The stained glass windows of the church reflected a magnificent halo in the setting sun. Ian's Hellcat was parked in a roadside parking space, the deep roar of its engine sounding like some kind of restless unease.
Ian squinted, and with his super vision, he saw his older brother Jonathan walk out of the church from a great distance, holding something in his hand.
"Brother!" Ian opened the car door, but his voice was drowned out by a sudden chime. Jonathan seemed not to hear him at all, his head down, intently examining the object in his hands.
It was a small God Statue.
The size that can be inserted into a belt.
"My darling, this is truly a treasure! The statue He gave me can actually unlock God Armor! I knew it, God truly responds to every devout believer," Jonathan murmured to himself, his careful demeanor reminiscent of Gollum from Middle-earth —those in the know would understand that he was constantly stroking the statue.
Anyone who didn't know better would have thought he was holding the One Ring. Ian's Super Hearing picked up on his older brother's murmur, and he increasingly felt that his intuition might not be wrong.
God wanted to be lazy and used his older brother Jonathan as a go-between for his date with the goddess! This might be a great honor, but who knows how things will develop after the couple dances and reminisces? If they were to walk around in their bedroom, would the child born be Jonathan's or God's?
This may be a philosophical question, but one thing is certain: if such a thing were to happen, the Kent Family might have to raise a new child for God!
Not far away, the eldest brother Jonathan was very excited, completely unaware that every favor had already been marked with a price in secret, and the young man was still unaware of what he would have to pay for it.
"Wait! Bro! Throw it away! Throw it away! You can't hold back!" Ian shouted, trying to rush over, but was blocked by a garbage truck that suddenly turned.
"Beep beep beep--!!!"
"Bang!!!"
Are you fucking blind?!
The entire street seemed to be working against him. The sparse traffic instantly became extremely congested. Taxis, trucks, private cars, and even an old-fashioned fire truck all crowded together like madmen, their engines roaring, horns blaring, and sirens creating a sound barrier.
Jonathan didn't notice Ian and just kept walking away. Because he lost sight of him, Ian couldn't even teleport to his older brother's side.
Of course, even if the teleportation were successful, Ian might not be able to reach Jonathan's side, and might instead teleport to the Sahara Desert due to some kind of "skill malfunction".
Look, Ian was trying to climb over the car blocking his way, but just as he turned around, a truck loaded with drinks braked suddenly. The metal cargo box opened with a "bang," and hundreds of cases of drinks tumbled to the ground. The ground was littered with broken bottles and small marbles from the bottles, and even someone as strong as Ian almost slipped.
If there were no unseen force at play behind this, even if you took Ian's Super Brain out and put it in the refrigerator, he still wouldn't believe he almost fell flat on his face.
The clever Ian instantly became the helpless Ian.
Damn it!
Ian covered his face, jumped back into the Hellcat, and tried to make it fly around the Hellcat. The Hellcat's tires retracted, and ghostly blue flames shot out from both sides.
However.
The moment the vehicle took off.
The sky cracked.
A crimson crack stretched across the sky, as if the universe had been ripped open. Immediately afterward, an enormous meteorite fell from the crack, and Ian's vision was suddenly filled with a blinding red light—in the blink of an eye, a huge meteorite was plummeting straight down from the sky, trailing a fiery tail!
Yes, it was that exaggerated, without the slightest attempt to conceal it. Just as Ian was making an emergency landing, the meteorite mysteriously dissipated into Starlight less than a hundred meters from the ground.
It looked like just a holographic projection.
But the scorching heat was so real that it made Ian's eyelashes curl.
The strangest thing was not only the disappearance of the meteorite, but also that pedestrians on the ground continued to go about their business as usual. A mother pushing a stroller even walked through the phantom of the meteorite without noticing.
The moment Ian landed, the meteorite, along with the crack in the sky, vanished into thin air. The streets returned to normal, and even the traffic instantly became less congested.
People were completely unaware, as if everything the superpower had just done was merely his hallucination.
"Am I the only one who can see this?" Ian didn't know how many times he cursed in secret. When he looked back at where Jonathan had been, the place was empty.
The traffic and crowds gradually dispersed.
"Warp!" Ian gritted his teeth and activated his ability, the space distorting before his eyes. The next moment, he appeared at the corner where Jonathan had last stood, but all that remained were scattered pieces of paper.
Jonathan had vanished without a trace. The streets were deserted, not even a stray cat in sight. Only a newspaper article featuring an old man grinning as it fluttered by drifted past Ian's eyes.
"You're faster than I can teleport?" Ian ran around aimlessly in the alley, his super vision scanning the surrounding streets, even lifting all the manhole covers to check. However, he still couldn't find Jonathan, and even his super hearing couldn't hear Jonathan's breathing or mutterings.
Jonathan is not there.
There were no footprints, no breath, no information whatsoever. Even when Ian took out his phone to call his older brother's cell phone, he could only hear the message that his phone number was out of service due to unpaid bills.
Even using the Black Box didn't work—it just goes to show that the little guy really can't beat the old guy. Ian was so angry that he couldn't hold back and cursed God for being unethical.
"I'm talking about a forty-year-old middle-aged man! An ordinary office worker! Middle-aged men... my brother's temperament isn't exactly pleasing!" Ian kicked a soda can on the side of the road in anger.
"Do you know that the charm of a middle-aged man is truly great? It's like..." Ian's rambling suddenly stopped. His Super Brain suddenly had a flash of inspiration, making him realize a more serious problem. As cold sweat quietly slid down his forehead, Ian also quickly put on a Sichuan opera-style face-changing act.
All the previous complaints and frustrations vanished, replaced by a genuine sense of peace.
"Oh, praise you, omnipotent Creator, Infinity great God... You may have wronged my older brother, but you can't wrong me and my father." As the saying goes, if Jonathan suffers a little, the Kent family can still live in harmony and happiness. But if God wants to make things difficult for Clark, then things will get really interesting.
Ian tentatively called out to the sky.
No one responded; only a gust of wind blew by, scattering a flyer on the ground—a promotional flyer from a gaming hotel, which read, "500 for an overnight stay, Heaven experience."
Across the street, a disheveled man was going berserk at the food delivery station. His face was covered in pustules, he wore a dirty T-shirt printed with various conspiracy theories, and he was roaring in broken Chinese and English.
"You Half-Maggot Man! Why won't you let me register as a rider? Am I not United States? Bruce Wayne must be a spy planted by the Chinese!"
"You're all spies! You're all trying to persecute me! Freedom and democracy are a hoax! You don't give me any freedom at all! Listen, if you don't give me democracy and don't process my employment, I'm going to run off to Mexico!"
"Believe me, it will only be your loss. I will expose you all! You will all be imprisoned in Guantanamo!" This is a typical example of illegal immigration.
Runren representative.
When the homeless man gets agitated, the pustules on his face will burst, and foul-smelling phlegm will flow down his cheeks, causing passersby to avoid him.
This guy's provocation caused the conflict to erupt within seconds.
The homeless man, who called himself the "nemesis of Half-Maggot Man," was still roaring at the air, spitting as he accused " Bruce Wayne's spy network" and "the spiritual castration of China." His voice was shrill and his content absurd, but the genuine anger revealed in his madness acted as a fuse, igniting the irritation of the food delivery station employees.
The crowd surged forward like a tidal wave. Fists, kicks, belts, umbrellas, and some even grabbed shared bicycle locks from the roadside and smashed them hard against the disheveled figure.
"Ah--! Don't hit me! I'm a patriot! I'll reveal the truth!" The homeless man screamed in agony as his boil ruptured, blood mingling with the liquid from his crotch.
He lay curled up on the ground, futilely protecting his head, mumbling, "I'd rather scrub toilets than leave that Hell... but you won't even let me scrub toilets!"
This guy even started to feel wronged.
Ian stood on the street corner and witnessed the whole thing. He couldn't stand watching such a beating, so he clicked his tongue a few times, turned around, and went back to his Hellcat.
"Let's go home now and ambush my bro." Ian climbed onto the roof of the car, stepping on the tires. He was about to lie down on the roof and use his Super Brain to think of a solution.
"Knock knock~"
Suddenly, there was a knocking sound coming from the car window below.
Ian peered down.
His gaze met a pair of grey-blue eyes. Dr. Hannibal Lecter's face was pressed against the car window, his soul-like features distorted like a goldfish in Fish Tank under the refracted light of the bulletproof glass.
" Ian, have you forgotten something? Like a psychiatrist locked in the back seat all morning?" Hannibal's exasperated voice came through the glass. His soul was still dressed in a sharp suit and tie, as if he had just returned from a high-class dinner party, rather than being imprisoned in the steel belly of a Hell creature.
The air froze instantly.
Even the Hellcat's engine seemed to have stopped.
Ian blinked.
His face instantly switched to an almost innocent expression. "Of course not, Dr. Hannibal! I was just busy for a little while... dealing with some minor street trouble."
Of all the parts of Ian's body, his mouth is definitely the most stubborn. Upon hearing this, the " King of Lies," who had also been locked up next to Hannibal all morning, immediately turned strange.
He remained in Chihuahua form, but this didn't mean he had lost his authority. The syllable "This is a lie" rolled in his throat, yet he dared not truly speak. The King of Hell, meeting Ian's unfathomable eyes, could only manage a pitiful whimper, uttering only a single, pathetic sentence:
"Luckily, we don't need oxygen to breathe." Belial, the Chihuahua-sized King of Lies, covered his mouth with his paw, his round, black eyes darting back and forth between Ian and Hannibal.
This might be a comforting thought, but Dr. Hannibal wasn't inclined to agree. Fortunately, Ian wasn't too thick-skinned, so after realizing there was a King of Lies in his car, he decisively chose another approach. "I've been sitting on the roof, of course I don't know what's going on inside."
"Oh, right, do you remember? I'm still a child, and it's normal for a child to have a bad memory." Ian suddenly admitted his mistake in the incredibly "frank" voice of a twelve-year-old boy.
He once again played the victim card innocently, and to make it more effective, he even controlled his Mimicry, growing beautiful eyelashes several tens of centimeters long, which really made it hard to blame him.
Yes, being speechless is so bad that you can't even bring yourself to blame them. It all has the same effect of making people fall silent; Ian simply saw through the essence of things. Hellcat's radio suddenly turned on automatically, playing the guitar solo from " Hotel California," as if also expressing amazement at Ian's actions.
"Alright, let's do this. I'll take Dr. Hannibal to resurrect him now."
Without waiting for Dr. Hannibal to comment, Ian decisively patted the Hellcat and started the car, intending to make up for the oversight of Hannibal being imprisoned in the Hellcat.
To admit one's mistakes and correct them is a virtue.
Of course, this is the greatest good.
Another wave of merits has been earned.
Upon receiving the command, the Hellcat's engine roared like a beast, all the gauges on the dashboard pointing to 666. It stepped on the accelerator on its own, and the car shot off like a rocket.
The tires left burning paw prints on the asphalt. As the car screeched to a halt before the wrought-iron gates of " Ian Manor," Hannibal's the Spectre nearly floated from the back seat to the front.
The complex, wrapped in ivy like a mummy, with every window seemingly bleeding, was a special residence that Crowley had given to Ian.
"Welcome to my little nest!" Ian jumped out of the car, his sleeve sweeping across the two statues of the Virgin Mary with octopus tentacles at the entrance, wiping away the dust. He remembered that Darkness (for now, his aunt) had said she was imprisoned down there, but he sensed nothing after trying to locate her.
"Perhaps the seal is very deep, and I am too inexperienced to do anything about it." Ian felt he had done his best, at least he had an excuse to try, so of course he wouldn't choose to try to release the other party.
The world Infinity better now.
The Darkness Descends is no fun update.
" Dr. Hannibal," Ian opened the tentacle-covered gate of the manor and gestured for me to enter, "Please wait in the drawing room for a moment, I'll be right back!"
He led Dr. Hannibal to the drawing room.
In the drawing room, Hannibal sat elegantly on a sofa made of bones, while the King of Chihuahuas curled up on Bone Piano, looking as content as if he had returned to Hell.
"I never expected... that what Ian said during the consultation was actually not just wishful thinking or metaphor..." Hannibal looked around—tapesers made from living human skin hung on the walls, dried Demons hearts hung from the ceiling, and the air was filled with a strange fragrance of blood and roses.
At that very moment.
A Lisa portrait suddenly rolled its eyes.
It must be the genuine product.
"Doctor, I need psychological counseling. I've been trapped in this painting for five hundred years." The Demon Portrait saw through Hannibal's profession and attempted to seduce Hannibal but failed.
The psychiatrist's soul drifted to the window and looked outside. He saw Ian humming a song, dragging a chainsaw and garden shovel from the tool shed, and starting to dig up the bulging mounds of earth like potatoes—perhaps there was no need to plant anything to harvest them. With each Ian, two or three living corpses would emerge like sprouting carrots.
Wow!
Ian pulled out a male corpse dressed in a ballet tutu.
"This Achilles tendon is perfect!"
He patted the corpses' ankles like picking watermelons, satisfied with the hollow echoes. Dust flew everywhere. Soon, one after another, seemingly unrotted corpses were dragged out—there were businessmen in suits, students in school uniforms, muscular strongmen, and even a woman in a wedding dress.
"Um..."
Ian, like a discerning tailor, crouched among the pile of corpses, examining them closely.
"These eyes... amber, bright, perfect for ' Eye of Insight '..." With a snap, he dug out the eyeball of a female corpse and stuffed it into a small bottle he carried with him.
"That mouth... the curve is perfect, it's naturally suited for smiling and lying..."
He then twisted off the lips of another male corpse.
"These legs... wow, long-term fitness training, extremely high muscle fiber density, definitely frog legs!" He flipped over a particularly robust male corpse, pulled down the pants to examine it, and suddenly exclaimed in amazement, "Hiss--! Dr. Hannibal, the size of this ' Root of Trouble ' is simply a work of art!"
"Just for this reason alone, it's worth charging Dr. Hannibal! It's like that profound saying the salesperson told me when I went to the dealership last time to buy a sports car for my child who probably hasn't even chosen his reincarnation date yet: 'True premium features always require payment to add!'"
Ian even picked up the enormous parts of the zombie and showed them to Dr. Hannibal by the window.
"?????"
Dr. Hannibal's expression was priceless; he could no longer tell where the real Hell was—under his gaze, Ian was enthusiastically piecing the corpse back together.
The back garden, bathed in the setting sun, resembled a bombed-out graveyard. Hannibal Lecter stood alone in the entire drawing room, facing this hall constructed of madness.
He stared out the window at the backyard, his soul convulsing. Just then, the Demons Baal's true form completed another evolution, opened its eyes, and immediately began its work.
"Oh! Behold God Ian! He is displaying his extraordinary talent once again. The great God Ian always nourishes us with his creativity. His skill in piecing together corpses has improved considerably since then!" Baal's head rested on a walnut tray like an ornament, its newly grown horns gleaming like asphalt in the shadows.
Evolution didn't stop him from frantically licking Ian. Belial, in his Chihuahua form, curled up on another leather sofa and, upon hearing this, immediately scratched his ear with his hind leg, engaging in a comedic performance.
"This is an objective fact, not a lie." It exclaimed like a ruthless lie detector, and when it came to praising others, this King of Hell was no less powerful.
"It's simply... a work of art. A symphony of soul and body, it should be composed by a master like God Ian!" The Chihuahua-like " King of Lies " wagged its tail. It even gestured with its little paws, trying to imitate Ian's actions of gouging out eyes and cutting lips, just like a comical straight man.
Baal and the King of Lies sang in unison, showering Ian's "masterpiece" with praise. The air was thick with the unspoken flattery and awe of power among Demons. Suddenly, a pale yellow liquid seeped from the walls, emitting a strange aroma of lemon and Hell Sulfur — the Demon Manor's way of expressing pleasure.
"I feel like I don't belong with you guys..."
Hannibal Lecter sat quietly in the bone chair, his hands folded on his knees, his eyes as deep as an ancient well. He didn't look at the corpse, nor at the two crazed Demons, but slowly turned his gaze to the window. Ian was still busy in the backyard, his figure swaying in the moonlight, constantly dragging new "materials" from the ground.
Dirt flew everywhere, and the corpses piled up like mountains. Dr. Hannibal stared at the mountain of corpses for a long time, and he really didn't want to ask Ian how many people he had buried in the backyard.
As a top-notch psychiatrist, he knew the saying, "Out of sight, out of mind." Hannibal's the Spectre turned to the television, the only object in the room that didn't seem likely to suddenly bite. Sensing the gaze, the television automatically lit up, and dozens of pairs of eyes, yearning to be seen, emerged from the depths of the picture tube.
"Want to change things up? I've saved 300 hours of ' Humanity Collapse Records '? Oh, looks like you don't like it, esteemed guest. What program would you like to watch?"
"Are you referring to those absurd TV dramas? I can grab a few actors right now, stuff them inside my belly, and give you a truly 'immersive' experience—their screams will travel directly from my speakers to your nerve endings, guaranteeing an unprecedented surround sound effect!"
Although it may not seem like it will bite, it is still Demon Television after all.
"No, no. It's come to this now. I just want to see... normal TV programs. The news is fine. I want to know... how long I've been gone."
Hannibal resolutely refused, his tone firm; his perception of time was unclear in Hell.
"Well, watching that kind of fake programming is really your loss." The television "face" let out an exaggerated sigh, as if mocking Hannibal's "vulgarity." Of course, being an appliance Demons, it still showed some "hospitality" by switching the screen, and the standard news channel logo appeared on the screen.
The first news item was that the military had imposed an emergency lockdown on Washington, D. C.
The scene shifts to Washington, D. C., where a large number of military armored vehicles and fully armed soldiers have cordoned off the area surrounding the White House. Reporters standing outside the cordon sound very tense.
No one knows what happened. The highest level of emergency response has been activated, and the entire Washington, D. C. area has been placed under temporary martial law. Experts speculate that it may be related to the president.
The second news story shifts to a city street, where a warrior clad in shimmering armor is seen carrying a gang leader by the arm. Other gang members perform a distorted, painful dance in front of him, tears of remorse streaming down their faces. The reporter narrating is equally impassioned.
" Armor Hero strikes again! With the power of 'Mind Purification,' he makes sinful souls repent through dance!" She was crying because she was an Indian-origin female journalist, so perhaps India had finally found its own superhero.
Look at that chivalrous way of doing justice! This is the epitome of Indian superheroism!
"..."
This is also not the news Hannibal wanted to see.
He switched the Demons Television to a different news channel, and the Metropolis News Channel appeared, showing dimly lit sewers and search and rescue teams with headlamps searching through the mud.
Metropolis City Hall confirmed that 16 sewer inspectors have gone missing in the past week. Search and rescue teams have discovered large amounts of unknown slime and giant claw marks deep within the pipes. Biologists warn that a mutated organism, possibly formed from a fusion of "urban resentment" and our "secretly discharged nuclear wastewater," may be quietly evolving underground.
The reporter's voice was low and quite honest, but it was precisely because of his honesty that the video was quickly cut off and replaced with a breaking news live broadcast.
Extraterrestrial creatures emerged from a meteorite crater in the suburbs.
It's a dog.
Just as it was about to attack the press corps, a red and blue shadow flashed by—it was Orange Cat wearing Superman cape, the S-shield on its chest stretched into a fat "$" shape.
The two creatures are fighting, both using Superman methods.
"The epic showdown between Supercat and alien dog!" The reporter screamed as he filmed the two creatures exchanging Heat Vision, the shockwaves knocking him off his feet as he merely seized the opportunity with his phone.
" My God! Superman did something... no, Superman fucked something!"
Even if you fall to the ground.
Even the reporter couldn't resist exclaiming in surprise.
Just as Hannibal was silently contemplating the meaninglessness of life, the banquet hall door was suddenly flung open. Ian dragged in a jigsaw puzzle doll, the scene resembling a massive sale on sex dolls.
The doll has a nose like a Greek sculpture, and comes from an internet celebrity who died from plastic surgery, as well as the long fingers of a pianist. Its original owner was said to be a very famous musician.
"My dear psychiatrist, come, let's perform the miracle of resurrection!" Ian eagerly showed Dr. Hannibal his latest masterpiece.
"??????" Hannibal lowered his head, his gaze slowly sweeping over the stitched-together grotesque corpse—especially that unusually "impressive" genitals. He remained silent for a few seconds, a crack finally appearing on his elegant face. He couldn't help it; he had witnessed just how meticulous Ian's "rigor" truly was!
He witnessed Ian cut off the true, well-deserved male dog's waist from a Hellhound and place it on this body. When he cut the dog's waist, he even lifted the Hellhound up to examine it closely!
"..."
Dr. Hannibal sensed his patient's kindness, but was somewhat hesitant to accept it, realizing that his obsessive-compulsive disorder had reached its peak.
" Ian... how about I prescribe you some medicine first, and we can talk about other things after you take it?" Hannibal said tactfully, ignoring the King of Lies's utter exclamation that this was a work of art.
The air was so silent it was as if all sound had been sucked out.
Ian tilted his head, about to say, "Doctor, if you don't like this body, I can contact some friends on the internet and let you go to the morgue to pick out a fresh one yourself—" He hadn't quite finished saying the words of his kind-hearted friend.
The door to the reception room was suddenly pushed open.
Then, the Demon Butler dragged in a gaunt man with ashen skin. The man swayed as if he might fall apart at any moment, his eyes were sunken, his lips were cracked, and he wore a tattered white robe that barely betrayed any semblance of holiness he once possessed.
"Who is this...?"
Ian blinked, sensing that the other person was a god.
"I am Shiva... Child, I have come to beg you." The man raised his head tremblingly, his voice so weak it seemed to float from a grave.
"Please, Ian Kent, go home and talk to your brother. He can't see me... but you can. Tell your brother, Jonathan Kent, to stop asking me for power... I really can't take it anymore!" Shiva, feeling utterly drained, shed tears of grievance.
He immediately knelt down in front of Ian with a thud.
Like Elf that has been drained of its life force.
She burst into tears.