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Chapter 63 - Chapter 63 – Abe Sukeyoshi Seized in Kyoto; Li Ming Jumps to Stark Tower and Revives Tony Stark

Abe Sukeyoshi hadn't come to negotiate empty-handed. He'd draped himself in treasures pulled straight from the Imperial vault and ringed himself with an entourage of "elite" supernaturals.

Too bad for him. In Li Ming's hands, those vaunted relics popped like soap bubbles.

As for the bodyguards—on paper each carried a signature trick and the Emperor's personal favor. In practice, once Li Ming casually crushed a few, the rest suddenly found gravel fascinating. No one wanted to swing. No one dared run.

The onmyōji held up best. Their shikigami at least slowed the scarab tide for a time—until the casters ran dry or the spirits turned, snapping free and letting the beetles feed on their masters instead.

The ninja fared worst. Built for ambush, not stand-up fights, their blades could only hack down a handful of scarabs at a time. They went under fast.

What is this, the Ninja Death Games? Why us? Do beetles just prefer lean muscle to cross-legged mystics?

The sharper ones finally read the room: dying as bug protein wasn't advancing the mission. On a shared glance they burned their trump cards and broke the line.

Li Ming, elbow-deep in Abe's memories, almost let them go. Almost. Then his conscience gave an inconvenient twitch. What a waste—premium wraith material wandering off.

He sighed, dissolved into black smoke, and drifted after them. A few he judged guilty on sight—he skimmed their memories, skipped the childhood bedwetting chapters, then left parting gifts: a halo of bad luck and a nastier one from Season of the Witch—a plague with teeth.

Curses were petty: misfortune that spread in a mean little circle. Stand too close and one day you might drown in a latrine.

The plague was real work. No alchemist could brew it away. True, his mana reserves made it temporary—two weeks before it bled off, sagging from catastrophic to just meaner than the flu.

Hole up and it would burn out with a cluster of graves. Keep moving? Populations would crater in their wake. And if they hustled back to Kyoto to report? Well—Li Ming figured a single string of firecrackers would be celebration enough. The Emperor wasn't worth two.

Work done, he drifted back to finish harvesting the onmyōji. Memories bottled one by one.

The "lucky" ninjas looked at each other, nodded. They'd crawl home, spin survival into valor, and demand their reward. Merit, or at least hardship pay.

When Li Ming finished, he rubbed his temples and grumbled. "I speak Chinese, English, Sanskrit, Ancient Egyptian, and the tongue of the dead. Five languages. And you aristocrat onmyōji only speak Sushi? Illiterate, the lot of you."

Then it hit him. He hustled to the interpreter the scarabs had chewed to bone, grinned, wove a spell, and asked in the language of the dead, "You speak Chinese?"

Dragged from the underworld for an encore, the skull blinked. I clocked out. Why am I back? You yanking me up just for screen time?

"Y-yes, my lord," the interpreter stammered.

"Good." Li Ming smiled, cut the spell, slung the corpse over one shoulder and Abe over the other, ordered the scarabs to carve a path and feed at will, and opened a portal back to Qin.

First order of business: carve thrall sigils into both bodies. Then crack the Black Book of the Dead and bring them back.

The ritual ended. Leaning on his warped scythe, Li Ming thumped his chest. "My slaves, present yourselves."

Abe didn't need the command—he felt the shackles sink into his soul. Bowing low, he said simply, "Master." Alive was still alive.

The interpreter looked dazed. Dead, alive, dead, alive. What was this—bullying the handsome one? He glanced at Li Ming, thought for half a second, then flopped to his knees with theatrical devotion. "Maaasteeer~!"

If Li Ming had known what was going through the man's head, he'd have picked a different translator—if only to keep dinner down.

Days blurred. He collated everything on shikigami, weaving it with the Black Book and the Solar Golden Canon. He teased out scarab-breeding methods and ways to reshape Anubis's dead into jackal-headed infantry.

Two sleepless weeks later, he'd stitched together a viable grafting ritual—or something that looked like one. Time to test. If it failed? No big loss. A dementor gone was a headache solved. If it worked? The dementors would finally climb the ladder and stop being the world's most expensive air conditioners.

He yanked one wraith from the scythe, ready to pin it down for the procedure—when Zhao Zheng stormed in, face thunder-dark.

"What did you do?"

Li Ming blinked at the furious emperor, then at the thrashing wraith. He scratched his head. "Recently? Working on a dementor upgrade."

Zhao's jaw flexed. "Not that."

Li Ming thought, genuinely blank. "Oh. The cook caught me with the beer-braised duck? Look, I was hungry. One duck. Don't be petty."

"For—" Zhao's eye twitched. A duck wasn't why he'd stormed in.

"The Emperor of Sushi," he spat. "Hirohito. He's dead."

Li Ming froze. Zhao exhaled through his nose. "Did you or did you not curse several ninjas with a plague?"

Li Ming licked his lips. "I did."

"And you think that helps me?" Zhao's eyes burned. "One Hirohito dead? You're naïve. Seventy percent of Kyoto is gone. They're calling it a necropolis."

He tapped his chest. "You think I stopped at mining? I made Hirohito my puppet. Now he's a corpse. The imperial house is down to kittens. Where am I supposed to find another emperor puppet? How do I take control quietly now?"

His hand slammed the table. "You just wrecked an entire plan. You—" he ground out the word, "—shit-stirrer."

He held Li Ming's gaze a beat longer, then spun on his heel. Any more and he'd put the sorcerer through the floor. His glare said Get out.

Li Ming shrugged. "Kreacher, pack up. We're moving—hot spring time."

Zhao Zheng's fury had made the message clear: get lost. And Li Ming understood. Emperors thrived on reputation; dragging around a plague-bringer meant every suspicious death landed on the throne. That wasn't sustainable.

Li Ming? Reputation was worthless coin. Sue me in the Marvel world. If face sold by the pound, I pawned mine years ago.

So he played along. Packed up. Announced he was heading to Shangri-La to "research dementor upgrades." In reality, every time he got restless at the Fountain of Life, he slipped back into Sushi Country wearing someone else's face but the same scythe and skull mask, looting anything arcane—books, reagents, souls. If it twitched the supernatural radar, it was his.

Onmyōji and ninja survivors fled overseas. Stay, and their line ended in Li Ming's gourd.

Half a year vanished like mist. His dementor flock, once six hundred strong, was shaved down to a grim 365.

Wangcai stared at the thinning ranks, mournful. Li Ming studied them with a squint. "Three-six-five. Lucky. Symmetry. Twelve phalanxes—call them Month One through Month Twelve. Captains are First, lieutenants Fifteenth…" He smirked. "Shame I don't know the Celestial Star Array. Imagine these guys forming a guardian net. Ancient One—come at me."

He shoved the idea down, then froze. A chill swept through him. His quantum charge was ebbing.

"How long have we been here?"

Kreacher's ears dipped. "Almost two years, boss."

Two years. Stronger power, longer tolerance. But the timer was ticking.

"Pack it." Li Ming hauled out a rune-scored, blue-hide gourd and dunked it in the Fountain. Only when the bottomless interior refused another drop did he lift it free, staring at the shimmering pool with rare reluctance. If Zhao hadn't spelled it, Li Ming would have left nothing but damp stone.

"All set, boss," Kreacher said quietly, bags in hand.

Li Ming nodded, pocketed the brimming gourd, and opened a gate to the City of the Dead—the same door he'd walked in. Clean exit, clean reentry. This time with a time-turner to keep the Marvel clock from outrunning him.

Afghan desert.

The portal spat them out like a bad joke. Li Ming hit sand, palms clamped to his skull. "Ow—ow—ow!"

Kreacher didn't scream, but sweat slicked his brow, arms trembling.

Eventually the pain dulled, or they just adapted. Li Ming sprawled starfish-wide, flipped the empty sky the bird. You're not a portal. You're a monk's curse. I'm the monkey with the ring, and my brain's drowning. You going to reimburse water damage?

He cracked an eye. "You alive, Kreacher?"

The elf shook his head, managed, "Kreacher is fine, boss."

Li Ming rolled upright, failed a kip-up, settled for cross-legged. Dropped into meditation. The quantum reserves ticked back, slow but steady.

Then a whisper in the dark: Help me. I'm—

He stayed under. A woman's voice. Only one clear word: Jenny.

He surfaced, frowning. "Jenny. Great. Yell that in New York and half a dozen turn around." A pause. His eyes narrowed. "Janet?"

Wasp. The original Wasp.

Excitement flared, then cooled. He couldn't punch a portal into the Quantum Realm if his life depended on it. Another angle to meet Pym, then.

He threw on his cloak, cut a gate to Manhattan. One problem left—what year is it? Did the time-turner hold?

Black mist spilled over the skyline. Li Ming froze. A white-hot pillar of light speared upward from Stark Industries. Space energy rippled through the clouds.

Two options: Thor opening the Bifröst. Or the Chitauri invasion—on a different clock.

Either way, too late.

He surged forward. Before he reached it, the beam winked out. A heartbeat later, fireworks—no, a chain of explosions—bloomed in the sky.

"What the—Tony, since when do you launch fireworks from the office?"

He tore across the night, landed on the tower. Stark Industries was a ruin, roof caved and bristling rebar. Tony Stark lay on the helipad, eyes closed, arc reactor dead.

Relief cut through him. Obadiah mess. Perfect timing.

Li Ming dropped to one knee, glanced at the glowless reactor, uncorked the gourd, and let a single drop of Fountain water fall to Tony's lips.

Tony stirred. Eyelids fluttered.

Li Ming waggled fingers in front of his face. "Buddy, how many am I holding up?"

Tony couldn't see him—only hear the familiar, irritating voice. If he hadn't recognized it, he might've screamed ghost. He rolled his eyes instead.

"Right, dumb question." Li Ming swept back his hood. "Didn't I tell you to keep an eye on Obadiah? So why the cage match with Iron Monger—bored and looking for a spar?"

Footsteps hammered up the stairwell. Pepper burst onto the roof with Coulson on her heels. She didn't even register Li Ming—she dropped to Tony's side, hands hovering, voice cracking. "Tony—talk to me. Please."

Before Tony could rasp a word, Li Ming raised the gourd with mock cheer. "Relax. He's not dying today. One drop of this, he bounces."

Coulson's eyes cut to the vessel, polite smile tugging at his lips. "Fountain of Life, you're saying? What would it do to… someone ordinary?"

Li Ming's grin sharpened. "The name's theatrical. The effect's real. It kicks your life force into overdrive."

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