Unfortunately, Zod had already vanished through instantaneous teleportation while holding the warehouse aloft.
Wakanda immediately sealed off several kilometers around the site, combing the area for days, yet they still could not find the missing vibranium warehouse.
Wakanda was completely thrown into chaos.
They had been targeted, and so much vibranium had been taken, yet they had not noticed a thing, even though they had planted so many intelligence agents in other countries.
T'Chaka, in particular, was miserable.
He could not sleep at night, because this incident made one thing clear: the enemy knew Wakanda extremely well, to the point of knowing exactly where vibranium was stored.
Even if Wakanda had many such warehouses, the fact that someone could bypass layer after layer of defenses made T'Chaka suspect there was a traitor on the inside.
While Wakanda was still suspicious and second guessing each other, Zod returned carrying the vibranium warehouse, only to realize the entire outer layer of the warehouse itself was made of vibranium.
Damn Wakanda, wasting priceless resources like this.
Vibranium was practically being left to gather dust, and only in his hands could it be put to its best possible use.
Thankfully, Wakanda had not gone insane enough to make even the floors out of vibranium.
Otherwise, Zod would have had to consider packing up all of Wakanda and taking it with him.
This warehouse probably was not an important one.
There were only a little over five hundred tons of vibranium inside, which, converted into U.S. dollars, was… just twenty five quadrillion.
Zod still calculated it at fifty thousand dollars per gram, because he had only just learned Wakanda's official trading price was ten thousand dollars per gram.
In reality, that traitor selling Wakandan vibranium had already pushed it to over fifty thousand dollars per gram.
All that could be said was that Wakanda had been too naive back then and had no idea how to do business.
If Zod were the one selling, he could have raised it to one million dollars per gram.
With ample inventory on hand, and since vibranium was a naturally occurring metal ore, it could be used for alloy testing with other metals.
If, by sheer luck, a super metal was created, then Zod would have struck it rich.
While having the Black Queen analyze how vibranium paired with other metals or substances, Zod enjoyed his breakfast.
He worked so hard to make money and do research not only to keep himself secure, but also to live well.
He did not want to end up like Clark, having invincible power yet still needing Batman to buy a bank just to solve housing problems.
Zod preferred to be a blend of Batman and Superman.
Breakfast was prepared by a Cantonese dim sum chef he had hired from Guangzhou.
In his previous life, Zod had been a Guangdong native, and after more than twenty years away, he naturally missed authentic Cantonese food.
Take har gow, for example.
In ordinary teahouses, har gow is built around five shrimp, and it tests the chef's skill to the limit.
It could even be said that in a single teahouse, chicken feet, har gow, char siu buns, and cheung fun were the Four Heavenly Kings of Cantonese morning tea.
On the table in front of Zod sat har gow, chicken feet, char siu buns, red rice roll cheung fun, beef omasum, siu mai, dry steamed dumplings, Baiyun chicken feet, sampan congee, and more than twenty other dim sum dishes.
These were foods he had eaten to the point of boredom in his previous life, yet now they tasted of pure nostalgia, and they were delicious.
After all, this was a master chef hired at great expense to serve Zod alone.
Naturally, the master chef was also surprised by how well Zod understood Cantonese morning tea, and wondered if this foreigner had once lived in Guangdong.
"Well, what did I tell you, it's good, right?" Zod said as he looked at Ulde.
Ulde, who had successfully been dragged into the deep pit of Cantonese morning tea by Zod, could not even spare the breath to answer.
After all, she was struggling just to hold the chopsticks.
For foreigners, among China's Eight Great Cuisines, the easiest to accept was probably Cantonese morning tea.
The flavors were not as heavy as Lu cuisine or Sichuan cuisine, leaning lighter instead, and with so many varieties, there were also many different tastes.
Even in the Chinatowns of San Francisco and Chicago, Cantonese morning tea often did not need to be modified to suit foreign palates.
Morning tea was not just breakfast.
It could be eaten from morning until afternoon, and some restaurants even served it all the way into the night market hours, with food of this same style throughout.
Ulde really liked the item called "feng zhua," and also that white "feng zhua."
Since Zod's appetite had grown enormous, he could eat every single dim sum item in one sitting, though he personally did not like fun guo.
"Delicious, so delicious," Ulde said, her vocabulary limited, stuck repeating "good."
Even so, Zod could still read her emotions clearly, the hormones in her body rising.
"The most important part is actually this sip of tea.
This is pu'er, this is tieguanyin, and this is longjing," Zod said.
Zod was used to pu'er and tieguanyin.
As for other green teas, black teas, and things like lei cha, he did not particularly like them.
After eating and drinking her fill, Ulde's face turned a little red.
She had wanted to be refined and maintain an elite air, but chopsticks were too hard to learn.
The more she panicked, the worse she used them, and the chain reaction made her look completely undignified.
Zod did not care about that.
After glancing at Ulde's beautiful scenery, he left to get back to work.
World Serpent's branch base was in the desert along the U.S. Mexico border.
Tony Stark was being held in a place like this, acting out the same "show" every day.
Zod had arranged for a group of beastification soldiers to play out scenes of civilians being threatened and shot by terrorists right in front of Tony Stark, making him watch slowly.
At that point, the translator and doctor, replacing Yinsen's role, would explain to Tony what had just happened.
It further amplified Tony Stark's guilt, even though Zod did not know whether this would create a corrupted Iron Man, something like an "Injustice Iron Man."
But considering that even if an Injustice Iron Man really appeared, Zod could still kill him easily, Zod did not care.
Tony Stark woke from his dream in a daze.
He felt as if his mind was on the brink of collapse, because yesterday, those terrorists had shot a group of innocent civilians right in front of him.
"They died because of you, Tony.
Because of your advanced weapons, the local government forces can't defeat these terrorists, so they can do whatever they want here.
I've seen this kind of scene hundreds of times," the fake Yinsen said to Tony Stark.
It was condemnation, and it was accusation.
Tony Stark sat on the edge of a crude concrete bed.
In agony, he clawed both hands through his hair, messing it into chaos.
He felt this place was an invisible interrogation room and hell itself.
He felt he could hear the wailing of the innocent dead who had perished because of him.
It was not an illusion.
Zod had arranged for people to creep close to Tony Stark's ear and wail after he fell asleep, and with the heightened senses of beastification soldiers, Tony Stark would never notice.
Under sleepless nights and this painful torment, Tony Stark could still hold on for so long only because something heroic was beginning to awaken in him, a spirit and a will taking shape.
The terrorists demanded that Tony Stark manufacture an Iron suit.
At first, Tony Stark kept stalling.
/-\
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