Tony's energy cannon was pressed against Kang's forehead. Under the white light, Kang's facial muscles twitched unnaturally. The appearance of fear vanished in a second, and his features were squeezed together, revealing a resolute and sinister look.
"Be buried with him!" Kang squeezed out a hoarse syllable.
The remaining azure energy tubes in the armor instantly overloaded and turned a blinding crimson.
A complete gravitational field erupted from him without reservation, and tangible psychokinetic energy superimposed on the gravitational waves expanded indiscriminately in all directions.
Strange clenched his hands together abruptly.
"Defense!"
Tony's nanotech armor instantly switched forms, his leg armor piercing the ground, and his chest reactor blazing brightly as all the energy was channeled into Strange's Shield of the Seraphim.
The golden magic circle had just taken shape when a violent energy shockwave slammed into it.
The glass in the Mirror Dimension emitted a cracking sound as it shattered under the strain.
The upside-down rainforest and twisted mountain peaks were crushed into dust in the gravitational field. Space collapsed completely.
In the real-world Amazon Rainforest, a hemispherical shockwave ripped through the clouds, uprooting trees within a ten-kilometer radius.
Soil, broken branches, and fallen wood all fell to the ground.
At the bottom of the charred meteorite crater, several figures lay sprawled in the mud.
Tony removed the cracked magic shield, his armor visor popped open, and he bent over, coughing violently and spitting out the dirt and sand in his mouth.
Strange knelt on one knee, his hands supporting him on the ground. A large patch of the edge of his red Cloak of Levitation was charred, and it was patting its owner's shoulder in a pitiful manner.
" Old Popsicle!" Tony shouted as he turned and strode to the side.
Steve lay dead beside a broken tree a dozen meters away, his Vibranium Shield clutched tightly to his chest. His uniform was tattered, his right arm twisted at an unnatural angle, and blood streamed from his forehead into his eyes.
Clint was half-buried in the ground, his warbow broken in two.
Natasha lay prone a short distance away, the surface of her live suit shimmering with a dim red light, attempting to heal the large burns on her back.
A flash of blue light appeared, Pietro staggered and fell at Tony's feet. His leg armor was completely shattered, and there was a deep laceration on his calf that exposed the bone, with blood staining the soil.
"Damn it." Tony immediately activated the medical module of his armor, flicked his wrist, and fired several nano-emergency syringes at the four people. The syringes pierced the skin and released repair gel.
"Boom!"
The distant mound exploded.
Banner shook off the dirt, revealing a huge charred gash on his chest, the skin torn and the muscle healing rapidly.
Jane descended from mid-air, carrying the pink Mjolnir, her armor torn in several places, her breathing rapid, and the lightning on the Hammerhead dim.
Vision appeared from the void, and the Mind Stone on his forehead dimmed.
"Where is he?" Tony looked around. Where Kang had been lying, there was only a deep pit left, with no remains.
Vision landed at the edge of the crater, his eyes shooting out yellow scanning beams that swept across the scorched earth at the bottom of the pit.
"There's a strong warp reaction remaining in space." Vision retracted his beam and turned to Tony. "He initiated inter-universe teleportation the instant he detonated the energy."
"Coordinates." Tony raised his wrist, brought up the holographic keyboard, and hovered his fingers over it.
Vision shakes his head.
"The teleportation was random. The explosion disrupted all spatial parameters, and I cannot track his final destination after leaving this universe."
Tony slammed his fist into the charred wood beside him, the charcoal shattered, and black ash clung to his armor.
"Mara Law School."
They let a madman who possessed time technology and the ability to travel between universes escape!
Tony rubbed his temples, his head buzzing.
He has been focusing all his energy on the development of the Anti- Celestials Armor lately, and also has to allocate computing power to deduce the Sunset Protocol and guard against that Sentry named Robert. Inter-universe tracking technology is not on his agenda at all in the near future.
" Strange, can magic find people?" Tony asked the sorcerer beside him.
Strange stood up, brushed the dirt off his clothes, and straightened his collar.
"Searching for someone across the universe? Do you take me for the omniscient and omnipotent Vishanti? Even if the Ancient One were alive, she couldn't find a needle in a haystack in countless parallel universes."
Tony stopped arguing with Strange and raised his right hand, quickly operating the communicator on his wrist.
JARVIS, calling Valeria.
The communicator emitted a slight static sound, then the call was connected.
"Get to the point, Mr. Stark. I'm adjusting the engine parameters for the shielding device." The girl's crisp, clearly impatient voice came through the communicator, accompanied by the sharp clang of a wrench striking metal.
Tony stepped over a fallen tree trunk and walked to a slightly more open area.
"Listen, genius girl, we're in big trouble. That guy named Kang just detonated his armor in the Amazon Rainforest and then escaped across space."
The tapping stopped for two seconds.
"Otherwise what? Do you think a few people can easily crush a conqueror? The fact that he's still alive means his escape skills are top-notch." Valeria's voice remained completely calm.
"I'm not here to listen to your post-war debriefing," Tony raised his voice. "We need his coordinates. Can your personal terminal, which is filled with massive amounts of multiverse data, find out where he is?"
"No," Valeria answered crisply.
"Why?"
"The trajectory of inter-universe teleportation would be smoothed out by quantum foam within three seconds. Unless I'm standing right next to him when he teleports, simultaneously collecting data on spatial warp, there's simply no trace of it. The data in my terminal is static, not a real-time monitoring radar for the entire universe."
Tony stopped and glanced back at Steve, who was being bandaged by Jane.
Is there really no other way?
There was silence for a few seconds on the other end of the communicator.
"There is a way," Valeria said. " Franklin can do it. He can directly perceive and even reshape the structure of the universe. Finding someone for him wouldn't be difficult."
"Then call your brother over for a favor."
"He's not in the Knowhere." Valeria's speech quickened slightly. "He's gone to play in another dimension; I can't contact him."
Tony reached out and wiped the mud and water off the edge of his mask.
"And what about your Papa, Reed Richards? Since he was able to get you that terminal, he should have a way to track down a fugitive from another universe, right?"
After those words were spoken, a long, deathly silence fell over the communication channel.
Only a faint hum of electricity echoed in Tony's ears.
The Knowhere, Frost City.
Valeria sat in front of a huge control panel, holding a plasma welding torch in her hand.
She stared at the scrolling data on the screen and bit her lip.
Contacting Reed would be tantamount to revealing one's current exact position.
She knows her father and mother too well.
Once the communication is established, Reed will create an inter-universe portal within half an hour, take Susan directly to the Knowhere, pack her up and bring her back to her original universe, then lock her in that solitary confinement room filled with boring books.
She didn't want to go back.
The Knowhere is practically a paradise for researchers.
Here are the dinosaurs she created that roam freely, all sorts of bizarre and mutated creatures, and Thor, that hands-off boss.
Although Thor often treated her like a human being, frequently grabbing her by the back of the neck and lifting her up, and very stingily refusing her reasonable request to "cut off a piece of meat to study," there is no denying that Thor was a perfect client.
As long as she makes a list, no matter how strange or unusual the research materials are, Thor can always find a way to get them for her.
Artificial Sun, floating cities like Asgard —these crazy ideas can all become reality here.
Going back to that boring home? Absolutely not.
But...
Valeria put down the welding torch and tapped her fingers on the edge of the control panel.
She pulled up the top-secret file on " Kang the Conqueror " in the terminal.
The screen was filled with a dense array of red warnings.
A threat on the Multiverse Level, capable of Carnage the universe and erasing timelines.
This is not only a formidable enemy, but also a madman who could return at any moment with an army to destroy everything.
Stark and his crew had no idea what kind of monster they had let escape.
If his location isn't pinpointed quickly, and he recovers, the entire multiverse will face annihilation.
Valeria grabbed a handful of her hair in frustration, making a mess of her golden curls.
"Consider it something I owe you."
She threw a sentence into the communicator.
Before Tony could ask any further questions, the communication was unilaterally cut off.
Valeria jumped off the chair and pulled a flat, silver metal box from her pocket—the core of her personal terminal that she had taken with her when she left home.
She connected the metal box to the main interface of the console.
Fingers flew across the keyboard, typing out a long string of extremely complex encrypted commands.
The screen switched between different images, with a green data stream cascading down like a waterfall.
[Building a cross-universe communication bridge]
[Positioning: Codename 'The Controlling Papa ']
[Breaking through dimensional barriers]
The progress bar moved slowly forward. Valeria stared at the screen, her arms crossed over her chest, her toes tapping rapidly on the ground.
"I hope he doesn't immediately tell me to go back and write a self-criticism," she muttered softly.
The progress bar has reached 100%.
[Communication established]
A soft "beep" sounded from the speaker.
Without waiting, the communication was connected in the first second.
" Val?"
A hurried, trembling woman's voice, filled with extreme worry, burst from the speaker.
"Is that you, Val? Where are you?"
Susan Stone Richards ' voice was noticeably choked with emotion.