Chapter 1806: Journey of a Madman (Part 19)

Stark couldn't stop Schiller, who was rushing up at high speed. What's more, he wasn't wearing his latest developed suit, just a flat substitute version knocked out in a very short time using someone else's laboratory, so his speed was even slower. By the time he flew near Galactus, the gray mist had completely wrapped the huge figure.

Before, the gray mist had retrieved all his memories and learned that he had a very mysterious origin. Logically speaking, he should have also embarked on the path of obtaining rule power through status.

But Batman and Iron Man intervened, giving him a part of the wisdom of the two strongest scientists in the universe, which allowed the gray mist to realize the unique secret of "physical movement is also movement" during his subsequent cooperation with mediocrity.

This made the gray mist's attack methods very unique, which could be said to be the only one in the universe.

Gray mist factors were also a kind of particle, or rather, all symbiote factors were a kind of special particle. The so-called symbiote cells were actually symbiote particles.

This magical race was more like a micro-particle that performed simple combinations at the material level, and because of different evolutionary directions, produced different properties.

Ordinary symbiotes like Venom would use energy obtained from the outside world to increase their own particle count, infinitely proliferating outward, to present a larger material mass, and because of their special particle organizational structure, possessed stronger power.

But the gray mist took the opposite path. He started to make his own factors split continuously, and while the total amount remained unchanged, he used energy to make his own particles smaller and smaller, further exploring toward the microscopic world.

As everyone knew, matter was composed of molecules, and molecules were connected by two or more atoms. It could be said that if one could freely control molecules, one could create things out of thin air. But if one could freely control atoms, subatomic particles, and even smaller microscopic units, then the truth of the universe wouldn't be far away.

From the moment the gray mist was born, his control over the microscopic level reached the molecular level. He could decompose things Schiller brought and then reorganize them, ensuring their properties remained completely unchanged. This was his instinct.

It was just that he only had instinct before, and his theoretical and scientific level in this regard followed Schiller, basically just at the level of only knowing how to screw in a light bulb.

But further exploration of the microscopic world required certain theoretical support, as well as repeated practice. The special genius scientist inspiration given by Batman and Iron Man finally made the gray mist realize what his strongest point actually was.

Before, he always felt that he had enough defense but insufficient offense. Schiller had never let him fight, and he didn't know how to fight. But now he discovered that destruction actually had a simpler method—

Once the exploration in the microscopic field touched the threshold of atomic and subatomic control, many terrible options would naturally emerge: nuclear fusion, nuclear fission, neutron radiation, antimatter impact, the Big Bang...

And if one explored deeper, one had to mention two of the four fundamental forces known to everyone: strong force and weak force.

Strong force, also known as "strong interaction force," was the force existing between hadrons such as protons, neutrons, and mesons. Weak force, also known as "weak interaction force," acted on fermions such as electrons, quarks, and neutrinos, and restricted radioactive phenomena.

Seeing the names of the examples appearing in the above concepts, one should understand that strong force and weak force were the rulers of the microscopic world and the cornerstone of half the universe.

Of course, so far, the gray mist hadn't explored to that part, but after a period of practice, he had been able to relatively skillfully control

This is actually not hard to understand; the Gray Fog itself is a special type of particle organism. To humans, it is a world of the microscopic, but to him, it is the normal world.

It's just that other symbiotes choose to achieve unity with normal organisms in the material world—that is, by making their volume and mass larger and their particle connections tighter, thereby gaining stronger macroscopic power.

But the Gray Fog does the opposite: he makes his particles smaller and smaller, the gaps between the particles larger and larger, and the interaction forces between the particles more and more obvious, which allows him to easily imitate any atomic-level movement.

Before Stark could even fly to Galactus's side, just hovering in mid-air, he saw Galactus's body below the head begin to collapse inward continuously.

Stark didn't know how to describe the process he was seeing now, because this kind of movement shouldn't appear in any humanoid creature at all; it is usually an astrophysical phenomenon that only appears after a star's lifespan reaches its end.

All the matter in Galactus's body was driven by a group of special particles to collapse inward, as if a powerful giant hand had grabbed a handful of sand and squeezed it hard.

All the matter in Galactus's body was compressed into neutrons under this extreme pressure, and at this moment, the huge gravity of the core made this inward collapse unstoppable. The internal pressure grew higher and higher until it compressed space and time, and finally, the neutrons were also crushed, leaving behind only a celestial body with an unimaginably high density, commonly known as a black hole.

The moment it began, alarm bells rang in Stark's mind. He desperately pushed his armor to maximum power and flew in the opposite direction, wanting to break free from the black hole's gravitational control.

But with the power level of the armor he was wearing, trying to resist the gravity of a black hole at such close range was nothing short of a pipe dream, and Tony didn't dare to use the energy of the Arc Reactor directly for fear of affecting the two universes.

He looked at a wisp of gray mist drifting before his eyes, gritted his teeth, and simply let go of the controls, allowing himself to be sucked into the black hole.

Entering a black hole is an extremely wonderful experience, especially while alive. Although the Iron Demon God had already reached a status that transcended the universe, he had indeed never recklessly dived into a black hole to see, and this time, this magical experience was completed.

The special gray particles attached to the surface of the armor, allowing Stark to ignore all gravity and pressure, entering the most mysterious celestial body in the history of human astrophysics in a special state, and observing all the mysteries here.

Stark saw that it was not pitch black inside the black hole. When approaching the world, he could see redshifted and blueshifted rays and electromagnetic waves, which manifested as a spirally twisting light wave, constantly wandering toward a point behind Stark.

Stark knew there must be a singularity behind it, but he instinctively felt that some kind of magical change was still happening within the entire field; the black hole was still not the end.

Sure enough, Stark couldn't feel how much time had passed, but he felt the gray mist pulling him closer and closer to the singularity, until at one moment, everything went still.

Just as Stark turned around, he saw the singularity, created by matter being compressed to the extreme, explode violently, and then he and countless particles were ejected from the center of the singularity's explosion like bullets from a gun barrel.

When his vision cleared, Stark saw an extremely beautiful spiral nebula, with a white hole emitting intense light in the middle of the nebula.

At this time, the particles that had been compressed to the extreme were still being continuously spewed out by the white hole, and due to the existence of the repulsive force around the white hole, Stark began to move further and further away from that mysterious and dreamy point of light.

When he withdrew his gaze and turned to look at the universe, he saw a completely unfamiliar starry sky.

The Gray Fog did not condense, but instead flew along with Stark. This flight felt devoid of speed, more like continuous, uninterrupted teleportation. Before long, Stark saw a planet that was both familiar and unfamiliar.

Stark felt it was familiar because it was the beautiful and blue Mother Earth he had gazed upon from space countless times, and he called it unfamiliar because this was neither the Earth Stark was most familiar with nor the Earth of the zombie universe.

This was a completely unfamiliar Earth, so Stark could deduce that he had come to an unfamiliar universe.

Stark turned to look at the Gray Fog floating beside him, his gaze meaning: So you went through all this trouble just to build a portal?

The Gray Fog seemed to hear his inner voice, as the part of the mist that was densest, resembling a head, shook vigorously, expressing its dissatisfaction.

The Gray Fog opened its big mouth and spat out a huge head—it was Galactus's head.

Stark widened his eyes in shock.

Shiler returned to his human form, stretched out his arm, and pointed at Galactus's head.

Very magically, Stark seemed to hear Shiler's inner voice too, which reminded him of the scene when the two had agreed to go home to sleep, only to end up looking at each other in silence inside the Galactus engine.

Stark looked back at the Earth; he could see that a riot seemed to have broken out in New York.

He didn't know if the zombie disaster in the other universe had already begun, but clearly, the Galactus engine was much more useful than the pile of scrap metal he was wearing.

Thus, Stark and Shiler flew toward Galactus's head.

Before entering Galactus's head, Stark looked at the Earth again with some unease, and right there in the New York City his gaze landed on, Helen, Spider-Man, Zombie Spider-Man, and Eddie with Venom—four figures were fleeing for their lives.

The good news is that the zombie crisis hadn't broken out; the bad news is that the Shiler crisis had.

"Say it again, what did you see before the teleportation array started?!!" Helen shouted at the Zombie Spider-Man behind her while running.

"I don't know, it might have been a hallucination!" Zombie Spider-Man panted while running, and he shouted at the top of his lungs: "I saw the shadow of a doctor in a white coat!"

"That was definitely Shiler!!!" Helen roared.

At this moment, Zombie Spider-Man said to himself in a tone of relief: "I don't know why, but the zombies suddenly stopped biting people. That's a good thing, right?"

"Good my ass!" Helen turned her head and cursed: "We're in big trouble!!!"

Helen, who was in the lead, had just turned the corner when she saw a man with a sallow, dark complexion and dark eye sockets carrying an axe, standing on their only path forward like he was possessed, his head tilted and his arm hanging limp.

Helen slammed on the brakes, stretched out her arm to block the people behind her, and shouted: "Stop!"

Venom, who was running second, couldn't stop in time and slammed directly into Helen. However, although Helen's frame was small, her durability was extremely high; after Venom hit her with a "bang," he was bounced right back and landed on the ground.

"Why did you stop suddenly?" Venom opened his bloody maw and roared at Helen: "Wouldn't it be fine if you just let me eat that guy's brain?!"

"What if Shiler is inside his brain?"

"Never mind what I said, run!"

The three people running in front turned 180 degrees in place with extremely uniform movements and bolted. Zombie Spider-Man, who was running at the back, didn't understand why, and he shouted at the three fleeing figures: "Who is Shiler?!"

"Whoosh!"

The moment an axe shimmering with cold light grazed past Zombie Spider-Man's ear, he saw a pair of desolate gray eyes beside him.