The Web of Life and Destiny.
It was the manifestation of the Spider-Totem God’s power.
The birth of every Spider-Man represented a choice made by the Web of Life and Destiny.
Those it chose would receive the power of the Spider-Totem God, transmitted through the Web of Life and Destiny.
Therefore, every Spider-Man in the Parallel Universes could be regarded as a Branch Anchor of the Web of Life and Destiny.
The more Branch Anchors it possessed, the more stable and powerful the Web of Life and Destiny became.
The two depended on and strengthened each other.
Neither could exist without the other.
However, despite its immense importance to Spider-Man, the Web of Life and Destiny usually influenced them from behind the scenes.
Few Spider-Men were even aware of its existence.
It had certainly never manifested directly on a Spider-Man’s body before.
This clearly defied all common sense.
That was why Peter was not entirely confident in his theory.
For now, he could only treat it as a possibility and prepare himself accordingly.
After spending several minutes examining it, Peter confirmed that the golden spiderweb pattern on his palm had no immediate effect on him.
It had neither enhanced any of his abilities nor caused him to grow any strange organs, such as web-shooting holes, four arms, or eight eyes…
“Is that good news or bad news?
Ah, whatever.
I’ll leave it alone for now.
Today’s a big day!”
Peter flexed his core slightly.
His astonishing strength erupted, launching him straight out of bed.
He could already smell the aroma of fried bacon drifting through the air.
Half a minute later, Peter walked downstairs with his hair in a complete mess.
“Peter…”
Aunt May’s voice drifted over with the rich aroma of coffee.
She wore an apron printed with Donald Duck and tapped a finger against a Post-it note stuck to the refrigerator door.
“Reminder number fifteen.
You forgot to get a haircut again, and today is the first day of school.”
Peter responded while struggling to stuff a bacon sandwich into his mouth.
“Okay, dear Aunt May.
I promise you’ll see my new haircut tonight.”
Across the table, Uncle Ben removed his reading glasses and poured Peter a glass of orange juice.
“Did you sleep well last night, Peter?”
The strange dream from the night before surfaced in Peter’s mind again.
He froze for half a second before coming back to his senses.
Before he could answer, however, a crisp knock at the door interrupted their conversation.
Knock!
Knock!
“Hurry up, Peter!
The bus will be here any minute, and I don’t want to be late on the first day of school.”
A tall white girl with long, fiery red hair stood outside the front door.
It was Mary Jane, Peter’s childhood friend.
“Coming!
Right now!”
Still biting into his half-eaten bacon sandwich, Peter hurried to open the door, remembering to say goodbye to Uncle Ben and Aunt May on his way out.
Soon, the two figures disappeared into the street bathed in morning light.
The shadows of the boy and girl walking side by side fell across the ground, intertwining and overlapping until they seemed impossible to separate.
“Teenagers are always such a handful.
Looks like I need to find some time to have a proper talk with him.”
Uncle Ben lowered his newspaper and propped his chin on his right hand, his eyes narrowing slightly.
Then he shook his head and smiled.
The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes relaxed as though he had thought of something amusing.
“Forget it.
He’s already in high school, so some things should be allowed to take their natural course.
Young people have their own way of living.
An old man like me shouldn’t interfere.”
…
On the way to the bus stop, Peter and Mary Jane chatted about what they had done over summer vacation.
“You’re saying you spent the entire summer working out and didn’t go anywhere?”
Mary Jane’s emerald-green eyes, bright as cat’s-eye gemstones, swept over Peter.
Only after noticing that his shoulders and arms had grown considerably broader did she reluctantly accept his explanation.
“All right, you have gotten a lot stronger.
Looks like you’ve got a real talent for working out.”
Mary Jane pulled something from her shoulder bag and handed it to Peter.
“Here you go, Gym Boy.
I brought you a gift from Disney.”
Peter accepted the gift and was about to open it when a searing pain suddenly flared in his right palm.
It felt as though someone had forcibly embedded a red-hot branding iron into his hand.
“Sorry, MJ.
Looks like you’ll have to go to school without me today.
I forgot something important at home.”
“But Peter, you…”
From the slight furrow in Peter’s brow, Mary Jane could tell that something was wrong.
“Trust me, I won’t be late.
I’ll see you at school.
Explain things to Harry for me.”
After firmly ushering Mary Jane onto the bus that had just arrived, Peter gritted his teeth against the burning pain in his palm and rushed into a dim alley.
When he opened his right hand and looked at the source of the pain, he saw the mysterious golden spiderweb pattern in his palm glowing with golden light.
Then the pain intensified.
It pierced all the way into his bones, as though boiling magma had been poured directly into their deepest crevices.
Take a deep breath…
Stay calm…
Panicking will only make things worse…
Peter reminded himself silently.
The sound of his heavy breathing rang clearly in his ears, while the adrenaline surging through his body finally began to dull the pain in his palm.
But in the next instant, the golden spiderweb pattern began to twist and change.
First, it rearranged itself into an incomprehensible designation: [1610b].
Then it transformed into a golden vortex at astonishing speed.
The surrounding space began to spin and warp until Peter was sucked into it completely.
…
Within a strange space filled with flickering golden light, Peter felt as though only a second had passed, yet also as though an entire century had gone by.
Finally, the space stabilized, and the golden light faded.
“Is this…
New York?”
Peter opened his eyes to a familiar cityscape.
As Spider-Man, committing every street and alley in New York City to memory was a basic professional requirement.
Peter could not possibly have been mistaken about that.
But when he saw the massive electronic screen embedded in the side of the apartment building across the street, his pupils abruptly contracted.
A breaking news report was playing on the enormous screen.
[We interrupt this broadcast with a special report.
Tragic news has emerged tonight.
The Superhero known as Spider-Man has been confirmed dead.]
[According to an investigation by the New York Police Department, Spider-Man died during yet another massive earthquake in Brooklyn.]
[Multiple sources have confirmed that Spider-Man was Peter Parker, a twenty-six-year-old graduate student and part-time photographer.]
Spider-Man was dead?
A mysterious earthquake in Brooklyn?
A twenty-six-year-old photographer named Peter Parker?
…
At that moment, memories buried deep within Peter’s mind resurfaced.
He finally understood what the designation [1610b], which had appeared in his palm, represented.
The New York he now stood in was not the New York where he lived.
This was New York in the Parallel Universe [Earth-1610B].
This Parallel Universe was a Variant of [Earth-1610], belonging specifically to the movie [Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse].
[Earth-1610] was also known as the [Ultimate Universe], and many Variant universes had branched from it.
In fact, the Parallel Universe where Peter lived was also a Variant of the [Ultimate Universe].
Its designation was [Earth-1610A], and it belonged specifically to the 2012 animated series [Ultimate Spider-Man].
Once Peter understood which universe he was in, many things began to make sense.
“According to the setting of [Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse], every Spider-Man who traveled here was forcibly dragged in by a massive multicolored space-time vortex.
That’s clearly different from the way I arrived.
In other words, my interdimensional travel must have been caused by this…”
Peter raised his right hand and stared at the golden spiderweb pattern, which still retained a trace of warmth.
All the answers seemed to be hidden within it, waiting for the right opportunity to reveal themselves.
“This universe doesn’t seem to be rejecting me either.
That means my spacetime stability is extremely high, which makes no sense.
Every Spider-Man in the movie suffered from spacetime instability, so why am I the exception?”
“If this really is the Web of Life and Destiny, that might explain it.”
“Could this be some kind of special favor that allows me to move freely in this Parallel Universe?”
“But what am I supposed to accomplish here?
There’s no way it sent me here just to eat Turkish kebabs, right?
Though if I have the time, I wouldn’t mind comparing the food in different Parallel Universes.”
As Peter continued muttering in a voice only he could hear, a current-like sensation suddenly surged through his mind.
Spider-Sense!
Someone was approaching him!
And they were fast.
Extremely fast!