Lu Mingfei doesn't want to be a superhero

Lu Mingfei ran over with a lobster claw in his mouth, and just then he saw from afar that the car they had driven there had crashed through the gate of the racetrack.

It seems Happy drove Pepper inside.

Lu Mingfei followed behind the car, but a machine is a machine after all. Even with his physical abilities, running at full speed, he was still a little slower than Happy's car with the accelerator floored.

By the time the attacker wielding two electric whips came into view, Happy's car was ramming the attacker into the barbed wire fence.

Tony, from the back seat, yelled into the back, "Give me that box!"

A box? Lu Mingfei was stunned for a moment, then realized that it should contain the new Iron Man suit that Tony had recently developed—the Mark 5 briefcase armor.

He remembered that this thing was poor in terms of defense, weaponry, and flight capability, but in return it was portable, as it could be folded into the size of a suitcase.

Why do we need armor now?

Wouldn't the guy with the whip be dead if he got hit like that? He's not wearing an Iron Man suit.

Just as Lu Mingfei was thinking this, he saw the burly man on top of the car raise the electric whip in his hand again.

Good heavens! Could this be a cyborg?!

While Lu Mingfei was surprised, he had already taken the shrimp claw he brought and hurled it hard at the attacker.

High-end banquets are luxurious; even the lobsters are huge. As a result, the large lobster claw, with tremendous kinetic energy, was thrown by Lu Mingfei and slammed into the attacker's head.

Once a whip is swung, it's very difficult to change direction, so even if the attacker reacts, they can only watch helplessly as the shrimp claws come crashing down.

The shrimp claw shattered on the attacker's head, causing him to shake his head involuntarily, and he couldn't retract the whip he had swung out in time.

Lu Mingfei increasingly felt that the attackers were bio-engineered humans, able to fight even after being hit by a car, and not falling down even after being hit in the head by such a huge shrimp claw.

Taking advantage of the attacker's disorientation from the impact, Tony caught a metal briefcase that Pepper threw at him, then threw it forcefully at Lu Mingfei, before catching another briefcase.

Lu Mingfei rushed forward a few steps and caught the suitcase. Fortunately, although he had never played with one before, he had heard Tony explain the instruction manual.

Pressing the button on the suitcase, the suitcase opened, revealing two handles. Lu Mingfei grasped the handles and placed them in front of his chest, watching the suitcase quickly transform and envelop his body in armor.

"How did you do that?!" Lu Mingfei looked at Tony, his face full of amazement.

Before learning from Tony, he only thought that these armor technologies were very advanced. Now that he has some basic knowledge, he truly understands just how advanced Tony's armor technology really is.

"Is this the time to talk about this?" As he spoke, Tony had already put on the portable version of the Iron Man suit, stepped on the car that Happy and Pepper were sitting in, and kicked it out with a sudden force, moving it horizontally towards Lu Mingfei.

Wearing the same Iron Man suit, Lu Mingfei took two steps forward and kicked the car, which hadn't even come to a complete stop, forward another step.

The attacker seemed to recover from his dizziness and lashed out with his whips at Tony and Lu Mingfei respectively.

Lu Mingfei sidestepped, narrowly avoiding the returning electric whip, and then turned his head to see Tony being hit squarely.

"Are you even good enough, Tony!" Lu Mingfei retorted. "Even a complete newbie like me plays better than you."

“The Iron Man suit is controlled by both physical and neurological mechanisms. What can I do if my reflexes are slower than yours?” Tony shouted.

He's not a mixed-race person like Lu Mingfei; his reaction speed is just at the level of an average person.

Despite his verbal complaints, Lu Mingfei's actions were swift. The fighting techniques he had learned from his coach proved useful at this moment. He raised his arm to block in front of him and strode towards the opponent. During this time, the opponent swung his whip again, which Lu Mingfei easily dodged once more.

By the time he tried to attack again, Lu Mingfei had already rushed in front of him, grabbed him, and threw him over his shoulder.

The attacker was slammed to the ground, his vision went black, and he immediately lost consciousness.

Lu Mingfei glanced down, hesitating whether to finish off the opponent, but his gaze was drawn to something slightly glowing hanging on the other's chest.

The attacker's two long metal whips were hanging from something resembling a metal vest, which he wore. There was also a slightly glowing blue object on his chest.

"Tony," Lu Mingfei said, his voice trembling with surprise, "look at that thing on him, isn't that your reactor?"

Tony walked over in silence, slammed the reactor off the attacker's body, and crushed it after a moment of silence.

……

In Tony's laboratory.

Lu Mingfei sat at the lab table, leaning back in his chair, holding a glass of champagne with ice in his left hand.

Several days had passed since the last attack. Even going to a racetrack could result in a terrorist attack, so Lu Mingfei was less inclined to attend parties after returning.

Aside from ordering takeout, eating and drinking, and playing games, I spent all my time in Tony's lab perfecting the previous metallurgical technology, and before I knew it, time had passed.

This technology was ultimately rushed out. Although it is advanced and perfect enough in the eyes of most people, for creator Lu Mingfei, as long as he is willing to spend some time, he can still optimize or even upgrade some aspects.

An exquisite 3D perspective model floated above the lab table. Lu Mingfei snapped his fingers with his right hand and then swiped to the left, causing the model to rotate.

Artificial intelligence is still the most useful.

Lu Mingfei couldn't help but marvel that after his usage habits were recorded, Jarvis knew what he wanted to do just by making a gesture.

After carefully reviewing the model, he found that it had indeed been improved to a near-complete state, and said, "Jarvis, bring up those formulas from yesterday."

"Yes, Mr. Lu."

The model on the lab table disappeared, replaced by a dozen or so lines of densely packed formulas.

"Mingfei! Mingfei, is that you?!" Pepper's voice came from afar.

Lu Mingfei then remembered that it was Tony's birthday today. He had been busy playing games all afternoon and had almost forgotten about it.

Judging by the time, Tony's birthday party has already started. Hopefully, he didn't miss cutting the cake.

“Excuse me, Miss Pepper, I’ll be right there,” Lu Mingfei said, standing up with his drink in hand and walking toward Pepper. After taking a couple of steps, he suddenly remembered something and turned back, saying, “Jarvis, organize and save today’s log and send a copy to my personal computer at home.”

"Yes, Mr. Lu."

Pepper, who was walking into the lab not far away, paused for a moment.

Just now, when Lu Mingfei was holding a wine glass and turned back towards the lab table, she seemed to see a bit of Tony's shadow in him.

"Sorry, I almost missed my appointment. Let's go." Lu Mingfei downed his drink in one gulp and casually placed it on the nearest shelf.

Pepper's eyes twitched—yes, this habit of leaving things lying around is very much like Tony's.

But now is not the time to focus on that. She quickly said, "Tony and Colonel Rhodes are fighting! Mingfei, hurry up and separate them!"

"Huh?" Lu Mingfei was taken aback. "Tony's birthday party even has such a wild program as an 'Iron Man gladiator match'?"

Lu Mingfei knows Rhodes; he is Tony's best friend in the military, and Tony once made him an Iron Man suit.

“It wasn’t a show,” Pepper explained anxiously. “Tony was playing around in his Iron Man suit at his birthday party. Rhodes vouched for Tony in front of the U.S. military before he arrived, but now that he sees Tony like this, he’s using the Iron Man suit that Tony gave him to fight him.”

"Huh?" Lu Mingfei was stunned. "Rhodes used the suit Tony gave him to fight Tony?"

Pepper nodded: "So please go and separate them! I know you also have an Iron Man suit."

“Wait, I have something to do first,” Lu Mingfei turned his head, “Jarvis, disable Colonel Rhodes’s access to his armor.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lu, Colonel Rhodes’ access to his armor was granted personally by Mr. Stark. If you wish to revoke Colonel Rhodes’ access, I can submit an application to Mr. Stark on your behalf,” Jarvis said.

Tony did not disable Colonel Rhodes's permissions?

After a moment of contemplation, Lu Mingfei gradually formed a bold guess in his mind.

“I think we can leave them alone,” Lu Mingfei said.

"What?" Pepper looked incredulous.

……

A moment later, Lu Mingfei walked over from the laboratory.

Tony's living room was a complete mess, as if two special forces teams had been exchanging RPGs inside.

Colonel Rhodes was nowhere to be found. Tony was lying against the wall, his mask off, staring at the ceiling damaged in the battle.

The guests had long been frightened away by the battle between the two steel monsters.

"Tony, wasn't your birthday party a little too lively?" Lu Mingfei walked over, squatted down next to Tony, and poked his face with his index finger.

“You missed my birthday party,” Tony said, looking at Lu Mingfei.

"I don't want to get splattered with birthday cake." Lu Mingfei pointed to a corner of the room where a cake, destroyed by the aftershocks of the battle, lay.

“Where’s Pepper? She said she went to see you,” Tony asked.

“I had Jarvis monitor your and Rhodes’ vital signs until Colonel Rhodes drove off in your Iron Man suit… well, until he put it on. Your vital signs were stable,” Lu Mingfei said. “I told Miss Pepper that you were not in danger, and she said she didn’t want to see you, so she went back to the company and asked me to call an ambulance for you.”

Tony paused for a moment, then nodded nonchalantly: "Looks like I'll have to make up for it with a birthday cake tomorrow."

Lu Mingfei frowned deeply: "Tony, what's wrong with you?"

……

Tony's living room, or rather, the ruins of his living room.

Tony had taken off his suit and was sitting opposite Lu Mingfei, while a mechanical arm served them iced cola on a tray.

"Tony, what's that on your neck?" Lu Mingfei suddenly raised an eyebrow.

He noticed some dark purple marks on Tony's neck, like protruding blood vessels.

"Just a scratch from a few days ago," Tony said without changing his expression.

Lu Mingfei narrowed his eyes, suddenly stepped forward, and violently tore open Tony's shirt.

Centered on the reactor in his chest, countless dense, purplish-black lines, resembling blood vessels, spread outwards from Tony's body, almost encompassing his entire chest and climbing up his neck.

"What is this?!" Lu Mingfei's eyes widened.

“Uh… a tattoo?” Tony tried to struggle.

Lu Mingfei's temples throbbed with veins: "Jarvis, help me find out which methods of torture are the most effective for extracting confessions!"

Tony paused for a few seconds, sighed, and said, "It's palladium poisoning."

"Palladium poisoning?!" Lu Mingfei was stunned.

……

Ten minutes later, Lu Mingfei and Tony sat facing each other on the sofa.

"So, even though this reactor constantly uses trace amounts of palladium to corrode your body?" Lu Mingfei asked, frowning. "Didn't you say this reactor is a clean energy source with no pollution?"

“Only trace amounts of palladium are released,” Tony said. “Completely harmless to ordinary people, but this stuff is in my body.”

"So the pollution you were exposed to was magnified many times over, which is why you got palladium poisoning." Lu Mingfei understood.

"To be precise, the rate at which the reactor consumes energy is directly proportional to the rate at which I become contaminated. If it were just about powering the magnets to hold the shrapnel inside me, the reactor would consume very little energy, and the palladium would have a very low corrosive effect on my body."

Tony said, "But using the Iron Man suit rapidly consumes a lot of energy, which drastically accelerates the contamination of my body with palladium. Every time I use the Iron Man suit, the concentration of palladium in my blood surges. I've tried to find an element that can replace palladium, but I've searched for every known element, and none of them can replace palladium..."