The afternoon in the Himalayas was so deeply blue it seemed like a single block of ice, and the sound of rustling snow swept in from outside the window, like the finest lullaby. After lunch, Pamela lay facedown on the table, dozing off.
Yawning, Shiller walked in, obviously just woken from a nap himself. His entrance roused Pamela, who smoothed her red hair and stretched lazily before lying down again.
"How are you feeling? Is the altitude sickness any better?"
"Much better, but I'm still sleepy and lacking energy," Pamela said, her eyelids drooping with weariness.
"Do you have time for a quick psychological assessment now?"
"What's that? Is it mandatory?" Pamela looked up at him with a puzzled expression, though her chin remained on the table.
"All the superheroes here need to do it, but many have been putting it off for too long."
"What's the point of it?"
"Monitoring the mental health of superheroes helps us understand their psychological state, and can prevent certain disasters that arise from mental issues."
"Well, that wouldn't work where we come from—our superheroes are walking psychological issues," Pamela said with a smile. "But Harley is always eager to give me psychological counseling. I think I'm fine."
"Thinking that her psychological counseling could 'fix' you is the problem itself," Shiller rolled his eyes gently and said, "It's like one person holds a flashlight for another to climb. The climber says, 'I won't do it. If you turn off the flashlight, won't I just fall?'"
Pamela chuckled, and Shiller walked over to lift her eyelid, saying, "I see you're still in the throes of altitude sickness. Your head doesn't seem very clear."
"That's fine by me. Being too clear-headed can be uncomfortable. I'm enjoying the bliss of feeling like an ordinary person right now."
"How is the experiment going?" Shiller asked, hoping to talk about something more serious.
Finally sitting up, Pamela moved her stiff arms and shook her head before saying, "Not bad, at least the cabbage is doing well."
"Cabbage again? I thought we were growing herbs?"
"You don't think we have so many precious herbs for experimentation, do you? Wild ones are hard to find nowadays, and our boss Strange is stingy. If not using cabbage, then what?"
Pamela took a cultured Petri dish from under the table and placed it on top. The cabbage inside was smaller than normal but had a beautiful iridescent sheen that would be a perfect +16 ingredient in any gourmet game.
"Why is it so small?"
"There seems to be a misconception here," Pamela explained. "People believe 'concentrated' means 'essence,' and that true wild herbs shouldn't grow too large. They think anything small must be wild, and that the large ones are cultivated."
Shiller nodded, agreeing with Pamela. He had chatted with some people keen on buying Chinese medicinal materials who generally believed that overly plump and complete materials were grown in greenhouses with excessive water and fertilizer, whereas the small, irregular-shaped ones were wild.
"So, I reduced the size of the plants we grow—after all, we're not using them to hit people. Then I altered the structure of the plant cells, enabling them to store an extremely faint magical energy."
"Do you know what our problem is now? If you produce something that is obviously a magical plant, it won't pass inspection. Such items are definitely not allowed for sale; they've learned their lesson."
"That is exactly the problem we'll tackle next. We've basically found a stable plant cell structure that can store magic energy, and we've confirmed that the intake of minute amounts of magic energy can help balance the body's indicators in ordinary people, indeed prolonging life."
"And this very faint magic energy can also gradually alter the magical affinity of ordinary people. If many people use it widely, it can create an effect similar to herd immunity, giving most people in a certain area a magical affinity."
"However, we're still researching the specific storage scale. This one I have here is fully charged, so the appearance is unavoidably unusual. We're now considering gradually downgrading the potency."
"How is it cultivated? Can it be mass-produced?"
"The Grand Mages nurtured this by hand. Stark was working on a broad-spectrum radiation device—that's the key to mass production, but he was gone halfway through the process, so we had no choice but to proceed to this step of adjusting the scale."
Shiller nodded, feeling that such a research process was quite good. Pamela said, "I didn't bring my lab assistant from back home. The Supreme Magician suggested I pick a few assistants from the local school, but I can't communicate with them—I really don't understand Chinese or Indonesian, and their English isn't very good."
"Barry's been a good runner. These past few days, he's been running back and forth between the lab and the Grand Mage's residence. But he's not much help in research. That Chinese guy you found does have decent English, but unfortunately, he's been assigned to plan the village's construction. There's simply not enough manpower to use in Shiyan right now."
Shiller thought for a moment and said, "Then let's pull a few assistants from the Gotham Magic Academy for you. Never mind, just find someone familiar. Dick and Raven are pretty idle; let them come over. I'll find you a few more Spider-Men."
"Right," Shiller said as if something had just occurred to him. "Have you been near any mountains lately? Heard any noises?"
Pamela shook her head but quickly added, "We placed a machine in the cave next to the village below, the radiation machine developed by Stark. But that cave is very shallow, and we've sealed it properly; there shouldn't be any issues."
Shiller nodded. These past few days, he had looked up some news reports and learned about the events that had happened on this land. From those guarded hints, it seemed that Chi You was buried very deep, with layers and layers of defense constructed outside. Not to mention them, even Magneto wouldn't necessarily be able to wake him up. No need to worry unnecessarily—why complicate life by fretting over imagined problems?
After leaving Pamela's lab, Shiller contacted some available Spider-Men while walking towards the portal, ready to pull a few idle folks from the DC side for some research.
But apart from a few who had participated in Battleworld or had been here before, most were unfamiliar with him and unclear about his relationship with Arrogance. Surprising them out of the blue could easily scare them. Before leaving, Shiller still had to change into a black suit, the time to disguise himself as Arrogance once again.
Through the portal to Gotham, Shiller first went to The inner world and caught Dick and Raven, who recently hadn't been doing anything but crazily falling in love.
The skin of Arrogance really came in handy. The two were as jittery as quails, afraid that Shiller would catch them and quiz them on their studies. Shiller feigned leniency, and off they scampered to the opposite cosmos.
Shiller was supposed to head back immediately because some Spider-Men had already replied to his messages. However, remembering that Arrogance recently bought a new house and that Arrogance never cleaned, Shiller decided to check it out.
Shiller drove to the new house only to find that he didn't have the keys, forcing him to open the lock through the Gray mist and locate the phone Arrogance had left on the table.
Since the two universes were not from the same era, the phones were not interchangeable. Despite the technology giants Wayne and Luther, the phone Arrogance used here was still a regular flip phone, whereas Greed had already started using a miniature holographic communication terminal.
Picking up this ancient phone, Shiller flipped it open only to see dozens of unread messages. Arrogance wouldn't have gotten so poor as to be chased by debt collectors, right?
Shiller pressed the buttons for quite a while to access the messaging interface. That's when he realized these messages were from Oliver.
The content of the messages was a bit all over the place. One moment Oliver was asking how well Shiller had settled in the new house, and the next, he was inquiring about how Clark had been lately, with a nuanced suggestion of changing the subject, seemingly to conceal something.
Shiller guessed that Clark was likely describing the situation in Mexico within the Marvel Universe to Oliver through pictures or text. Clearly, Oliver couldn't sit still any longer.
From the situation in the Marvel Universe, it would be odd if he could stay calm. The Mexican situation there was much better than here, as they had been pushed to the brink, and their greatest backing wasn't from a struggling Soviet Union.
Through the veiled words in the text messages, Shiller could tell how anxious Oliver was, but considering this man's stubbornness, Shiller decided to ignore it and clean the house first.
But Oliver must have been truly desperate because just as Shiller had nearly finished tidying the living room, the doorbell rang.
When Shiller opened the door, there stood Oliver with food and wine in hand, and what drew Shiller's attention the most was a big fish.
The Shillers didn't have any particular food preferences, but if they had to choose, they tended towards fish, especially Greed, who loved to go fishing around New York with Matt and then grill fish while drinking.
Considering the fish, Shiller still opened the door. Noticing Shiller's gaze, Oliver immediately smirked and said, "I knew you'd like this. Let's go inside."
The two entered the room together, with Oliver looking up at the furnishings and saying, "I received your housewarming invitation, but my friend was injured at the time, and I was taking care of her, so I couldn't make it."
"Black Canary?"
Oliver looked at him strangely, not understanding why he used the codename; it was because Shiller had forgotten what Black Canary's real name was, as he didn't pay much attention to these nuts from DC.
"Yes, she had tracked down the Penitent Cartel's base again. However, those cunning bastards managed to elude her once more and even set a trap for her. Luckily, she reacted quickly and didn't fall victim to their plan, though she did sustain minor injuries."
"Um..." Oliver looked up at Shiller and hesitated. "Clark sent me a lot of messages, saying he is in another universe, um..."
"Yes, he's just avoiding," Shiller deliberately said. "Nothing compares to the business you once had. These little skirmishes he's getting into now are just a substitute."
"Little skirmishes?" Oliver raised his voice. "They've even declared their colors. I don't understand how they have the nerve! It's only been a few decades; do they think..."
Shiller chuckled. "Maybe in the time difference of these few decades, the greatest miracle in this world has happened?"