Fear Laughing Demon (Part 3)

"Wait, but..."

In an apartment in the Seaside City, a man in a bomber jacket was talking to himself, pacing back and forth with his hands on his hips. He said, "I know, I know, it's my duty, but..."

"Okay, if things are really as you say, then I'll go over there, but I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill."

"When I first joined the Green Lantern Corps, you told me that the Green Lantern Corps was the most powerful of all the Lantern Corps, and I've felt that way. I don't quite understand what's making you all so nervous..."

"... Alright, if you insist on doing it this way, I won't object. After all, Earth is my home, and protecting it is my responsibility."

"Do you have the exact location where the yellow light came on? I was sleeping just now and didn't feel anything unusual."

The man scratched his head; his brown hair looked a little messy, just as he said, he had just woken up and was still sleepy.

"What? Gotham? How come it's in that godforsaken place? Well... not surprising. What do you guys say a yellow light means? Oh, fear. The environment there is definitely terrifying enough."

"I'll teleport there now and take a look. If things are really as serious as you say, I'll deal with it as soon as possible."

"Listen, right now, I, Hal, Hal Jordan, am the One Green Lantern on Earth. I can't let my homeland lose face. If I call for backup before the fight even starts, it will seriously damage my image within the Green Lantern Corps, won't it?"

"Oh, yes, I know you mean well, and I know that the Yellow Lantern you're talking about might be difficult to deal with, but you have to believe in me, believe in my willpower. During my time as Green Lantern, I've done pretty well, haven't I?"

The man who called himself Hal put his hands on his hips and said, "You know, not all Earthlings have my level of adaptability and willpower. Although I haven't been using the power of the Lantern Ring for very long, I think I can handle these troubles on Earth without any problems..."

After a while, he sighed, then patted his pet dog at his feet and said, "Sorry, it seems I'll have to take you for a walk later. I have some things to take care of, but you have to believe me, I'll be back soon..."

As he spoke, a green light flashed, and Hal's figure disappeared. However, when he reappeared, he didn't appear directly in Gotham, but on a highway in Bludhaven. He stood on the highway, looked at the sky, and said with some confusion, "... What's wrong? Am I lost?"

The climate in Bludhaven was pleasant, and the weather was clear, so even during the day, you could see the stars through the sky. Hal checked his bearings and realized he hadn't gone astray.

If he had teleported here normally, he should have stopped right below the signpost at the entrance to Gotham, but now there's nothing here except a straight road.

Such a big city?

Hal spun around in confusion for a moment. He thought that perhaps the direction of the stars was wrong. This was not impossible, since each ring would produce some strange phenomena when it was brought to the world. So he teleported back to Bludhaven and bought a tourist map of the area.

Following the tourist map, Hal walked towards Gotham without finding it troublesome, because he was now the Lantern had inherited the Green Lantern ring, so there was no problem with his physical strength, and he could walk very fast. Besides, Bludhaven and Gotham were not far apart.

But the more he walked with the map, the more confused he became. He held the map up to his eyes and said, "Damn it, doesn't it say here that as long as you get to this point, cross the pine forest on your right, you'll see Wayne Tower, Gotham's tallest building... Where is the tower???"

After crossing the pine forest planted along the right side of the road, Hal saw nothing, but there was a faint smell of alcohol in the air. Hal assumed it was the smell of alcohol left over from someone's camping party and didn't pay any attention to it.

He continued walking forward, and after walking a long distance, he finally saw a sign.

What puzzled Hal was that there was a person standing under the sign, holding an umbrella. Hal walked over and asked him, "Hello, I want to go to Gotham. Is it by going straight along this road?"

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

"You know me?"

"I not only know you, I also know who you are. You are a pilot, and also the owner of Green Lantern ring, a Green Lantern, right?"

Hal was already puzzled when he heard the first part of the man's sentence. He wasn't a big star, and it was impossible for just any ordinary person to know him. But when he heard the second part, he narrowed his eyes, looked at the man, and said, "Who are you? Why do you know about the Green Lantern?"

"Do you remember when you first received your Green Lantern ring, you posted something on a forum about aliens, and only one person replied to you? That was me..."

"You're... my God! I sent you so many messages, why didn't you reply?!"

Hal's tone was initially one of shock, but it later turned into a complaint.

Schiller sighed and said to him, "I can explain this later, but there's a Big Trouble right now that might require your help."

"Big Trouble? What Big Trouble? Why are you here? What's going on?"

Hal was completely bewildered, but Schiller had no intention of answering his series of questions. Instead, he said to Hal, "Aren't you going to Gotham? I regret to inform you that you will not reach Gotham even if you keep going down this road."

"Impossible." Hal directly denied the claim.

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

You can give it a try.

Haier stretched out a hand and waved, then made a running motion and disappeared in a flash. Then, in another flash, he darted to the sign from the other side.

Seeing Schiller and the sign reappear before him, Hal was confused. Schiller, however, said, "Indeed, the Earth is round, but I don't think you're going fast enough to circle the Earth so quickly."

Even if Hal had underestimated his opponent, he knew things had changed. His expression gradually turned serious as he asked Schiller, "What exactly is going on? You'd better give me a reasonable explanation."

"Abandon all your illusions about 'reasonableness.'" Schiller stepped over the highway guardrail, walked to the roadside sign, and said to Hal, "Because you are dreaming now."

No sooner had he finished speaking than Hal saw the pillar supporting the traffic sign grow larger and larger in his line of sight until it became an enormous Towering Babel, sitting on a patch of scorched black earth. Hal looked up, opened his mouth, and said, "What is this?"

"Come with me first, I'll explain everything to you." Schiller led Hal forward, Hal's brown eyes filled with confusion. He followed Schiller, asking, "Where is this? Is this an illusion you created? Who are you? Do you have anything to do with Yellow Light?"

Schiller sighed and said, "I won't explain what happened before. Let's start from when the yellow light came on."

"You know the yellow light is coming? Oh, right, you must be someone special, but I've never heard of any Lantern Ring that can make a city disappear."

"Because it wasn't the Lantern Ring destroyed the city, it was me."

"Don't joke around." Hal's tone revealed disbelief.

"That's Gotham! One of the biggest cities on the entire East Coast. How could you just disappear it in an instant? How much panic would that create? 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 step onto that highway, you've already entered a dream."

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

Schiller sighed again, more than he had in the past few months combined, because things had indeed taken him a little beyond his expectations.

His and Jack's original plan was to delve into the edge of Batman's consciousness, dig out the potentially dangerous entity, and eliminate it. Although the process was very complicated, the goal was very clear: to eliminate any possibility of the Batman Who Laughs appearing.

In this process, Schiller kills Joker when he encounters Joker, and bats when he encounters bats. In short, he will stop at nothing to prevent the extremely annoying the Batman Who Laughs from appearing in his life.

In the first two stories near the end, everything went very smoothly. They successfully reached the edge of Batman's dream, found the embryo that might hatch into the Laughing Man, and almost killed him.

But unexpectedly, this stimulation caused the dark undercurrents deep within Batman to surge forth from his soul with unprecedented ferocity, rushing into the universe.

This purest power of fear in the entire universe would naturally attract the attention of one being: the Yellow Lantern Ring, or more precisely, the Yellow Lantern Beast "Parallax," which represents the power of fear on the Emotional Spectrum.

All the Entity with different colored Lantern Ring in this universe are extremely powerful beings, Parallax is no exception.

However, Parallax is also a man of experience; ordinary fear is not enough to attract his attention. The problem is that the fear power within Batman is almost the purest fear power in the entire DC universe, which is an irresistible temptation for Parallax.

Thus, along with the Yellow Lantern Ring came a terrifying monster, the Yellow Lantern Beast Parallax.

"Parallax?" Hal asked in confusion. He said, "I once heard from the seniors in the Legion that every Lamp Society has a Lamp Furnace and Entity. They mentioned that the Entity generated by each kind of emotion are very powerful, but they also don't descend easily..."

"You mean, in this city, someone's fear triggered the arrival of the Yellow Lantern Beast? That's really troublesome..." Hal's expression grew increasingly serious; clearly, he realized the gravity of the situation.

"I didn't expect that either, because according to the timeline, it's impossible, since you've only just..." Schiller turned to look at Hal and said.

The reason he wasn't worried about the Yellow Lantern Ring was that, according to the normal timeline, Hal had just become Lantern, Sinestro, the founder of the Yellow Lantern Corps, should still be Green Lantern. Since the two of them hadn't fallen out, Sinestro wouldn't have betrayed the Green Lantern Corps and wouldn't have created the Yellow Lantern Ring.

As the black tide rose, Schiller didn't consider the Emotional Spectrum at all. He thought that the category of fear didn't exist in the current universe's Lantern Ring. But who knew that the Yellow Lantern Ring would descend upon us like this.

Schiller reflected that the universe had already changed enough, and it was not impossible for the Yellow Lantern Corps to appear ahead of schedule.

"But you still haven't said what's happening in Gotham? And where is this place?"

"Wait, I was just about to say that..."

"The arrival of the Yellow Lantern Ring and its Entity is not the greatest danger. The greatest danger is that the host that the Yellow Lantern Ring and its Entity want to parasitize has an egg inside its body that is being chased and is fleeing for its life."

"An egg, what's that?"

"I'm not trying to scare you, but I have to tell you that he's a being that if all of your light clusters were tied together, they wouldn't be enough to defeat him alone."

Before Hal could retort, Schiller continued, "Fortunately, he is now just an embryo, and his mobility has been greatly weakened; he is only a hair's breadth away from death."

"But just then, the Yellow Lantern Ring and the Entity appeared. One tried desperately to run out, and the other tried desperately to squeeze in. Guess who won in the end?"

"Hmm, it should be Entity, right?"

"No, they all lost, while Batman won both ways. Now, he has both the Laughing Egg and the Yellow Lantern Beast."

Schiller explained again, "Batman could have refused the Yellow Lantern Ring by his own will, but the nearly dying egg inside him saw the One way out."

"So, while Batman's attention was focused on the Yellow Lantern Beast, he controlled his consciousness and accepted the Yellow Lantern Ring. The Yellow Lantern Beast then entered Batman's body through the Yellow Lantern Ring, and now they are one."

As Schiller recounted the story, the two entered the Towering Babel. Then, amidst shifting light and shadow, Hal found himself atop a tall building. Looking down, he saw the entire Gotham City below.

They finally arrived in Gotham, but Hal felt no joy at all, because when he looked up, an indescribable monster was standing in the sky above Gotham.

He has a multi-segmented, multi-legged lower body like a yellow centipede, a jet-black upper body adorned with bat patterns, and a head without eyes, any other facial features, only a large, bright red mouth.

At that moment, Schiller's voice rang out:

"The Yellow Lantern Ring, Parallax, Batman, the Laughing Egg are all mixed together, and I call it..."

"The Fear Laughing Demon".

The plot unfolded in a grand loop—

We've come full circle again!