Chapter 267: Brand New Universe
In Stacy's House in Universe 65B, Gwen sat in front of her drum set in her room. Although her room was bigger now, her drum set was still the same one, because Yang Le had made it for her, capable of withstanding Spider-Man's strength, its durability pushed to the limit.
Holding drumsticks, Gwen unleashed her emotions on the drum set without restraint. Despite her carefree demeanor earlier, it was just to keep Yang Le from worrying and to avoid putting any pressure on him.
The fear of death, and her worries about Yang Le, all coalesced into pressure, accumulating in Gwen's heart. So, she once again chose her favorite way to vent – drumming.
Gwen didn't even know how long she had been drumming. Luckily, they had moved to a bigger house with extra space that could be turned into a soundproof room. Otherwise, in their old house, people would have been banging on their door long ago.
"Dong!" With the final strike, Gwen finished her performance. Hearing the applause that followed, Gwen thought it was her Papa George. She brushed aside the strands of hair stuck to her forehead from sweat, which had been obscuring her line of sight. But the figure she saw was not who she expected.
"It feels like it's been a long time since I last heard you play the drum," Yang Le stopped applauding. "Have you gotten even better?"
Gwen paused for a moment, then smiled and said, "Well, music is a lot about emotion. How did it go? Did you solve it?"
"Of course," Yang Le spread his hands. "Like you said, I've never let you down."
"At least so far," Gwen raised an eyebrow. "Now that everything's okay, shouldn't we head to that universe?"
Yang Le was taken aback. "I thought you'd at least want to rest for a bit."
"Please, I'm a student, you know," Gwen rolled her eyes. "I still have to get into university, so I can't fall behind on my courses."
Gwen stood up from her seat and walked towards the luggage in the corner. She said, "Dad saw me come back with luggage alone and thought we'd had a fight. I had to explain it several times before he believed you'd gone off to save the world."
"To be precise, saving the multiverse," Yang Le corrected. He looked at Gwen, who was holding several bags, and asked, "Don't you want to say goodbye to Uncle George again?"
Gwen shook her head and said, "I told him I might leave at any time. Two goodbyes in such a short time would be too awkward. Let's just hurry up and go to TRN-123 Universe."
"About that..." Yang Le smiled mysteriously. "There might have been a slight change of plans."
Gwen was puzzled, blinking her eyes at Yang Le, waiting for him to give her an explanation.
Yang Le waved his hand, using his Dimensional Demon God Clone's power to open a portal, and said, "You'll see when you get there."
Trusting him, Gwen rolled her eyes at the mysterious Yang Le, playfully snorted, and obediently walked into the portal.
Stepping through the portal, Gwen eagerly looked around and realized they were in an apartment, much like Yang Le's previous house.
"Where are we?" Gwen asked curiously.
"Universe 9527," Yang Le followed her through the portal, introducing their location to Gwen.
"?" Gwen looked at Yang Le, puzzled. "Weren't we supposed to go to TRN-123 Universe?"
"I changed my mind," Yang Le said with a smile. "Originally, this universe didn't exist in the multiverse. I created it using Alien X's power."
Not just Alien X's power, Yang Le also used the Beyonders to lay the foundation, ostensibly to make them atone for their sins. It was also because of this that Oz agreed to Yang Le creating a brand new universe.
As for Mamon, Yang Le finally understood. This guy was more like the Voice of Amusement than the Voice of Destruction. As long as he saw rivers of blood or people being humiliated, he was ecstatic, a pure madman.
Before the incident concluded, Oz and Mamon proactively approached Yang Le. While restoring the multiverse, they had sensed numerous threats, so they agreed to let Yang Le use most of Alien X's abilities, precisely so Yang Le could protect his life in emergencies.
This was an unexpected delight. Yang Le agreed without hesitation, afraid that even a second's delay might make them change their minds.
Although he didn't gain 100% control of Alien X, Yang Le checked and found that, apart from not being able to casually restart the universe, there was basically nothing he couldn't do.
But he couldn't get too excited yet. After all, even transformed into Alien X, he still had two supervisors by his side. If Yang Le actually tried to use Alien X to run wild, Oz definitely wouldn't cooperate with him.
As for Mamon, he also said that Yang Le couldn't use Alien X's power to bully the weak, because he found destroying the weak to be utterly boring. At the very least, it had to be someone on the level of the Beyonder Race to be interesting.
"I am the Voice of Destruction, not the Voice of Bullying," Mamon had said.
Getting sidetracked. Let's get back to this newly born Universe 9527. Actually, Yang Le had already come here once before Gwen arrived, mainly to observe this universe he created and see if it was suitable for long-term residence.
Although Yang Le was the creator of this universe, he hadn't interfered much with its development. However, perhaps because he used the Beyonders as its foundation, the superhumans in this universe were, more or less, stronger than those in other universes, and could even rival those in the Main Universe.
And Universe 9527 followed the characteristics of a Marvel parallel universe: largely the same but with minor differences. In general, there weren't many major changes, but some details were completely different.
For example, in this universe, Iron Man wasn't Tony Stark, but his Dad Howard Stark.
This was the change Yang Le noticed as soon as he arrived in this universe. Just by buying a newspaper on the street, he could see the media's hype about Howard in the front-page headline.
"Savior of New York," "World's Number One Genius," "Iron Ambition"—every newspaper praised this billionaire in different ways, but there were very few reports about his son, Tony Stark.
Yang Le searched and learned that Tony in this universe hadn't disappeared. He was 17 years old this year and still in high school. Yes, even though he claimed he could have graduated from university and earned a bunch of degrees as early as four years ago, Howard still made him attend high school step by step.
And Tony was attending Midtown High School, which had changed its reputation after the universe shift. In this universe, Midtown High School wasn't the original civilian high school, but the top high school in New York. With a recommendation letter from this high school, getting into the world's top universities was practically guaranteed.
And the high school Yang Le had enrolled Gwen in was precisely this high school.
After Yang Le finished all this, he also searched for the Parker family and discovered that Peter in this universe was already an adult and had been working for years. And most importantly...
Both his parents were alive.