This story continues from GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #150.
Adam Warlock awakes and emerges from the Soul Stone... And it is Kang the Conqueror who greets him at the end of time. Kang is in his citadel. His building is full of memorabilia from fallen heroes (similar to the trophy room in Hulk's Future Imperfect).
After describing Warlock's past through a series of flashbacks (Thor, Thanos, and Magus are in them, among others), Kang takes his guest, the one called Him, to a field of death and destruction where many heroes (Hulk, Captain America, Spider-Man, Silver Surfer, Dr Strange, Star-Lord, Groot, and Black Widow, to name some) are dead. Only Gamora is alive; the rest, destroyed by Thanos the Mad Titan.
Warlock asks Kang to take him to a moment in time where he could turn the tide against Thanos. Unfortunately, says the Conqueror, such has been tried a hundred times plus, but the outcome against the Omnipotent supervillain is always the same.
There is only one way to achieve victory and that is to prevent Thanos from ever obtaining the Soul Stone and the Time Stone! Kang sends Warlock into the past to find his younger self. He would aid Adam in locating both gems. Warlock should guard the Soul Gem, and deliver the Time Gem to Kang, the true master of time. As Warlock initiates his time travel, Thanos attacks Kang, who perishes. His remains, a stain on a wall of his ghoulish trophy room.
But time can be rewritten...
Warlock appears in ancient Egypt. After subduing a few guards, he meets Am Rama Tut, he who will become Kang. Tut takes Adam through a building too advanced for that age. In its observatory, Tut points to the specific star where Warlock will find the Soul Gem (guarded by Magus, his evil doppelganger). It's also where Warlock could defeat Thanos, and prevent the end of times.
After revealing Warlock the location of the Soul Gem, Tut has to send him into the future. But it isn't in the way Kang would usually do it. Caught off guard, Warlock is fatally stabbed by Tut! Two of his servants prepare Adam's body so it could regenerate plenty, and place him in a sarcophagus, from where he will wake up, in distant millennia, healed and ready.
Note: Both servants drink poison; there should be no witnesses, other than Tut, of the whereabouts of the future saviour.
The Infinity Countdown story continues in IC PRIME.