The office soon welcomed a new visitor, a red figure appeared accompanied by golden light.
"I can help you," he spoke, "but I must take that person away with me. I need to know the secrets of time."
Sophop sighed lightly and said, "You are fixated on an answer in your heart, believing it to be your judgment, but answers are always limited by cognition. After gaining new knowledge, don't you plan to confirm your judgment?"
The Flash Batman, in his red uniform, frowned, but still stared coldly at Sophop and said, "Are you planning to go back on your word?"
"I hope you understand, the one trading with you is not me." Sophop opened a drawer and placed a Tarot card on the table.
Flash Batman saw the card now heavy with thicker mist and frowned. A few hours earlier, after seeing a person who could control time through an illusion, he wanted to know where this person was. The other party had also handed him this card, but at that time the card was blank.
Flash Batman never believed in any vague gods. He thought with infinite speed and infinite time, he would eventually find the person in the illusion.
But the result was that he had come back, because no matter where he searched, he could not find a trace of this time controller.
Perhaps a year, perhaps ten years, he had used the Divine Speed to search almost the entire cosmos. There was nothing here, nothing there—in a sense, he had come to a new understanding of the world, which led him to believe in the existence of God.
Is this a new understanding? What new answer would this bring? Flash Batman didn't know, and he had no time to consider now.
"You should rethink this, Batman," the voice of Flash Barry once again appeared in his mind.
"Shut up, Barry, I didn't keep you around to cause me trouble," said Flash Batman.
"I know why you kept me," Barry's voice did not carry much anger when facing his own killer, just deep helplessness, "Because you still have a conscience, Batman, you didn't really want to kill me, you just wanted me to cooperate."
"But I have to tell you, even if you become the master of the Divine Speed, even if you search the entire universe, you will not find the answer you seek, because it is fundamentally wrong."
"Shut up."
Flash Batman walked up to the table and before placing his hand on it, said, "I will agree with him, and eventually you will understand that I am right, I am the first to find the answer."
In the psychic battlefield of David, Charles hid in a corner of a street, less than five kilometers away from the Soulstream Sect's temple, and it was his first time venturing this deep.
They had collected a lot of data on personalities, but it was mostly superficial information about their appearance and general abilities. Nevertheless, the purpose of gathering data was to find their weaknesses, which couldn't be found by just observing from afar.
To know specific combat data, one had to actually fight. Charles also realized for the first time that he wasn't all-powerful. The world did not bend to his control. The words weak, helpless, and pain could be applied not only to ordinary people.
It had been five days since Charles tackled this challenge; he faced one of the core combat forces of the Soulstream Sect, which was the toxic plants guarding the outer perimeter of the temple.
He lived in the tallest tree on the outskirts of the temple, surrounded by a range of two to three kilometers filled with deadly miasma.
This toxin was a neurotoxin, which was the most feared and most difficult poison for humans to counter to date; even a small inhalation would immediately cause nerve paralysis, followed by the loss of all motor functions.
The most terrifying part was that this substance would affect the mind even in the illusion, and after multiple probes over the past few days, Charles discovered that excessive inhalation would cause the terrifying illusions to follow him back to reality, which is why he had been having nightmares for four nights in a row.
Charles possessed psychic abilities, which in another theory would be explained as brain wave mutation, but he knew little about human nerves, another mystery beyond neurology. His superpower controlled humans by directly manipulating the brain, not the nerves.
Therefore, Charles also had no way of dealing with those neural hallucinations. He controlled his brain to calm the active nerves, but once he entered the unconscious state, the nerves would drag him back into a nightmare, with the actual mechanism unclear.
These twitching nerves would in turn affect him in the illusion, and now Charles felt mentally scattered every five minutes, which almost cost him his life in the last battle with the toxic plants.
However, this repeated trial was not without rewards. By exploring the buildings within the range of miasma, Charles discovered a strange point—there wasn't a single drop of water in the entire area.
This was actually abnormal. After all, this was a projection of Paris city, where other parts of the city had water pipes and fountains, and most of the bathrooms were functioning normally. The personalities in the illusion needed to drink and relieve themselves just like actual people.
But only the area controlled by the toxic plants lacked any water. The pipes were dry, the faucets did not run, even the water containers seemed dry for a long time.
Charles got some water from outside the area and realized that the neurotoxin, nearly invincible in effect, ceased to work upon contact with water.
This was also why he was able to make a breakthrough today in terms of distance. He first jumped into a nearby artificial lake for a bath, and then made his way here confidently.
But there was a problem: there were no vehicles in this city. The vehicles that Charles manifested using his psychic ability wouldn't start. It seemed like some stronger presence had set the rules.
The Paris City was scorching hot. To avoid the branches and vines in the city, they couldn't walk in straight lines. A distance of two kilometers had to be detoured to four or five kilometers, and Charles' clothes were almost dry again.
As Charles hesitated between charging straight to the residence of the venomous plants to confront them or retreating to prepare better for next time, a giggling sound came from behind him.
With a swoosh, Charles disappeared, but it was still a step too late. A robust plant arm viciously struck his back, and he hit the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
When he tried to get up again, he felt dizzy. He realized a more potent neurotoxin was invading his brain.
As the dust cleared, the shadow opposite looked like a tree-person but was dressed in a clown's costume that was particularly ridiculous, especially the jester's hat with two horns dangling with round balls and bells. It was exceptionally glaring.
Who in the world would dress up as a clown? Charles didn't know. He only knew he was probably in big trouble today.
A denser cloud of spores drifted over, and Charles took a deep breath, concentrated, and summoned countless mists around him. He had materialized them out of thin air through the psychic battlefield's object manifestation technique.
Many people have experienced this: being chased in a dream, suddenly realizing that they are in their own dreamworld, and then conjuring up powerful weapons to defeat the pursuer, or sprouting wings to soar through the sky. This is actually the human race's ability to control dreams and materialize objects.
Of course, all this happens in one's own dream. However, in someone else's dream, this ability is greatly diminished. Charles could use this method simply because he was Professor X, and his mutant ability was still effective here.
But since this was someone else's dreamworld and the master of this dreamworld was stronger than the current him, his power of materialization was significantly weakened. If this were in an ordinary person's dream, Charles would have already raised a huge wave and drowned this tree.
The mist temporarily eased Charles' predicament, giving him a chance to catch his breath, but unfortunately, countless vines and tendrils followed, and Charles' continuous blinking left him far from rested.
Just as he paused again and gasped for breath, certain patterns on the ground tiles suddenly glowed green. Charles then realized they weren't patterns at all but vines that had been lying in wait for a long time.
With a swish, the vines captured Charles' ankles, and in an instant, he was hoisted up.
The venomous plant dressed as a joker capered over to him, laughing gleefully. Just as Charles was about to resist, a vine stabbed into his neck, a massive dose of neurotoxin injected directly turned his lips purple. He couldn't even maintain the shape of his psychic body.
A vine wound around his neck, tightening more and more. As oxygen thinned, darkness began to overtake Charles' vision.
The closer he got to death, the more his psychic body disintegrated, but there was a silver lining: he began to hear voices from afar.
Suddenly, two distinct sounds came from not too far away.
"What's going on with this place? Paris as I remember it wasn't like this."
"Me neither. I think this could be some kind of alternate dimension."
"You're becoming more superstitious about magic."
"If it exists, it's as worth studying as science."
Clearly a man and a woman, Charles could also hear something buzzing, like a machine or a weapon, but he didn't have the strength to care about that, as he used his last bit of energy to send a wave of signals toward the male and female.
Batwoman, standing on a piece of rubble, suddenly froze. She turned to look at Batman, whose expression also revealed a hint of bewilderment; they had both received the same signal at the same time.
Behind them, a portal had just dissipated, and they both instinctively looked back. Batwoman was the first to regain her composure, "No wonder he said we'd understand when we got here. Let's go."
The signal wasn't a sound, but an image—a large tree at the center of the frame, which was very recognizable. To their northeast, that massive tree stood against the skyline.
The two headed in that direction, but soon they encountered the same obstacle—a distinctly unnatural green cloud.
Batman pulled out a detector from his belt. Before it was even fully out, it started to beep frantically. He glanced at the readings and said, "No good, there's a very dense neurotoxin here, in the form of spore-like mist. We can't go in like this."
"Isn't the mask in the armor any good?"
"Better not try blindly; let me do a detailed check." Batman took out a miniature probe from his belt. With a flick of his arm guard, a small drone flew out. He attached the probe beneath it and launched the drone.
Soon a series of readings transmitted back to the device, and as he looked at the data, Batman suddenly froze.