Victor flew down, and at the moment Dr. Stone saw him, he showed an expression of surprise or rather panic.
"What are you doing?" Victor asked, suppressing his anger, "What did you do to Mother?!"
"Victor, listen to my explanation." Dr. Stone quickly calmed down and said, "But first, I need to know who else knows you're here besides you."
Victor really wanted to shout, but he maintained his last bit of sanity, gritting his teeth as he said, "Bruce helped me find you."
Dr. Stone immediately pressed his lips tightly, seemingly dissatisfied with this answer. He said, "Now call him and tell him I'm fine, that it's all a misunderstanding. Otherwise, I won't tell you anything."
Victor looked at him in disbelief. Dr. Stone took a step closer and said, "Listen, Victor. I've never done anything outrageous in my life, but they made the first move. I am just... I'm just trying to right this wrong."
Victor vaguely felt something was off. He stared intently at Dr. Stone and said, "What exactly did you do?"
"Send a message to Bruce Wayne first."
Victor took two steps back and said, "This isn't right. Do you still remember you taught me not to lie?"
"Yes, I know. But this time is an exception." Dr. Stone spread his hands and said, "Your mother is always an exception, isn't she?"
Mentioning his mother, Victor finally couldn't hold it in anymore. He punched a nearby tree, his whole body trembling.
"Victor, believe me. My love for her is no less than yours. This is all for her..."
Victor looked at Dr. Stone, seeing his serious expression without any signs of pretense. He closed his eyes firmly, took out his phone, and, fearing his tone might give him away, sent Bruce a message instead.
He explained all this by saying his father missed his mother too much, which led to such an extreme action. After his persuasion, everything was fine.
After explaining, he continued to stare at Dr. Stone. Dr. Stone sighed heavily, his shoulders relaxed, and he led Victor into the laboratory.
The moment the door opened, Victor was completely stunned. His mother was lying in a nutrient-filled tank—not bones, not a projection, but a living, breathing mother.
"This... This..."
Victor was momentarily speechless and said, "How is this possible?! Mother clearly..."
Because earlier, he had recalled the specific scene of the car accident. He remembered that his mother, sitting in the driver's seat, suffered a severe impact, and her body was in tatters, later barely stitched up by a mortuary beautician. When viewing the remains, he couldn't even bring himself to look.
But now, his mother in the tank was completely intact, with no stitch marks on her body. Except for her closed eyes, she appeared very alive. Victor uncontrollably walked over and placed his hand on the tank's surface, seemingly wanting to touch his mother's face.
"What on earth is happening?" Victor asked, "How could this be..."
He turned to Dr. Stone and said, "What did you do?"
Dr. Stone shook his head, also walking up to the tank, and then said, "You won't believe it. It was your mother who asked me to rescue her."
"What?!"
"On Christmas Eve, I received a message from her. She said it was very dark there, and she wanted to spend Christmas with us..."
Victor stared at his father in shock, as if he were a madman. Such nonsense, of course, he wouldn't believe, yet his mother was here, intact, forcing him to believe.
He looked up again at the tank. His mother's expression seemed to change slightly. Victor leaned closer and noticed that the figure in the tank appeared to be breathing.
"I don't know what's going on either, maybe it's a miracle. But your mother has come back to life." Dr. Stone looked at Victor and said, "I don't want to know how she came back to life; I just want her to live. She has to live, do you understand?!"
Dr. Stone's emotions were clearly a bit out of control. Victor's bad premonition came true, yet inside, a voice told him his father was doing the right thing.
His mother's death was not an accident but a conspiracy woven by those damned bastards. Their family did nothing wrong, yet they bore the worst consequences. It shouldn't be like this. None of this should have happened. This is what the world owes them.
The voice grew stronger, and Victor was almost uncontrollably fixated on his mother's face, thinking, just this once. He just wanted to hear his mother speak one more time, really, just this once.
Victor took a deep breath and said, "So what is going on now?"
" Your mother has indeed come back to life. But now, the energy in her body isn't enough to sustain her activity. We need to supplement her with nutrients, and then she'll be able to communicate with us."
"How much energy is needed?"
"No, you can't directly use the Mother Box to transfer it." Dr. Stone shook his head and said, "That's too rough; she wouldn't be able to handle it. But you can charge the nutrient solution, which might be faster."
"However, you have a more important task." Dr. Stone looked at Victor and said, "Don't let the Justice League know about this; they won't agree."
"Why?"
"The concept of resurrection is utterly shocking. And I think you should know, there can be no such thing without a price. I swear, I'll handle everything. Make sure no one finds out."
Victor felt an increasing sense of foreboding, but he could not resist the temptation of seeing his mother once more. So he nodded and said, "I'll do my best to keep it a secret, but I'm not sure if I can deceive Bruce. He's just too..."
"Try to meet with him as little as possible," Dr. Stone advised. "Let's just stay here and wait for your mother to wake up. It won't be long now."
After Victor left, Bruce continued to track his signal. But soon, the signal disappeared, and he realized the other party might have entered the Red House Base.
Not long after, he received a text message from Victor. But after reading it, Bruce frowned. He knew things weren't that simple. Just then, a communication request came through from Ron.
"Bruce, didn't you want to learn more about Mars culture? I remember there's an underground library in the east of the city, which serves as Mars City's archive. Would you like to go with me?"
"No, Ron, you go by yourself. I have some things to take care of here."
After hanging up, Bruce felt something was off. Ron had previously mentioned that his home was in the eastern part of the city. Before, Ron was always resistant to entering Mars City, and though he had slightly improved, he still didn't want to go east, where every little thing would remind him of the past.
But this time, he had actively suggested going to the east to check it out. Although it was to the underground library, which might not be near his home, it still seemed unusual.
Checking the work logs sent back by the Mars spaceship, Bruce found that after hanging up, Ron went there immediately, and instead of locking the landing point in the center of the city as before, he went directly to the east. Truly becoming stranger.
Bruce sighed. He left the Batcave, went upstairs, and sat on the sofa thinking. Perhaps things were just as he and Shiller had deduced, yet everything still came too quickly, catching him off guard.
He took out his phone and sent a message. Shiller soon pushed open the estate door and looked at Bruce. "It's really happening, isn't it?"
"Yes, and it should have happened while Savage Wolf was invading. It's just that it's quite eerie. I can't be sure..."
"Let's wait and see," Shiller said. "He won't just stop at this. You stood out so much in the Savage Wolf incident that he will definitely come after you."
"That's precisely what worries me. Perhaps..."
The phone rang sharply, startling even Bruce. He sharply turned his head to look at the landline phone placed by the staircase; after smartphones became common, not many would call this phone.
Bruce stood up and walked towards the phone. But instead of answering it immediately, he directly reached out and pulled out the phone line.
This left Shiller quite stunned. Bruce was precisely the kind of person even ghosts in horror films were most afraid to encounter. If he hadn't wanted to flex his skills, those cultists could have barely sustained until the main plot concluded.
But this method was indeed very effective. Because even after pulling out the phone line, the phone kept ringing. This meant this incoming call was bound to be extraordinary. Bruce directly returned to the Batcave, donned the Hell Bat Armor, and placed some sort of casing over the phone, taking it to the Batcave.
Then, he placed the encased phone on a certain instrument. The readings began to change. Shiller observed the readings and said, "This looks somewhat familiar."
He opened the Battleworld interface, found the monitoring data related to Dark energy sent by Primary Universe Batman, and noticed the identical set of numbers. Shiller smiled, "Got you."
Only after meticulously recording all the readings did Bruce carefully place the phone on the adjacent workbench, remove the casing, pick up the receiver, and speak in a low voice to the other side: "Hello?"
"Hello? Bruce?"
Noticing Bruce's evident pause, Shiller walked over to his side. He heard a somewhat youthful voice coming from the receiver.
"It's me. Are you doing well? How many Christmases have passed since I died?"
"Damian." Bruce called out his name, "Where are you?"
"You know. Come find me."
Then the call ended. Shiller looked at Bruce with some concern and said, "You should know this is a conspiracy, right?"
"Yes, I know," Bruce said, "but I still need to go."
"You..." Shiller hesitated, "I know you're confident and feel you won't be tempted. But things might not be that simple. The Human race's control over emotion often isn't as strong as they imagine..."
"Since they've targeted me, if I don't show myself, he'll never give up. Besides, we also need to see what exactly this so-called revival is all about."
"If he dared to do it, he must be quite confident; it might not just be about manipulating a corpse. If he indeed inherited Damian's memories and emotions, what will you do?"
Bruce, who was walking out, looked back at Shiller and said, "You know better than I, don't you?"
Shiller merely watched Bruce's figure disappear. He didn't stop him any further because he knew, regardless of what Damian intended to do upon his return, he came back too late—Batman had already returned from the darkness, and this world had a new Sun.