Chapter 174: Chaos Invades! Demons Descend!
Paradox Lady’s tone held a certain firmness.
There was no room for negotiation whatsoever.
As if she were stating a conclusion that must be reached.
“You also have a responsibility to guide him to the end; you are death itself, you shouldn’t have personal preferences.” The woman spoke in a low voice, the shadow beneath her umbrella trembling slightly.
As if the afterimages of countless timelines were constantly surging and appearing within it.
“Hah, lecturing?”
Miss Death’s smile gradually turned cold.
The temperature in the studio suddenly dropped to freezing point, and the various biological specimens on display began to tremble uneasily, the eyeballs suspended in the glass jars all turning towards the white-dressed woman.
“You want to give Ian Kent a fated death?”
Miss Death softly repeated the words, her fingertips tracing her lips as if tasting some unfamiliar flavor, “My dear, it seems you’ve misunderstood something.”
“Who lives and who dies has never been for you to decide… Standing here, who do you think you’re talking to?” Her voice was no longer filled with languid sweetness.
Instead, it transformed into the deep bass of ten thousand lost souls roaring simultaneously. Miss Death’s black veil skirt moved without wind, the concept of death sweeping like a black tide, directly at the Time Lord, Paradox Lady.
In Miss Death’s domain, all life will eventually end, and all existence will return to nothingness—she is not a killer, she is the embodiment of the end.
“The erosion of death.”
The white-dressed woman’s pupils contracted slightly, but her figure remained as steady as a rock. The runes on her umbrella flickered wildly, resisting the erosion of death’s power.
The air between the two began to warp, and the laws of time and death collided fiercely at this moment.
Miss Death did not go all out.
She conducted a probe.
As expected.
The materialized concepts turned to dust the moment they touched the edge of the umbrella, and the shadow cast by the umbrella seemed to form a world of its own, isolating the concept of death.
That seemingly ordinary black umbrella was perhaps Paradox Lady’s greatest reliance. Miss Death’s attack was like a clay ox entering the sea, swallowed, distorted, and reversed by the “Paradox Space” beneath the umbrella.
Her power not only failed to reach Paradox Lady but was instead reflected back as a “resurrection force,” causing a long-dead character in a shattered mirror to reopen his eyes.
“Tsk.”
Miss Death’s expression grew colder.
“Dodged quickly.”
She said, raising her hand again and closing the eyes of the lucky one, allowing the briefly resurrected lucky one to return to his rightful place.
“Calm down, I hope you can calm down.”
The Time Lord’s voice still held a forced calmness.
“Believe me, I am absolutely not here to provoke, I am just doing what I must do—to fulfill an agreement.” She slightly lifted the umbrella, revealing her delicate jawline.
There was a golden crack flowing with temporal energy.
“So, you think you can persuade me?”
Miss Death suddenly smiled.
“Time Lord… you are using power that does not belong to you. It might be able to temporarily isolate my influence, but you and I will eventually meet at the end of your life.”
She did not continue her attack, but merely probed the power represented by the umbrella, which contained many universes and timelines. It was this “moat” that blocked her invitation.
“My life is stuck in a bug, so that time will never come.” Paradox Lady spoke softly, her tone betraying neither boastfulness nor sigh.
“Oh?”
The walls of the studio began to melt, revealing an endless void behind them. Countless lost souls slumbered within—Miss Death floated to eye level with Paradox Lady.
She tilted her head slightly, a hint of playful light flashing in her pitch-black pupils.
“Interesting.”
Miss Death did not deny the other’s statement, and perhaps having observed something, she lightly traced the umbrella’s surface with her fingertips, leaving a scorched mark emitting black smoke.
“I can sense you fear Ian Kent, yet you have no hatred for him, but you insist he must die… This is truly contradictory.” Her voice suddenly took on a hint of mockery.
“If you want him dead, you shouldn’t be asking me, but should go find the being who truly decides everything. What? Do you lack the courage to face our Creator directly?”
Miss Death’s tone was incredibly playful.
The shadow beneath the umbrella swayed slightly.
Paradox Lady’s golden pupils flickered behind her veil, and temporal sand trickled down from the cracks at the corners of her eyes.
“This is an agreement with only one outcome.”
Her voice was as calm as if she were reading a foregone conclusion.
Miss Death suddenly leaned in, close enough to see the liquid foundation condensed on the other’s eyelashes.
“An agreement with whom?”
Her exhaled breath formed frost on the veil.
“Could it be that old guy who’s always patching up timelines?”
Miss Death scoffed.
The white-dressed woman silently turned the umbrella handle, projections of countless universes appearing and disappearing on the umbrella’s surface.
“You can’t stop me.”
She finally spoke, her voice echoing, “Soon, God will disappear, and I will step forward to personally deliver Ian Kent’s fated death.”
The tip of the umbrella suddenly emitted a blinding golden light.
It dispelled the influence of Miss Death’s words. The studio’s glass suddenly shattered simultaneously, countless fragments suspended in the air, each reflecting a different death scene.
Ian struggling at the edge of a black hole, pierced by a Kryptonite spear, dissipating in a time paradox… Miss Death suddenly reached out and crushed the nearest piece of glass into dust.
“My dear, it seems you’ve forgotten who is the embodiment of death?” Her black veil gloves were covered in crystalline debris, and she contemptuously addressed the Time Lord before her with an irrefutable tone.
“Regarding your request, what if I say no?” Miss Death’s black veil gloves suddenly lifted, pressing down on the other’s umbrella, and Paradox Lady, somewhat astonished, finally let out a muffled groan.
But her grip on the umbrella handle remained firm.
The studio seemed to be plunged into endless darkness.
Only the umbrella still emitted a faint light, illuminating Paradox Lady’s delicate jawline. She tilted her head slightly, her golden pupils like two miniature suns in the darkness.
“I know you will agree.” She raised her left hand and gently pressed it against Miss Death’s chest, “After we have both gone to the end of time together.”
Without waiting for the intrigued Miss Death to speak, the white-dressed woman suddenly threw her head back and shouted.
“TARDIS! Now!”
The words fell.
The blue police box on the ceiling suddenly lit up with blinding light, and as the police light rotated, it released a powerful force field ripple. The entire death studio began to shake violently, and the glass specimens on the display shelves began to explode one after another. Glass fragments floated in the air, each reflecting the silhouettes of the two women confronting each other.
“You dare—”
Miss Death’s angry roar was drowned out by the hum of dimensional transition.
The British police box projected countless golden light strips, enveloping the entire space like a spider web. With the final flash, the studio and the police box underwent some kind of transition together.
The police box, the small shop, Miss Death, Paradox Lady… everything, disappeared without a trace. The dimensional rift returned to silence, as if no one had ever spoken here.
Along with the figures of the two supreme beings, they were completely erased from the sight of all observers.
Gotham—Batcave.
Clark’s pupils contracted sharply. He had lost the vision he was using to peek into the dimensional rift. Not only that, but after retracting his gaze, Clark’s eyes felt sore and strained from the overuse of his powers.
“They’ve vanished. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but those two women had a dispute and have now disappeared from my sight together. They seem to have performed some kind of spatial jump.”
Clark’s ears had not yet evolved to that extent, so it was like watching a silent film, one with a limited field of vision that prevented him from utilizing his lip-reading talent.
“My tracking was also unsuccessful.” Bruce looked up from the console, his fingers quickly sliding across the holographic projection. Dozens of surveillance feeds projected based on Superman’s “scientific” biology simultaneously flashed with “signal lost” warnings. He pondered for a moment and made further adjustments on the console.
“It’s not invisibility. The force field fluctuations indicate they may have left this universe.” Bruce Wayne’s words fell, and he ceased his futile investigation.
The existing Bat-tech was still somewhat insufficient.
“Clark, you need to find a way to evolve your eyes further.” Bruce Wayne knew that improving his Bat-tech in a short period would be troublesome.
The best way was to urge and remind Superman to evolve quickly. Just as Superman relied on Batman as his external brain, Superman was also a part of Batman’s Bat-tech.
As the saying goes, true friends are perhaps like this.
“With great power comes great responsibility.” Bruce’s face remained impassive as he plagiarized Ian’s famous quote. “Since you can see dimensional rifts, you should be able to see further, perhaps all the multiverses, even beyond the multiverses, to see that fictional universe drawn in the comic where Ian is.”
“Then, I will acknowledge you as the true Superman.”
Batman’s superb resonant voice spurred Clark on.
“…”
Clark looked at Bruce’s serious and earnest face and suddenly felt an urge to shove Kryptonite down his throat. Fortunately, he was now completely sober.
The taste of alcohol was gone.
He even lacked the perfect opportunity to feign drunkenness.
“Stop with the Ian-speak. The immediate priority is to find out that woman’s identity. My intuition tells me she’s not a ‘good person’.”
In the Batcave, the red and blue cape hung over the cold metal floor, intersecting with the shadow of the Bat-symbol. Clark Kent stood before the console, his brow furrowed.
His gaze once again lingered in the direction of the “disappeared dimension.”
“If intuition were useful, then this world wouldn’t need investigation, analysis, research, or deduction.” Bruce Wayne stood before the terminal, his fingers flying across the keyboard. Without looking up, he expressed his distrust of Clark’s intuition. It was normal; Batman only trusted his own Bat-intuition.
“Then what are your thoughts?”
Clark turned to look at Bruce Wayne.
“To get an answer, you need to let me see your brain.” Upon hearing this, Bruce paused his operation again, slowly turned around, his gaze locking onto Clark like a probe.
“You’re using this as an excuse to study me again, aren’t you?” Clark sighed, but resignedly stood up. His superb vision had already allowed him to see from his seated position that Batman had deployed some kind of instrument.
This meant that the other party was not at all asking for his opinion.
“The Kent family’s Super Brain that Ian always raves about is indeed well-deserved.” Bruce offered a little emotional value and then led Clark towards a brand-new instrument in the corner that Clark had never seen before—the machine resembled a metal chair, topped with a complex neural interface helmet covered in flashing quantum nodes.
“When did you build this thing?” Clark sat on the instrument that looked like it was from a sci-fi movie, allowing Bruce to put the helmet on him. However, the moment the helmet clicked shut, he couldn’t help but ask, “When you were detecting Barry’s dreamscape before, you already realized you’d need to probe my memories and dreams someday?”
It had to be said that after living for so many years, Superman was still that innocent youth. Hearing this, Bruce’s fingers paused for a moment at the connection terminal.
“Clark, do you remember the first time we met?” He looked up, answering a question with a question, his eyes beneath the mask appearing particularly deep in the dim light.
Clark paused, then finally nodded.
“You beat me up so badly, of course I wouldn’t forget.” He looked at the awkward Batman with his death gaze, and Batman quickly shook his head, saying it wasn’t that time.
He guided Clark to recall, and Clark finally had a sudden realization.
“Oh, right. If you mean the first informal meeting, I also remember it was on a cruise ship. I was on vacation and was assigned to the same room as you on the same cruise ship. Thinking back now, that was probably not a coincidence.” Clark hadn’t lived all these years in vain.
He had indeed made some progress in utilizing his Super Brain.
“Yes, that was many years ago.” Bruce Wayne replied with an incredibly emotional voice, continuing to adjust the instrument’s wiring.
“So, it was then that you already built these instruments targeting me?” Clark asked in disbelief, his tone laced with exasperation.
“No.”
Bruce Wayne shook his head.
“It was a bit earlier than that… probably when you were still in college.” Batman continued to connect the wires, revealing a secret buried deep in his heart for many years.
“.”
Clark was, of course, completely taken by surprise.
It was as if ten thousand Grass Mud Horses with bat heads were stampeding through his mind.
“What does that have to do with us meeting for the first time?” He rolled his eyes in annoyance, looking at Batman with a strange tone. Batman was still engrossed in organizing the wires.
“It doesn’t have much to do with it, but I just wanted you to recall our years of friendship, so you wouldn’t get too angry about it.” Batman’s voice remained calm.
Clark paused again.
A warmth suddenly surged in his heart.
Just as he was about to marvel that Batman actually considered others’ feelings,
Batman added another sentence.
“Getting angry will affect the operation of this machine.” Batman finished arranging the wires and walked towards the control console, signaling Clark with his eyes to sit properly and not move.
“…”
Clark’s smile froze, and his fists clenched instantly. Batman hadn’t used his fists, but with just one sentence, he had shattered Clark’s dream of friendship, which truly made him grind his teeth.
Of course, unlike Ian, Clark was good at judging the situation. Since he was wearing the other party’s equipment, he feared retaliation, so he could only manage a very strained smile.
“Let’s begin.”
Clark sighed softly, deciding that after this was over, he would pretend not to see Ian move Wayne Enterprises’ satellites behind the sun when Ian launched his satellites.
A real man’s revenge was thus silent.
“Mhm.”
Bruce Wayne, whose Bat-Intelligence hadn’t alerted him immediately, failed to read the mind of the darkened Superman. After giving a reminder, he activated the refurbished antique.
Instantly.
Clark’s consciousness felt a sense of disorientation.
The memory projection began to play—Batman’s pupils contracted slightly. On the screen, in Clark’s consciousness dimension, countless starlights flashed by rapidly as he fell through layers of temporal fragments. And at the end of that void, the white-dressed woman stood quietly, a mysterious smile curving her lips beneath her veil.
He, of course, also noticed the déjà vu of this smile.
The instrument stopped operating.
Clark took off the helmet.
“How was it? Did you find anything?”
Superman saw Bruce Wayne’s expression constantly changing and anxiously asked, but Bruce Wayne did not answer his question immediately.
The Gotham Freak had been focusing on the recorded memory, but not on the woman’s smile; instead, he zoomed in on the umbrella in the woman’s hand, as if he had discovered something.
No one knew what information he had perceived. When Clark’s gaze fell upon him, he had already deleted the backup recording file from the computer.
Some files were only to be stored in Bruce Wayne’s own mind.
That was the safest archive.
Just like the memory palace that Sherlock Holmes prided himself on, it was not only mastered by Gotham’s Master but also by some unknown villains in Gotham.
“What’s wrong?”
Clark walked over and only saw a blank operation screen. Batman was staring at the screen as if deep in thought, even his philtrum furrowed.
This was much more difficult than just furrowing his brow.
Bruce stared at the screen, silent for a long time.
When Clark shook him, asking if he had been disturbed by something again and threatening to find a crowbar to crack open his skull to check for new outer-universe contamination, Bruce Wayne, whose joke had only a 49% sincerity, immediately forced himself to break free from his thoughts.
“Do you think there’s a possibility—that Ian Kent has a twin sister?” He slowly turned around, his gaze like a knife, fixing on Clark, who was already preparing the crowbar.
At Batman’s place.
Clark’s decisive determination was always serious.
“What? Why are you suddenly asking this?” Clark was slightly regretful as Bruce Wayne spoke human words again. He threw away the crowbar he used to scare Batman, feeling a bit confused.
“I discovered something peculiar.”
Under Clark’s gaze, Bruce Wayne offered a terse explanation, not elaborating on the reasons for his discovery.
It’s not without reason that he’ll have his skull knocked off by Clark one day.
“Riddler, right? A Gotham specialty, right?” Clark was accustomed to Batman’s personality, knowing he could crack the man’s skull but not pry open his mouth.
He pondered for a moment, about to say he couldn’t answer that question either but felt it unlikely. A very clear, violent tremor came from underground.
Even a normal person could feel that commotion.
“An earthquake?”
Bruce Wayne’s mind briefly flashed with the thought, but he immediately dismissed the possibility of an earthquake. Meanwhile, Clark had already used his vision to penetrate the ground.
It was too late.
The floor suddenly bulged, and gravel and dust flew everywhere. Batman and Superman both took a step back, looking speechlessly at the ground that continued to collapse. The next moment, a hand covered in mud broke through the earth, followed by messy black hair, and finally a dirt-covered but triumphant face.
“Haha! I knew Gotham’s foundation wouldn’t stop me!” Ian Kent crawled out of the hole, patting the dirt off himself with the pride and dishevelment of a returning veteran.
He still had residual alloy fragments in his mouth. Clearly, Bruce Wayne’s alloy foundation was no match for God’s eternal foundation; it was only good for a crispy crunch in Ian’s mouth.
It was as tasty as shortbread biscuits.
【 Entropy Annihilation Lord Experience Points +21】
【 Entropy Annihilation Lord Experience Points +19】
【 Entropy Annihilation Lord Experience Points +23】
……
Ian knew he could always expect a warm welcome at Batman’s.
He emerged from underground, his mouth full of genuine steel debris. Being thirsty, he looked around for a little energy drink that couldn’t be bought elsewhere.
“Uncle Bruce, your Uncle Ian needs your help. Quickly make me a pair of iron underwear that even God can’t open. I know you can make it if you truly want to.”
While searching for a drink, Ian tried to manipulate Bruce Wayne. He was truly frightened, not knowing what would happen if the Creation Goddess found him.
And would God, in his anger, decide to ‘sleep’ again, forcing Ian to be ‘slept’ twice? He didn’t want such sexual harassment to happen to him.
If Bruce could get out of his wheelchair so quickly, then Bruce could surely perform a Bat-miracle and create the iron underwear Ian wanted. This was Ian’s respect for Batman!
【 Savage Tyrant Experience Points +88】
【 Savage Tyrant Experience Points +96】
【 Savage Tyrant Experience Points +87】
……
However, after seizing the opportunity and drinking many energy drinks, Ian finally noticed the atmosphere in the room—Clark Kent sat in a chair, his cape dim, his eyes weary.
Bruce Wayne stood before the console, expressionless, watching many of his poisons be drunk by Ian as strengthening medicine. Yet, he didn’t see Ian fall down and foam at the mouth as he had hoped.
This boy.
After drinking the poison, he became even more energetic.
“That’s not right! Dad, why are you here? My black box told me this was a secret garden only Batman knew about, a place he uses to hide when avoiding nuisances!” Ian saw Bruce and his father, and in his shock, quickly asked.
“Dad! Are you having a late-night rendezvous with Batman behind Mom’s back?” After all, being in Free America, Ian had to consider the worst-case scenario.
This was the way of thinking taught to him by 《 Upper Echelon Entry Guide 》.
“????”
“?????”
Clark and Batman reacted strongly, their faces a picture of astonishment. Batman wanted to create a real sewing machine to stitch Ian’s mouth shut, while Clark simply slapped his forehead.
A crisp sound, like that of a good brain being hit, echoed in the air. Clark didn’t want to answer such questions, so when faced with Ian’s pestering, he could only point to the large bed in the room.
A drunken Lois was sound asleep on it.
“!!!!!!!!”
Ian’s reaction was immense, almost leaping to the ceiling. His questioning voice abruptly stopped as he finally noticed the unconscious Lois on the bed, drunk.
At this moment.
Ian, who had always considered his parents traditional, felt struck by lightning. However, before he could unleash a nuclear explosion of words, Batman had silently slipped towards the main door, his finger about to touch the emergency escape button. Seeing the Bat-freak about to escape, Ian used a Tyrant Leap, instantly flashing to block his path.
“I knew I heard it! Someone said they wanted to have a sister for me! Damn it, Uncle Bruce! Are you trying to hide from your Uncle Ian because you’re too embarrassed to face him?”
Ian was truly furious.
Fortunately, Clark, seeing this, quickly explained the whole story, preventing Ian, who wanted to protect his family’s happiness, from jumping up and ripping Bruce Wayne’s head off. Clark didn’t know if Bruce Wayne had any backup plans; he just didn’t want Ian to clash with Batman due to a misunderstanding.
“So that’s how it is… a mysterious woman… stole my smile without paying royalties. Nowadays, even when I send an emoji, I have to pay a fee.”
Ian’s expression gradually became serious.
However, his focus was clearly in the wrong direction.
“That’s not the point, is it?”
Clark sighed and looked at his own young son.
“Yes, yes, the point is I failed to save God’s marriage. The Creation Goddess is already looking for me all over the world. The urgent matter is for Uncle Bruce to make an invincible iron underwear for his Uncle Ian.” Ian immediately reacted, wanting to hit Bruce’s head, but Bruce dodged.
“Can you stop talking about ‘Uncle’ every other sentence?”
Bruce Wayne was as weary as Clark. To be honest, if Ian were truly malicious and wanted to do something truly evil, he could find a way to punish him.
Unfortunately, this boy only wanted to be an uncle and had no other evil thoughts in his eyes. This truly made Bruce Wayne, who knew the boy wasn’t lying, feel like he had met his nemesis.
In comparison.
His own brat was too pure, innocent, and untainted!
“Iron underwear that even God can’t open? Are you thinking too highly of me? Honestly, wish for someone else. I think your dad is a good candidate.”
“Let him work hard to evolve into iron underwear for you to inherit,” Bruce Wayne was already studying Ian’s thought process, attempting to get close to it.
However.
Ian tilted his head and thought.
He suddenly took out a handful of colorful alchemical materials from his pocket: “Then I’ll go find Big Brother Thomas! He can definitely make it. After all, bats are more flavorful when they’re old… I mean, smarter.”
He genuinely didn’t misspeak; he was multitasking, and his Super Brain couldn’t handle everything. As Ian took out the alchemical materials and began to arrange them properly.
Bruce Wayne instantly stiffened.
He wasn’t ready yet! But a teleportation array emitting purple smoke had already lit up on the ground, and a smell resembling sulfur began to permeate the Batcave.
“Wait!”
Bruce lunged forward and stomped out the formation.
“Let me think about it.”
He said, looking at Ian’s expectant eyes, adding with difficulty.
“It might take some time.” The King of Gotham used a stratagem, a delaying tactic, but at least it wasn’t just empty promises. He grudgingly stopped Ian’s action.
He only mentioned time, not a specific duration, so he wasn’t lying. Ian saw through this, but it didn’t prevent him from expressing his gratitude.
“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” Ian believed Batman would never disappoint him. Unlike The Flash, Batman was the type to most likely save friends and family just in time.
Of course, this trait didn’t apply when it came to his parents’ relationship.
“I knew Uncle Bruce would definitely make it! Go for it!” Ian instantly switched from “angry mode” to “grateful mode,” making him act as if he had found a savior.
First, he put away the materials.
Then, he prepared himself.
Next.
Under the dumbfounded gaze of his father Clark, Ian, without a word, plopped down—not kneeling, but standing on his elbows, “supporting” himself on the ground.
This was a way of showing gratitude that only a Super Brain could conceive.
“Thump!”
His elbows hit the ground with a dull thud. Ian’s elbows rested on the ground, his knees bent and suspended, perfectly demonstrating his astonishing talent that “a man’s knees have gold, but a man’s elbows do not.”
This was the height of wisdom.
“…”
Clark watched his son’s fluid movements, truly speechless. For a moment, he couldn’t tell who the strange alien was between himself and Ian.
“You felt my sincerity, and I felt yours. So—stop crawling on the ground in the darkness. If I remember correctly, it’s almost time for you to sleep.” Batman looked at Ian standing on his hands, feeling like his muscles were about to twitch out twenty-four abs.
“Huh?” Ian blinked and quickly pulled out his watch, which had a different graffiti style drawn on it every day, featuring a grinning skull and “Zzz” symbols.
This was a manually adjusted graffiti dial, much more practical than an electronic watch.
“That’s right, I have to sleep. Early to bed, early to rise, good health.” He immediately pulled out a sleeping bag printed with “Ian’s Special” from his fourth-dimensional pocket, his movements as practiced as if he had rehearsed them a thousand times.
Ever since the last time he slept anywhere, Ian had made some civilized preparations. He saw Ian turn back and urge Bruce to pay close attention to this matter, saying that Uncle Ian’s innocence depended entirely on his brain, and then he crawled into the sleeping bag, wriggling with it to under Lois’s bed.
As Ian peacefully closed his eyes.
The sleeping bag fell completely silent.
The laboratory suddenly became frighteningly quiet.
Clark and Bruce stood in place, staring at each other.
“Don’t speak,” Bruce broke the silence first, his voice raspy as if sandpaper had been used to rub it. He anticipated Clark’s anticipation, so he gave a heads-up in advance.
“Your little son is not my uncle.”
He said with certainty, his voice firm, with a kind of stubborn handsomeness.
“To be honest, Bruce, that was your father’s choice,” Superman suddenly looked thoughtful, patting Batman’s shoulder as he spoke earnestly.
“We should all respect our fathers, shouldn’t we?” It was hard to imagine how Clark could hold back; he used an impeccable, just reason to silence Bruce Wayne.
Bruce’s mouth twitched.
Clark, however, became even more serious.
“Oh, right, speaking of which, perhaps the relationship between you and me needs to be redefined?” He deliberately counted on his fingers, his tone carrying a rather exaggerated confusion.
“If Ian is your uncle, then I should be your…” He didn’t finish the sentence, merely fixing his heat-ray-emitting eyes on Bruce Wayne.
At this moment.
Superman’s silent gaze felt more scorching to Bruce Wayne than a heat ray.
He was extremely uncomfortable.
“I’m going to check on Ian’s condition.” Bruce Wayne changed the subject, decisively turning around and striding towards Lois’s bedding. He then knelt on one knee and reached out to pull the sleeping bag.
However.
Bruce Wayne’s fingers passed through the surface of the sleeping bag.
Even the sleeping bag had become ethereal, impossible to touch. Bruce frowned and tried a few more times. The sleeping bag was like a holographic projection, intangible and emitting strange ripples on its surface.
This was not invisibility or an illusion; it was a shift in the level of existence. It was no longer in the physical space of this dimension but had entered some kind of “pre-sleep reality bubble.”
Only Ian could enter and exit it.
“As expected, it’s the same as Barry said… What kind of phenomenon is this? Is it a self-protection mechanism?” Batman Bruce Wayne muttered in surprise, lowing his voice.
He couldn’t understand.
So he immediately got up to fetch a detection instrument, hoping to test Ian’s existence for any unknown abnormal data on-site.
Just then—
“Hahahahahaha!!!”
A burst of maniacal laughter suddenly echoed throughout the Batcave. The laughter sounded like Bruce Wayne’s voice, yet it carried a chilling quality.
Before Clark and Batman could react.
Boom!!!
All the alarm systems in the Batcave instantly exploded!
Red lights flashed, and the alarms flooded the entire space like a tide. All computer screens lit up simultaneously, their images distorting, eventually freezing on a familiar face—Clark Kent’s face.
But it wasn’t Clark.
“Did you miss me?”
Injustice Superman’s face appeared on every screen. Those emotionless eyes, seemingly devoid of thought, stared directly at the real-world Clark and Bruce.
Simultaneously.
Inside the sleeping bag.
Amidst the dramatic bell tolls, Ian, without a long journey, instantly teleported into the Marvel Universe, just like at the beginning. He had expected to “refresh” into the previous black hole.
However, he found himself standing in Earth’s rain. The raindrops pattered on Ian’s face, cold and real. He blinked, looked down at his hands—no black hole tearing, no dimensional distortion—he was simply standing abruptly in Earth’s rain, as if precisely “projected” here by some force.
“It seems that New Teacher Tony’s calculations were mistaken…”
Ian looked up at the gloomy sky, rain water sliding down his cheeks.
The street was empty and silent, with only the sound of rain echoing in his ears. In the distance, street lamps flickered erratically, as if their current was being interfered with by some force. Just as Ian was about to find the real New Teacher Tony to borrow another spaceship and return to the universe with the unrivaled aura of a second playthrough to save his followers.
“Ian Kent…”
A hoarse, low voice came from the end of the street, accompanied by the rhythm of a cane tapping the ground.
“I know about you, yes, Ian Kent, the world’s first superhero. People call you Superman… and you are the one who finally released all of us.”
“I’m a fan of yours.”
The voice was old, yet held a hint of teasing.
Ian turned to look.
In the rain, an old man in a well-tailored suit walked slowly towards him. Every time his ruby cane touched the ground, it created an unnatural ripple in the puddles.
“I’ve been watching you.”
The old man smiled.
But his eyes burned with hellish flames.
At this very moment.
A blinding white lightning bolt suddenly tore through the night sky, illuminating the entire street as brightly as hell. In an instant, the old man’s benevolent face was revealed in perfect detail; beneath the slack skin, the true form of a demon emerged. Sulphur-colored flames flickered in its eye sockets, and its mouth stretched to its ears.
Revealing two rows of fine, sharp teeth.
The moment the lightning faded, the face returned to human form.
“Ah?”
Ian was stunned.
“Scared?”
The old man blinked, revealing an overly kind smile. At this moment, raindrops hung suspended in mid-air, each water droplet reflecting his demonic face from moments before.
“Don’t worry, really, don’t worry.” His crutch lightly tapped the ground, and all the raindrops simultaneously exploded into small green flames. “This is just a small surprise for the fan meeting.”
He walked step by step towards Ian.
He raised his hand.
Wanting to touch Ian’s cheek.
“Your fan wants to give you a little gift, perhaps…” Before the old man could finish speaking, he saw Ian’s eyes light up, and he bit down on his palm.
“Mephisto! It’s you! Chicken flavor! Crispy! Ten times the nutritional value of ordinary demons!” Ian’s teeth were no less numerous than the teeth of the astonished demon.
This is how the Lord Evil God is.
He can grow as many rows of teeth as he wants.
Teeth personally tested by DC God, whoever gets bitten knows it!
