MC Creative Mode: Wholesale Perpetual Motion Machine

Chapter 277 Only Love is Real

After a night of torrential rain, the streets of Gotham City were transformed.

Once upon a time, towering skyscrapers and dilapidated slums stood side by side, a place where extreme wealth and poverty coexisted.

Whether day or night, many corners remain dark and gloomy, where countless horrific crimes thrive in the damp and shady crevices.

However, after just one night of torrential rain, everything had changed.

The rain washed away the filth from the streets, as if it had also washed away the blood and sin that permeated the air of Gotham City.

The streets were devastated, littered with rubble and broken stones. The high-rise buildings that once symbolized power and wealth were now riddled with bullet holes and gaping wounds, and corpses could be vaguely seen through the broken openings.

Beneath the ruins of those cheap apartments and slums, in the violently torn-open basements, luxury built on sin was exposed to the sunlight, and everywhere employees and customers could be seen huddled on the ground, trembling under the threat of corpses.

Scattered across the streets were even more corpses of those who had fled in panic but could not escape death. They were smashed to pieces like chickens and dogs, and their body parts were piled up into small mountains.

The stench of blood and gore that should have stained the streets was washed away by the torrential rain, along with severed limbs, and flowed into the sewers.

The heavily armed, well-equipped men in black suits, along with those seemingly respectable social elites, left behind fragments that, washed white by the rain, resembled pieces of soaked pork.

"Oh my god, shit!" A panicked shout came from a car.

Gotham City Sheriff James Gordon sped out of his car at a street corner, nearly running over a pile of corpses.

This horrifying scene terrified him. He slammed on the brakes and jerked the steering wheel, bringing the car to a stop just before it crashed into the wall.

He was drenched in cold sweat, struggled to get up from the driver's seat, and got out of the car with his body trembling slightly. He subconsciously drew the police gun from his waist.

Amidst the piercing sirens, police cars roared in.

The officers quickly got out of their vehicle and stood side by side with Gordon, facing the horrific wreckage on the street, their faces filled with bewilderment and helplessness.

Speaking of which, how many officers in the Gotham City Police Department still have a conscience?

In the past backstories, perhaps only Gordon and a very few other almost unknown background characters could be considered to have a conscience; the rest were almost all accomplices.

But now, as the storyboards merge, those companions who had worked with him in Gordon's merging memories have also gathered around him.

Despite the horrifying situation, the officers slowly surrounded a massive figure in the center of the pile of corpses.

It was a giant nearly three meters tall, but despite its enormous size, its face was still youthful.

He sat somewhat bewildered beside the corpse, a light screen floating in front of him, his face a mixture of fear and anger, staring at a man and a woman on the screen.

Those were his parents, the "parents" of this child named Kelly.

They never actually existed; they were merely vague settings existing in the background of the story.

A pair of sickly parents who barely raised him to be two or three years old before selling him to an orphanage.

The only memories that remain after the body has become strong are brief, fragmented images and childhood hunger.

Kelly's eyes reddened, her voice choked with sobs, and all her grievances and anger burst forth in a torrent of questions.

On the other side of the screen, the background was a raging fire, resembling a scene from hell, or rather, this was indeed hell, as Gotham City had quite a few portals leading to hell.

Over there, a man and a woman, their figures emaciated and terrifying like walking corpses, began to rapidly become clearer and more substantial under Kelly's relentless questioning.

They responded to this "son" they had never truly had, with equally complex emotions.

Meanwhile, on the rooftop of a building not far away, a dark shadow flashed by.

Batman's batarang traced an arc of electricity, striking precisely a man wearing an owl mask and an expensive suit who was trying to escape in a private jet, instantly stunning him.

In the process of building the new world, in less than half a night, the entire Gotham City was completely cleaned up. No matter how much the population increased, it made no difference to the various superheroes who actually used their abilities.

Whether it's 100, 1000, 10,000, or even 10 billion, 100 billion, or 1 trillion... they're all the same when faced with the terrifying power of superheroes.

Those deserving the death penalty are arrested first and put on trial. Of course, it won't be like the trials in Gotham City where no matter the crime, the death penalty is absolutely not imposed. Those who deserve to die will die.

There are many others who are not quite deserving of death, but are not good people either. For example, this guy is a minor member of the Court of Owls, which once ruled Gotham City.

He hasn't done anything particularly bad, but he's not a good person either.

Even while bound, once he regained his senses, he continued to struggle and curse hysterically: "Bruce Wayne! You bastard! No matter what this world becomes, our god Barbatos will find this place, capture you, and torture you forever!"

Batman, or rather, Bruce Wayne, who was now revealing his true form, was completely oblivious to this.

Barbatos, an evil villain who only exists in the background setting, cannot possibly be personified in this reshaped new world.

Bruce only got impatient and punched the man hard in the stomach twice when the man tried to spit at him.

The man curled up in pain, vomiting bile, and nearly choked to death by his own vomit.

The bat mask had long been discarded. Bruce Wayne stood on the edge of the rooftop, gazing at Kelly and her "parents" on the street below. His expression was complex, his voice hollow as he muttered to himself, "This..."

"Is this really okay...?"

"Our world will determine itself in its own way. Social relationships, composed of fragmented pieces of information, will determine its future form."

"But is this really a good idea?"

“A child, from the moment of birth, already possesses all the memories of this moment, the memories of struggling to survive in the slums and barely surviving in the sewers.”

“These memories, as a miniature network of relationships, gave rise to an individual who could be called ‘Kelly’.”

"His values, his personality, his joys and sorrows seem to have been predetermined from the very beginning."

"In the new world you create, the network of relationships will indeed evolve on its own, choosing its own future and shaping its own form through interactions between different nodes."

“In such a world, Kelly’s parents, who did not originally exist, will be gradually shaped and completed by this network of relationships.”

“They, who are already incomplete information, will be ‘customized’ and ‘created’ by the entire network of relationships.”

"Kelly imagines that her parents will come into this world, becoming what could perhaps be called new life, inheriting some of the old social relationships, and continuing to weave new social relationships with Kelly..."

Suddenly, the giant in the distance trembled, and he hugged the two newly "born" parents tightly, letting out a heart-wrenching howl.

The crying was even more exaggerated than the concert's sound system, so loud that nearby police officers covered their ears tightly, and Bruce's words came to an abrupt halt.

Fang Zheng's figure appeared beside Batman at some point, leisurely sitting on the edge of the rooftop, swinging his legs, looking down at the small chaos below, and casually saying, "Isn't this pretty good?"

"In this new world, some people can deduce approximate truths based on existing information and their additional fragments of memory."

"They may know, or they may not know, the true nature of this world. But even if everything in the past was false, at least at this moment, the social relationships they have formed are real."

"Even if everything is fake, the world is fake, Gotham City is fake, Kelly's memories are fake, and his parents are even more fake than fake."

"The only real thing in this illusion is the love you feel right now." "Of course..." Fang Zheng changed the subject, casually grabbing a human silhouette from the void and slapping the intangible face several times.

Bruce Wayne could even see the silhouette's cheeks swollen from being punched, covering its face and whimpering in grievance, before it slunk away, tearing open a spatial rift and disappearing back into the void.

Immediately afterwards, looking aggrieved, He then dragged out the Laughing Bat, who was already bruised and battered, and the blue-skinned bald Dr. Manhattan, and continued to beat them up again.

Fang Zheng continued, "In this new world, you can decide for yourselves, and this new world itself can also decide for itself."

"However, like many criminals in Gotham City, they possess great abilities and could live well without committing crimes, yet they still choose to do evil."

"Your entire social network is inherently quite dark in its information structure. If left to evolve on its own, it will become a disgusting mess, so it has to be beaten up."

"He can certainly make his own decisions, but he needs my permission to decide what to do."

Fang Zheng pointed down the street to Kelly, who was embracing her "biological parents" and weeping so bitterly that the sound of their cries almost shattered the surrounding windows, and said again, "A child who has lived a short 13 years without ever experiencing a single day of happiness, constantly living in hunger, disease, and the pain of abuse."

"What kind of scum would his parents be in his memory? The social network itself allows Kelly's imagination to fill in the gaps in his parents' information, and what is filled in will inevitably be scum that is beyond description."

“But we can make a choice. In this new world, the social network itself will give Kelly unconditional love.”

"I will give each and every one of you true, unconditional, pure love that is free from any malice."

“However…” Fang Zheng looked at Bruce’s still conflicted expression, patted him on the shoulder, and pointed to a corner of the rooftop. “Your challenge to me is over, the world has been shaped. You’re saying all this just because you’re still a little unaccustomed to it, a little shy, right?”

“Bruce…” In another corner of the rooftop, a man who looked very similar to Bruce Wayne in height, build and appearance was arm in arm with a beautiful woman.

They were looking at the young man on the rooftop wearing a strange bodysuit.

After sorting through the flood of memories that had suddenly surged into their minds, they roughly grasped the truth. After a moment's hesitation, they quickly stepped forward and, under Bruce's bewildered gaze, embraced him tightly.

Bruce felt the warmth in his arms, looked up at the sky, bewildered.

After a night of torrential rain, the dark clouds that had shrouded Gotham City for years finally dissipated, and golden sunlight shone down, illuminating faces and bringing a long-awaited warmth.

"Sigh..." Bruce sighed softly, then closed his eyes and hugged his parents tightly with his strong arms.

In his fragmented memories, flashes of the two tall figures falling in the crime alley, the warm blood splattered on his face, the piercing gunshot, and the bats that took flight in fright...

Regardless of how the story was set up in the past, once life is truly born, the characters in the story will decide for themselves according to their own logic.

In a past that doesn't actually exist, but is merely a setting, Bruce Wayne's childhood trauma led him to become Batman.

At this moment, in the warm embrace of their parents, under their unconditional love, it's like the warm sun shining in the shadows, and all the shadows vanish.

Bruce smiled slightly and said softly, "Dad, Mom..."

"Welcome home..."

……

This new world still harbors many unresolved problems and confusions.

In the same city, the population suddenly increased many times over, including notorious criminals and innocent civilians.

Their originally independent social relationships became intertwined, creating an extremely chaotic situation.

Many of them have the same face, and during the fusion of storyboards, individuals with completely identical memories will be directly merged.

Those that are significantly different exist simultaneously in this spacetime, just like individuals from parallel worlds.

Like the Gotham City Police Department, in most storylines, James Gordon is a conscientious sheriff, but in a very few branches, he also falls into depravity and colludes with criminals.

Similarly, even so-called supervillains like the Joker, the Penguin, Two-Face, and the Riddler, in other stories, might just be ordinary people who haven't yet gone astray, or even superheroes.
Therefore, these vastly different individuals coexist in Gotham. From the moment the world was born, these criminals had no opportunity to commit evil. One by one, victims who unexpectedly gained power transformed into "Avengers," turning their spears against those who had harmed them.

The population surge, coupled with the vague existence of those lives that exist only in collective memory and require social relationships to gradually "fill in the gaps," will inevitably cause some temporary and small-scale chaos. But this is only a transition, and everything is moving towards prosperity.

In Gotham City, amidst the roar of construction machinery, residents donned portable exoskeletons designed by Batman. They effortlessly punched through concrete walls, clearing hidden lead pipes; others, clad in magically glowing armor, blasted through the ground, unearthing bizarre monsters and demons lurking within Gotham City, and mercilessly crushing them.

Within those intricate and complex storyboards, the various reasons that led to Gotham's rampant crime—

Leaking nuclear reactors, dangerous chemicals, malevolent curses, strange viruses... no matter how bizarre they may seem, they cannot cause a ripple in this thorough, absolutely violent transformation.

From a Fangzheng perspective, intervention and achievement are like mathematical formulas; the answer is determined the moment the two formulas intersect.

But for humans, it takes time and a process to adapt and shape their personalities and social relationships in the new world.

Therefore, although the new world constructed by Founder was "completed" at the beginning of its creation, from the perspective of life, it still needs to go through a transition period within the world.

On this very day...

Fang was strolling down the street when he suddenly saw Bruce put on the Batman suit and transform into Batman once again.

The lower half of his face, not covered by the bat mask, bore an ugly expression, as if he had eaten dog poop.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Fang Zheng greeted him.

"I..." Batman stopped, looked down at Fang Zheng's sunny face, tried to suppress his own ugly expression, and didn't respond. He just turned and left in a hurry.

"What's wrong with him?" Fang Zheng turned to Superman, who was following closely behind and also looked conflicted.

Superman replied casually, "Oh, it's nothing, he was just disgusted."

"Isn't the new world referring to itself and constantly absorbing and encompassing areas close to us? Out of curiosity, we recently finished what we were doing and went to see some of the places that are being encompassed."

"Then, the origin story of the Batman Who Laughs, and the members of the Bat Corps, completely disgusted Bruce."

"Oh, is it so?"

As self-referentiality continues, this entirely new world continues to expand and merge. This seemingly endless self-expansion will continue for a very, very long time.

As the entire social relations system becomes self-referential and integrated, this process may never truly end in the eyes of humans.

But in Fang Zheng's eyes, all of this was already "over" the moment it began.

The entire massive set has been completely encompassed, and within this encompassed set, Fang Zheng noticed traces of another set.

……

Location: Downtown New York City.

The blood-red setting sun shone on the ruins of the land.

Having removed his Spider-Man suit, Spider-Man, wailing as he tore off his own skin, now resembling a skinless demon, stood atop the former Empire State Building, watching the sunset and continuing his wailing that had lasted for an unknown period of time.

(End of this chapter)