Chapter 183
Near the Azores, on an island 500 kilometers away.
Zatara had once battled Bardi here.
Blue sea, blue sky with white clouds, green fields, dense forests, and towering trees stretching across the undulating terrain.
The salty sea breeze brushed against Bruce's nose, tickling the fine hairs on his face and causing him to squint slightly.
He stood on the green grass of the plains. His ten-year-old face was tense. Dressed in tight black training clothes, his thin frame and exposed forearms already showed some muscle definition. Compared to when he lay weeping before the bodies of his slain parents, he had grown significantly stronger.
His expression carried an unease far beyond his years—like a prematurely wise man troubled by foresight.
Nimue Inwudu had fed him a mysterious magical elixir. While asleep, he had awakened with memories from the future as Batman, experiencing a fragment of his original life, memories from before the founding of the Justice League.
The interweaving of youthful confusion and mature recollections made him deeply uneasy. He was still adapting, gradually integrating those future memories.
Bruce held his breath. The sea breeze brushing against his nose and the fresh scent of the grassland gradually slowed his breathing.
Over a hundred meters ahead stood Nimue Inwudu, her enchanting figure poised in the center of a magical array. She was merging the island's entire spell formation, casting a spatial-tearing spell.
Subconsciously, from his experience.
He always felt this woman's predictive magic and pre-arranged actions were too crude.
Wouldn't the other party be prepared?
Was the other side really being toyed with like this?
She couldn't even predict Barmulodi's behavior directly. She could only anticipate his actions by interpreting fragments from others' future memories. This alone made Bruce instinctively wary.
Yet caught between youthful naivety and mature insight, he had merely voiced caution based on his experience. She had only thought for a moment, then acted "strategically," believing it was the only way to counter Barmulodi.
And what came next… was a total shock.
"Aaah!"
Nimue Inwudu's green eyes widened in terror. She screamed and collapsed to the ground, gasping heavily—completely losing her previous composure.
Her right hand was clutching the small, skeletal corpse.
Her left arm, from the upper section to the elbow had turned into chocolate. When she fell, the chocolate arm struck the ground. The sea breeze scattered the particles.
Beads of sweat formed on her pale, delicate face. She panted furiously, her complexion ghostly, drenched in sweat. She instinctively glanced at the chocolate-transformed stump. Though there was no physical pain, a wave of fear surged from the severed limb into her nerves, sending chills down her spine.
It was total atomic-altering magic irreversible, terrifying chocolate magic. The speed at which it transformed matter was so fast that only pure energy magic could offset its effects.
She shouldn't have formed a rock-based defense spell. She should have countered with pure energy magic. That was the only way to prevent her arm from being turned into chocolate.
In all her years, she had never encountered such terrifying magic—so strange, so absolute. Magic that directly and irreversibly turned matter into chocolate.
It was horrifying. She couldn't even imagine what it would look like if Barmulodi turned his enemies into chocolate and devoured them.
This man was truly ruthless. Just the concept of this kind of magic was bone-chilling.
The cool sea breeze swept across the plains, rippling the grass. Nimue Inwudu's sweat-soaked body shivered with goosebumps.
At last, she let out a relieved breath and looked at Clark's body in her right hand.
The broken limb could be restored. It would be difficult, but for her, it wasn't impossible.
The hope of the future was now in her hands. Everything seemed perfect.
"Haa…"
She exhaled gently. The curls at her temples clung to her damp face. Her flushed, sweat-slicked skin glowed in the sunlight—like a radiant, hardworking country maiden out of a classical painting.
She stood calmly and looked at Clark's corpse in her hand. A smile appeared on her face, clear and bright under the sun.
Bruce, his young face holding an adult's grimness, raised Clark's body and said with a faint smile, "In the future... you'll be just like this…"
Suddenly!
A terrifying scene unfolded before Bruce's eyes.
Clark's corpse—its spine suddenly lit up.
In that instant, solar energy began undergoing fission—preparing to explode like a nuclear bomb.
At the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, temperatures can reach 100 million degrees. That number was so immense, so unfathomably powerful—it defied imagination.
Instantly, the tachyonic wormhole device activated. Jor-El and Clark's infant consciousness were shredded into nothingness by the tachyon particles.
There wasn't even time to scream.
Thought itself was far slower than the speed of light.
They died in hope.
Tachyons moved faster than the solar energy explosion.
The moment the blast occurred, the tachyons had already outrun its destructive radius. Photons, moving irregularly, twisted, distorted, rotated and spread out from Clark's corpse like a chain reaction.
Clark's arm still in Nimue Inwudu's grasp was torn apart at the atomic level by the photons. The disintegration spread through the limb: arm, shoulder, neck, chest, head, and even his clothing—instantly atomized.
Before she could even think to react, she was already dead.
Finally, the tachyon burst enveloped the solar explosion, twisting and rotating, forcibly ripping open a spatial wormhole.
It all happened faster than the blink of an eye, so fast it defied description. The superluminal speed of the photons condensed within a minuscule range, forming an energy reaction strong enough to disintegrate matter and rend space itself.
Bruce stood frozen in horror, drenched in sweat.
For the first time, he truly understood what Nimue Inwudu had meant, that Barmulodi's terror far surpassed any enemy he could recall.
Through data from a few missing persons, an extremely terrifying energy reaction capable of tearing space had been orchestrated—obliterating the so-called future child of hope and Nimue Inwudu.
In his memories, Bruce held multiple degrees in physics. From the light and spatial distortion alone, he could identify tachyon particles. This kind of motion penetrated deeper than the molecular level. Uncontrolled tachyons could shred anything—matter, devices, even the dimensional wormhole device embedded with Clark's consciousness—pulled apart and shattered at the atomic level.
No biological consciousness could survive this moment.
The son of hope died, just like that!
Nimue Inwudu—who could predict the future and had rescued him, Flash, Green Lantern, and others from surveillance died just like that.
Without warning. Without resistance.
It chilled him to the bone.
It felt like a dream—unreal.
Such a casual death!
Cold sweat drenched him. The sheer brutality of Barmulodi, and his terrifying effectiveness in killing enemies, sent a shiver down his spine.
At this moment, Bruce's memory seemed to truly become his lived experience. His brain awakened—no longer merely a ten-year-old child. He thought more, understood more, matured quickly, and finally recognized just what kind of terrifying opponent he was facing.
Even so, Bruce's horrified gaze remained fixed on the wormhole ripped open by the tachyon particles.
…
Universe Biotechnology Co., Ltd.
Second Basement Level.
Through mirror magic cast by Raven, Bardi was communicating with Zatara. He had even drawn a portrait of Nimue Inwudu to ask Zatara who she was.
He learned that someone from the Zatara family had indeed loaned the island's magical array to a woman. After a brief exchange, Bardi understood exactly who she was and why she had tried to stop him.
"So it was Madame Xanadu."
Bardi nodded.
(To be continued.)
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