The dome of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center glowed mercury-silver under the moonlight. As Xiao Yan parked his Tesla Model X in the spot marked "Quantum Magic Startup Incubator," the Google campus three kilometers away suddenly suffered a total power outage—ancient texts in his backpack were resonating with the circular particle collider.
"This is your temporary ID," an Indian engineer in an Arc'teryx jacket tossed a transparent card. "Remember, the most dangerous thing in Stark Industries' autonomous driving lab isn't the melting Arc Reactor, but those vultures from Maserati Ventures."
Ducking under floating AI security jellyfish on the ceiling, Xiao Yan's wrist-mounted particle detector showed radiation levels in the conference room matching those of the Chernobyl Sarcophagus. The moment he pushed open the door, eighteen OLED screens flared to life with Mayan numeral matrices. A teenage CEO in a Chrome Hearts leather jacket was slicing Manhattan in a holographic sandbox with a laser pointer.
"Mr. Xiao," the blue light of the electromagnetic lock collar around her neck surged as she turned. "The protective shield of the Imperial Array Tower your father designed has scuttled Musk's Mars colony power grid procurement bids twice." She slammed an iced Celsius energy drink onto the conference table emblazoned with "Y Combinator Magic Acceleration Program," while Wall Street Journal headlinesDistort into incantations in the AR projection.
Encrypted messages from Xiao Xun'er suddenly exploded across his retinal display—she was using high-frequency trading algorithms on the dark web to reverse-analyze dark matter spectra from the Yellowstone meteorite. Xiao YanStroking; caressingthe alchemical microchip in the third button of his shirt. This device, hidden with the Stark family crest, had been transmitting his brainwave patterns since he entered the lab.
"In the latest Series D funding agreement," the CEO summoned a diamond-encrusted magic contract, "we need to demonstrate a viable product to the board before the blood moon rises—like..." She suddenly fired an arcane missile out the window, and the entire Bay Area power grid erupted inDeep bluearcs. "...solving San Francisco Bay's waste disposal problem with a controllable magical black hole."
Alarmstearthe air as Xiao Yan's custom Pixel 7 Pro automatically switched to SATCOM satellite mode. News alerts showed Aztec sunstone carvings suddenly appearing in Chinatown, while FedEx drone swarms crashed into the Golden Gate Bridge cables—each cargo drone carrying Xiao Energy's secret documents. These parchment contracts, meant to be locked in Switzerland's Knox Castle, were burning with alchemical flames under quantum teleportation.
"Activate Beta Protection Protocol!" The CEO threw a USB drive inscribed with Solomon's Seal. Thorn-likepattern on Xiao Yan'sback of the hand suddenly resonated以太ically with the server room. As he instinctively traced ancient Egyptianoperation symbol in the air, the lab's quantum computers began compiling code in Sanskrit. Liquid moonlight poured from the ventilation ducts instead of refrigerant.
The Wall Street wolves' ambush came faster than predicted. When the first short-selling order breached the magic firewall, 600 quadrillion gigabytes of financial data exploded in his irises. Curses disguised as securities trades were shredding his neural network along 5G millimeter waves. He staggered to grab the lab's brain-computer interface, uploading cuneiform from page 47 of Star Alchemy directly to the Starlink network.
"Reverse-engineer the alchemical array using JPMorgan's clearing algorithms!" Xiao Xun'er's voice suddenly came through his Apple Glasses. "The hedge fund's dark magic source is in Miami..." A holographic mapExpand, showing a Sequoia Capital partner's yacht anchored in the Bermuda Triangle. Aclear Mayan blood ritual formationon deck retained energy signatures of Mjölnir.
The lab's cryogenic superconducting ring suddenly erupted with solar flare-likeOptical flow. In his daze, Xiao Yan saw the 1953 truth: Howard Stark hadn't died in a car crash—he'd used stargate technology from ancient texts to teleport to that dwarf planet in Area 51! The James Webb Telescope images in NASA's live stream weren't cosmic microwave background radiation at all—they were the framework of a Dyson sphere Stark was building on the alien world!
"Warning: Unauthorized spacetime distortion!"
The Indian engineer screamed, knocking over a nanomaterial workbench. FieryAirflow surged from Xiao Yan's Supreme backpack. The yellowed Daily Planet newspaperSuspension combustion midair. Howard Stark's portraitMetamorphosisthrough quantum tunneling effects—the young engineer's facedistort, finally freezing into Xiao Yan's reflection in the blast-resistant glass.
Twelve thunderclapsBoomover the Bay Area, each lightning boltHit accurately a tech giant's logo. As Google's 'G' was blasted into a Celtic triskelion, the CEO suddenly tore off her collar, revealing skinflowing liquid vibranium. "Seems the DuPont family's pet collarExpired; failed?" Xiao YanSneer, crushing his ID badge. Antimatter sparks erupted,staining her chest's Stark Reactor blood-red.
S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjets broke through the clouds as Xiao Yan etched Mayangolden ratio onto a silicon wafer with a laser pointer. He deliberately let surveillance capture him inserting the Tesla key into the mainframe port—when federal agents burst in, all lab screens began looping TikTok influencers hawking alchemical beauty filters.
"The magic code you're looking for?" Xiao Yanlift his Starbucks cup to the holographic camera. "Just random algorithms for a Web3.0 astrology app." He opened a GitHub page in front of the agents, where his latest commit—Predicting Magical Futures Price Volatility with Machine Learning—was rapidly gaining stars.
But no one noticed thenanoscale film inside the coffee cup sleeve, which had already written the ancient text into his mitochondrial DNA via subcutaneous injection. Xiao Yan watched the blood moon rise over Santa Clara County, knowing the meteorite fragments werereorganization in the Stanford Linear Accelerator's collision beams—in three days, at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, Tim Cook wouldn't unveil VR headsets, but a wormhole generator to Howard Stark's alien base.