MC Creative Mode: Wholesale Perpetual Motion Machine

Chapter 281 An Attempt at an End

What exactly is this zombie virus, something that sounds completely illogical?
It completely disregards the basic laws of life, like an all-pervasive net, from which no life can escape once it touches it.

Even the Hulk's indestructible physique, and even Thanos's unimaginably powerful body, would be infected if they were bitten by it—what kind of monster is this?

The silence of the cosmic deities gave Spider-Man a vague sense of unsettling truths.

Legend has it that all souls in the universe belong to the god who governs death. He is the source, creator, and manipulator of all souls.

While Spider-Man was exploring the universe, he even found some scattered records in the ruins of some planets that had perished long before the zombie crisis.

It mentions that Thanos of the Titans was obsessed with the heartbreaking beauty of the Goddess of Death, and slaughtered life on planets. He used the countless souls he personally ended to weave a rose symbolizing the soul, attempting to please the cold goddess of death.

The zombie virus before us, this unreasonable thing that ignores the laws of physics, doesn't even need direct contact. Just being bitten once can make it gradually appear like a ghost in the gaps of time loops.

If even the gods of the universe turn a blind eye to it, then it probably possesses power that rivals, or is even more terrifying than, that of the gods.
Is it even possible that this is the poison concocted by the death god of this universe, that damned being who has never shown the slightest pity for life, to completely annihilate all life in the entire universe?

A piece of evidence surfaced in Spider-Man's memory.

He vaguely remembered that in the blurry memories brought by the spider-sense, in those repeated cycles, there were indeed many incidents of zombie heroes breaking through to other universes, or superheroes from other universes accidentally entering the zombie universe and wreaking havoc.

Strangely, the virus, which is so powerful in the zombie universe that it can infect everything and grant immortality, can be easily vaccinated in other universes and its physical form can be completely destroyed by physical means.

Perhaps this is because, in other universes, those cosmic deities who have different avatars in each universe do not approve of this killing behavior, and therefore do not endow the virus with power?
This also explains why, in two universes trapped in time loops, Spider-Man was able to repeatedly use Iron Man's nanobot technology to modify Sandman and create vaccines, easily "killing" numerous zombie heroes—because the divine avatars here, or rather, the rules themselves, tacitly approved or even facilitated all of this.

……

Listen quietly as Spider-Man's narration, initially calm, gradually becomes increasingly frantic as he recounts his memories.

Watching Spider-Man howl and tear at his skin, clawing at his flesh, gradually transforming into a blood-red humanoid figure, Fang Zheng silently waited for him to calm down before asking, "So, Spider-Man, have you given up entirely because of this?"

"Despair? Probably..." Spider-Man sighed deeply, gazing up at the sky. After a whole night of wailing, the sky was once again tinged with the faint light of dawn.

As the warm morning sunlight shone down, his manic state subsided somewhat.

"Our original souls may have already been completely devoured by this thing. Our consciousness has been uploaded to the vast consciousness network woven by the zombie virus, which continues to control our remains and spread the virus through our corpses."

Spider-Man looked at his hands covered in blood scabs, closed his eyes and listened intently for a while, then looked at Fang Zheng with a strange expression and said calmly, "Since you turned me back into human form yesterday afternoon, I have never heard the wails of other people that used to fill my ears all the time."

"Fang Zheng, I don't know who you are, or how you came to be in this universe."

"If I had to put it that way, I wouldn't say I was resurrected by you, but rather that I was copied by you, right?"

"The zombie virus directly corroded our souls, causing us to suffer endless hunger and making our souls disappear completely."

"It's more like utterly destroying our souls and transferring our consciousness into some kind of cluster network. And that terrible hunger that consumes everything we have is closer to the irresistible network protocol engraved at the bottom of the internet."

"Our thoughts, our memories, everything about us are just accessories that support the operation of this network protocol."

"I don't know what form the souls that magicians on Earth saw when I was still human were."

"But the soul is something of value to dimensional demons, various hellish demons, and even cosmic gods."

"Then why don't the cosmic beings respond to us?" Spider-Man paused slightly. "Is it possible that our souls were completely killed the moment we were infected and taken away by the god of death?"

"And what we perceive ourselves as after becoming zombies is merely a personality plugin simulated by the zombie virus network? An intelligent algorithm used to continue spreading itself?"

Fang Zheng calmly asked, "So, what did you do after that?"

Spider-Man shook his head. "What else can I do? Even if I've really lost my soul, I still have to do something."

After a period of despair, what did Spider-Man do? He once tried to find and destroy the root of the virus—a cluster network existing at some unknown level—but he discovered in despair that he could not find its carrier at all.

Aside from itself, which may be part of the virus network itself, no method can reach that elusive wail, or find that soul that may not even exist.

Originally, every time they felt hungry, that unforgettable appetite would overwhelm all reason, causing each zombie hero to use the greatest wisdom and strength of their life to devour the lives they once protected, just as they had saved from disasters and defeated evil villains.

This can perhaps be seen as the instinct of the virus network itself to continue and spread.

When all the virus carriers in the universe were destroyed, leaving only Spider-Man as a zombie, the zombie virus network, existing at some unknown level, still showed no signs of weakening.

Through years of listening to the wailing sounds, Spider-Man discerned some information. It was the voices of other "dead" Spider-Men, and other "dead" zombie superheroes.

Each time loop seems to have no effect on the entities within the zombie virus network.

The power of time cannot erase those terrible things. The consciousness of those who died from the zombie virus in each cycle piled up in a virus network of unknown levels, enduring the torment of near-eternal hunger and nothingness.

Perhaps this is also why the zombie virus network, driven by a kind of hunger, did not try to stop the time loop from occurring.

For entities that may transcend time, each time loop might be equivalent to a new "meal," and two constantly looping parallel universes are a convenient and infinite dining hall for them.

A good way to endlessly self-circulate and grow without having to expand into more distant universes or risk offending other powerful gods.

"What the real truth is, who knows..." Spider-Man looked at Fang Zheng with a strange expression, shook his head and said, "I really don't know how you broke in."

"To prevent the zombie virus from spreading and infecting again through parallel universes, and to prevent the cycle from happening again, I spent a long time using nanorobots to concentrate almost all the mass energy of the two parallel universes, enveloping all the planets that once had life in black holes, and then using these black holes as materials to construct a super-large spacetime transfer silencing device."

"Unless one possesses the ability to directly pierce through two universes, it should be impossible to break through that defensive barrier."

Spider-Man is once again filled with fear after realizing the seemingly timeless nature of the zombie virus network.

He roughly understood why, in each time loop, even without any physical contact, he would inexplicably contract that agonizing hunger at the corresponding time point.

This might be an indirect phenomenon caused by the gradual increase in the size of that damned zombie network's will.

At first, when he realized that the time loop might just be an infinite canteen for this thing, he immediately realized that this thing could transcend time, but perhaps it had not completely transcended time.

At least with each time loop, it does manage to erase a portion of the vehicle that interferes with reality.

So, is there any way to slow down this thing's continued growth as much as possible?

After becoming the last carrier of the virus, Spider-Man felt an unprecedentedly strong force of will interference, restarting the time loop and traveling to more universes to continue spreading the virus, while his desire to eat flesh and blood grew stronger.

He could only struggle to stay afloat, barely managing to maintain a sliver of clarity amidst the ebb and flow of desire.

But with just a little bit of lucidity, he spent a long time iterating and upgrading the nanobot technology left by Iron Man to create a powerful swarm of nanobees.

While the power of time loops cannot erase viral entities at any unknown level, it can prevent the spread of viral material-level transmission behaviors.

Therefore, whether it was to prevent the remnants of viruses that might still exist on some inhabited planet from being taken away by visitors from a parallel universe in the future, or to try to see if stopping time could alleviate the suffering of consciousnesses that exist at some unknown level, Spider-Man created a black hole and, relying on the program of the nanobea swarm, concentrated all the mass and energy of the entire universe, enveloping all the inhabited planets within it.

Using the terrifying time difference created by the black hole's gravity, they attempted to freeze the consciousness that might exist on those planets in the time trough.

Furthermore, relying on these supermassive black holes, gravitational waves penetrate spacetime, weaving a silent spacetime transfer device on an astronomical scale.

Even if he can't commit suicide or self-destruct, as the zombie Spider-Man gradually stays on Earth and is gradually weathered away, perhaps the zombie virus entity, which exists on some unknown level, will lose the chance to grow again...

After hearing all this, Fang Zheng said, "Do you want to change all of this?"

(End of this chapter)