BXBX NOVEL Chapter 67: Ch.66 Resolution
Chapter 67: Ch.66 Resolution
There was no chant, no warning. Suddenly, their bodies exploded, sending thick, black slime flying everywhere. The powerful shockwave caused the entire cavern to tremble.
Barry felt as though he had dodged it, but several strands of black energy clung to him like parasitic worms. In an instant, it seemed to transcend the concepts of speed and space, carving deep gashes into his legs. His knees buckled, and he tumbled, crashing into the wall.
Su Ming and Bryce were further away. As the strong wind rushed in, Su Ming tackled Bryce to the ground, using his promethium armor to provide excellent protection against the magical onslaught.
The strong wind pressed against his back, and he felt as if he had been stomped by some giant beast. The black energy was repelled, and he suffered only minor injuries from the impact. But a torrent of memories surged into his mind, making his face grimace.
Bryce\'s black Batwoman suit looked dusty and grey, truly resembling a bat. Su Ming pressed his head, struggling to organize the flood of memories.
"Barry, are you okay?" He slowly stood up, brushing the dust off his suit. The cavern\'s tremors gradually ceased, and no more dust fell. It seemed unlikely to collapse, at least for now.
"Cough, cough... I\'m fine, just a scratch." Barry rolled over and lay on his back. The abrupt stop had thrown him far, and he had crashed into the wall. "I thought they\'d at least chant something before they committed suicide. Why don\'t they follow the script?"
"Haha, maybe they were chanting in their minds." Su Ming walked over and examined Barry\'s leg wound. It wasn\'t too severe, and the black energy wasn\'t lingering around the injury.
Bryce also approached, squatting beside Barry to check his wound. "Do you need some Lazarus Water?"
Barry quickly shook his head. He knew Batman had resisted its side effects through sheer willpower, but he was just a scientist, not a warrior with an indomitable will.
"No, it turns people into bloodthirsty maniacs. I\'d become a rampaging madman who couldn\'t calm down without killing. My abilities are too dangerous. If I lose control, it\'ll be disastrous."
"Barry\'s right. Let\'s just bandage it. Speedsters heal much faster than normal people. We can use this time to clear the area." Su Ming took the roll of bandages Bryce handed him and began wrapping Barry\'s leg in a field dressing style.
As for field dressing, it was a straightforward process in the heat of battle: press down on the blood vessels and wrap the bandages haphazardly. After bandaging, Su Ming helped Barry to lean against the wall, and he and Bryce began inspecting the cavern.
Aside from the priests who had self-detonated, the ground was littered with bodies. Bryce\'s face was expressionless. She had thought they might be human, but now it was clear they were monsters. If she had known earlier, she would have taken action herself.
Indeed, the Bat\'s no-kill rule only applied to human beings on Earth. Aliens and monsters were exceptions. Even the main world\'s Batman had slaughtered many on Apokolips.
Su Ming searched the corpses of the monsters but found nothing of value. These creatures didn\'t even have personal belongings. So, he simply threw their bodies into the black well. The black liquid below churned like boiling asphalt, swallowing the mummified remains one by one.
"What do you think is down there?" Bryce asked, standing to the side, not interfering with Su Ming\'s actions.
"Some manifestation of dark energy, I suppose. These bodies dissolve in it, but the principle is unclear." Su Ming tossed the last corpse down and clapped his hands, then removed four grenades from his chest and threw them into the well.
There was a muffled explosion, like popcorn popping. The black well collapsed, deeply buried underground. Rocks and sand completely covered it, and no black substance splashed out.
"To be honest, I wasn\'t too optimistic about such a reckless plan," Bryce said with a blank expression.
"We always take risks. There\'s no such thing as a 100% success rate in this world. Luckily, you found Bat-Metal. If we hadn\'t found it, we\'d be in big trouble. The longer we fought these things, the more variables would arise. If they had discovered the \'human pyramid incantation\' technique, Barry\'s crowd-control would\'ve been useless."
Su Ming inhaled the faint scent of gunpowder in the air, feeling slightly relieved. Before coming here, he had only been fifty percent sure. That\'s why he had told Cindy everything he knew. If the three of them didn\'t make it, maybe she could find a way to survive.
It was fortunate he had sent Bryce to find the key item. As expected of DC\'s darling.
Next, he decided to search for any stragglers. Despite the commotion they\'d caused, the priests\' fanatical faith would have driven them to join the battle, but there could still be special cases. Better to search again.
"I\'ll head up to turn off the site\'s alarm. You two be careful." She swung her cape and quickly disappeared into the darkness.
Waiting wasn\'t enough. Su Ming searched through the underground passages. Aside from the priests\' living quarters, the underground space wasn\'t very large, not even comparable to the underground lab in Indian Hill.
All the enemies had been eliminated. In a large room at the back, there were some members of the Court of Owls who had committed suicide. Their bodies were still fresh, with blood not yet dried. He simply piled them together with their books and documents and set them ablaze with a lighter, filling the underground with smoke and dust.
The place where they had fallen led in the other direction to a hidden exit, located in a dried-up underground riverbed outside the Valley of the Kings. By the time the three of them returned to the surface, it was already dark.
The temperature in the desert dropped quickly. Not a single cloud marred the sky, and the stars above seemed almost within reach.
In the open desert, the sky always appeared vast.
"We\'ve taken out the main base of the Strigidae. Now only the Gotham branch remains. Strigidae Priests are like tribal shamans; they typically don\'t wander the world," Su Ming said, supporting Barry as they headed towards the Nile.
"There may still be a few in Gotham," Bryce said, warily scanning their surroundings.
"Cairo and Gotham—one is their brain, the other their claws," Su Ming nodded, affirming her words, as he carried Barry towards the river. "Members of the Court of Owls are spread across the world, but without their priesthood, their means of contacting Barbatos have been severed. It would take them three to five years to train new Strigidae. By then, we\'ll have solved the problem in the main world."
"When you say \'definitely,\' you sound anything but certain. You don\'t think I understand what a multiversal god represents? I just hope things won\'t get too bad." Bryce shook her head. She was always firmly opposed to blind optimism.
Su Ming glanced at her, then at Barry. "That\'s the main world\'s problem. Barry\'s already agreed to hire me to fix it, right?"
"Uh..." Barry scratched his head, showing an embarrassed smile. "I think... yeah? But I\'m not sure Bryce would pay for it..."
"You\'re a member of the Justice League. Your actions represent the League. Bryce doesn\'t care about money; there\'s a 90% chance he\'ll pay. If he doesn\'t, I\'ll go to Lex Luthor. He thinks he\'s humanity\'s savior and won\'t refuse to pay for the world. Then I\'ll hold a press conference and say the Justice League and Superman caused all this trouble. I\'ve got plenty of evidence, and the world\'s scumbags will back me up..."
Su Ming set him down. The three of them found a sheltered niche in the cliff and started a fire, waiting for Barry\'s leg to heal.
Barry looked conflicted. He wasn\'t sure if Su Ming would actually go that far for money, but he felt it was better to get Bryce to pay up.
Su Ming, however, was mostly joking. Some things were better left unknown to ordinary people. Keep it hidden if you can.
"The Luthor Corporation... Well, I\'d like to hear your next plan," Bryce interrupted his and Barry\'s idle chatter, looking at Su Ming thoughtfully.
Su Ming poked at the fire with a dry branch, a piece of driftwood washed down from the Nile\'s upper reaches. Finding firewood in other deserts wasn\'t this easy: "After dealing with human traitors, the next step is to resolve this world\'s main conflict, the military standoff between Themyscira and Atlantis."
"That\'s what I thought too, but it requires a meticulous plan," Bryce nodded, the firelight casting a red glow on her face.
Su Ming shook his head, not sure if he was disagreeing or just feeling helpless: "Plans don\'t need to be overly meticulous. Human nature and the brain are fascinating things. Sometimes the enemy\'s misconceptions will work in our favor, filling gaps we leave
open. That\'s truly flawless."
"Because people only believe what they want to believe..." Bryce seemed to understand something and fell silent.
Barry looked at Su Ming, his helmet spattered with black blood, concealing any expression. Then he glanced at Bryce, but she always had a poker face, making it impossible to read her thoughts.
He could only raise his hand, indicating he wanted to speak: "But they\'ve been at war for centuries. This isn\'t a conflict born from misunderstanding; it\'s a fight for world domination."