I Know You Better Than You Know Yourself

"Interesting. You used my blood to develop a weapon against me." Shendu's tone held no emotion.

"Not just that."

The Iron Legion behind Tony raised their arms in unison, countless energy cannons aimed at Shendu.

"I discovered a unique energy resonance frequency in your blood. I call it the 'Dragon Blood Factor.' As long as I create a frequency that resonates with it, your regeneration and defenses will fail."

Shendu narrowed his eyes. "That attack just now was testing my regeneration speed?"

"Smart." Tony's provocative voice came from within the armor. "That was just a warm-up. You'd better hold yourself together for the next shot."

All the Iron Man armors charged up at once, looking like a miniature sun from below.

"I'll show you what human intelligence is."

Shendu vanished the instant the barrage erupted.

Snake Talisman, invisibility.

Shendu's trace vanished from Tony's sight in an instant, but Tony showed no sign of panic.

The pressure sensor data appeared across his helmet display.

"Left!"

Tony twisted aside. A stream of fire swept through where he had just been, turning the wall behind him into molten lava.

Tony narrowed his eyes. He hadn't expected Shendu to be able to control fire as well.

Shendu emerged from the flames. As the Demon of Fire, he was quite pleased by the long-missed environment of being surrounded by flames.

"You really are smarter than I imagined. But it seems you've forgotten something."

Shendu vanished again, his voice coming from every direction. "My power isn't limited to controlling inanimate objects."

Tony quickly activated thermal imaging, but Shendu's temperature now matched the surroundings perfectly. Thermal imaging was useless.

Sonar detection failed as well. His opponent had completely merged with the air.

"JARVIS, switch to pressure-grid analysis," Tony ordered.

"Analyzing... Sir, he's moving across the ground too quickly. Pressure changes cannot precisely lock onto the target."

Inside Tony's helmet, a fully two-dimensional grid map of the room unfolded before him. Countless points of light flickered across it. "It's not that he's too fast. A massive number of living creatures suddenly appeared in the room!"

Tony reached a conclusion almost instantly. Without hesitation, he fired an energy blast downward from both hands.

"If I can't catch you in the room, I'll force you out!"

Tony hovered high in the open sky, continuously scanning the rooftop below. "Come out. Hiding all the time doesn't suit your style."

Shendu slowly appeared in the open space on the rooftop. He looked up at Tony and the Iron Legion beneath him. "You think flying into the sky makes you safe?"

Shendu raised a hand. The Mouse Talisman's power rippled in his palm. Debris on the ground rose into the air from nothing, flames appearing over it as it flew. The flames swelled until they became fireballs.

Tony and the Iron Legion fired beams through the air, shattering the fireballs one after another.

"Give it up. Against someone who can't fly, I'm invincible," Tony's mocking voice came from above.

Hearing Tony's taunting voice, Shendu suddenly burst out laughing, as if he had heard some outrageous joke.

"Tony Stark, you really are a genius. But do you know what a genius's biggest problem is?"

Tony frowned. "Putting on an act."

Shendu continued, "A genius's biggest problem is believing too much in his own logic."

Tony stopped wasting words. Hundreds of beams shot toward Shendu.

When the light faded, Shendu had vanished once more.

"JARVIS, scan."

"Sir, an error has occurred. A large number of life signatures have been detected. They are..." JARVIS's voice cut off abruptly.

Tony looked down at Stark Tower. Now, the building felt completely unfamiliar to him, as though it had gained a life of its own.

Another familiar energy suddenly came from a different corner, and Shendu appeared there as well.

Tony found it hard to believe the energy analysis displayed on his helmet.

[Energy Source: Mind Stone]

Thunder exploded in Tony's mind. Two hearts? Not being controlled?

Shendu had absorbed the Mind Stone. How could he possibly have been controlled by Fury's tampered contract?

"Fury's strange behavior was your doing too!" Tony thought of how Fury had suddenly become a different person recently.

Shendu did not respond. The Observer's restrictions had brought him immense pain, but he no longer cared about that at all.

The ability formed by combining the Mouse Talisman with the Mind Stone gave him an unprecedented sense of control.

"Tony, my power isn't controlling inanimate objects. It's granting life!" Shendu's words exploded in Tony's ears.

Shendu slammed his palm onto the ground.

The building came alive.

Tony immediately gave the order. "Everyone, ascend!"

The Iron Legion rapidly gained altitude, but the building reacted even faster.

Hundreds of steel rebar rods shot out from the building. Tony failed to evade in time and was grazed by one. The armor's surface instantly shattered.

"Dammit!" Tony steadied himself and fired a repulsor blast, snapping the rebar flying toward him.

Shendu stood amid the twisted ruins. The surrounding rooftop had become a domain of animated building materials.

One Iron Man armor was entangled by rebar. Tony tried to remotely shut down its core, but Shendu was faster.

The armor was pierced through by rebar, its energy core precisely plucked out. It traced an arc through the air and landed in Shendu's hand.

"Not a bad toy." Shendu crushed the core in his hand, reducing it to dust.

Cold sweat seeped across Tony's forehead. He had underestimated Shendu's strength—or rather, he had never understood Shendu's abilities at all.

"You developed a weapon against me."

Shendu slowly walked forward, rebar forming a staircase beneath his feet. "But you never considered that I know you better than you know yourself."

"I noticed you the moment you built your first suit of armor from a pile of scrap in that cave in Afghanistan."

Tony's pupils contracted sharply. He had never told anyone about that. How did Shendu know?

"You always believe that as long as you have enough data and enough parameters, you can control everything."

"Weapons need aerodynamics. To deal with an enemy, you need to find their weakness."

"What are you trying to say?" Tony asked coldly.

Shendu raised a hand. A rebar rod silently stabbed toward Tony from the side. "There is one fatal flaw in your logic: you believe the rules are stable."

Tony dodged sideways and blasted the rebar apart with his palm cannon.

Tony did not respond to Shendu's mockery. His attention was entirely fixed on Shendu's previous words. "How did you know? I never told anyone about developing the armor. The military didn't know, the media didn't know, not even Pepper knew."

Shendu did not answer. He knew everything about the Marvel world. There was no need to explain.