Tony took a sip of his specially mixed drink and listened to the message from Miss Potts in his voicemail.
"Little Chili" Pepper Potts, Tony Stark's secretary in the original work, was probably the model example of a secretary rising to the top. Pepper was not only responsible for Tony's work but even took care of every aspect of his life in minute detail; rather than a secretary, she was more like a mother.
Perhaps because of this, the original Tony became increasingly inseparable from her, until they finally got together.
But now, after transmigrating, Tony was intentionally keeping his distance from her.
First, at this stage, Tony and Pepper only maintained an employer-employee relationship and hadn't gone further. Pepper didn't have many excessive thoughts about her boss, who was known for his promiscuity.
And now, as a transmigrator, Tony was happy to maintain the status quo, and even intentionally kept a distance based on this.
Not only because he didn't have improper thoughts about his secretary like the original Tony, but also because Pepper Potts was probably the person who knew the original Tony Stark best in this world. This meant that the more he interacted with her, the more likely he was to show differences from the past.
Although it might not necessarily be a big trouble, it is better to avoid unnecessary issues.
Tony finished the voicemail in the time it took to drink a glass. Nothing special, mostly company affairs, events requiring Tony Stark's attendance, and so on.
Before hearing the end, he had already casually asked J.A.R.V.I.S. to decline all declinable events as per usual practice.
It wasn't that he was acting like a diva and didn't want to attend—if possible, he certainly wanted to manage his personal image well and put some effort into making his company bigger and stronger. After all, although he had plenty of money now, who wouldn't want to earn more if they could?
However, he always had more urgent matters to attend to, and most of them seemed like life-and-death situations to him, so he really couldn't spare more time for Tony Stark's daily routine.
But when Tony heard the end of the message, he paused and suddenly changed his mind.
"Wait, J.A.R.V.I.S., don't rush to draft a reply." Tony handed the empty glass to a mechanical arm extending from the side. "Was the last message in the voice report about the Monaco Grand Prix?"
J.A.R.V.I.S. replied quickly: "Yes, sir. Miss Potts asked at the end if you plan to participate in the Monaco Formula One Championship."
Monaco is the only country in the world where city streets can be directly used as a racing track. Tony also invested in one of the participating teams...
...In fact, in the Iron Man 2 movie, Tony even did the crazy thing of the boss stepping onto the field personally, squeezing out the participating driver to race himself.
Of course, that was because in the movie, Tony was dying from palladium poisoning, so he wanted to go crazy for a bit. But the incident of "the boss squeezing out the driver" was still enough to cause a sensation.
But the race itself wasn't the main point. The point was, Tony remembered that in the movie, one of his mortal enemies, Ivan Vanko, the supervillain codenamed "Whiplash," attacked the original body precisely on the Monaco track.
Thinking of this, Tony quickly asked again: "I previously arranged to search for Ivan Vanko's whereabouts... have we still not found him?"
Not long after transmigrating, Tony had J.A.R.V.I.S. establish a dedicated archive titled "High-Risk List." Most of those who could enter this list were people Tony filtered out based on his memory of the movies, who might pose a huge threat to him and this world in the future.
For example, the first on the list was his good uncle "Obadiah Stane," though he had currently been thrown into the "Resolved" category.
Currently, the main villains of Iron Man 2 and Iron Man 3, Ivan Vanko and Aldrich Killian, were also on the list. Unfortunately, both were currently missing.
Tony speculated that Ivan Vanko might be using a fake name, because his current investigation of people with this name had yielded no results. He only knew that this person was probably in Russia, but the movie didn't seem to detail exactly which city he was in.
Moreover, until he tried to attack Iron Man in the movie, Ivan had lived an almost obscure life. It wasn't easy to find such a person in the vast sea of people in Russia.
But at the mention of the Monaco race, Tony's mind immediately became active.
Trying to find Ivan in a country as large as Russia was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but what if he let the other party come to find him on his own initiative?
If following the movie plot, Ivan Vanko should also appear at the Monaco Grand Prix to snipe at Tony Stark, who came to attend the event.
If assuming "Ivan will also come to Monaco" as a premise, and only investigating around the racing competition, the probability of finding this person would undoubtedly increase significantly.
Thinking of this, Tony quickly made up his mind: "Help me reply to the message, say that all other declinable activities are cancelled. However, you can announce to the public that Tony Stark will attend the Monaco Grand Prix."
J.A.R.V.I.S. said gently: "Yes, sir."
Thinking of Ivan Vanko made Tony feel a slight headache, and he couldn't help rubbing the bridge of his nose again.
Although transmigrating as Tony meant having luxury cars and beauties, billions in assets, high-tech armor, and all kinds of good things others couldn't buy with money, which was quite nice, the price was always being targeted by people.
For example, this Ivan Vanko, whom he had never even met in this life, held a grudge against Tony because of the grievances of the previous generation...
Tony was very annoyed.
Where did so many people come from to target him? Couldn't they just let him live a luxurious life like a filthy rich tycoon in peace?
So after a brief rest, Tony quickly returned to the work of developing the new element.
The process was generally smooth. Knowing the method, it took him only one day to successfully extract this high-efficiency, non-toxic, clean new element following Howard Stark's line of thought.
Although the movie didn't focus too much on depicting it, it wasn't hard to see from subsequent clips of the MCU movie series that the development of this new element didn't just bring a qualitative leap to the Iron Man armor.
The extraction of this element had epoch-making significance for the whole world. It was a milestone in energy history and marked the Stark Group, or perhaps Tony Stark himself, becoming the leader in the field of energy technology.
Of course, this was a story for later. Now Tony only cared about one thing, and that was that he could finally drive that damn palladium poison out of his body—and in terms of progress, he was even faster than the Tony in the original movie.
In addition, in the original work, Tony publicly said "I am Iron Man" directly in front of the camera. Although it had a quite amazing promotional effect for himself and his company, it also brought him a lot of trouble.
For example, at this stage in the movie, Tony was burned out by the hearing—because he revealed the fact that he was Iron Man, the government began to pressure him to hand over the "Iron Man weapon." Although Tony withstood the pressure, it caused a lot of trouble during the period.
Now, not only did Tony not show his face in front of the media, but he even resolved the Obadiah trouble secretly. The image of "Iron Man" hadn't even appeared in public yet. So the hearing naturally didn't happen.
This also gave him more time to focus on the tasks he listed.
The new element project came to a temporary close, and Tony felt a heavy stone lifted from his heart.
After finishing the high-intensity work, the fatigue of spinning around all day hit him like a tide, making him yawn involuntarily.
J.A.R.V.I.S. reminded him in a timely manner: "You really should rest more, sir. My statistical data shows that your average sleep time per night in the past week was only five hours, which is very unhealthy."
Hearing this, Tony couldn't help but sigh.
"I don't want to either; of course, I want to have a peaceful sleep."
"But how can I sleep when there are people trying to harm me all day long..."