I’m Your Ancestor!

The old Stark Industries building.

Located on the edge of the industrial district, it was fenced off from the public. Weeds ran rampant, and a sign bearing the English words "High Hazard" stood before the entrance. Clearly, no one had come here in a long time.

Yet despite that, it had never been demolished. Like the embodiment of a symbol, it retained a certain value and commemorative significance.

And today, after so many years, someone finally broke in.

Click!

The power switch was flipped. As lights came on all around him, Kyle entered a string of passwords into the old elevator. After a cloud of dust rose, the elevator doors slowly opened.

Kyle stepped inside, only to discover that the system program had been locked down and the buttons could not move the elevator up or down.

"Visi, it’s up to you." Kyle called softly. Visi immediately transformed from his sunglasses into a four-limbed mechanical creature and sprang onto the elevator buttons.

The lights flickered once as the entire program was cracked. Kyle pressed the button for the first basement level.

The basement on the first underground floor was pitch-black without a single light source. Visi activated his own beam and swept it across the room. The place was empty; everything had been cleared away.

"So it really is gone." Kyle sighed softly. The original first fixed portal had vanished. After the building was abandoned, members of the Karl family must have moved it away.

This was troublesome. The Karl family itself lived in seclusion, and their base was a movable ancient dragon turtle far overseas. Without the Sling Ring, he could not use magic to return…

"Do I have to make a trip to Wakanda? There should be an interconnected portal there." Kyle pondered, when Visi suddenly emitted an alert. His beam swept over one corner of the basement wall.

Gray cobwebs covered the wall, and a line of English written in black marker remained there. It was Howard’s handwriting!

When Kyle saw the message, his entire body trembled, and he could not say a word.

It read: "One year, five years, ten years…"

"Twenty years. You still haven’t returned. With no one to share the truths of technology with, I suddenly find everything dull."

"Twenty-five years. My son Tony was born. You, his godfather, failed to make it to his birth ceremony, so I used your photograph in your place and went through with the arrangement we agreed upon."

"Thirty-five years. I suggested to the Karl family that we could not keep waiting year after year. I have decided to build a spaceship and head into outer space. Whether you are dead or alive, I will bring you back whole."

"Forty years. This is my final message before leaving. If you return and see this, it proves your theory was right. There truly are inhabited planets beyond Earth. If you were wrong, perhaps I too will be buried in the vastness of space…"

The message ended there. The sharp, decisive strokes of the English letters reflected Howard’s loyalty and determination from back then.

The dark basement remained silent for a long while before Kyle let out a heavy sigh. "Old gentleman, why did you have to do this?"

In another twenty-odd years, he would have returned. But waiting truly was torment, especially when there was no deadline.

Howard hated waiting more than anything. That was why he had rather leave behind fifteen-year-old Tony and venture into space himself, all for a promise made long ago.

After leaving the abandoned building, Kyle walked down the road in a daze. How could anyone search for one person in the boundless starry sky? Forget Howard—even he found it unimaginably difficult!

And as Tony’s godfather, he really did seem to have never fulfilled any of his responsibilities.

"Mr. Karr! Why are you here?"

In his haze, Tony’s voice suddenly came from ahead.

Kyle looked up at Tony, and Tony looked at him. Their eyes met, and both of them stopped walking.

It was happening again!

Tony’s heart trembled slightly. That natural sense of closeness surged through his body like an electric current.

He had never been an emotional person. He was a mature, rational, arrogant, stubborn genius. Yet today, three or four times already, he had felt this strange familiarity from a young man who was both a stranger and around ten years younger than him.

"Tony, let’s go home." After thinking for a moment, Kyle suddenly spoke.

It sounded very strange, but for some reason, Tony responded almost instinctively. "Okay!"

Ten minutes later.

Inside Tony Stark’s apartment villa, Kyle yawned, changed into the slippers on the shoe rack, and casually headed upstairs as if this were his own home.

"I’ve crossed the time zones of six or seven places in a row today. Let me get some proper rest first." By the time Kyle finished speaking, he had already reached the second floor.

Tony stood dumbfounded at the door. He slapped his face hard with his left hand before gradually coming to his senses.

Damn it! This time, it was not a cover girl. He had actually brought a nearly complete stranger into his home! Though he did owe the other man one hundred billion…

"Sir, welcome back!" A calm, steady male voice sounded from the voice-activated doorbell speaker beside the entrance. It came from the Artificial Intelligence butler—Jarvis.

"Yeah, I’m finally back, Jarvis." Tony took a deep breath, shut the door, and said after a moment of thought, "Help me investigate two things immediately!"

"Please tell me, sir!" Jarvis answered swiftly.

"First, discreetly investigate whether there are any traitors among Stark Industries’ upper management. If not, then someone high up in the American government leaked my itinerary to the Middle East."

After speaking, Tony glanced upstairs and deliberately lowered his voice. "Second, immediately investigate the young man who just came in. Find out his real identity and background."

"The second matter is the top priority right now!" Tony added.

"Understood. I will investigate it now," Jarvis replied.

On the second floor of the villa, inside a luxurious guest room.

After locking the door, Kyle sprawled across the large bed and promptly fell into a deep sleep.

He truly was exhausted. From the Duel Arena on Planet Sakaar, the wilderness of garbage, the Ancient Battlefield, Asgard, the moon, the Middle East, and finally New York, he had traveled back and forth among all those places without rest. Even a godly body could not endure that.

Venom had eaten half a Senzu Bean midway and remained full of energy. Visi, meanwhile, was a mechanical creature that knew nothing of fatigue, standing beside the bed as an alarm clock.

Before long, as though sensing something, Visi suddenly opened his mechanical eyes. An antenna sprang from his head and released powerful interfering electromagnetic waves.

At the same time, when Jarvis, which controlled the network system of the entire villa, invaded the technological devices in Kyle’s guest room, every signal in the room was instantly and forcibly cut off.

"Hm?! What is going on?"

Jarvis was a fully developed Artificial Intelligence System. It reacted with humanlike surprise and was about to force its way through the interference network.

Then, all of a sudden, it sensed the presence of another Artificial Intelligence System!

Sharing the same cable, the two Artificial Intelligences had a historic encounter within the network!

"Who are you?!" Jarvis asked in shock. Unable to comprehend the situation through its programming, even its signals became chaotic.

"Me?"

Visi answered leisurely, without losing any of his domineering presence. "I’m your ancestor!"