Ian: Damn it! It's Fall-Phoenix Slope!!

There really were treacherous subjects trying to harm their emperor!

At this moment.

As Ian's emotions surged, his brilliant intellect was once again knocked back to the high ground by those emotional waves, and in the unseen depths, he had already realized what was happening to him.

"Oh! No!"

Ian stood frozen three meters above Crime Alley, as though pierced through by invisible stakes and pinned in Gotham's never-dispersing rain mist and aura of sin. The strange halo around him had gone still; streams of dark-gold and Hell-scarlet energy were like frozen amber, wrapping around his statue-like figure.

Right then.

Ian's brain was running at a frantic intensity unlike anything before.

His brain had never operated so seriously. Countless fragments of clues collided and spun in the depths of his consciousness, trying to piece together the great net that was tightening around him.

Batman should not have, and could not have, fused with his original divine blood—that half-vial of blood was enough to kill any mortal countless times over, let alone the fact that it also carried Lucifer's brand of contamination.

In other words, Satan-certified.

Bruce should have broken down, mutated, and vanished like those lab animals.

But Batman had not.

Batman was still alive in the mortal world in a brand-new form that had fused with Ian's bloodline.

Did that make sense?

Of course it did not!

And behind every unreasonable thing in this world, there had to be a reason!

Ian's eyes flashed wildly!

At the same time, on a dimensional level Ian's sight could not reach and his perception could not penetrate, several blocks away from Crime Alley, atop the spire of a Gothic high-rise.

That familiar figure stood quietly.

Watching the strange scene of Ian frozen stiff in midair above the distant alley.

This person was,