Chapter 1861: The Madman's Journey (Seventy-Four)

This is the battlefield where Ultron's robot army clashes with the resistance of the three great empires; in the past, Stark and Thor wouldn't have bothered with aliens, of course opening fire with full force.

But after the interstellar situation stabilized, as Earth's representative scientist and Emperor of Asgard, they had interacted with some alien heroes, more or less acquaintances, so to avoid harming innocents, neither of them used their most destructive forms, instead fighting Ultron in humanoid form.

At this moment, Earth and Asgard in this universe have been destroyed, only the elite armies of the three great empires still putting up a desperate resistance; the Avengers have no more teammates, so they can only operate as a small team, advancing toward Ultron and the Darkhold.

In the Star-Eating Engine, Venom propped himself on the table with one hand and covered his eyes with the other, seemingly suffering a headache over these people's intelligence.

"I'm still curious who you used to parasitize." Nick crossed his arms, looking at Venom from the side with a probing gaze: "You don't look like a pure scientist, at least not one as easily fooled as Tony."

"Have you heard of Batman?" Shiler turned his head to look at him: "He was also once a host of Venom."

"Tony mentioned him a few times." Nick shrugged: "But mostly he said the other guy's scientific ability was excellent, second only to his own or something like that; I never heard Batman was also a great detective."

"If Batman is the greatest detective, then the Venom that possessed him is the second greatest." Shiler let out a light sigh: "I just said he couldn't fool me."

"By the way, Eddie, where's your camera? Now is a great time to film the Avengers in action; Tony and Thor now dare not use full force, but fighting in humanoid form best fits the visual aesthetics, don't forget the next season's documentary is about the Avengers."

Eddie was about to respond when Venom shouted: "No way! If you don't tell me the truth, I absolutely won't let Eddie carry the camera!"

"You want to kidnap my cameraman?"

"You're the one kidnapping my morals, and still want to insult my brain!" Venom bared his huge mouth and roared at Shiler: "You want to hide it from me like you hid it from that bunch of idiots—impossible!!!"

Shiler found his voice too loud, poked his ears with his fingers, helplessly pursed his lips and said: "I also didn't intend to hide it from you."

"Yeah, you never intentionally hid anything from anyone, you just wouldn't let us know—hurry up and say it!"

"Alright." Shiler stretched, walked back to the sofa and sat down, shook his somewhat stiff neck and said: "This still has to start with a group of powerful gods in the universe, called the Transcendent Gods..."

As Shiler spoke, the veil over a group of powerful beings beyond ordinary imagination was gradually lifted.

The Transcendent Gods, a group of powerful deities living in the lightless universe—explaining how strong they are is meaningless; one can only say this is another breakthrough by Marvel editors in power-level stacking, simply put: "Slaying gods is like slaying dogs."

What the Five Great Gods of the Universe, what the Life Tribunal, what this Overseer that Observer—never mind how awesome previous settings were, once touched by the Transcendent Gods, it's all kill kill kill.

This setting can't be called novel, only that it has the aesthetic of a laughing bat, but the most peculiar thing about this race is that they're not just a background prop, not the traditional meaning of powerful, indifferent, uncaring gods; they're a bunch of brat kids.

But they're not quite like the Little Blue Men of the DC universe; the Little Blue Men's biggest trait is double standards—power is fine for themselves to use, but not to give others; justice is fine for themselves to uphold, but not to let others uphold; more like adult selfishness and self-interest.

But the Transcendent Gods are the kind of teenagers who think of something and do it—for example, I now plan to set fire to your trash can, not to retaliate against you, purely just for fun.

How could such a race not cause a big commotion? One day they slapped their foreheads, thought: What if we treat every universe in the multiverse as fireworks and set them off? How fun would that be!

And they really did just that.

They gave this plan a very impressive name: "All Things Must Perish," but actually the plan's content is very simple: just blow up every universe in the infinite multiverse.

This plan, from motive to method to gain, is utterly meaningless—like Thanos snapping his fingers to wipe out half the universe's life, seeing this plan would make him exclaim "You're too extreme!"—but that's just teenagers.

Shiler actually already knew about this big-name big event; this big event is also the creator of the brand-new and utterly different, called "Secret Wars."

Although after all universes were destroyed, they were later reshaped by Reed, who had gained Transcendent God power from the Molecule Man's body, still, that saying—Shiler firmly believes, the one who restarts the universe is the madman.

Since knowing these biggest madmen's plans, Shiler couldn't possibly not guard against them; he has always maintained close contact with Eternity, and also unreservedly advised Adam to investigate around the Adam Life Tribunal in the main universe, just to find out when these brat kids plan to strike.

The flow of time in the great world is basically based on the main universe, so Shiler also had Nick watch the main universe's Spider-Man; once he detects that universe is approaching Secret Wars, he'll hurry up and prepare.

But for some reason, the main universe side has had zero movement; since the Annihilation Bugs came out causing a ruckus, there's been not a hint of a big event, not even a shadow on the good-evil axis, let alone Secret Wars.

Shiler will discover the Transcendent Gods have already acted, through that Skrull Shiler he placed in this universe, who, while working at the Ring Area Security Bureau, received a report of a violent destruction case.

The report said a suddenly appearing unknown humanoid fell from the sky and even injured several guards at Xinggang; normally such incidents happen often, but this time was different because the opponent was very strong—Heshia Empire's full-area portal blockade couldn't stop his escape.

The Skrull Shiler looked at this humanoid and felt a bit familiar, so he returned to Gao Ta, applied for memory bank access, and upon looking again, this guy in green clothes and purple shoulder cape—wasn't he the Molecule Man?

The Molecule Man is a very important prop in the Transcendent Gods' crazy plan; I don't know why they're so strong yet still need bombs to blow up the Marvel multiverse, but anyway, the Molecule Man is that bomb.

This bomb has been thrown right in front of Shiler—could he still not know the Transcendent Gods are about to act? Although for some reason their action time has been moved up, Shiler certainly won't let them succeed, because these guys obviously don't plan to give compensation.

In the matter of how to save the universe from these brat kids' hands, Shiler has rich experience: simply put, you must be more of a brat than the brats.

Since beginning research on the Planet-Eater, Shiler has never forgotten his universe-creation plan.

In Secret Wars, all universes collided pairwise and were destroyed, including the main universe and the Ultimate Universe that ultimately collided with the main universe; precisely the main universe's destruction led to the world's reshaping.

And Shiler thought of a method to prevent universes from colliding and destroying each other—not trying to fix them in place, but making them move: as long as there's enough thrust pushing all universes along non-intersecting trajectories, they won't collide.

Simply put, the Transcendent Gods are just playing billiards; Shiler plans to pull all universes together to play dodgeball.

But this faces a very real problem: where to find enough thrust.

Shiler again turned his gaze to the Planet-Eater.

For some reason, the Planet-Eater is very suitable for being modified into all kinds of strange machinery; Shiler thinks if we can transform each universe's Star-Eater into an engine that can push the universe through the great world, his plan might just work.

Shiler named this plan the "Wandering Universe Plan."

Not to mention how original this is, but in daring to imagine and dare to act, Shiler is no worse than the Transcendent Gods, or rather, his imagination is far greater than theirs.

Shiler knows he lacks the technology and also the energy to research how to turn Planet-Eaters into universe propulsion engines, but he knows who can do it, and also knows how to get that person to do it.

Shiler had his robot butler Ultron send the detailed content of the Transcendent Gods' "All Things Must Perish" plan via brainwaves across the multiverse.

Next, he had Ultron act as an envoy of advanced civilization, spreading the Wandering Universe Plan to those universes that heard and valued this plan, including the ultimately destroyed main universe and Ultimate Universe.

In the vast majority of worlds receiving and valuing this information, it's Iron Man, because Shiler's ads mainly target Iron Man, and the main universe is no exception.

The main universe has not yet experienced the Good-Evil Axis major event; Tony Stark remains that righteous Iron Man.

After preliminary communication with the Ultron spreading the news, Stark confirmed the other party wasn't just alarmist, and some of the technical and informational details they gave about modifying Planet-Eaters weren't made up—there's a chance of implementation.

Of course this isn't because Stark is especially gullible; although Shiler has extremely rich experience in deceiving Tony Stark, the main reason Stark would immediately bite is that the main universe has endured too many great storms.

Put it this way: a dog left in an earthquake zone for a day, shaken three times, knows to bury a few more bones; no exaggeration—main universe's New York isn't on an earthquake belt, it's in the Earth's core.

Major events morning, noon, and night are routine; disaster-packed schedules can't even be arranged; under these circumstances, Iron Man has long been accustomed to being busy every day between various salvation plans.

Following the spirit of "one sheep, also herding two sheep, also letting them graze," today the Transcendent Gods aren't coming to play universe billiards; tomorrow some other god race might come to play universe bumper cars—build a thruster, build a thruster, sooner or later there'll be a usable day; Iron Man didn't ask too many questions, just built it and done.

Another benefit of choosing Iron Man as the ad target: Ultron merely told Iron Man some habits of the Planet-Eater, and Iron Man figured out himself how to lure the Star-Eater.

Moreover, Spider-Man of the main universe, on Nick's side, also brought back not a few advanced technologies; the two combined, they soon captured the Star-Eater, then began work on creating an engine capable of pushing the entire universe—a cosmic engine.

But Shiler's time with a scientist's mindset was short; he truly doesn't know where the difficulty lies in manufacturing an engine to push the whole universe; he feels he provided raw materials, ideas, and technology, so genius Stark building a cosmic engine should be no problem—but the result: main universe's Iron Man and Spider-Man weren't blocked by anything else, they were blocked by computing power.

Manufacturing an engine to push the entire universe and manufacturing a planet engine are two completely different things; the former is already approaching rule-level manufacturing—even if the brain of the universe's greatest genius, Tony Stark, could stomach it, the hardware he uses for calculation can't stomach it; relying on that human meat computer, calculating until the Year of the Monkey and Horse Month still wouldn't yield one ten-thousandth of a result.

And at this time, Shiler encountered another problem.