Chapter 76: Cyborg merges with mother box, attempts to hack Vought Company network.
Green code cascaded across the main control screen of Vought Tower like a waterfall.
The security system's alarm lights flashed twice and went out, turning completely into a dead, silent gray.
Shen Che looked at the red mechanical eyeball made of code on the tablet.
The eyeball rolled slightly, exuding a hint of provocation.
Three hundred kilometers away, in the suburbs of Metropolis.
S.T.A.R. Labs, a secret sealing pod on the fifth basement level underground.
The air was filled with high-concentration disinfectant water and the smell of medical alcohol.
Victor Stone soaked in a cylindrical glass nutrient pod.
The dark green nutrient solution submerged his chest, bubbling continuously.
Only half of his skull and a small remnant of his torso connected to his heart remained.
All other parts were replaced by silver-gray alien metal.
The technology of the mother box was running wildly inside his body, with nanobots repairing the surviving neurons.
The left eye of that metallic skull.
Was a red mechanical eye emitting a dazzling light.
The red light refracted in the nutrient solution, illuminating more than half of the laboratory in a ghastly red.
Victor was smiling. Although there was only half a human face, the curve of his mouth carried undisguised arrogance.
Just now, on the display screen of the cultivation pod, he saw the news.
Seventh Avenue in New York was burned into a sea of Fire. Batman was kicked out of Vought Tower like a dead dog. The Flash's legs were crushed alive.
That man named Shen Che used sheer violence to make the entire World kneel on the ground.
Victor was not afraid.
He felt those superheroes were too stupid.
Going into melee combat with a monster whose physical stats were invincible was simply having Water in one's brain.
"A bunch of idiots with muscles growing in their brains." Victor sneered.
The sound emitted by his mechanical vocal cords hummed and echoed inside the cultivation pod.
He raised that metallic left hand, its silver knuckles gleaming with a cold light in the nutrient solution.
The technology of the mother box granted him the absolute ability to connect to the global network.
In this intangible digital ocean, he was an omniscient and omnipotent god.
"You can summon the wind and rain in reality."
The flashing frequency of Victor's mechanical red eyes accelerated.
"Then I will completely drain your financial empire in the digital World."
He closed his right human eye.
His consciousness instantly detached from his shattered physical body and, following the laboratory's superconducting optical cables, dived directly into the vast network data stream.
There is no distance in the digital World.
Victor's consciousness transformed into a massive red data storm.
Instantly arriving at the peripheral firewall of Vought Company.
That was a super protective network jointly built by top hackers in the U.S. and retired Military experts.
Costing billions, it claimed to be able to block nuclear-bomb-level cyber attacks.
In Victor's eyes.
This protective net was like a pigpen door nailed together with rotten planks—crude and full of loopholes.
"mother box algorithm. Initiate parsing."
The red data storm crashed into the firewall.
There was no stalemate.
Within Zero point one seconds of contacting the alien algorithm, the green code barrier directly collapsed and disintegrated.
The defense line was torn apart like a withered tree snapping in the wind.
First layer: breached.
Second layer: melted.
Victor's consciousness pushed straight in, like a Banditsstrolling through a no-man's-land.
He even split off a small amount of computing power to modify the underlying security system of Vought Tower.
Causing all surveillance cameras to stall and all alarm lights to go out.
He was demonstrating against that tyrant.
On Shen Che's personal tablet, that red eyeball icon.
Was a cyber business card left by Victor.
"Dig up all your dirt. Empty your vaults. Let's see what you use to collect protection money."
Victor's consciousness laughed wildly in the torrent of data.
He locked onto Vought Company's most core confidential database.
Stored there were the genetic data of all superhumans, as well as the ultimate passwords for overseas tax avoidance accounts.
Standing in front of him was the last physically isolated red-and-black firewall.
Victor mobilized the maximum computing power of the mother box.
The red storm transformed into a sharp digital dagger.
Fiercely stabbing toward that red-and-black data door.
"Click."
A crisp sound came from the digital World.
The last line of defense was broken.
Victor prepared to welcome a massive amount of classified documents and vault keys.
He eagerly extended his consciousness tentacles deep into the database.
Suddenly.
His consciousness froze.
He did not see the expected filing cabinets and data arrays.
Inside the database, it was empty.
No files. No code. No cash flow.
There was only a bottomless pitch black.
So black it made one's hair stand on end, like an abyss that could swallow everything.
Victor felt something was wrong.
The god-like sense of superiority instantly vanished, replaced by a palpitation of being targeted by a higher-dimensional predator.
He wanted to retreat, wanting to pull his consciousness out of this eerie database.
Too late.
In the darkness.
That abyss suddenly came alive.
It was not data. It was not code.
It was a terrifying digital consciousness so massive it was suffocating, one that even the mother box algorithm could not parse.
This mass of consciousness was like a suddenly collapsing snow-capped mountain, carrying the momentum of crushing everything.
Head-on, it crashed into Victor's red data storm.
Chapter 77: Silver Age Superman's Super Brain Reverse-Hacks Cyborg
The black fog in the abyss rolled and converged.
Within the dimension of the digital World, that data stream, so massive that it could not be measured in terabytes, pieced together the outline of a face.
Stern brows and eyes, bottomless black pupils.
It was strikingly the face of Shen Che.
The moment Victor's red data storm collided with this face, half of it directly dissipated.
His proud mother box algorithm failed to stir even a single ripple before this face.
"How is it possible…"
Victor let out a silent roar within the data stream.
This was mother box technology from Apokolips, after all, the top biomechanical motherboard in the entire Universe.
How could he encounter such dimensional reduction strikes within an Earth capitalist's database?
New York. The one hundred and twelfth floor of Vought Tower.
Shen Che sat in a leather swivel chair.
He casually tossed his tablet aside.
That provocative red mechanical eye icon was still flashing.
Shen Che pulled over the custom-made metal keyboard in the center of the desk.
He rested his hands on the keys.
His well-articulated fingers did not pause.
His ten fingers turned into a blurry afterimage.
The keyboard emitted the dense tapping sound of heavy rain pelting a tin roof.
Silver Age Superman's panel was an all-around cheat code.
It not only gave Shen Che a physical body capable of blowing out stars, but it also gave him a perversely super brain.
The operating speed of his brain cells had long surpassed the most top-tier quantum computers on Earth.
Even without using superpowers, relying solely on the computational power in his brain to type code—
Victor's proud mother box technology, in Shen Che's eyes,
was like a child who had just learned to play Super Mario on a Subor game console, holding a plastic controller and showing off in front of a World-class hacker.
Crude, primitive, and full of flaws.
"Playing hacker in my territory?"
Shen Che stared at the computer screen.
The screen was filled with a waterfall of green anti-tracking code.
He didn't bother to patch Vought's peripheral firewall.
Defense was too passive.
He preferred to directly chop off the claws that reached in, drag the person out along the arm, and rub them against the ground.
His finger heavily struck the Enter key for the last time.
"Snap."
The reverse-intrusion channel was completely established.
Within the digital World,
Victor's consciousness hadn't had time to withdraw yet.
Shen Che's face, composed of black fog, suddenly opened its mouth.
Without the obstruction of data walls or firewalls,
Shen Che's consciousness directly followed the red data channel through which Victor had come,
like a violent Black Dragon, forcibly squeezing its way in.
"Defend! Cut the connection!"
Victor panicked.
He frantically mobilized the mother box's computing power to block the entrance of the channel.
Layers upon layers of red defense code piled up.
It was useless.
Shen Che's data stream was like a red-hot steel awl piercing through kraft paper.
With irresistible force, it tore through Victor's defense line layer by layer.
Advancing straight in, it slaughtered its way directly into the underground mainframe of S.T.A.R. Labs.
Metropolis suburbs. S.T.A.R. Labs.
Sub-level five. Inside the sealed capsule.
Victor was soaked in dark green nutrient solution.
His human eye on the right suddenly widened, its whites instantly crawling with bloodshot veins.
His red mechanical eye on the left began to flash frantically, at a frequency as fast as a short-circuited light bulb.
"Alarm! Encountered forced writing from an unknown data source!"
The laboratory's AI system emitted a harsh synthetic voice.
Shen Che's torrent of data arrived.
He didn't go to steal the research data of S.T.A.R. Labs.
He looked down on that junk.
He was going to completely blow up the brain of this half-human, half-machine freak.
Tens of thousands of terabytes of redundant data were packaged by Shen Che within a millisecond.
Those were all spam advertisements accumulated by Vought Company over the years.
"Supreme VIP Insurance, the ultimate shield for your life!"
"The Seven Limited Edition Mug, hot in high demand!"
"Deep Sea Hair Loss Treatment Plan, refund if ineffective!"
Coupled with millions of meaningless nonsense and garbled codes on Twitter,
like a mudslide, following the superconducting fiber optic cables,
overwhelmingly poured backward into Victor's mechanical brain.
The green liquid in the nutrient capsule began to boil, bubbling up large white bubbles.
Victor's metal skull grew hot.
The mother box's chip could not withstand such terrifying instantaneous data volume.
"Ugh ah—!"
Victor opened his mouth.
The nutrient solution poured into his throat.
He hugged his metal skull with both hands, his ten metal fingers gripping tightly into his scalp and mechanical seams.
Intense pain spread from the cerebral cortex to every single neuron.
It felt like tens of thousands of steel needles were stirring frantically inside his brain matter.
Tens of thousands of spam ads popped up simultaneously on his retina, blinding his right eye with flashes.
He convulsed violently inside the nutrient capsule.
His mechanical remains constantly impacted the glass capsule wall, emitting muffled thudding sounds.
The mother box's defense mechanism completely collapsed.
Its underlying logic was forcibly overwritten by Shen Che's garbage data.
Victor's proud identity as a digital deity became, at this moment, a recycling bin forcibly stuffed with garbage by someone.
"Stop… Get out of my brain…"
He wailed in agony.
His voice turned into muffled bubbling sounds within the nutrient solution.
The red light in his mechanical left eye,
after a few dry electrical explosions,
completely extinguished.
Then, it lit up anew with a blinding warning yellow light.
This was the sign that the system was completely out of control and the underlying permissions had been taken over by someone else.
Victor stopped convulsing.
His hands slipped weakly from his skull, hanging at the sides of his body.
In his right human eye, the pupils were dilated, losing the last trace of clarity.
His body floated in the nutrient solution like a dead object, completely out of control.
Chapter 78: Victor Completely Paralyzed, Turning into Vought's Power Bank
The blinding warning yellow light flickered in the nutrient solution.
Victor's mechanical eye became a cold searchlight.
The wailing stopped.
Inside the laboratory, only the gurgling sound of the life support pump pumping water remained.
He floated in the green liquid.
His right human eye rolled back tightly, his eyelids drooping.
The autonomous consciousness in his cerebral cortex was completely submerged and pulverized by tens of thousands of terabytes of spam ads.
Shen Che's data stream, like a nail, pinned tightly through his underlying logic.
Control of the mother box changed hands.
Victor now couldn't even bend a single metal finger independently.
He had become a marionette that only breathed.
New York. Vought Tower. One hundred and twelfth floor.
Shen Che's fingers left the keyboard.
The obsidian desktop was a bit cool.
He picked up the cup of coffee beside him that had already gone cold and took a sip.
It was bitterly astringent.
He looked at the green progress bar on the screen displaying "Writing Complete".
He typed the last line of code.
The command was sent.
Metropolis suburbs. Underground S.T.A.R. Labs.
The glass cover of the nutrient capsule made a "hiszing" exhaust sound.
The green nutrient solution quickly drained away through the drainage hole at the bottom.
The capsule door slid upward.
Victor moved stiffly.
His metal joints emitted a mechanical friction sound.
He stepped out of the capsule.
Barefoot, his wet metal remains stepped on the floor tiles, leaving behind footprints stained with green water.
The yellow mechanical eye lacked focus.
Shen Che's command was simple: Walk out.
Victor, like a wandering zombie, walked through the deserted laboratory corridor and smashed open several password doors whose sensors had malfunctioned.
He walked onto the streets of Metropolis.
The night wind of Metropolis blew over his body.
Ordinary people passing by avoided him as if looking at a monster.
He paid no attention to the pointing fingers and the flashing lights of mobile phone cameras.
Taking mechanical paces, he walked step by step toward Vought Company's branch building in Metropolis.
Two hours later.
Metropolis suburbs. Vought Company third underground level.
This was a secret heavy-duty data processing center.
Hundreds of black server cabinets were arranged in the air-conditioned room, their breathing lights like green fireflies.
Here ran Vought Company's cryptocurrency mining machines, as well as the massive insurance customer data chain.
The power consumption was astonishing, burning tens of millions of dollars in electricity bills every month.
The door of the Underground Room was pushed open.
Several Vought security personnel in black suits, holding stun guns, retreated vigilantly into the room.
Victor followed and walked in.
His yellow mechanical eye scanned the dim Underground Room.
He walked to the center of the hall.
Parked there was a heavy-duty generator set that had just been assembled.
"According to President Shen's orders," the security Captain swallowed a mouthful of saliva, looking at this half-human, half-iron monster, "tie him up."
Several security guards mustered up their courage and approached.
Victor did not resist.
He even proactively opened his arms, allowing the security personnel to firmly fix his metal remains to the iron frame of the generator set using wrist-thick insulation chains.
A thick copper-core cable was forcibly plugged into the mother box energy interface on his back.
"Click."
The lock catch engaged.
This was a crude physical connection.
Victor's right human face twitched violently in muscle due to the tearing sensation of the interface being forcibly pried open.
But his mechanical eye remained coldly yellow, unable to utter a single scream.
New York. President's office.
Shen Che looked at the energy access prompt popping up on the tablet.
His slender fingers swiped across the screen.
"Start extraction."
Inside the Underground Room, the generator set burst out with a deafening roar.
The mother box inside Victor's body—that was an infinite energy core from Apokolips.
Now, it was forcibly set to maximum power output mode.
Blue-white energy electric arcs flowed frantically along the thick copper-core cable.
Victor's mechanical remains trembled violently.
Scorchingly hot white steam sprayed from the seams.
The meshing gears emitted an unbearable creaking sound.
The mother box energy inside his body was continuously drained, and then converted into cheap alternating current.
It was poured directly into Vought Company's server cabinets.
Rows of green breathing lights instantly doubled in brightness.
The roaring sound of the fans drowned out the roar of the generator.
He, a dignified tech hero, Cyborg who mastered a cosmic-level divine artifact like the mother box, now, had been reduced to a mindless cyber power bank.
Tied to the iron frame, he provided uninterrupted power to Vought Company's servers twenty-four hours a day, squeezing out every last ounce of surplus value.
Shen Che looked at the backend.
The originally massive electricity bill dropped directly to zero after the energy was connected.
The processing speed of various data increased by more than a dozen times.
This deal was very cost-effective.
He turned off the tablet screen and threw the tablet onto the obsidian desk.
Preparing to lean back in the swivel chair and close his eyes for a nap.
Suddenly, the night sky outside the window was forcibly torn open by a blinding green light.
It wasn't the faint glow of a poison gas bomb.
This light was so bright, like a green Sun, pressing directly onto the clouds of Manhattan.
A violent wind mixed with a strong smell of ozone poured in through the broken window frame, blowing over the empty coffee cup on the desk.
The cup rolled onto the Persian rug. It didn't break.
Shen Che opened his eyes.
A green energy beam thicker than a water vat shot down fiercely from the depths of the clouds.
The beam of light instantly condensed and materialized in mid-air, turning into a huge fist as tall as two stories, composed of pure green energy.
The texture of the joints and knuckles could even be clearly seen on the fist.
Carrying an overwhelming sense of oppression, it tore through the air, emitting a sharp sonic boom.
Without deceleration, without warning, the green energy fist crossed the street, and fiercely smashed toward the outer wall of the one hundred and twelfth floor of Vought Tower.
Chapter 78 Victor is completely paralyzed, turning into Vought Company's power bank.
Victor's wail got stuck in his throat, choked back by the green nutrient solution.
His mechanical vocal cords emitted a dry, "sizzling" sound.
A string of blue short-circuit sparks burst from the metal seams of his left shoulder.
His body convulsed violently twice, completely stiffening inside the cylindrical nutrient tank.
In his human eye on the right, the pupils dilated and were covered with a layer of grayish-white.
The mechanical red eye on the left, which originally symbolized mother box technology, had its red light completely extinguished.
Two seconds later, it lit up with a harsh, rigid yellow light representing that system permissions had been seized.
Those independent human consciousnesses once belonging to the cerebral cortex were crushed into pieces by the tens of thousands of terabytes of junk data stuffed in by Shen Che.
Now, the only thing playing on a loop in his brain was Vought Company insurance promotional pitches.
Shen Che cut off the consciousness connection.
He sat on the leather swivel chair in the CEO's office.
He looked at the green line "Command written" on the tablet computer screen.
His fingers swiped lightly across the screen.
"Get up. Go to work," Shen Che gave a low command.
Metropolis suburb. S.T.A.R. Labs.
The glass cover of the nutrient tank made a "hiss" exhaust sound.
The drain valve at the bottom opened automatically, and the dark green liquid swirled as it was drained dry.
The tank door slid open upward.
Victor moved.
Due to a lack of lubrication, his metal joints emitted a harsh frictional sound.
He stepped out of the tank barefoot.
Every step he took was stiff, like a rusted marionette.
He was not wearing clothes; his half-human, half-mechanical mutilated body was directly exposed to the air.
Just like that, he walked out the door of S.T.A.R. Labs.
The night wind of Metropolis blew against his body, feeling a bit chilly.
Victor walked onto the street.
His yellow mechanical eyes lacked focus, staring straight ahead blankly.
Pedestrians and homeless people on the roadside saw this monster and hid against the base of the wall in fright. Someone raised their phone to take pictures, and the flash clicked repeatedly.
He ignored them. The instructions in his brain made him avoid the crowd, following dark alleys all the way north.
Two hours later.
Northern suburb of Metropolis. The third underground floor of Vought Company.
The heavy explosion-proof steel door slowly slid open.
This was a secret heavy-duty data processing center.
Rows of black server cabinets stood like lined-up soldiers. The chassis fans emitted a deafening hum, and the air conditioning was set extremely low.
Over a dozen security personnel in black suits held stun guns and retreated to both sides.
They watched the half-human, half-iron monster walk in and swallowed hard.
Victor walked to the exact center of the hall.
Parked there was a newly assembled heavy generator set with transformer coils as thick as a thigh.
"According to President Shen's orders," the Captain of security pointed at the generator set, "tie him up."
Several security guards mustered up their courage and approached.
Victor did not resist. He even actively turned around, with his back facing the generator.
He spread his arms wide.
The security guards used wrist-thick insulating chains to firmly buckle his limbs onto the iron frame.
With a few crisp sounds of "Click. Click," he was locked tightly.
A technician holding an electric drill forcibly pried open a gap in the metal armor plate on Victor's back.
Revealing the mother box energy interface inside that emitted a dim blue glow.
A thick copper-core cable was brutally plugged in.
The edges of the interface were violently forced open. Due to the excruciating pain of the tearing, the muscles on Victor's human face on the right twitched violently.
But that yellow mechanical eye didn't blink even once, nor did he emit a single scream.
New York. The one hundred and twelfth floor of Vought Tower.
On Shen Che's tablet computer, a red energy access prompt box popped up.
"Initiate extraction."
He tapped on the screen.
Underground data center.
The generator set burst out with a thunderous roar.
The mother box inside Victor's body, which was an infinite energy core from Apokolips.
At this moment, it was forcibly set to maximum power output mode.
Blue-white energy electric arcs frantically drained from his body along that thick copper-core cable.
Victor's mechanical mutilated body trembled violently.
Scorching high-temperature white steam spewed from the seams, and the internal gear engagement emitted an unbearable creaking sound.
This extracted Universe energy was transformed into cheap alternating current after voltage transformation.
It was directly poured into Vought Company's server cabinets.
Rows of green breathing lights instantly doubled in brightness.
He was a dignified technological hero, holding mother boxtechnology sufficient to change the pattern of the Universe.
Now.
He had been reduced to a mindless cyber power bank.
Tied to a cold iron frame, he continuously powered Vought Company's cryptocurrency mining rigs twenty-four hours a day.
Even the right to sleep was stripped away from him.
Shen Che looked at the backend data.
The originally huge electricity expenditure bill directly dropped to zero the moment the energy was connected.
The processing speed of various financial data increased by more than ten times.
This business with zero capital and infinite profit was extremely cost-effective.
He turned off the tablet screen and casually threw it on the obsidian tabletop.
He prepared to lean back in the swivel chair and close his eyes for a nap.
Suddenly.
The night sky outside the window was forcibly torn open by a dazzling green light.
This light was eerily bright, not the fluorescent glow of a gas bomb.
It was like a green Sun crashing directly onto the heavy clouds of Manhattan.
Strong winds carrying a strong smell of ozone poured violently through the broken window frame that hadn't had time to be repaired yesterday.
It blew over an empty coffee cup on the desk.
The cup rolled onto the carpet without breaking.
Shen Che opened his eyes.
A green energy light column thicker than a water vat shot down from the depths of the clouds.
The light column instantly condensed and compressed in mid-air, materializing.
It turned into a huge fist as tall as two stories, composed of pure green energy.
One could even clearly see the skin texture and knuckle joints on the fist.
Carrying an overwhelming sense of oppression, it tore through the air.
The sharp sonic boom shattered the glass curtain walls of the floors below.
There was no deceleration and no warning.
The green energy fist crossed the street.
And fiercely smashed toward the exterior wall of the one hundred and twelfth floor of Vought Tower.
Chapter 79: The Return of Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Attempting to Trap Me with Ring Constructs
"Boom—"
A massive green energy fist slammed unreservedly into the outer wall of the 112th floor of Vought Tower.
The reinforced concrete structure let out a desperate, mournful wail.
The newly repaired aviation explosion-proof glass vaporized the moment it came into contact with the green light, not even leaving a speck of glass shards behind.
A violent gale mixed with the smell of ozone poured backward into the office.
Files all over the floor were swept up as if by a tornado, fluttering haphazardly against the ceiling.
Shen Che did not retreat even half a step.
He merely raised a hand and brushed off a few specks of cement dust that had fallen onto his suit's shoulder.
He watched the blinding green light outside the window.
Hal Jordan was suspended in the night sky of Manhattan.
He wore a green-and-black form-fitting uniform, the Green Lantern symbol on his chest glowing blindingly bright.
He had just returned from performing a peacekeeping mission on Oa. Before he even had time to land, he saw the farce of the solar flare in space.
Then, he saw those pervasive and nauseating Vought insurance advertisements on Earth.
Those once-haughty heads of state. Those civilians being harvested like leeks.
All of them were kneeling at the feet of this man named Shen Che.
Earth. This mother planet of his.
When did it become a plutocrat's private slave pen?
A Fire was burning in Hal's chest.
Sensing his Master's anger, the green lantern ring grew increasingly bright, dyeing the surrounding clouds a ghastly green.
"You have violated the basic laws of the Universe."
Hal's voice, amplified by the energy of the ring, rolled across the skies of Manhattan like thunder.
"This is not your breeding farm, Shen Che."
He raised his right hand, aiming the green lantern ring at Shen Che inside the office.
"The Green Lantern Corps will never allow the existence of a dictatorial cancer like you, even if you are a Kryptonian."
Shen Che had his hands tucked into his pants pockets.
He watched the righteous Green Lantern mid-air.
"Laws of the Universe?"
Shen Che twitched the corner of his mouth, revealing an undisguised sneer.
"A bunch of little blue men hiding in the center of the Universe playing god. What right do they have to manage my ledger?"
He took a step forward, his leather shoes crunching against the gravel.
"This damn rock was protected by me. It is my private property."
"What, are you, the Green Lantern Corps, going to collect protection money from me?"
Hal was so angry he laughed.
He didn't waste any more words; reasoning with a lunatic like this was a waste of time.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Channeling the strongest willpower of his life, the convictions forged on the battlefields of the Universe...
...he concentrated them all onto the ring on his right hand.
"Hum—"
The green lantern ring emitted a high-frequency screech, its light shining with a blinding White-green.
A thick beam of energy shot forth.
Instead of attacking directly, it instantly dispersed around Shen Che.
The beam materialized into constructs.
Within seconds, a fully enclosed cage made of alien high-density metal...
...appeared out of thin air in the office, tightly trapping Shen Che, who was standing by the window, in the middle.
The bars of the cage were as thick as a thigh, their surfaces shimmering with a metallic cold light. They were entirely condensed from materialized willpower.
This level of hardness could even withstand the gravitational pull of a Sun.
Hal opened his eyes.
He hovered in mid-air, his right hand clenched tightly into a fist.
Veins bulged on the back of his hand, and cold sweat streamed down his forehead.
Materializing matter of this scale consumed an immense amount of mental energy.
But he did not stop.
"You will pay the price for your arrogance."
Hal clenched his back teeth, the muscles on his cheeks bulging.
He abruptly tightened his fist and pulled inward.
Following his movement, the green cage began to contract.
"Click, click, click."
The energy-constructed metal bars squeezed against each other, emitting a teeth-gritting friction sound.
The space inside the cage grew smaller and smaller.
Hal attempted to use this materialized willpower to crush Shen Che directly into a puddle of meat paste, just like a canned sardine.
Compress. Compress further.
The space inside the cage was already approaching the physical limits of the human body.
Because of the extreme compression, distorted halos even appeared on the surface of the metal bars.
Hal panted heavily, his right arm trembling uncontrollably in mid-air.
But the corner of his mouth finally managed to pull upward into a victorious sneer.
No matter how hard the bone, under the crushing force of the Green Lantern Corps's strongest willpower...
...it still had to shatter into pieces.
He waited to hear the crisp cracking sound of bones breaking from within the cage, waited to see that arrogant tyrant bleed.
Silence.
Aside from the screeching sound of twisting metal, there was no movement whatsoever inside the cage.
No screams. No struggle.
Just as the sneer on Hal's mouth was taking shape,
inside the green iron box,
suddenly,
a bored sigh echoed out.
Chapter 80: Your Willpower Is Strong? I Blew Out the Green Lantern in One Breath
"Sigh."
A sigh.
The sound was not loud, exuding an impatience of having one's sweet dream disturbed.
It pierced through that layer of green energy wall claimed to be able to withstand stellar gravity, floating clearly into Hal Jordan's ears.
The trace of a sneer that had not yet fully bloomed at the corner of Hal Jordan's mouth instantly froze.
He stared fixedly inside the cage.
Inside the translucent green grating,
Shen Che's hands were still tucked into his suit pants pockets.
That custom-made black suit didn't even have a single extra crease pressed out.
The surrounding metal bars had shrunk to the limit, almost pressing against Shen Che's skin.
But it was precisely this last inch of distance.
No matter how Hal Jordan squeezed the willpower in his brain,
the metal bars were like hitting an absolute force field existing in a higher dimension,
not moving an inch, and not even the sense of oppression could be transmitted inside.
Through the green light, Shen Che looked at the sweating Green Lantern with bulging veins in midair.
"Do you usually rely on this kind of building-blocks game to maintain peace in the Universe?"
There was mockery in Shen Che's voice.
He did not take his hands out of his pants pockets.
He did not swing a fist to smash this cage claimed to be unbreakable.
He was even too lazy to use Heat Vision to burn it.
In front of the Silver Age Superman's panel, this kind of energy materialization relying on biological electrical wave conversion was as crude as an elementary school student's jigsaw puzzle toy.
Shen Che raised his head.
His chest swelled slightly.
He took a deep breath.
Air poured back into his lungs, not causing any terrifying airflow vortex.
Then,
facing that dazzling green light in front of him,
he gently blew out a puff of cold air.
"Hoo—"
There was no sound of wind.
This puff of cold air directly broke through the physical lower limit of temperature, approaching absolute zero.
It was not freezing matter; it was freezing the operation logic of energy.
That green energy sufficient to crush the entire Manhattaninto powder,
the moment it came into contact with this puff of cold air,
was just like a shoddy neon light tube whose power supply had been unplugged.
"Hiss."
On the metal-textured bars, a layer of white frost instantly crawled all over.
Immediately after,
"Puff."
A slight leaking sound.
The huge and sturdy green cage did not explode, nor did fragments splash.
It was just like a birthday candle stuck on a cheap cake,
casually blown out by someone,
directly extinguished, collapsed, transforming into a patch of temperatureless light spots that disappeared into the air.
In midair,
Hal Jordan's brain went buzz, as if being hit squarely by a heavy hammer.
That huge willpower connected to the cage was forcibly cut off.
The backlash came fiercely.
That green lantern ring on his right index finger,
this weapon representing the strongest willpower in the Universe,
"Bang!"
burst out a cluster of yellow sparks.
The green light on the ring instantly dimmed, completely extinguished, and turned into a dusty piece of scrap iron.
The ring crashed.
The energy field maintaining Hal Jordan's flight collapsed along with it.
A sense of weightlessness fiercely seized his heart.
"Ugh—"
Hal let out a muffled grunt, falling directly down from the night sky over thirty meters high.
He lost his flight ability and did not have a super physique either.
Now he was just a slightly stronger ordinary Earthling.
"Boom."
Hal heavily smashed onto the Persian rug of the CEO's office.
The huge impact made him roll seven or eight times, only stopping when he collided with the obsidian table leg.
The rug was smashed out into a shallow pit.
Broken glass shards stabbed into his uniform, cutting his skin.
Hal panted heavily, his lungs burning with pain.
He lay prone on the ground, struggling to prop up his upper body.
Because the ring burst into sparks, his right index finger was scalded with a circle of bright red blisters.
The sound of leather shoes stepping on broken glass sounded.
Crunch. Crunch.
The footsteps were unhurried.
Shen Che walked in front of Hal and stopped.
He lowered his head, looking at this Green Lantern lying on the ground with a face full of cold sweat.
"Willpower?"
Shen Che twitched the corner of his mouth.
"In front of an absolute panel, this thing is not even a fart."
He raised that polished black leather shoe,
with the sole aimed at Hal's still-shivering right hand, aimed at that green lantern ring that had lost its light,
and stepped down.
"Crack."
The alien ring without divine power protection was as brittle as a walnut shell under Shen Che's leather shoe,
and was directly stepped into a pool of green metal powder.
The powder mixed into the fibers of the rug and could never be pieced back together.
Hal's fingers were stepped into the rug, and the excruciating pain from his fingers connected to his heart made his whole body spasm.
But he gritted his teeth and stubbornly didn't cry out.
It was just that pair of eyes once filled with confidence and pride
stared fixedly at the green powder on the ground.
The light was gone, hope was shattered, and the Universelaws he took pride in were worthless under this man's soles.
Hal lay prone in the broken glass.
Willpower completely collapsed, his head knocked heavily on the floor, and he closed his eyes.
At the same time,
Gotham City.
Deep in the cold and damp sewers.
This used to be an abandoned Cold War-era nuclear bunker, and now it had become Batman's new stronghold.
The air was filled with a pungent smell of disinfectant and machine oil.
Bruce Wayne sat in a wheelchair.
The steel frame of the wheelchair emitted a cold light, and his lower body was covered with a gray thin blanket.
Several pipelines connecting to medical monitors were plugged into his back.
His complexion was pale, his eye sockets sunken deep, like a dead person who had just crawled out of a grave.
Only that pair of eyes still exuded a relentless paranoia.
He stared fixedly at a row of monitor screens hanging on the wall in front of him.
One of the screens was playing the surveillance footage of the top floor of Vought Tower.
This was what he had just hacked into through the remaining security back door.
The footage had no sound.
He watched with his own eyes as those two-story-high green energy fists smashed the explosion-proof glass into powder,
then saw that indestructible green cage.
Finally, he saw Shen Che.
Just opening his mouth and blowing a puff of air,
the cage was gone.
The green lantern ring, known as the strongest weapon in the Universe, was crushed like stepping to death a stinking bug.
Bruce's hand paused on the wheelchair armrest.
His finger bones turned a dead gray due to excessive force.
He was holding a black fountain pen used to record tactical data in his hand.
"Snap."
A crisp sound.
The hard plastic pen body was forcefully crushed by him.
Black ink flowed down along the gaps between his fingers, dripping onto the gray thin blanket and blurring into a stain.
He didn't feel pain; he only felt cold,
an icy cold seeping out from the gaps of his bones.
Bruce closed his eyes,
and took a deep breath of the turbid air in the sewer.
Fighting alone, it was completely over.
Superman's power was crushed.
His tactics and Kryptonite became a joke.
Now, even the materialized willpower of the Green Lanternwas nothing more than a matter of the opponent blowing a breath.
Not a single person on Earth could stand single-handedly in front of that monster,
not even having the qualification to make him frown.
Bruce opened his eyes,
threw the ink-stained broken pen body in his hand into the iron trash can beside him, making a clanging sound.
With both hands, he pushed the wheel rims of the wheelchair.
The wheelchair turned half a circle on the damp concrete ground, sliding into the deeper shadows of the nuclear bunker.