Su Ming had not anticipated Darkseid pulling something like this. Sending one of his avatars to willingly become a Black Lantern Zombie sounded like he was trying to snatch chestnuts from the fire.
The fire in question was not Nekron, that Lantern Beast. It was not worthy.
It referred to Death of the Endless, because every concept of death in the DC Universe belonged to her. Anyone else who meddled with it would suffer.
But now, it seemed Darkseid had found another path. He did not seek any authority over death, nor did he step forward to stir up trouble himself. Instead, he had remained hidden in the shadows, creating the illusion that the Lantern Zombies were steadily losing ground, then waited for Hal to deliver the Entity of Life to him.
If Hal had injected white light into the Green Lantern Central Power Battery just now, the energy from a single ring definitely would not have been enough. Only the Entity of Life, using that ring as a medium, could personally come to save Ion.
Because it had done exactly that at the beginning of Genesis. Repeating something it had done before would not arouse much suspicion.
Once it connected itself to Ion, the bait, Darkseid could seize its power while its guard was down and its defenses were wide open, obtaining a ticket into the Force of Connection.
It was indeed a good plan, and the performance had been convincing as well. Throwing out Hawk's triple identity, along with the concept of the Timeline, had been an especially brilliant way to discard a pawn.
If Deathstroke had not been leading the team and had not always known there was a hidden mastermind, but someone else had taken his place, they would probably have let down their guard after