Marvel: Starting with Iron Man in the Apocalypse

The air in the ward seemed to still carry the strange, lingering sensation of a spatial rift. Tony Stark stood frozen, his brain processing the terrifying information he had just received at an unprecedented speed. Doubt, shock, and a chilling feeling of being forcibly dragged into the unknown mingled into an extremely complex emotion that clung to his face.

He stared intently at Chen Haotian, trying to find even the slightest trace of pretense on that pale face, which bore the usual playful smile. There was nothing. Only the exhaustion of using his ability, and an unsettling calm that seemed to know everything.

"You..." Tony's voice was terribly dry. He cleared his throat, trying to regain his usual tone, but failed. "What exactly is it? Some kind of... advanced application of quantum tunneling effect? ​​Or... magic?" He uttered the last word almost with disgust.

Chen Haotian, slightly out of breath, leaned against the bedside, beads of sweat glistening in the lamplight on his forehead. "You can think of it as a kind of...authority. Authority that transcends the barriers of three-dimensional space. As for the principle," he smirked, a slightly mocking expression on his face, "it's probably a little more complex than your reactors and armor."

This nonchalant attitude ignited Tony's long-suppressed curiosity and a sense of offended pride. He took a step forward, his eyes burning: "Access? Whose access? How did you obtain it? What was on the other side of that rift? That energy reading… Jarvis, retrieve the analysis data again, highest priority! I need to know what form that energy is!"

He practically roared out his last words, directed not only at Chen Haotian but also at the ubiquitous artificial intelligence.

"Reanalyzing, sir," Jarvis's voice immediately rang out, but with an unprecedented gravity. "The residual energy is extremely weak and rapidly decaying, but its nature... cannot be categorized. It does not belong to any known energy spectrum. Its spatial distortion characteristics have approximately 7.3% similarity to some magical phenomena recorded in Kamar-Taj, but the core driving mechanism is completely different. Warning: An unknown energy field has been detected accumulating again in the ward..."

"Accumulating again?" Tony was taken aback, then looked sharply at Chen Haotian. "What are you up to now?"

The lazy smile on Chen Haotian's face vanished instantly, replaced by genuine astonishment and solemnity. He looked down at his right hand, where, beneath his skin, a barely visible, dim rune was lighting up uncontrollably, emitting energy fluctuations that were even hotter and more chaotic than during the demonstration.

"It wasn't me..." Chen Haotian frowned, trying to suppress the restless runes within his body with his willpower. "It was it...it was interfered with by something?"

The instant he finished speaking—

[Warning! High-intensity, unknown energy interference detected! Frequency highly synchronized with the energy source within Mr. Chen Haotian's body!] Jarvis's warning suddenly turned sharp and piercing. [Energy level rapidly escalating! Exceeding safety threshold! Spatial stability is being lost!]

The lights in the ward flickered wildly, emitting a crackling electrical noise. The medical monitoring screen on the wall went black for a moment, then burst into a burst of sparks. A strong smell of ozone filled the air, as if a thunderstorm had just passed.

Tony's emergency summoning device on his wrist beeped urgently, and the deployment program of the Mark armor was automatically activated, but it only lit up with a red light before suddenly going out - the surrounding electromagnetic environment had become completely disordered!

"Jarvis! Activate all defense protocols! Isolate this room!" Tony shouted sharply, instinctively rushing towards Chen Haotian, trying to pull him away from the center of the energy eruption. Regardless of who this guy was, he looked to be in extremely poor condition, and this sudden change was clearly beyond his control.

However, his outstretched hand stopped in mid-air.

Centered on Chen Haotian, the air around his body rippled violently, like a pebble thrown into water, spreading out in visible concentric circles. No longer the controllable, small cracks of before, this time, the entire ward was distorting and groaning!

Chen Haotian groaned, his body arching slightly involuntarily. The runes beneath his skin shone brightly, piercing through his hospital gown and outlining a complex, ancient, and ever-changing phantom on his chest. The phantom emitted a chilling suction force, causing the papers and small medical instruments in the ward to levitate and be pulled towards Chen Haotian by an invisible force.

"I can't suppress it... Something... is forcibly resonating..." Chen Haotian gritted his teeth, squeezing out a few words. His face turned ashen, and sweat poured down his face. He could feel that the runic entity was active due to the demonstration earlier, but now it was being forcibly pried and interfered with by an external, homologous but more violent energy. It was like using the wrong key to forcibly turn a lock, resulting in the entire lock structure being on the verge of collapse!

[Energy overload! Spatial coordinate locking failure! Warning! Forcibly writing non-local universe coordinate anchor points detected!] Jarvis's voice was distorted with an almost panicked tone. [Sir, the energy source must be shut down immediately! Otherwise, an unpredictable spatial catastrophe will be triggered!]

"How do we interrupt it?!" Tony looked at Chen Haotian, who seemed to be in the eye of the storm, and was at a loss for what to do. Physical interruption? Energy neutralization? Without fully understanding the nature of this energy, any rash action could accelerate the disaster.

Just then, the phantom of the runes on Chen Haotian's chest suddenly expanded, the light so bright that Tony could barely open his eyes. A dark portal, over two meters in diameter, flickering erratically and constantly cracking and reforming at its edges, forcefully tore open in front of Chen Haotian!

This portal was completely different from the controllable rift from before. It was filled with violence and uncertainty. Inside, there was no longer a fleeting glimpse of another world, but a chaotic flow of colors, accompanied by a deafening roar that seemed to be the collapse of countless worlds at the same time!

The powerful suction suddenly increased tenfold! The furniture and equipment in the ward were uprooted and hurled towards the chaotic light gate, where they were torn into the most basic particles the moment they made contact!

"Tony!" Chen Haotian struggled to lift his head amidst the chaotic energy storm, looking at Tony who was only a few steps away. For the first time, his eyes revealed an almost uncontrollable urgency. "Grab onto something stable! Get away from it!"

But it was too late.

The suction force of the portal created a powerful vortex of force, and Tony was caught in the blast. He felt as if he were being gripped by an invisible giant hand and violently pulled towards that chaos!

"Damn it!" Tony roared, straining his feet to steady himself, but the slippery floor offered no traction. He was dragged forward, about to be swept away.

At the critical moment, a resolute glint flashed in Chen Haotian's eyes. Instead of trying to move away from the portal, he used his last bit of control over the runes not to close it, but... adjusted its "target"!

Since we can't stop this unexpected and violent journey, at least we should make sure that no one is randomly thrown into an unknown corner!

"Let's die together, my dear 'brother'!" Just before his body was completely swallowed by the portal, Chen Haotian shouted at Tony in a tone that was almost like throwing caution to the wind, a mixture of pain and malicious laughter.

At the same time, he forcibly "marked" Tony's existence as that of a fellow traveler!

Tony felt the force pulling him surge again, and the scene before him was instantly filled with distorted, chaotic colors. A sudden feeling of weightlessness washed over him, and he heard a piercing scream as space was violently torn apart. The last thing he saw was Chen Haotian's face, adorned with a complex smile, disappearing into the light, and himself being uncontrollably dragged into that unknown, raging void.

The next moment, the enormous dark portal suddenly shrank into a singularity and then disappeared completely.

The ward was a scene of utter chaos, as if a typhoon had swept through. Broken instruments, scattered documents, and furniture leaning askew... but Chen Haotian and Tony Stark were nowhere to be seen.

Only Jarvis's intermittent, heavily disruptive alarm echoed in the empty room:

[…Emergency travel procedure…triggered…Target coordinates…unresolved…Life signal…disappeared…]