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Chapter 272: The Fearful Laughing Demon (3)

"Wait, but..."

In an apartment in Coastal City, a man wearing a pilot jacket was talking to himself, pacing back and forth in the room. He said, "I know, I know, it's my duty, but..."

"Well, if things are really as you say, then I'll go there, but I think you're overreacting a bit."

"When I first joined the Green Lantern Corps, you told me that the Green Lantern Corps is the most powerful among all the Lantern Corps, and I have felt that too. I don't quite understand what is making you so nervous..."

"...Alright, if you insist on doing this, I won't object. After all, Earth is also my homeland, and it's my responsibility to protect it."

"Do you have the specific location where the yellow light appeared? I was asleep just now and didn't sense anything unusual."

The man scratched his hair. His brown hair looked somewhat messy, just as he had said. He had just woken up and still had a sleepy look in his eyes.

"What? Gotham? How come it's in that haunted place? Well... not surprising, what did you say the yellow light represents? Oh, fear. The environment there is indeed fearful."

"I'll teleport over now to take a look. If things are really as serious as you say, then I'll handle it as soon as possible."

"Listen, right now, I, Hal, Hal Jordan, am the only Green Lantern on Earth. I can't let my home be disgraced. If I request backup before the fight even starts, it will seriously tarnish my image within the Lantern Corps, won't it?"

"Oh, yes, I know, you mean well. I also know that the Yellow Lanterns may be difficult to deal with, but you have to believe in me and my willpower. I've been doing fairly well since becoming a Green Lantern, right?"

Hal, the man who called himself Hal, put his hands on his hips and said, "You know, not all people on Earth have the acceptance and willpower like mine. Although I haven't had the power of the Lantern Ring for a long time, I think I can handle these troubles on Earth without much problem..."

After a while, he sighed and then touched his pet dog at his feet. He said, "Sorry, looks like I can only take you out for a walk later. I have something to take care of. But trust me, I'll be back soon..."

As he said that, a green light flashed, and Hal's figure disappeared. But when he reappeared, he didn't appear directly in Gotham. Instead, he appeared on a road in Brooklyn. He stood on the road and looked at the sky, feeling a little confused. He said, "What's wrong? Did I get lost?"

The climate in Brooklyn was very pleasant, and the weather was clear. Even during the day, stars could be seen through the sky. Hal assessed the direction and realized he should be right.

Normally, when he teleported here, he should have ended up right below the sign at the entrance to Gotham. But now, there was only a straight road with nothing around.

So, what happened to a bigger city?

Hal spun around in confusion, thinking that maybe the direction of the stars was the issue. It wasn't entirely implausible since each ring's arrival often brought about some anomalies. He decided to teleport back to Brooklyn and purchased a nearby tourist map.

Following the map, Hal began walking towards Gotham, not finding it troublesome at all. As the inheritor of the Green Lantern ring, he had no physical limitations and could walk swiftly. Additionally, the distance between Brooklyn and Gotham wasn't significant.

However, the more he followed the map, the more perplexed he became. Holding the map up to his face, he exclaimed, "What the hell? Isn't it written here? Once I reach this point and cross the pine forest on the right, I should see the tallest building in Gotham, Wayne Tower... Where is the building???"

Hal crossed the pine forest planted beside the road, but there was nothing to be seen. However, he noticed a subtle scent of alcohol in the air. Assuming it was leftover from someone's camping party, he didn't pay much attention to it.

He continued walking ahead for a long distance until he finally came across a sign. What puzzled Hal was that there was a person standing beneath the sign, holding an umbrella. Hal approached him and asked, "Hello, I want to go to Gotham. Is it straight ahead along this road?"

The man shook his head and inquired, "Are you Hal? Hal Jordan?"

"Do you know me?" Hal questioned.

"Not only do I know you, but I also know your identity. You're a pilot and the owner of the Green Lantern ring, a Green Lantern, right?"

Upon hearing the first half of his sentence, Hal was already very confused. He wasn't a big celebrity, so it was impossible for an ordinary person to know him. But when he heard the second half of the sentence, he squinted his eyes and looked at the man, saying, "Who are you? How do you know about the Green Lantern?"

"Do you remember when you had just obtained the Green Lantern ring and posted a message on an alien-related forum? Only one person replied to your post, and that was me..."

"You're the... my goodness! I sent you so many messages. Why didn't you reply to me?!"

Initially shocked, Hal's tone turned into a complaint.

Schiller sighed and said, "I can explain that later, but right now there's a big problem that might require your attention."

"Big trouble? What kind of trouble? Why are you here? What's going on?"

Hal was filled with questions, but Schiller had no intention of answering his series of inquiries. Instead, he said to Hal, "Weren't you heading to Gotham? I'm sorry to inform you that even if you continue straight on this road, you won't reach Gotham."

"That's impossible." Hal outright denied the claim.

"The map says that if you follow the traffic signs, you'll reach Gotham..."

You can give it a try.

Hal extended a finger, waved it, and then assumed a running posture. With a "whoosh," he disappeared, only to appear again in front of the sign.

As Hal saw Schiller and the sign reappear before him, he was perplexed. Schiller, however, said, "Indeed, Earth is round, but I don't think your speed is fast enough to go around the Earth in a split second, right?"

Even if Hal underestimated the situation, he knew that things had taken a different turn. His expression gradually grew serious as he asked Schiller, "What's going on here? You better give me a reasonable explanation."

"Abandon all your notions of 'reasonable,'" Schiller stepped over the roadside barrier and approached the sign, saying to Hal, "Because right now, you're in a dream."

As soon as he finished speaking, Hal saw the pillar supporting the traffic sign grow larger and larger in his line of sight, until it transformed into an immensely colossal tower, situated on a charred black land. Hal raised his head, opened his mouth, and asked, "What is this?"

"Come with me, and I'll explain everything to you," Schiller said as he led Hal forward. Hal's brown eyes were filled with doubt, and he followed behind Schiller, asking, "Where are we? Is this an illusion you've created? Who are you? Is it related to the yellow light?"

Schiller sighed and said, "I won't explain the previous events to you. Let's start with the arrival of the yellow light."

"You're aware of the yellow light's arrival? Oh, right, you're probably not an ordinary person. But I've never heard of a Lantern Ring that can make an entire city vanish."

"That's because it's not the Lantern Ring that turned the city into nothingness, but me."

"Don't joke around," Hal's tone conveyed his disbelief.

"That's Gotham! One of the top cities on the entire East Coast. How could you make it disappear in an instant? The panic it would cause would be unimaginable. Why haven't I seen it on the news?"

"Gotham hasn't disappeared in the real world. You can't see it because the moment you stepped on that road, you entered a dream."

"As for why I did this, it's because I have certain responsibilities..."

Schiller sighed once again, more times today than in the past few months combined, as things had indeed taken an unexpected turn.

He and Jack's original plan was to delve into the depths of Batman's consciousness and extract and eliminate any potential threats. Although the process was highly complex, the objective was clear—to eliminate any possibility of the Laughing Bat's appearance.

In this process, Schiller encountered clowns killing clowns and bats killing bats. In short, he would do whatever it takes to prevent the extremely annoying Laughing Bat from appearing in his life.

In the first two stories leading up to the climax, everything went very smoothly. They successfully reached the edge of Batman's dream, found the embryo that could hatch the maniacal laughter, and almost killed him.

However, unexpectedly, this stimulation caused a surge of darkness deep within Batman's heart, and it erupted from his soul in an unprecedented ferocious manner, rushing into the universe.

This purest force of fear in the entire universe naturally attracted the attention of an entity, which is the yellow lantern ring or the representative of fear power in the emotional spectrum, the yellow lantern beast known as "Parallax."

All the lantern beasts of different colored rings in this universe are powerful beings, and Parallax is no exception.

However, Parallax is also a connoisseur. Ordinary fear power is not enough to grab its attention. But the problem lies in the fact that the fear power within Batman's heart is almost the purest form of fear in the entire DC universe. For Parallax, it's an irresistible temptation.

Thus, with the arrival of the yellow lantern ring, a terrifying monster accompanied it, which is the yellow lantern beast, Parallax.

"Parallax?" Hal asked with confusion. He said, "I've heard from the veterans in the Corps that every Lantern Corps has lantern furnaces and lantern beasts. They mentioned that the lantern beasts generated by each emotion are incredibly powerful. However, they don't easily appear..."

"You mean someone's power of fear in this city triggered the arrival of the yellow lantern beast? That's really troublesome..." Hal's expression grew increasingly serious, indicating that he realized the severity of the problem.

"I didn't expect this either because, according to the timeline, it's impossible. You've just..." Schiller turned to Hal and said.

The reason why he hadn't been concerned about the yellow lantern ring issue was that, in the normal timeline, Hal had only recently become a Lantern. At this point, Sinestro, the founder of the Yellow Lantern Corps, should still be a Green Lantern. If they didn't have a falling out, Sinestro wouldn't have betrayed the Green Lantern Corps, and he wouldn't have created the Yellow Lantern Ring.

During the rising tide of darkness, Schiller hadn't considered the issue of the emotional spectrum at all. He believed that the current universe's light rings didn't include the category of fear. But who knew that the yellow lantern ring descended just like that.

Schiller reflected on the changes in this universe. The early appearance of the Yellow Lantern Corps wasn't entirely impossible.

"But you still haven't said what happened to Gotham? Where are we?"

"Don't worry, I'm about to explain..."

"The arrival of the yellow lantern ring and the yellow lantern beast isn't the greatest danger. The greatest danger is that the host they want to parasitize has an escaped... egg inside their body."

"Egg? What is that?"

"I'm not trying to scare you, but I have to tell you that it's an existence that even if all your lantern corps were combined, wouldn't be enough for him to fight alone."

Just as Hal was about to refute, Schiller continued, "Fortunately, now he is just an embryo, greatly weakened in terms of his ability to act, and only a step away from death."

"But at this moment, the Yellow Lantern ring and the Lantern Beast arrived. One was desperately trying to escape, while the other was desperately trying to invade. Guess who won in the end?"

"Well, it should be the Lantern Beast, right?"

"No, they both lost, and Batman won both. Now, he possesses both the Egg of Laughter and the Yellow Lantern Beast."

Schiller explained again, "Originally, Batman could reject the Yellow Lantern ring with his own will, but the almost dying egg inside him saw it as the only way to survive."

"So, when Batman's attention shifted to the Yellow Lantern Beast, it took control of his consciousness and accepted the Yellow Lantern ring, and the Yellow Lantern Beast entered Batman's body through the ring. Now, they are merged as one."

As Schiller narrated, the two entered the Babel Tower, and then, amidst the shifting lights and shadows, Hal found himself on top of a high-rise building. He looked down, and beneath his feet lay the entire city of Gotham.

Finally in Gotham, but Hal didn't feel any happiness inside because, as he looked up, an indescribable monster stood above Gotham.

It had a segmented, multi-legged lower body resembling a yellow centipede, a Dark upper body adorned with a bat emblem, and a head without eyes or any other facial features, except for a large mouth of bright red.

At this moment, Schiller's voice resounded:

"The Yellow Lantern ring, Parallax, Batman, and the Laughing Egg all intertwined, and I call it..."

"The Laughing Demon of Fear."

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