This was a city of dead silence.
There was no gunshot, no explosion, no siren, only the perpetually thick clouds obscuring the last sliver of moonlight, the only light in the entire city coming from a red figure.
He raced through the ruins, yet you couldn't see his movements; he was like a red flash of lightning, but his shadow left a heavy darkness behind.
The red figure stopped in front of a tombstone, the overcast clouds showed their last kindness, a ray of moonlight shone on the tombstone, casting the crookedly engraved names in another kind of desolation.
"Barry Allen."
The Flash was dead, but without a body, he existed in the world in another way, and beneath the countless tombstones lay numerous bodies of sin, the last of which he held in his arms, the formless bones scattered upon the ground like silent sighs when they fell.
When the figure turned around, the chest emblem was whiter than the moonlight, a bat logo, but with wings cleaved by a lightning bolt, like a bat torn asunder.
The numerous spiky ridges on the shoulder guard shimmered under the moonlight, the figure turned without hesitation, not lingering over the name of an old friend for even a second, perhaps as the culprit behind The Flash's grave here, he too should remain unmoved.
The moonlight grew hazy and the world seemed covered in a light veil, when he came to his senses, a thick fog had enveloped the graveyard.
He turned to see a shadow standing silently in the middle of the dense fog in the distance.
There was nothing there, but it felt as noisy as ever, the shadows passing through the fog all too familiar to him, the Batman Family, Gordon, the Justice League...
No, that was all in the past, a cold voice echoed in his mind, a past abandoned in the stream of time, never to return.
Nothing is more ruthless than time, it never returns the lost, no matter how hard one has tried, no matter how much one has sacrificed, never, never...
The moment he turned he moved, became a red bolt of lightning, speeding towards that figure at a velocity beyond the concept of speed.
He should have arrived in an instant, yet in his vision, the distance between him and that figure never changed, he couldn't outrun the fog, the shadow just stood there watching him silently, like a mocking sneer, or a deep sigh.
He finally stopped, a deep voice came from the red metal face guard, "Who are you?"
"The truth..."
Suddenly, he heard a word like particles of fog burrowing into his ears, it sounded like whispering secrets in the mist.
"Go..."
He heard again, he felt his auditory organs being decomposed and reassembled by the mist, turning into a receiver of another form.
"Where to?" he asked.
Suddenly, the dense fog condensed then dispersed, and in the moment it reconvened, a few fragmented images appeared before his eyes.
It was a dimly-lit study, flames flickering behind the delicate metal railings of the fireplace, on the sturdy wooden desk to the left lay an odd ornament made of feathers, wire, and unrecognizable withered body parts, to the right, a massive globe, under the brass desk lamp the light flickered on and off.
Three walls of bookshelves were crammed with all kinds of books, in the center hung a blackboard with strange indescribable patterns and a mess of formulas, the writing hasty and twisted.
Flipped-open books, newspapers piled chaotically on the desk, several letters and a letter opener tossed to the side of the table, cigarette butts in the ashtray had just gone out, and the whiskey was halved.
The pocket watch hanging on the shelf ticked and tocked, the only thing providing a useful clue, its time told any observer that the owner of the room was in the Greenwich Mean Time Zone.
Ding, ding, ding...
The sound of the clock chiming awakened him, when he awoke the fog had already dispersed, a downturned mouth visible beneath the somber face guard, he looked down at his palm.
Let me see your true face...
With another appearance of red lightning, crossing the ocean was but a blink away, and London was rainy again tonight.
To find a person in the city based merely on a few snippets from indoors was as difficult as ascending to heaven, even pinpointing a location, but the fleeting glimpse had captured the view outside a window, that was upstream of the Thames River.
Clock chimes, he thought.
Turning his head, inside a street-side window display, a clock showed it was 3:05 AM, London was on strict Greenwich Mean Time, five minutes slower than that, the area was Oxford.
The red figure appeared in the ancient city, a nighttime stroll through Oxford as if returning to a millennium ago when herds of cattle waded upstream across the river, groups of monks in long robes outside buildings ancient even by today's standards eroded ever so slightly by the rain.
It looked like a medieval scholar's office, he thought, the oldest place in Oxfordshire had to be Oxford University located within the city walls of Oxford, so he would start searching from the oldest college, time was never an issue for him.
This was an exceedingly ancient school, dim and narrow corridors, weathered floors, between the cramped bookshelves seemed as if ghosts' hands could reach out at any moment, on a rainy night, everything seemed to return to the era when steam whistles could still be heard.
Finally, the red figure stopped in the middle of a lawn, here was a neoclassical courtyard, with an open grass plot in the middle, surrounded by buildings, and two high towers standing at the main entrance in the rainy night.
The red figure disappeared into the door, but the college was empty, he knew he had found the right place, but still had not found the correct way in.
He started running again, countless fragments of time passed him by, the rain falling to the ground was denser with the third clock chime, a yellow light glowed from a room in the right tower.
He walked in, the door was ajar, a figure sat in front of the desk facing the blackboard.
He walked into the room, and the man seemed startled when he turned around. He saw a mixed-race man with brown eyes holding a thick book.
"Who are you?"
"That's what I'd like to ask you."
"You've broken into my office."
"Someone sent me here."
He saw the man close the book somewhat reluctantly and let out a sigh, "Looks like there's trouble again, Naog Sokhup. And you?"
"Batman."
"No, you're not him," the man's brown eyes glowed faintly, and when he fixed his gaze on him, it caused a subtle sense of confusion, "You're not just him, there are two souls within you."
"The Flash."
"You're not just him either." The man who claimed to be Sokhup took out a pair of glasses and put them on. He looked at the red figure and said, "The fusion of these two souls will bring destruction. Can you feel the cosmos beginning to fracture?"
He just silently looked at his palm where a faint sound was emanating, a voice that only he could hear, Barry's voice, "Please, don't go on any further, Batman, you can't save anyone this way, you'll only destroy ourselves."
"It seems your plan wasn't successful," he heard Sokhup say. "You won't find the answer you're looking for here. Go back."
The red Batman began to run, but in that instant, he ran right through Sokhup's figure, touching nothing.
"You're not within time," Sokhup's voice came from beside his ear, "Everything you see is just a projection. I'm not in the period of time you are in now, and therefore, you can't touch me no matter what."
"Tell me the truth about time," his tone contained anger, almost roaring, "Someone said the truth is here with you. Tell me how to reverse time."
"I told you, you won't find your answer here," Sokhup turned and walked back to his desk. He picked up the Globe from beside it and fiddled with it, then said, "Come with me."
Sokhup's figure suddenly became blurry, and as he took a step forward, he stood in front of the red Batman, walking right through him. The red Batman spun around sharply.
He followed Sokhup, running, but he could barely keep up. Weaving through the boundless Divine Speed, the figure holding the Globe always kept a moderate distance ahead.
In the moment of stopping, the blurry shadows within the Divine Speed dispersed, and though he found himself in the same place, everything was vastly different.
Every object in the study was floating, rotating, inverting, or shattering in an eerie manner, like a bizarre and absurd dream.
"This is the Dreamworld, welcome to Dreamworld," Sokhup's voice emerged faintly. The red Batman turned, and a book was handed to him.
"Take a look at this." He seemed confident and added, "I guess they have the answer you want."
The red Batman opened the book.
The first page showed a young man with blue eyes, his expression slightly panicked.
"What the hell was that about?!!" Charles roared, "Why was there a centaur?! Has he been reading too many fantasy novels?!!"
"How should I know?!" A figure in front was running even faster than him, it was Spider Man Riley, who also shouted, "That armor was even weirder! I punched it and nearly shattered myself!!"
"Stop yelling!" Treasure Woman Jessica, flying at the front, looked back at the huge fat man chasing after them, who seemed to be a sumo wrestler.
With his size, he shouldn't be running so fast, but it was clear he wasn't running. With each step he took, the space beneath his feet folded. He possessed the ability to fold space.
Jessica rubbed her sore shoulder, having only been grazed by his fist, she felt as if she was being torn apart. However, she had to muster more strength to fly higher and pointed into the distance, "Go that way, that territory belongs to the Flame Gang, maybe they can help us deal with him!"
"The vampire is back!!" Xu Shang-Chi, running in the rear, took a frantic turn and shouted, "He's trying to cut us off from the right—turn left!!"
"There's an octopus on the left!!!"
The group slowed down and gathered together cautiously. All around them were odd characters. Charles took a deep breath and said, "Don't panic. The vampire and the sumo wrestler can be disrupted by Psychic Ability. I'll hold them back for a moment, then you run out."
"What about you?" Jessica asked.
"Once you've run off, I'll forcibly extract myself," Charles swallowed hard, "That will leave me needing several hours of rest, but it's okay, we've gathered enough information this time."
"Three, two, one... Go!!"
Suddenly, the sumo wrestler and the vampire flying behind them paused for a moment. Jessica, in mid-air, punched the vampire sending him flying, while Riley and Xu Shang-Chi took the chance to jump over the sumo wrestler's head.
Then the image stuttered and everyone's motion froze completely; someone hit the rewind button.
Returning to the side of Charles, Riley, Xu Shang-Chi, and Jessica were all bewildered. Charles looked up incredulously to see a man with black hair extending his hand toward them.
Time began to flow backward, everyone was back in the middle of the road, and once again, the desperate flight commenced.