Toward Destruction

Perhaps because he was truly exhausted, Zhang Ye slept for a full seventeen hours. The sun had not yet set when he went to sleep, and it was still daylight when he woke up.

He had originally thought that all the turmoil he had gone through lately would keep him from sleeping soundly and fill his dreams with nightmares. But in truth, he slept wonderfully, without a single dream, straight through to morning.

Other than a slight headache from sleeping too long, Zhang Ye felt fantastic from head to toe.

"Pietro, what time is it?"

Still groggy as he climbed out of bed, Zhang Ye stretched and spoke.

But he received no reply. Raising an eyebrow, Zhang Ye turned his head and saw Pietro sitting on the bed with his back to him, wearing headphones and doing something unknown. A bottle of cola sat beside him.

Headphones? Cola?

Zhang Ye froze for a moment, then rubbed his eyes.

The room, which had originally been empty, now had several large boxes piled in the corner. Judging by the packaging, they were filled with all sorts of snacks. Several large crates of unopened cola sat on the floor, obviously brand-new. On top of that, several phones had been casually tossed onto the bed, while Pietro was fiddling with a laptop.

The corner of Zhang Ye's mouth twitched as he got out of bed. Looking at the stuff all over the floor, he did not even know where to step.

Apparently hearing movement behind him, Pietro turned around and took off his headphones. "Zhang, you're awake! Let me tell you, this world is absolutely amazing! There are so, so many games I've never played before!"

"You brat..." Zhang Ye covered his face. There was no need to guess where Pietro had gotten all this stuff. With his speed, it was hardly surprising that he could pull something like this off. It seemed Pietro's legs had truly recovered.

"Is there anything to eat?" Zhang Ye knew Pietro was simply too excited after arriving in a new environment. Stealing was bad, but this was clearly not the right time to correct his values.

"Yes, yes! What do you want? I've got pizza and burgers. If you want Chinese food, I can go get some right now and be back within ten seconds. Though it'll be a Chinese food mystery box."

"Enough, forget it. I'll just eat whatever." Zhang Ye hurriedly stopped the eager Pietro.

He opened a box of pizza, and it was still steaming. It seemed Pietro had only brought this stuff back recently. "I don't even care where you got all this anymore. I just want to know how you managed to carry so much with one hand."

"If I can't carry it all in one trip, then I just make more trips!" Pietro happily bounced on the bed. "This world is amazing!"

"No superpowered people, no tyrannical President X, none of that hopeless way of life. Most importantly, no mutants!"

You're thinking too much.

Zhang Ye shook his head helplessly and said casually, "Listen, Pietro. I don't mean to kill your excitement, but there's something I need to tell you. We won't be staying in this world for long. Once the machine is charged, we're leaving this universe."

"Leaving here? Why?" Pietro immediately became dejected. "I haven't even finished playing my games. There are so many interesting things here. There aren't just arcade games, there are offline games, and they can even connect to the internet. I haven't tried any of that yet."

"There's nothing we can do about that. But the things you mentioned should exist in other universes too. As for why we can't settle down in this universe, it's because..."

"I know!" Before Zhang Ye could finish, Pietro immediately spoke up. "It's because we aren't in our original timeline. If we stay here too long, the timeline will reject us, and we'll keep traveling through the various timelines of this universe!"

"Uh..."

Zhang Ye opened his mouth, then said speechlessly.

"Although I have no idea when you became so knowledgeable about physics, what you're describing is probably 'time slipping,' or 'temporal displacement.' As far as I know, we've already left the original timeline, so that probably won't happen."

"Ah, I thought of another one!" Pietro held up one finger and continued. "It must be because we came to a different universe, so our bodies don't match this universe's dimension. If we stay in this universe too long, we'll die, right?"

"Uh, that's the 'quantum rejection' effect of parallel universes. But we came here through the Time Variance Authority's Time Twister. It was a legitimate crossing, so that probably won't happen either."

"I see. Then let me think some more."

"Enough, stop thinking. It has nothing to do with quantum mechanics, the Multiverse, or world dimensions. The reason we have to leave is simple: this world is about to end. Understand? It's about to be destroyed."

"This world is going to be destroyed?" Pietro's mouth fell open. "How is that possible? This world is so nice. There's no war, people live peacefully, and there's delicious food and games. Who would destroy this place?"

Zhang Ye slapped his face.

"Come on, when you went out early this morning to haul all this stuff back, didn't you stop to check the news? The whole world is talking about it right now, yet you went out so many times and still don't know?"

"Oh, that." Pietro smiled awkwardly. "I was busy avoiding surveillance cameras, hehe. Besides, if I stopped while stealing things, wouldn't I get caught?"

"Sigh." Zhang Ye walked helplessly over to Pietro, straightened the laptop, then casually opened a news homepage. It immediately showed a live feed of General Zod's Kryptonian ship hovering overhead.

"See that? That alien spaceship. Maybe this planet won't be destroyed by war, but we still aren't safe when it comes to threats from space. There's a guy aboard that ship named Zod, and he's about to destroy this planet."

Listening to Zhang Ye, Pietro stared intently at the image on the screen. To be honest, that ship was indeed extremely oppressive.

"Is there really no one on this planet who can stop all this?" Pietro could hardly believe it. Such a huge planet was going to be destroyed by a single spaceship.

"Normally, there would be. This planet originally had an organization called the Justice League. You can think of them as another Avengers. If they were here, they really could stop Zod. But unfortunately, in this universe, most Justice League members were never born, and the rest never gained superpowers."

"How could that happen?"

"Because this universe is a parallel world created through human interference. I don't know how to explain it either. Just understand that, for now, there isn't anyone in this universe who can stop this."

Zhang Ye spread his hands.

"Even if you add the two of us, we still couldn't do it."