuse themselves with, like a mouse tossed into a cat's den. Once they got bored, they'd kill him.
But he had no way to fight back yet, so he could only walk over to the nearly wrecked off-roader.
"Listen up. You have thirty seconds to get that car moving."
The countdown came from behind him, clearly a count toward his death. Even without looking back, Luo Xia could sense a gun pointed at his back, ready to fire at any moment.
Luo Xia took a deep breath and quickly approached the off-roader, calculating how he could vault over it to dodge the bullets and buy himself a little time.
But as soon as his left hand touched the badly damaged vehicle, a stream of information flashed through his mind: Four-wheel-drive desert long-nose off-roader, total mass... A series of vehicle specifications appeared before Luo Xia in glowing text.
More importantly, beneath the information was a line of green text.
[Mechanical integrity: 70%. Activation requires 915 points of AllSpark energy. Energy remaining: 1,000 points.]
Luo Xia had his back to the criminals, so none of them saw the delight on his face. Nor did they notice him channeling a current-like energy from his hand into the badly damaged desert off-roader.
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