Marvel's Shendu: Dominating the Multiverse

Chapter 164 Step by Step

The teacher came in for the second period. She was a Black woman who wore glasses and taught English literature. Parker was forced to turn back to face the blackboard.

As it turns out, the niche of a "new transfer student" in an American public high school is quite delicate. By the end of the second period in the morning, Lu Chen's name had already spread throughout Class 308.

There are several reasons.

First, he's good-looking. The adjustments made to Reality Gem were very restrained; they didn't create a suspiciously perfect look, but his natural features didn't need much embellishment. When girls passed by his seat during breaks, their walking paths would naturally swerve slightly, pretending to go to the window to look at the playground.

Second, remain silent. The less you speak, the more the rumors spread.

The third period was chemistry. It was Ms. Warren's class.

Parker sat at the lab bench, a pile of unopened equipment in front of him, his whole body tense. The Holy Lord sat to his right and slightly behind him, with a similar set of equipment in front of him, which he didn't touch.

After Ms. Warren finished explaining the theoretical part, she had the students conduct experiments in groups. They were grouped according to their seating arrangement, and Parker and Saint Lord were assigned to the same group.

Parker remained silent and began mechanically assembling the distillation apparatus. The Holy Spirit took a folded piece of paper from his pocket and placed it next to Parker's lab notebook.

Parker caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye. He continued screwing on the condenser coil connector, and after ten seconds, he stopped, picked up the piece of paper.

The paper listed three sets of molecular formulas. The first set was Parker's existing spider silk formulation, with performance parameters listed after each compound. The second set was Alternative A, with a different polymer backbone, and a theoretical elastic modulus that was 40 percent higher than the current version. The third set was Alternative B, a completely different approach, using a cross-linking structure that Parker had never seen before.

Parker stared at the paper for a long time.

"Where did the crosslinking agent for Option B come from?" His voice was very soft. "It's not available on the market."

"Your high school lab could synthesize it."

"Impossible, that requires—" Parker stopped talking, because he had followed the molecular formula two steps further and discovered that if he used the reagents available in Ms. Warren's lab to perform a two-step reaction—it was indeed possible. The path was incredibly clever. He probably wouldn't have figured it out even after another three months of pondering.

Parker folded the paper and put it in his pocket.

"Thank you," he said awkwardly. "But that doesn't mean I trust you."

"I didn't ask you to believe it."

Lunchtime. The cafeteria.

Parker sat down in the corner with his plate, and the Lord sat down opposite him with another plate. Parker moved to the left, but the Lord didn't move with him.

The chubby boy whose seat had been taken by the Holy Lord that morning also came over with a plate; his name was Ned Liz. Parker's only close friend.

"Hi, Peter." Ned sat down and looked at the person opposite him. "Are you the new guy? Transferred from California?"

"right."

"Cool, where in California? Los Angeles?"

San Francisco.

"That's even cooler. Can you see the Golden Gate Bridge every day where you are?"

"able."

Ned was satisfied. He turned to Parker and asked if they should go to the newly opened Lego store in Queens over the weekend. Parker responded with "uh-huhs" and ate quickly.

There wasn't much to record about the afternoon classes. In PE class, we ran the 800 meters. Saint Master controlled his speed and achieved a slightly above-average time. Parker came in third; the first place went to the school track and field team.

school.

Parker was the fastest packer in the class. He stuffed his things into the bag, zipped it up, and left without looking back.

The Holy Lord did not follow.

He sat in the classroom until everyone had left, and through the window he saw Parker exit through the school gate, turn right, and head towards Queens Road. The boy walked about two hundred meters, turned into an alley, and three seconds later emerged from a rooftop at the other end of the alley, wearing a red and blue sweatshirt and sweatpants. He had ski goggles over his face and a hat on top.

Parker jumped off the roof, a spider silk he spun out and caught on the water tower of the apartment building across the street, and he swung off. He wasn't very skilled yet, and his timing for reeling in the silk was often a beat too late, causing him to be too close to the ground when he reached the lowest point of the swing, almost scraping the roof of a bread truck.

The Holy Lord looked out the window for a while.

The power of the Space Stone flowed through his palm. He didn't swing over; he simply sat there, his consciousness expanding. The Mind Stone's perception range was wide enough to cover the entire Queens district, and Parker's location was as clear in his mind as a GPS tracker.

Parker stopped a bicycle thief on 43rd Street, prevented a convenience store robbery in Flushing, and helped an old lady get a cat down from a tree.

Parker went home at 7:20 p.m.

When he climbed through the window into his room, Shendu was standing on the rooftop of the building across the street. Parker didn't know he was there, but his spider-sense made him glance out the window again after entering the room. There was nothing on the rooftop. Shendu was gone.

Queens, Forest Hills, Parker's house.

My uncle cooked dinner. It was spaghetti with store-bought sauce, nothing fancy, but he added half a pound of ground beef, which made it feel more substantial.

"How was school today?" Uncle Ben asked.

"A new student has arrived," Parker said.

"Have you made any new friends?"

Parker paused in his chewing of noodles. "That doesn't count."

Aunt May brought a salad out of the kitchen. "Peter, you look tired. Have you been staying up late lately?"

"Too much homework."

Uncle Ben glanced at him. A middle-aged man's intuition can sometimes be more accurate than spider-sense; he could tell his nephew had something on his mind lately, but he wouldn't pry. Ben Parker had a very strong sense of boundaries. He'd let you know he was there, but he wouldn't open the door for you.

"There's a volunteer activity in the community next Saturday," Uncle Ben wiped his mouth, "FEAST shelter, distributing supplies. I've signed up, do you want to come?"

"Okay," Parker said.

After dinner, Parker went back to his room and locked the door. He took the paper out of his pocket, spread it out on the table, and stared at the molecular formula of Scheme B for fifteen minutes.

Then he opened the drawer and took out his spider silk projectile. He had made it himself; the casing was 3D printed, and the internal mechanism was made from two lighters and an old watch. It was crude, but it worked.

He flipped the launcher over, examining the wear and tear on the bottom. The spider silk breakage last week still haunted him. Option B

If the formula can truly increase the elastic modulus by 40%, it means that it can swing between taller buildings at a faster speed, and the probability of breakage will be reduced to almost negligible.

The question is: Would you dare use something given to you by someone of unknown origin?

Parker's phone vibrated. A text message; the number wasn't saved.

"The reaction temperature in the second step of Option B should be controlled at 62 degrees Celsius, and should not exceed 65 degrees Celsius. If it exceeds this, the cross-linking density will be too high, and the fibers will become brittle."

Parker stared at his phone screen.

He didn't even want to ask how this person got his phone number.

On the rooftop of the building across the street, the Holy Lord put away his phone. He'd bought it that afternoon at an electronics store near the school—a prepaid SIM card, paid in cash, with no identification information. Sending Parker a text message would normally be easier by directly projecting his thoughts using the Mind Stone, but that would scare Parker into a frenzy; a gradual approach was necessary.