In the Marvel Omnipotent Universe, inside the Multiverse, a terrible disaster occurred.
The Laughing Bat, having sneaked into Marvel in an unknown manner, used schemes to steal the authority over the dreams of Dream Power Doctor Strange and played a movie across the Omnipotent Universe—a staggering 11-hour epic called "Star Core Rescue."
Yes, not seven hours, but eleven hours, which was not the version Eddie originally edited according to Shiller's request, but the version that came about after Laughing Bat got hold of the tape and made modifications, deletions, additions, and re-direction.
The version had such devastating effects that, overnight, players from the Eastern Great Nation collectively logged onto various platforms to give "Three Kingdoms" rave reviews, heralding it as a historically balanced masterpiece of gameplay, while players from the West flocked to websites to frequently praise "Overwatch 2," calling it a cultural heritage with an excellent operational strategy.
Of course, the ordinary people who did not engage in gaming could only experience endless psychological shocks from this colossal piece of crap, shocks so severe they could even cause Greed to crash, let alone the ordinary people with weaker mental strength.
After that frightful night, when everyone woke up in the morning, it felt not like awakening from sleep but rather like being resurrected from the dead.
Then, once people were slightly more sober, they confirmed with close ones or online friends who they usually chat with that they had also experienced the same dreams; they knew this wasn't just some bizarre spontaneous invention of their own brains, but a film intentionally made and disseminated.
What followed was an endless tide of negative reviews.
No matter the video platform or website, as long as there was a function to discuss it, it all became about lambasting this dreadful film. Even users, who typically made comments with a sense of humor, could not utter their satirical remarks; everyone was engaged in pure invective.
And the target of release wasn't just Earth but all dream-capable beings across the universe who were forced to watch the entire movie in their dreams without being allowed to fall asleep halfway, look away, or outright leave; no matter how bad it was, they had to endure all 11 hours as if the lousy movie was poured into their brains, unforgettable.
Thus, the wave of negative reviews swept across the whole universe, and every Individual Universe, every Multiverse composed of Individual Universes, every plurality of Multiverses, until it spread through the entire Omnipotent Universe.
By evening, the movie had essentially received a 99% negative rating. As for why it wasn't 100%, well, in such a vast universe, there are always some with unique tastes. Although most of them were also stubbornly holding on, merely to show off their distinct taste by enduring the ordeal, they still contributed to that 1% of positive feedback.
But the end times for the positive rating group came at 10:00 PM when the majority of intelligent beings, shutting their eyes to sleep, saw a familiar figure again—Robbins on his bicycle zooming past.
The movie started playing again.
Then, after another long 11 hours, the whole scene could be described as what happened when Fan Da Mingbai entered the psychiatric hospital—the doctors went mad.
Simultaneous lamentations arose at dawn; everyone lay despondently in bed, unable to even conjure more venomous words to curse that horrific nightmare.
This nightmare didn't actually cause any spiritual depletion to people, functioning just like ordinary dreams, and it didn't harm the body. Even though 11 hours passed in the dreams, the actual time spent varied in reality, mainly depending on the thinking speed of different beings. Races with faster thinking speeds might only need to sleep for 10 minutes to get through these 11 hours, while humans, with their moderate thinking speed, needed about 4 to 5 hours, just enough to meet the deep sleep requirement for humans.
That is to say, this thing couldn't really cause any physical or mental harm; the only problem was that the film was incredibly terrible.
On the first day, people still had the spirit to curse it on various short video media. By the second day, some had already started to panic, fearing it would continue every day!
By the third day, when everyone who woke up found the dreams still persisting, they were utterly shattered. Government agencies could no longer sit idly by and began using various methods to soothe the public and stop the panic.
But since this thing couldn't really cause any harm, and most people had no knowledge about dreams, they had no idea how to stop it; everyone just had to go through this lousy movie's dream over and over every night.
You wouldn't have guessed it, Nick's crisis drills were called into play. The Stella Core Space Station rescue had just ended not long ago, and before anyone could evacuate the United Nations Assembly Hall, they started investigating how to end this dreadful nightmare of a film.
Human technology and magic levels had not yet reached a level capable of fully clarifying the principles behind the subconscious and dreamworld, rendering them essentially helpless.
The Supreme Magician knew of the Nightmare Dimension's existence, but Incubus and other Demon Gods were not easy to contact in normal ways, and since this event occurred, the Nightmare Dimension had remained completely silent, making it impossible for Doctor Strange to locate its existence.
Stark had also studied neuroscience, but unfortunately, controlling the dreams of the Marvel World required authority, and not merely scientific discoveries about the subconscious and dreams. Otherwise, Mad Laugh would not have needed to use a diversion to lure Dream Power Doctor Strange away.
Thus, after much discussion, they concluded that resolving the bad movie nightmare from its root was highly unlikely.
However, the good thing was that dreams were not essential for humans. Since all dreams had turned into bad movie nightmares, they might as well simply stop dreaming.
The final solution discussed by various nations was for the neuroscience labs of each country to lead a technical collaboration, firstly researching drugs that could keep people awake for extended periods. This would allow the most important batch of scientists to escape from the bad movie universe, then use these scientists to study something that could completely block dreams, and simply stop dreaming altogether.
This approach was also the strategy for the vast majority of civilizations in the cosmos, as almost all civilizations lacked the authority over dreams. Hence, they had to start from their end—if they couldn't change the cosmos, then they'd change themselves—no more dreams.
Human technology was not quite up to the task, and any research would take years, but many humanoid civilizations had highly developed technology that could easily create drugs that kept individuals awake for months or even years. Stark, leveraging his good relationships with various civilizations, had obtained this technology, and within about a week of adaptation, had nearly perfected an awakening potion without side effects.
Though the production was limited, it was sufficient to be used first by a group of researchers. Once these researchers had escaped from the bad movie nightmares, they could look into mass-producing the drug.
There were also many underdeveloped civilizations, like the human race, that suffered from bad movie nightmares but couldn't quickly devise countermeasures.
Shiller, with the help of AI Iron Man whose information networks spanned the Multiverse, brokered and established a technological version of the Holy Sanctuary—The Universe Information Management Bureau—to help civilizations across the cosmos access the technology to suppress bad movie nightmares as quickly as possible.
In exchange, AI Iron Man could collect various rule samples from these cosmoses for disassembly and analysis. Normally, Abstract Entities would not agree, as even if this information was not unique and could regenerate, it wasn't meant for just anyone to take.
But under special circumstances, special measures were required; indeed, these Abstract Entities had also experienced the bad movie nightmares, and it was unknown how many cosmoses saw Eternity learn to vomit for the first time.
AI Iron Man was very satisfied with this trade. Shiller discovered that this peculiar Iron Man seemed to have a collecting obsession. Many pieces of information were deconstructed but served no practical use, nor could they be used to optimize himself, but he just wanted to deconstruct, analyze, and store everything systematically, like a hamster that stuffs its cheeks even when full.
This crisis led to an unprecedented unity among the civilizations of the cosmos, showing a scene of mutual assistance and harmonious friendship never seen before. Under the threat of the bad movie nightmares, civilizations that had recently been at war ceased hostilities, and races with centuries old grievances set aside their disputes.
Theoretically, this disaster should only have impacted races that dreamt and couldn't control their dreaming, and it shouldn't have been on such a large scale, because not every race was as weak as humans; many mechanical civilizations had stopped dreaming millions of years ago.
But, alas, Mad Laugh was not only overly self-confident; he was also ruthless. He had not only stolen the authority over the dreamworld but had used the same method Shiller had planned before—information invasion—directly using technological means to push through the foundational protocols of mechanical civilizations, embedding the entire bad movie script into their code.
As a result, the mechanical civilizations were in serious trouble, as their entire logic of operation had turned into a bad movie. Closing eyes led to "Robbins obtaining the Invisibility Cloak," and opening eyes faced "Mysterio battling the Elemental Monsters."
The first to suffer greatly were naturally the Skrulls and the Kree, whose level of mechanization was very high, especially The Supremacy, which had literally been "capped," viewing the scripts more often than any other in the cosmos, showing symptoms of code collapse.
Under such dire circumstances, the Skrulls and the Kree, who had been enemies for a thousand years, exchanged letters and embarked on deep technological cooperation to hasten the flow of technology. The Shi'ar Empire, in order to speed things up, even voluntarily lowered the usage fees of their grand teleportation gates. The Three Great Empires established the Anti-Bad Movie Alliance, uniting together regardless of past conflicts.
Thus, this catastrophe, a divine-like absurdity conceived by Mad Laugh, led to an unprecedented cosmic movement.