"Damn it, damn it! If I'd known this would happen, I never should've wished to transmigrate into the Marvel Universe on my birthday yesterday!"
Su An cursed at the night sky while feeling as if his lungs were exploding. Every breath he took carried a sweet, cloying taste of blood in the back of his throat.
At this moment, his legs were stretched nearly to the point of tearing as he ran for his life through the ruins of the city.
This was New York, the "center of the universe" that was "destroyed" dozens or even hundreds of times every year.
Now, it had finally gotten its wish and degenerated into a massive factory of rotting flesh.
Su An had only been in this world for less than ten minutes since crossing over in his physical body, but he had already figured out the current state of the world:
This was not the main MCU universe where heroes gathered, and passion ran high, but the most hopeless branch of the Marvel Universe…
The Zombie Universe!
In this desperate parallel timeline, a mysterious plague had swept across the entire world. Even superheroes were not spared.
Those heroes who had become zombies still retained their memories and abilities from when they were alive, but their only remaining drive had become hunger.
It was a hunger capable of devouring planets; eternal, endless hunger that could drive even gods mad.
As powerful as Thanos and as small as Ant-Man, all had become slaves to hunger, transformed into monsters that drank blood and devoured raw flesh.
"Huff… huff…"
Driven by a surge of adrenaline and a desperate will to survive, Su An had sprinted three kilometers in one go. His stamina was severely depleted.
He slammed into a broken wall within the ruins, desperately suppressing his breathing. Looking back in the direction he had run from and confirming that no zombies were chasing him, he collapsed onto the ground.
Tilting his head back against the cold steel and concrete, he wiped the sweat from his forehead, gasping for breath, and gave a self-mocking laugh.
"Su An, Su An… Didn't you always complain that your old life was ordinary and lacked excitement? Well, now the excitement's so intense it's about to kill you."
After wiping the sweat from his face several times, Su An noticed a few strands of dark red, extremely resilient fibrous tissue stuck to the tips of his hair.
Looking closer, he realized they were actually the blood vessels of some kind of animal.
"What the hell… what kind of zombie has so little public decency that it just throws blood vessels everywhere after eating…"
Before he could finish complaining, Su An's smile suddenly froze.
From the corner of his eye, he saw that above the ruins, a tattered figure was hanging upside down in midair, watching him.
"A living human… fresh…"
A hoarse, wheezing voice like a rusty saw blade jammed into someone's throat drifted down from above the ruins.
Every hair on Su An's body stood on end.
By the faint moonlight, he finally saw the figure hanging upside down from the ruined beam.
The uniform was torn to shreds, but the original red-and-blue pattern could still vaguely be made out.
On his chest remained half of a torn spider emblem.
The muscles on the left half of his face had already rotted away, exposing stark white bone. In the empty socket was a cloudy eyeball veined with blood.
In his hand, he held a thin "web" made from blood vessels, using it as a pivot to hang upside down while curling his body into a spider-like posture.
"Is that… Spider-Man?!"
Su An cried out, his mind already in complete chaos.
Bloody hell!
He had just transmigrated and already encountered a zombie superhuman… one of the top-tier ones at that!
Looks like this was where he would meet his end. Having lived for barely ten minutes after arriving, Su An suspected he might qualify as the shortest-lived transmigrator in history.
"Hungry… I want to eat…"
Before Zombie Spider-Man finished speaking, he lunged fiercely at Su An.
As an ordinary human, how could Su An possibly compete with a superhero? Su An didn't even manage to take a single step before Spider-Man pinned him firmly beneath his body.
The next second, Spider-Man grabbed Su An's right leg and bit down hard.
Cold, sharp teeth pierced through flesh. The intense pain ignited Su An instantly, like a sea of fire. He could even feel the vibration of teeth grinding against bone.
"Goodbye, Spider-Man… Hopefully next time I'll be reborn into a normal Marvel Universe…"
Just as Su An was about to lose consciousness, suddenly—
[Ding!]
[Superhero Savior System Activated. Talent Unlocked: Blood of Light]
[Blood of Light: The blood within your body can heal zombie superheroes and restore their physical injuries]
[Note: Blood of Light only functions while inside your body. Once blood leaves your body for one second, it immediately loses its effect]
"A system? I'm saved!" Su An exclaimed inwardly.
In the next moment, Spider-Man, who had been devouring him with gusto, suddenly slowed the chewing motion of his mouth.
His cloudy eyes suddenly widened, and a whimper of extreme terror escaped from his mouth.
He had no choice but to release his bite. Staggering backward, he clutched his stomach and collapsed to his knees.
"Ugh!!!"
Spider-Man's throat loosened, and large clumps of sticky black blood and chunks of tissue were violently sprayed out from deep within his throat.
Immediately, the rotten skin on his face and the torn wounds across his body began to rapidly heal at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Before long, Peter's body had returned to normal, and the murderous ferocity surrounding him disappeared.
In its place was a vacant, exhausted despair.
In Su An's memory, it was the kind of expression one could only see outside lottery shops, casinos, or hospital wards.
Peter collapsed onto the ground, covering his face with his hands as he spoke in agony.
"Captain Rogers mutated. Mr. Stark did too. What's even worse…"
Peter buried his head hard into his knees. His brown hair, stained with blood, trembled.
"Aunt May, Mary Jane… and so many others… I… it was me… I… I was the one who personally…"
At this moment, the little Spider sat helplessly on the ground, like the boy in the main universe who had just lost Iron Man.
Su An was a hardcore Marvel fan. He knew exactly why Peter was so utterly hopeless.
In the comic version of Marvel Zombies, at the very beginning of the outbreak, Spider-Man was bitten by Zombie Captain America.
He dragged his injured body back home, hoping to use his final moments to settle things for Aunt May and Mary Jane.
Instead, he suddenly transformed into a zombie himself.
Driven by the overwhelming biological hunger, he turned his fangs toward Aunt May and Mary Jane, devouring them alive in only a few bites, leaving behind nothing but several fragments of bone.
For Peter, who was originally kind-hearted and deeply starved for love, this was undoubtedly a devastating blow.
"Hey, are you okay?"
Su An gritted his teeth against the pain in his leg and spoke softly.
Hearing this, Peter snapped out of it. He hurriedly wiped his face, the skin around his eyes red.
He crouched in front of Su An and carefully shot webbing from his right hand, tightly wrapping Su An's bitten calf.
Then he pulled off the mask on his face that had long since been torn to pieces.
Beneath the mask was a pair of clear yet heavy eyes, gazing sorrowfully into Su An's.
"I'm sorry… I…"
His voice was still hoarse, but now it carried a gentleness like that of the boy next door.
"I'm Peter Parker. What's your name?"
"Su An."
"Okay, Su An. I… it's very hard for me to explain what just happened. I…"
"Peter," Su An interrupted Peter directly as he struggled to find the words. "I know. I know everything about you and about this universe!"
Su An paused, thinking about his system, then raised his head to meet Peter's somewhat puzzled eyes.
"Don't ask about my origins. I can only tell you that I transmigrated here from another parallel universe. And my mission is to save this Zombie Universe!"
[Ding!]
[Host detected to have successfully saved the first superhero. New function unlocked: Attribute Panel]