msmithbooks Chapter 453 The Anti-Surveillance Agent: Who is he?
Chapter 453 The Anti-Surveillance Agent: Who is he?
Chapter 453 The Anti-Surveillance Agent... Who is he?
"That...that darkness is actually countless shadow demons."
At the Pentagon, Amanda Waller suddenly stood up, staring intently at the screen.
She has experienced wars, superhuman battles, and countless crises that threaten human safety, including many terrifying events that even Batman is unaware of. She has experienced things that would terrify even the bravest soul.
Yet even she shuddered before the dark, cold face of death itself, and in those burning eyes... she saw the end of everything.
On the streets, countless pedestrians screamed and fled, while soldiers raised their guns and fired at the Shadow Demon, but to no avail.
Gotham.
In a dark red sky, Chen Taofei's eyes emitted a red, intense gaze, like a sharp sword piercing through the darkness.
Damn it.
As he flew, he gave orders to Hal and Arlene Sue, the current de facto leaders of the Green Lantern Corps: "Take your men and set up the shield!"
The appearance of the Shadow Fiend cast a shadow over Chen Tao's heart...
The truth is: even though Night Owl had proactively revealed a lot of information about the Counter-Monitors to him, Chen Tao still knew very little about them.
In the comics he read in his previous life, the anti-surveillance agents in different periods and major events had vastly different levels of power.
He has a history of being a destructive villain who nearly destroyed the entire DC universe during the Crisis on Infinite Earths arc, a period of weakness during the Sinestro Legion Wars arc where half of his body was shattered by Superman Supreme, and even a period after the New 52 Flashpoint arc where, due to a timeline reboot, he lost his supreme godhood and became a mortal named Möbius who was merely enslaved by the Anti-Life Equation.
Even during the Darkseid Wars, they were reduced to fighting Darkseid to a draw, and it took them a tremendous amount of effort to defeat him.
According to the intelligence provided by Night Owl, the Anti-Monitor he is facing now looks exactly like the mortal Mobius from the Darkseid Wars, making him arguably the weakest version of the Anti-Monitor.
But the Shadow Fiend of this scale is clearly something that only the strongest version of the Anti-Monitor could create during the Crisis on Infinite Earths era.
Damn it, Night Owl! How could you not have gathered such crucial intelligence?!
Star City.
Green Arrow is fleeing for his life amidst Shadow Fiend's attacks.
Despite the protection of the green barrier in the sky, the dense swarms of Shadow Demons outside the barrier still sent chills down one's spine.
He tumbled and leaped across the gaps between the tall buildings.
Some of the Shadow Fiends entered the city before the protective shield was erected, and he is now running around frantically.
He leaped down from the high building, the rope arrows he fired propelling his body through the air.
He turned to the side, and the energy blast arrow he fired shattered a Shadow Fiend.
He landed on the ground.
However, more Shadow Fiends attacked Green Arrow, forcing him to flee once more. But as he soared through the air and looked back, his eyes widened in horror as he saw a mother protecting her child amidst the Shadow Fiends' carnage on the street…
He charged forward fearlessly, but was overwhelmed by more Shadow Fiends in the next second. The rope snapped, and he lost his footing and fell. At that moment, a Green Lantern Ring flew into his hand...
Los Angeles.
Within the city protected by the yellow barrier, Black Lightning unleashed a torrent of electricity, turning countless Shadow Fiends that had been encroaching upon it into ashes. He was panting heavily, but when he looked up, he saw even more Shadow Fiends swarming in from the other side of the junction like locusts.
Atlantis.
In prison.
Lord Om bowed his head, his hands gripping the bars of the cage.
"tell me."
He inquired of the Atlantean guards outside.
"What happened outside?"
He heard a rumbling sound coming from underwater; it was the roar of the Atlantean cannons.
"Atlantis has been invaded."
"By land people?"
"The Anti-Monitor, a common enemy of both land dwellers and Atlanteans."
Crunch, crunch, crunch—
Under Lord Orm's superhuman strength, even the Atlantean cage specially made for him could not stop him from pulling with all his might.
"Take me to battle."
He told the guard.
"You...you are no longer the King of Atlantis."
"But I am still a warrior!"
The whole world is like this; Shadow Fiend is everywhere.
The few heroes on Earth united, and their great strength paled in comparison to their boundless courage.
Deep in space, the Owl spaceship.
"See, Dick? If Batman had accepted my plan, this wouldn't have happened."
Night Owl and Nightwing Dick Grayson sat together, a small dish of snacks and drinks on the table in front of them, but Nightwing noticed that Night Owl hadn't touched them. This indicated that Night Owl was wary and was only communicating with him through the Night Owl robot, which he controlled remotely.
Night Owl continued, "If Batman were to accept my plan, the Shadow Fiend army of the Anti-Monitor would be utterly routed by the 80 billion fully transformed orcs, which would greatly weaken the Anti-Monitor."
He noticed that Dick's lips curled up almost imperceptibly as he watched the Shadow Fiends wreak havoc on the screen.
In fact, the Shadow Fiend army has not yet been able to break through the protective shields erected by the Yellow Light Legion in major cities on a large scale, but even before the shields are erected, a small number of Shadow Fiends entering the cities are already enough to give the heroes a hard time.
Night Owl simply showed Nightwing Dick Grayson some footage of the areas invaded by Shadow Fiend. He wasn't sure what he was trying to prove; perhaps he just wanted to show Dick that Batman had led him astray.
"Your plan will turn 80 billion people into beasts. Even if we disregard the potential casualties from their infighting, I'll just say this: this transformation is very likely irreversible. You never intended to restore them to normal. They are resources to you, but not human beings."
"They are warriors fighting for their own survival," Night Owl said. "Their transformation can increase the world's chances of victory."
Nightwing was silent for a moment, then he said, slowly and deliberately, "Sending untrained civilians to the battlefield is not what heroes do."
"If the world is going to be destroyed, then there's no point in worrying about these things," Night Owl said. "When a world is struggling to survive, considering moral principles is undoubtedly a form of slow suicide."
"There must be other ways," Nightwing said.
"There is no other way," Night Owl said. "Either we use the Crimson of All Beings to transform everyone into beasts and then let them fight the Shadow Demon, at the cost of them becoming bloodthirsty beasts, or we leave them as powerless civilians and watch them all be slaughtered by the Shadow Demon."
He said to Nightwing, "Tell me, what's your choice?"
"Batman must have other plans," Nightwing said. "He will save everyone; no one will die today."
"Someone is already dead," Night Owl said.
Nightwing remained unmoved, continuing to talk to Batman, while Night Owl refused to acknowledge his own emotions.
He continued, "He died at the hands of the Shadow Demon. If he could have transformed into a beastman, he might have been able to perish with him, but now there's no chance, no more chances."
Night Owl said, "Batman's moral code has poisoned this world, a world that should have had a chance to escape the clutches of the Anti-Surveillance..."
Then suddenly, the monitor went completely black.
This brought the night owl to an abrupt halt.
He tapped a few times on the keyboard next to him, trying to switch to other monitoring screens, but everywhere was pitch black.
"What happened?"
He muttered to himself.
Nightwing slowly stood up from the chair.
The owl was still switching monitors there until he switched to one that was located outside of Earth.
Then...then he saw Batman standing alone in the vast, boundless starry sky, holding a bottle in each hand.
Wait, a bottle?
A blue planet floats quietly inside the bottle, looking as beautiful as a light bulb shining inside.
Inside another bottle, countless shrunken, ant-like black shadow demons aimlessly searched for a non-existent target.
"Batman... Batman shrunk the Earth and stuffed it into a bottle," Nightwing said. "Using Brainiac's technology."
"This...this doesn't make sense." Night Owl paused, then said:
"This is definitely not something that can be done in a short time. I have studied Brainiac's technology before. His shrinking ray can shrink a city in an instant, but if he wants to do something to a planet..."
"Batman has been thinking about doing that for a long time." Then he heard Batman's Dick's cheerful voice: "Batman always anticipates the worst. He... he does it. Always."
Night Owl looked at Nightwing's profile. His bright eyes shone with a light as bright as autumn water reflecting the stars.
Sadly... this light does not belong to the night owl.
……
……
……
"I never expected the Wandering Earth project would come in handy at this time..."
Chen Tao put the Earth inside the bottle into his stomach, muttering to himself, "Help, I bet Luther is going to say something like 'You can't protect humans by putting them in bottles' again. Luther hates that the most... It's also his main argument against Clark."
"But if I had released everyone after everything was over, I probably wouldn't have been subjected to his insults..."
He took a deep breath as he let his thoughts wander.
Although he has put the Earth into a bottle, it does not mean that the impenetrable position that the anti-monitors used to envelop the Earth has completely disappeared. On the contrary, Chen Tao himself is still in this position, like a cricket caught in a giant trap.
And then...
He guessed he would soon be able to find the source of the evil.
"That's a really great idea."
Sure enough, as Chen Tao turned around, in the silent universe, he saw a huge planet break through space. The force field that had originally only bound the Earth was infinitely magnified, creating a large enough battlefield.
Chen Tao immediately set off, flying directly towards the giant planet in front of him.
Silver particles flowed across his body, and some of the red body features of the Red Death Demon appeared on his synchronized high-speed bullets. The Kryptonian's innate bio-force allowed him to discard a portion of the Speed Force used to protect his body from being burned by friction, thus using less Speed Force to create greater speed.
He quickly landed on the surface of that giant planet, and there he saw…
The true identity of the anti-surveillance agent.
Thank goodness.
Having read the comics thoroughly, Chen Tao immediately recognized that the opponent before him was not an Anti-Monitor from the Crisis on Infinite Earths era, but rather an Anti-Monitor from the Darkseid War era. This meant that the enemy he was facing might not be as powerful as he had imagined.
"From the moment you set foot on Quad, you have sealed your fate. Today is the day the universe ends."
The anti-surveillance agent spoke up, and to Chen Tao's surprise, he didn't seem anxious or even fierce; instead, he appeared somewhat relaxed and regretful.
Chen Tao had imagined his first face-to-face meeting with the anti-surveillance agent countless times, but he never expected the other party to have such a peculiar attitude.
"But speaking of which... your universe is truly complete."
The Anti-Monitor said, "The Justice League is one thing, it's standard equipment in every universe, but you guys actually have the Green Lantern Corps, and not only the Green Lantern Corps, but also the Black Death Emperor, and even Superman Supreme?"
He said, "Of all the dark multiverses I've ever seen, your world is one of the most powerful, especially Superman Supreme."
Of all the Dark Multiverses I've encountered, very few possess the Supreme Superman. I've only seen two so far, and you are the second.
You know, the last Superman Supreme I've seen in a universe was pitifully weak. But your universe's Superman Supreme is so strong—oh, by the way, do you know what a Dark Multiverse is?
(Note: The previous Dark Multiverse with Superman Supreme mentioned by the Anti-Monitor refers to the Dark Multiverse in The Dark Multiverse Saga: Infinite Crisis.)
That multiverse is a dark mirror version of the DC event "Infinite Crisis," and Superman Supreme is one of the main villains of this event. However, he is far too weak in the dark multiverse compared to the normal multiverse, to the point that he was actually killed by the corrupted Blue Beetle.
Although the corrupted Blue Beetle was a second-generation Blue Beetle and had received an epic upgrade, even so, the Superman Supreme from the Infinite Crisis era should still have been at his peak, but he died so easily...
Chen Tao remained silent.
This was too strange. Even the Dark Multiverse knew about it; the Anti-Monitor seemed to know far too much. He wanted to figure out—who exactly was the Anti-Monitor?
(End of this chapter)