Chapter 300: Surviving the Explosion

"If I were you, I wouldn't move."

Tony glanced at the person speaking. It was a middle-aged man standing by the stove, stirring something.

Ignoring the warning, Tony tried to sit up but suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest, causing him to weaken and lie back down.

Tony tried to sit up, but he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest. This made him feel weak and lie back down.

A man came out of the darkness near the stove. He was holding a frying pan in his left hand and happily stirring a pile of brownish-black paste in a pot with his right hand.

"Be careful not to open your wound. We don't have much antibiotics here, unless you want to die from postoperative infection."

The man calmly put the paste into a pitch-black little box.

Tony wasn't sure if the box had even been cleaned in a while. It looked like the bottom of a bullet case that had been cut off from a box of bullets.

Putting down the frying pan, the man picked up a spoon from the table and scooped a large spoonful into his mouth, to Tony's horrified gaze.

"Mmm, it tastes really good."

The man nodded and seemed happy with what he had made. When he saw how Tony looked, he smiled and shook his head.

"Sorry, please forgive me. They gave me some canned luncheon meat because of you. I don't know if it's expired, but it's the first meat I've eaten since I was captured."

He held the box with the paste in front of Tony.

"Have some. You just had surgery, and if you want to recover quickly, you have to eat."

Tony endured the pain in his chest and sat up, looking at the paste on the plate in front of him. Surprisingly, it didn't smell bad, even though it didn't look very good.

A growling feeling in his stomach made it impossible for Tony to resist the porridge-like dish.

"Thank you."

Without hesitation, Tony took the plate and began to eat.

Hmm, it actually tastes unexpectedly good.

Tony could taste canned food, oats, and even millet in the mixture. It looked like a mess, but the taste was good.

Maybe it was because he was hungry.

"That's right. You need to eat to recover quickly."

The man nodded in satisfaction, cursing the frying pan back to the stove and starting to prepare food again.

While eating, Tony observed his surroundings.

The hard stone walls around it made it look like a cave.

The cave wasn't very big because it only had two beds, a stove, and a desk. There was a stack of water, canned food, and ration bags in the corner.

Apart from that, there was a surveillance camera in the corner.

And there was a closed iron door that Tony boldly noted probably couldn't be opened.

His gaze returned to the man. Tony looked at his clothes and squinted as he asked,

"Who are you?"

"Ha, I didn't expect that."

The man chuckled and glanced back at him.

"I thought you would ask first about where this place is and what has happened."

"After all, most people would ask those questions when they find themselves in an unknown place."

"No need to ask, I can guess."

Tony put down the empty plate and sighed.

"I was attacked, obviously, and now I've been kidnapped."

He looked around and then lowered his head to observe the thick bandages on his chest.

"What happened to me? Did you treat my injuries?"

"Speaking of that, I have to say, you're very lucky, Tony Stark."

The man paused his stirring, turned around, and looked at him.

"You were hit straight on by the blast of a Stark missile. You should have died several times. But you're really lucky; those shrapnel pieces didn't even penetrate your breastbone."

He put down the frying pan and took out a small glass bottle from his pocket. Inside were some fragmented objects that made a tinkling sound as he shook them.

"Take a look. Keep it as a souvenir if you like."

He casually tossed the bottle to Tony and continued,

"My name is Ethan, and I'm a doctor. I did my best to remove those shrapnel pieces. Luckily, your bulletproof vest saved your life. Otherwise, even if you somehow survived, you would have died a week later. The shrapnel would have moved into your heart through the bloodstream, and you would have suffered a painful death."

"In Afghanistan, there are many people who have had similar experiences."

Tony looked at the fragments in the bottle, a shadow of gloom passing through his eyes. These were all produced by his company.

"Speaking of the bulletproof vest, you may have noticed that their leader took it."

"What does he want?"

Tony didn't care about the bulletproof vest; he just wanted to know what these people who captured him were up to.

"I..."

Before Ethan could say anything, there was suddenly a noise behind the iron door.

He ran straight to the bed and pulled Tony's confused face down with force, telling him to cover his head with his hands like he did.

The iron door was pushed open with a lot of force, and seven or eight armed criminals with assault rifles came in one by one, filling up the large cave.

Tony's eyes grew cold as he realized that the weapons in their hands were Stark Industries' creations.

How did they get their hands on his gun?

Stark Industries hasn't been selling weapons illegally since Obadiah was fired.

Even though there are still some Stark weapons on the market, they are hard to find because the company has been cracking down on them.

Yet here, all of a sudden, these people have these guns, and the models seem to be the newly released ones from the past two years.

Come to think of it, that missile that blew him up was also released around this time last year.

Tony's intuition tells him that something is wrong with the company.

At that moment, a fat guy with a beard walked in slowly. He was clearly the leader of the group. When he saw Tony awake, a smile came to his face as if he were seeing his own father.

He started babbling at Tony in a language he couldn't understand.

After the bearded man finished speaking, he gestured towards Ethan, who understood and silently became the translator.

"He says, Welcome, Tony Stark, the most notorious killer in the history of the United States."

A killer?

Tony snickered to himself. If he's a killer, then who are these people who have killed an entire team of innocent soldiers? Satan?

The bearded man continued his babbling, and the more Ethan listened, the more his expression turned grim.

He didn't want to translate, but he had no choice when the man with the beard looked at him with a terrifying gaze.

"He... he wants you to build a weapon for him, the Jericho missile you were testing in the field."

The man with a beard was afraid he wasn't making himself clear enough, so he gave him a picture.

Tony reached out and took a look, his expression changing once again.

The photo showed the Jericho missile he exhibited in Afghanistan. It was highly classified, yet these people managed to get a photo.

Tony came to an answer after thinking about how these people set up a trap for him on the road.

There's a traitor in the military.

And this traitor is among the people who attended the weapons exhibition.

Not only that, but very few people knew where he was going. Tony understood that someone wanted to kill him.

He looked at the photo of the Jericho missile once again, glanced at the bearded man, and coldly uttered one word.

"No!"

...

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