redvbooks Chapter 576 Let the Dark Multiverse Be Great Again!
Chapter 576 Let the Dark Multiverse Be Great Again!
Chapter 576 Let the Dark Multiverse Be Great Again!
During the short time that the Laughing Bat and Chen Tao were exchanging words, their minds were like ultra-high-speed computers, each processing a whole host of information.
Chen Tao pondered the contents he had left for the Justice League when he thought he was going to die. Although he deleted the contents that the Justice League shouldn't know as soon as he rebuilt the cosmic fortress, quite a few members of the Justice League had still read the entire contents.
Aside from Thunder's Jazz, Sleeping King Hal Jordan, Brokeback Barry Allen, and Talking Fish Man Arthur Curry who was busy treating his fish head, almost all the other Justice League bigwigs, including Lex Luthor, had read all the content. Of the other four, besides Flash, who was lying in the hospital, and Thunder's Jazz, who hadn't even thought about reading it, the other two had also read a portion.
The plan to improve my teammates needs to be put on the agenda...
Chen Tao thought to himself silently.
Ultimately, however, his overall strategy for the Dark Knights and Barbatos in his suicide note was always focused on escape.
What a joke! If he died at the hands of the Anti-Monitors, how could he possibly have planned any Justice League to fight the Dark Knights?
For a multiverse-level crisis like the metal, the best course of action is to go into hiding, leave it to fate, and gamble on whether one of them dies first or the Justice League of the main universe, the most powerful "immune system" in the multiverse, resolves Barbatos.
Chen Tao knew deep down that his Justice League was not capable of taking over, and he also considered the issue of leaks—what if he left the entire plot of "Metal" directly to the Justice League, and as a result, his Justice League was captured by the Dark Knights, allowing Barbatos to know the plot in advance? Wouldn't that be a catastrophe for the main universe?
So although he left behind a storyline, it was done in a way that was hidden in two layers. Only after his Justice League found the main universe's Justice League would the second layer of his secret plan be revealed.
Now, although his Justice League has read the information he left behind, it is only at the level of the first layer of the secret plan. They only have some understanding of the Dark Knights and know a part of the story, but they do not fully understand the story of the metal.
Therefore, there is no need to erase the memory yet.
Moreover, his Justice League members also need a crisis, and the responsibilities they should bear.
Don't be a nanny! Don't be a nanny! Don't be a nanny!
Chen Tao suppressed the bad thoughts in his heart.
He turned his attention back to what was in front of him.
He turned the tables on the Batman Who Laughs, and at this point, whether the Batman Who Laughs refused or agreed, it would be advantageous to him.
Chen Tao didn't know exactly what the Batman Who Laughs planned to do, but just by thinking about it from the perspective of any random skeleton in the Dark Multiverse, he knew that if he didn't want to become a skeleton, he should never let the Batman Who Laughs lead him by the nose.
As for the Bat of Laughter, after a brief moment of astonishment upon hearing Chen Tao's words, he immediately understood the other's intention:
The level of trust is far from sufficient...
Despite knowing he was being suspected, the Batman Who Laughs wasn't overly worried about him. It was Bruce who knew all too well what Batman was thinking. If someone like Batman trusted him completely after just one conversation, the Batman Who Laughs would suspect that the other was plotting something big against him.
He knew very well that after his first meeting with Superman, it took him a long time to gradually dare to entrust his trust to him. Of course, in the end, he killed him, haha—but this became one of the many things he regretted.
(Note: In the Batman v2 publication, the Batman Who Laughs explicitly mentioned that he regretted hastily killing Clark Kent, the Superman of his universe, which is also the reason why he tried to take down the Superman of the main universe.)
However, Batman's inherent skepticism is a huge obstacle for the Batman Who Laughs at this moment, making it difficult for him to manipulate him.
To be fair, The Batman Who Laughs' acting was good enough, and such rhetoric, regardless of which Batman he was dealing with, except for the one from the main universe, could at least establish a certain degree of trust.
The Batman Who Laughs could naturally use subsequent methods to gradually strengthen this sense of trust, but the Batman in front of him proposed some kind of Dark Multiverse Resistance and then gave him the position of leader, which clearly showed that he had no trust at all.
This is similar to Batman's initial tacit acceptance of Superman becoming the leader of the Justice League, while secretly spying on him from the shadows.
So the Laughing Bat made the following choice:
Point it out to my face.
"I know you don't trust me." He sighed. "You suspect I'm a Barbatos spy, plotting to lure you to your death, or a new-age Trojan horse."
The Batman Who Laughs knows Batman too well. He should treat all of Batman's "I trust you, so I made you the leader" nonsense as utter rubbish. But that doesn't mean Batman doesn't believe him at all. What he does is to reinforce that belief.
Mad Laugh paused, looking to see if Batman intended to talk to him properly, but all he heard was Chen Tao continuing, "Boss Mad Laugh! How could I not trust you? I've finally found my organization! From today onwards, I'm your most loyal little brother!"
The maniacal laughter was somewhat irritating, which is why he disliked Batman characters who laughed like him the most.
Their speech is not as predictable as that of a regular Batman. Although a Joker and a Batman can be combined to create a laughing Batman, the ingredients for different laughing Batmen are different. Even if he laughs and uses two minds at the same time, it is impossible to immediately analyze what the other person is thinking. This is completely different from the other Batmen he has faced in the Dark Multiverse.
Then he let out a few low laughs that sounded like crying, and said, "Be serious, the most dangerous enemies we face right now are still the Emperor Joker and the Black Death Emperor..."
"Boss, I've had this idea for a while, but I never managed to put it into practice. Your appearance has finally given me the courage. I want to recruit more people for our organization and help it grow stronger. What do you think?"
Chen Tao deliberately didn't talk about how to develop and expand. He wanted to finish some things before he could go to Kuang Xiao and give him a surprise, especially since what he needed to do was not just to deal with the Black Death Emperor.
Kuang Xiao was getting annoyed by Chen Tao's continued refusal to follow his lead and his repeated irrelevant answers.
Actually, the Batman Who Laughs wasn't stupid. He had initially mistaken the other party for one of the Dark Multiverse Batmen he could guide. However, the other party kept evading the question, talking at length about some ridiculous Dark Multiverse Resistance Army that shouldn't exist and would never exist, and its plans and deployments. The Batman Who Laughs realized that the other party was simply trying to raise the price, hoping that he, the Batman Who Laughs, would offer a reasonable price before obediently following his orders.
The problem now is that the Black Death Emperor is invading the other's universe, while the Batman Who Laughs is here to help the other. The initiative should be on the Batman Who Laughs' side.
He has already hinted, both openly and subtly, that he possesses a method to help the other party defeat the Black Death Emperor and block the Emperor Joker. At this point, shouldn't the other party want to know what his method is?
Despite being at a disadvantage, the other party kept quiet, only rambling on about unrelated things: "Our organization is an underground organization that secretly opposes Barbatos, and now that we have me, we can build a fortress in the open, and then..."
The Laughing Bat could only patiently analyze the hidden meanings in the other party's words, piecing together their purpose little by little from their evasive and nonsensical remarks.
What exactly does the other party want? Even at the cost of refraining from directly asking about the Black Death Emperor?
"Our purpose? Our purpose is to make the Dark Multiverse great again! No one understands the Dark Multiverse better than me. Today, I stand here with a message of faith, strength, and hope. I have never doubted us. Soon, we will achieve an incredible victory, and we will usher in the greatest era in the history of our Dark Multiverse!"
"Barbatos, Barbatos is a fraud. No one knows Barbatos better than me. He weakened our universe, he caused all of this, and we must make..."
"...We need to build a wall in the dark multiverse, a wall to keep villains like Barbatos out of our beautiful home... He's like a Mexican, you know?"
Mexican, he brought his shitty fate, like cocaine, oh, he's so bad, so bad, no one knows how bad Barbatos is better than me.
We want to build a steel wall, not concrete. Why do we need a wall? It's not because we hate the people outside, but because the people we love are inside!
"Stop, stop."
The laughing bat got a headache from the noise.
Before coming, he had imagined facing a cold, skeptical person, a smiling, deceitful man...
But he never imagined he would be facing a noisy, quacking male duck!
"Alright, I'll definitely support all of this." The Laughing Bat plastered a smile on his face, looking as righteous as could be.
This argument wasn't for nothing; he's gradually figured out the other party's tactics: "You're absolutely right, about the issue of our organization not having enough manpower, and that other thing..."
"We need to build a wall! I can explain it all in detail; we need..."
"Stop, stop, stop, I know, don't repeat yourself. I can teach you a way to travel fast through the Dark Multiverse, a method from Barbatos. You can also use this method to filter for the Batman you need, or other universes."
The Bat of Laughter's line of reasoning was simply a roundabout way of asking him for some other help.
Just give it to him; everything is going according to the Bat of Laughter's plan anyway.
The so-called methods of fast travel and finding specific dark multiverses are essentially just a filter.
Previously, Chen Tao had also traveled through the Dark Multiverse while Barbatos was overwhelmed with problems and unable to attend to other matters.
But it was purely about running towards a target point to retrieve the bodies of their companions, and they would just run into whichever dark multiverse they encountered along the way.
Compared to the normal, barely tangible, dark multiverses he encountered, there were many more bizarre universes that were more obviously incomplete and chaotic.
In some universes, even the Justice League's Big Three can't be assembled, the world is in complete chaos, and the few superheroes and supervillains that exist are incredibly weak.
Chen Tao even suspected that if they were thrown into the main universe, let alone being able to fight the mainstream heroes of the main universe like the members of the Dark Knights and the Cheetah and Wonder Woman from the Barbatos Legion, they might even be able to defeat these Supermen or Wonder Women from the Dark Multiverse, like the athletic master or Black Arrow from the main universe.
Before entering these dark multiverses, Chen Tao had absolutely no idea what was going on inside.
The ability that the Batman Who Laughs taught him gave him the most basic filtering ability, like checking tags, allowing him to easily filter out those universes that were too weak or had other problems, and piece together, bit by bit, the location of the few powerful worlds he wanted most.
This sounds like finding a needle in a haystack, but for Chen Tao, having this ability is practically like finding someone just by reading their ID card.
He couldn't interfere with the future Dark Knights members targeted by Barbatos yet, as doing so could lead to a direct confrontation with Barbatos. However, the Dark Multiverse was vast, and as far as he knew, he still knew of many dangerous characters who hadn't yet been recruited by Barbatos.
The Lantern of Horrors, Queen Hecate, Gaia Terra, the Earth Goddess, the Omac Blue Beetle...
But not now.
The Batman Who Laughs had no idea what he had done... or perhaps he did, but to the Batman Who Laughs, he and Barbatos were never two separate entities.
So what's wrong with selling the other party?
"Originally, the Black Death Emperor planned to use Faust and his magical abilities to completely corrupt him into his own followers, and then, together with Lafriz, the Lord of the Orange Lanterns who was influenced by the Black Death Emperor, to reignite the War of the Seven Lanterns and fulfill the pre-prophecy condition for the coming of the Darkest Night."
The whole plan was well-planned. The Orange Lantern King, Lafriz, would provide ample cover for Faust. While everyone was drawn to the other's strength, the true summoner, Faust, would be able to calmly forge a continuous supply of Black Lantern Rings for the Black Emperor, allowing him to accumulate power in reality and ultimately descend to earth.
The Laughing Bat said, "But now, something unexpected has happened. Faust didn't even have time to play his most important role in the darkest night before you arrived and killed him."
"Now, the Black Death Emperor must find another way to manipulate death and forge the Black Lantern Ring in place of Faust."
"Want to know what method he chose?"
"The laughing bat asked."
Chen Tao turned his head away.
"Speak."
"He's made a deal with the Emperor Joker," said the Batman Who Laughs. "The Emperor Joker will replace Faust with his own Joker agents, and you think the person hiding behind the scenes, helping the Black Death and the Emperor Joker, will reveal themselves?"
The Bat Who Laughs said, "I think you've already guessed who's behind it all."
"...Barbatos."
"correct."
Chen Tao said, "Only he has the ability to participate in bringing down the Emperor Joker together with the Black Death Emperor."
"A new crisis has arrived, you know? Perhaps this is destiny."
The laughing bat patiently and persuasively guided him.
Chen Tao then declared, "And we will make the Dark Multiverse great again!"
The Laughing Bat: "Be normal."
(End of this chapter)