Alexandra

Early the next morning.

Ten sets of field agent equipment were nothing much. S.H.I.E.L.D. had plenty in stock, and they were delivered that afternoon, personally escorted by Black Widow.

This standard-issue equipment was even better than the individual gear used by the Navy SEALs, but there was no need for a legendary agent to personally escort it.

People did not pay visits without a reason. Black Widow naturally had an agenda.

"Master Wang, do you have any Essence Wine left? This time, I hope to buy the kind that doesn’t need purification!"

Black Widow emphasized certain words, then softened her tone. Her eyes turned alluring as she blinked. "For helping you and Iron Fist hold back the Triads, could you give me a discount? How about half price?"

An hour later.

Black Widow left with a bottle of Bamboo Leaf Green containing two drops of Essence Wine from the Well of Eternity Bottle.

Another two hours later, Old Wang had an extra ten million dollars in his account.

All things considered, Old Wang had sold it a little cheaper this time. He could not gouge them too badly, after all. Small profits and quick turnover; steady streams run long.

His profit margin had dropped from a hundredfold to around fiftyfold. That was quite a hefty discount.

Old Wang felt that he was a conscientious businessman, earning hard-earned money. Exchanging for Well of Eternity Water essence required opening a Time-Space Channel and risking discovery by the mages of Kamar-Taj and countless powerful beings across the multiverse!

Besides, it was a monopoly. If he earned too little, it would be an insult to the word "monopoly." His peers would laugh at him.

He truly meant well. He did not want S.H.I.E.L.D. to buy too much and waste too much money, because they would never get any results from researching it anyway.

He had obtained Well of Eternity Water essence back in World of Warcraft. He had his goblin engineers and gnome engineers study it for a full year, and in the end, they discovered nothing. It was simply too difficult.

Old Wang had no hopes for S.H.I.E.L.D.’s technology division.

They had been studying the Cosmic Cube—the Space Stone—for decades. Their only achievement was the theoretical "Cosmic Cube energy isotope" developed by Tony’s father, Howard Stark.

Rather than counting on them, he might as well count on Tony and Banner.

"Skye, use all ten million dollars to buy Stark Industries shares." Old Wang tapped the armrest.

"Not keeping any?"

"Not a single cent!"

There was nowhere he needed to spend money for the time being. Darkhold Laboratory had already bought all the equipment it needed and was now in the research stage. Once it produced results and began mass production, there would be plenty of places to spend money.

Forget ten million—even a hundred billion might not be enough.

Old Wang was very ambitious.

After crossing over eighteen years ago, he had come up with many ideas and intended to realize them one by one.

Stark Industries’ stock price had stabilized by now, with little fluctuation and no real profit to be made for the moment. Old Wang planned to wait until Tony returned before selling. There would definitely be plenty of buyers then.

Then he would buy again when the stock price crashed.

If he saved up enough money now, perhaps he could become a major shareholder in Stark Industries when the time came.

Future Iron Man, you’d better not die because of the butterfly effect, or I’ll be taking a huge loss…

If he had not been unable to find Tony, Old Wang would have wanted to go to Afghanistan himself, play the lone hero, and make sure Tony stayed safe.

Eighteen years after leaving World of Warcraft, those days of constant wandering were long gone, but the Pandaren spirit of adventure remained.

Old Wang had once investigated his ancestry and found that his forefather had actually been the Pandaren traveler Liu Lang. Liu Lang’s wandering genes flowed through his veins. Shen-zin Su was his family’s inherited mount and pet. Who knew what it had eaten to grow into an entire island? It was completely unscientific.

Tortolla the Turtle God next door had lived for who knew how many tens of thousands of years and was who knew how many times Shen-zin Su’s ancestor, yet it was nowhere near that size.

Could it have mutated?

Old Wang always felt that Tortolla the Turtle God must have done something shameful back then. Its head was not even green!

Come to think of it, was Tortolla the Turtle God male or female?

"Skye."

After thinking for a moment, Old Wang added, "Take one set of this field agent equipment for yourself, give one to Gabe, leave three in the shop, and find a way to send the other five to Puerto Rico for Eli, Lucy, and the others to protect themselves."

"You’re not keeping one?" Skye asked casually. Then, before Old Wang could answer, she went, "Oh. Right, you don’t need one."

Old Wang smiled.

A Grandmaster naturally had no need for such ordinary equipment.

S.H.I.E.L.D.’s technological level was quite good, and its field agent gear was internationally leading, but it might not even be better than Gnomeregan’s Gnomish Mechanized Infantry from World of Warcraft. Wearing it would only get in his way.

For a Grandmaster Monk, only epic-grade equipment was barely useful, such as the Chi-Ji Set, Yu’lon Set, and others named after the four August Celestials.

Other than that, a pair of gauntlets and an iron staff were enough.

"Mm, got it." Skye agreed and began clattering away at the keyboard, contacting her friends.

She was a member of Rising Tide.

The organization gathered the world’s top hackers. Skye was already a first-rate hacker, yet she did not even rank among the best there. At least a dozen people were better than her.

Every hacker knew far too many secrets about far too many people and possessed all kinds of reliable channels.

For them, whether smuggling or sneaking people across borders, neither was difficult.

"News of Madame Gao’s death has already spread. The other four fingers of The Hand should be surfacing soon, right?"

Old Wang lay back in his chair, gently rocking, but his thoughts had already drifted into the skies.

New York, Manhattan, the top floor of a skyscraper.

Before the floor-to-ceiling windows, a world-class symphony orchestra was performing.

The vast audience hall held only one person.

This was a concert for one.

After the soothing piano sonata "Moonlight Sonata" came Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, "Fate."

Alexandra, who had personally witnessed Beethoven compose it, recalled that young man who had refused to bow before Fate—stubborn, sensitive, easily stirred, brimming with passion. Even his boundless talent could not stop Fate’s assault.

He had died at the age of fifty-seven.

And she had already lived through dozens of lifetimes of fifty-seven years, only to face the same threat in the end:

The threat of death.

"My time… is running out!" she murmured.

She had undergone an examination two hours earlier. The doctor had told her clearly that her body was naturally aging, and that no treatment in modern medicine would work.

Before that, she had gone to Egypt, India, Japan, China, and all over the world.

She had tried every method.

Those medical practices that seemed mysterious and bizarre to others were things she had researched long ago over the course of her long life.

None had worked.

Only a negligible piece remained of the Dragon Bone Fossil brought back from K’un-Lun. It was shared property among five people, and she had no right to use it alone. Even if all five used it, it clearly would not be enough.

The other four…

Madame Gao, the oldest among them, was dead. The other three still had vigorous bodies and could live for at least several more decades, while she had less than five years left. She was the only one truly desperate.

Suddenly, a cold, stern Japanese man walked in.