Main Titles
(Game of Thrones theme song)
(Did you think I'd write something boring about the main world? No! You're wrong!)
The thought only flashed through my mind for a moment.
The howling white winds of the polar regions swept by, forcefully pulling memories back to reality.
The spaceship wreckage was still hissing and emitting white steam.
The broken wing was stuck diagonally in the snow, which was tens of meters deep, and there were still many purplish-black bloodstains on the ground.
Deep within the snow pit, the purplish-red alien lay half-lying in the broken ice, breathing weakly.
Beside the ribs, the edges of the carbonized wound curled up with clearly grayish granulation tissue, and the sticky yellow flakes shimmered with a dim light.
In John's focused, penetrating vision, the other person's vital signs were clearly visible.
Under the corrosive influence of that dark yellow energy, the main veins, which appeared to be blood vessels, were visibly fracturing and dying.
It's hopeless.
This is clearly incapable of healing; the blood vessels are gone. How long can it possibly live?
John walked through the ice shards to the edge of the snow pit.
Then, following the slope of the snow, he half-squatted down and looked down at the aliens.
The Bioelectric Field on the body surface naturally insulates against the sub-zero winds and blocks all the falling snow.
Create a peaceful vacuum.
Then, John looked at the other person's distorted, narrow face and said slowly:
"I don't know if you can understand... You're badly injured. If I were you, I wouldn't be moving around like that."
"That will only hasten your death."
Upon hearing John's words, Abin Sue, who was lying in the snow, suddenly trembled.
Then, with great effort, he lifted his heavy head from the snow, purplish-black blood seeping down his jaw and into the snow, staining the ground.
His blood-red, murky eyes lingered for half a second in the wind and snow before finally settling on the two distinctive red "S" patterns on John's collar.
The next second, his previously somewhat unfocused pupils suddenly contracted.
" The El... family..."
Abin Sue was running out of strength; a weak, hoarse voice, like that of a broken bellows, rang out, tinged with a hint of surprise.
Krypton... descendants?
That's impossible. Thirty years ago, Krypton's gravity collapsed, its core completely crumbled, and the entire Interstellar Federation confirmed the demise of the Kryptonian Krypton...
Aside from a group of criminals permanently banished, the Kryptonian genetic map has long since disappeared from the cosmos...
Why are you on this remote planet?
"That lump of yellow sludge inside you is still gnawing at your blood vessels... Your time is running out."
Instead of dwelling on these things, why don't you first tell me about your own situation?
John shrugged.
Abin Su forced a bitter smile.
In fact, he knew his situation better than anyone else.
The lingering fear energy of the Parallax is devouring his flesh and blood.
As expected, his entire body will soon be completely devoured.
Perhaps, this is fate...
Thinking about it, he let out a long breath:
"You're right..."
Abin Sue moved his right arm with difficulty; the cold air rushed into his damaged lungs, triggering another violent coughing fit.
"I am Abin Su... the guardian of Sector 2814, here on Earth to investigate the Parallax's whereabouts."
Parallax? Are these the disgusting things they're talking about?
John examined the clump of dark yellow light.
"No... this is the fear energy left behind by the Parallax."
Abin Su opened his chapped lips, and a flicker of fear flashed deep in his eyes:
"At the beginning of the universe... Parallax was born from the Emotional Spectrum accompanied by 'fear,' representing the concrete entity of yellow fear."
The Guardians spared no effort and paid a heavy price to lock its main body inside the Central Power Battery.
But not long ago... its seal broke.
The yellow energy of fear seeped into our shields, my comrades... wiped out.
" The Parallax can amplify and control fear; those who are controlled... become Parallax."
Abin Su clenched his teeth, his face twitching violently.
"They were consumed by fear, they killed each other, and in the end I was the only one left..."
But my core is almost completely devoured by fear.
John listened quietly, his mind racing as he processed the information.
Parallax, Emotional Spectrum, fear entities...
It seems that what the cheap alien dad said at the base was true.
This world is full of Hell lords and troubles from beyond the universe.
Compared to that, the petty squabbles of the Boys World... really aren't worth mentioning.
The pressure that followed was even greater.
"That sounds like a big problem."
John nodded slightly, his gaze falling on Abin Sue's increasingly ashen face.
Abin Su took a deep breath and gathered the last bit of strength he had in his body into his hands.
He trembled as he laboriously lifted the back of his hand from the snow, then placed it between their lines of sight.
At that moment, the tattered cuff slipped down, revealing a jade-green ring shimmering with a bluish light on the middle finger of his right hand.
The ring face is fairly flat, with a totem carved in the center consisting of miniature double horizontal lines and concentric circles.
"My life is about to end, but my duty... must not be interrupted in Sector 2814."
The Parallax has broken free, and this sector will soon face unprecedented chaos and destruction.
This ring is a divine artifact forged by the Supreme Guardians of Oa, and it connects to the core energy network of the entire universe.
Abin Sue stared intently at John, his voice gradually lowering, and his breathing becoming rapid.
"It is a duty... and also a weapon."
It will automatically detach when the guardian falls.
Then, from among hundreds of millions of lives, search for those successors with resilient minds, capable of facing the abyss.
"Buzz--"
As if to cater to the master's final wishes.
Before Abin Su finished speaking, the emerald green finger suddenly emitted a clear and long hollow sound.
The ring then turned slightly, smoothly slipping off Abin Su's withered knuckles, and then hung quietly between the two.
"Call--"
Immediately afterwards, a pure and warm emerald light burst forth from the totem in the center of the ring face.
A halo of green light, like a veil, shielded John from the wind and snow, slowly spreading outwards and gently enveloping him completely.
The selection mechanism for the Lantern Ring is set by the Guardians.
When a legion member dies on the frontier, the mechanism will activate automatically.
The intelligent hub inside the ring will quickly scan all intelligent life forms with tenacious willpower within a radius of a hundred miles and complete the screening.
Furthermore, it also searches deep within the target's soul for signs of cowardice and compromise.
Retrieve neural responses to the state of facing death.
More importantly, it needs to confirm whether the host possesses the noble will to overcome fear and self-sacrifice.
But at this very moment, in the desolate, uninhabited ice field spanning thousands of kilometers.
Aside from the dying Abin Sue on the ground, it seems that John is the only intelligent being left.
Moreover, the life energy level currently emanating from John's body...
Within the ring's core detection matrix, it's as conspicuous as a burning furnace.
And just as that emerald beam of light touched John's body—
A sudden change occurred.
"Buzz--"
In mid-air, the ring, which had been breathing smoothly, suddenly emitted a strange, high-frequency buzzing sound.
The moment the ring scanned John, it froze in mid-air, as if stuck, completely motionless.
In John, that tentative green light seemed to have collided with a vast, boundless, towering wall.
Before it could even move, it was directly suppressed in place by that overwhelming power, unable to advance an inch.
At the same time, the color of the ring face suddenly changed.
"Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!"
Emerald green, pale white, dull, bluish-gray!
The light flickered, and even a ring of fine electric sparks began to ripple around the edge of the ring.
The originally clear energy field became visibly disordered at this moment.
There are only two possible outcomes from the selection process.
One succeeded, one failed.
But in John's case, both of these criteria seemed to inexplicably fail.
It didn't, as it would have done with a suitable match, naturally and proactively slip its fingers onto John's.
It also did not trigger the [failure evacuation procedure] stipulated in the Book of Oa.
Under normal circumstances, if a candidate harbors cowardice or is driven by evil thoughts and desires, it will lead to their downfall.
The Lantern Ring will then sever the connection without hesitation, soar into the sky, and fly across the ocean to find the next suitable host.
But now the ring is stuck in mid-air like a monster, the ring facet constantly flashing.
At this moment, the weak Abin Su, who had been half-closing his eyelids in the snow pit, suddenly opened them.
For the first time, an incredulous look of horror and bewilderment appeared on that bluish-purple, ashen face.
He has toured hundreds of planets in other sectors and witnessed dozens of transmissions and handovers of the Lantern Ring.
But this situation... he had never seen anything like it before.
That's fucking absurd.
This completely overturns the worldview that has been established over thousands of years.
Why?
Why did Oa's Supreme Lantern Ring exhibit this uncontrolled, convulsive reaction?
What Abin Sue didn't know was...
What kind of torment did this artifact, which represents "will," just endure?
The underlying code of the Green Lantern Ring is built upon a constant proposition:
Fear is an objective reality.
Great will lies in acknowledging and confronting fear.
Therefore, when the scanning program probes into the candidate's consciousness, it must first anchor itself to the candidate's "fear" anchor point.
Then, through calculation, the degree of neural damping and bursting when confronting this fear is measured, thereby assessing the candidate's eligibility.
The giant wall it crashed into remained unmoved.
The immense power suppressed it effortlessly.
Through the subtle flow of information, it seemed to sense the immense power that spanned heaven and earth and cleaved the universe at the very beginning of creation.
There was even a hint of hidden terror.
The mere wisp of energy it emitted startled it, causing it to tremble violently, cower into a ball, and shiver uncontrollably.
However, what made the energy of the Lantern Ring even more desperate was...
In John's subtly revealed stream of consciousness, there was absolutely no tendency toward self-sacrifice or dedication.
Deep within a man's mind.
In those few leaked fragments of memory.
The guard could vaguely detect several tears from the morning, enough to allow the Spectrum program to risk intruding into the Mind Stone's hidden wounds.
It was a kind of imprisonment, manipulation, and insecurity—a kind of incompleteness.
But strangely enough...
Those potentially fatal cracks were somehow completely filled and smoothed out by a deep, warm feeling.
It then became increasingly solid.
The remaining drivers only contain the four words:
[I am the only one who matters]
What makes the body feel despair is...
Almost all known Spectrum lines are indiscriminately intertwined and entangled within these four words.
And this also means--
Red's Fury, Orange's Greed, Yellow's Fear;
Blue represents hope, black represents death, and white represents life.
Apart from the purple light symbolizing selfless love and the blue light symbolizing pure compassion, which were almost dim.
All other Emotional Spectrum erupted from the depths of this man's soul with a chilling and terrifying reaction.
They were intertwined and turbulent, their intensity evenly matched.
What does this tell us?
This demonstrates that he is able to forcibly accommodate most of the emotional matrices in the known universe.
He can cross any barrier at any time and wield the power of any Spectrum, if he so desires.
Even if it is based on the fundamental nature of green will.
It was also the most powerful and terrifying life form it had ever encountered.
Even if it focuses solely on the green Emotional Spectrum.
No matter how unwilling or resistant it was, it could not "disobey" and escape from John's grasp.
(Scumbag: Get in my bowl!)
( Lantern Ring: No!!)
"Warn...!!"
"Logic failure... Unable to determine threshold..."
"Protocol overflow... Unable to perform binding, warning! Unable to perform exit procedure!"
"Computing power overload..."
In just three seconds.
All the buzzing and flashing stopped in that instant, returning to stillness.
To Abin Sue's horrified gaze, the emerald green on the surface of the Lantern Ring lit up again.
Then, with an extremely strange submissiveness, it fell straight down from mid-air and obediently landed in John's hands.
"Clatter."
John half-squatted in the snow, looking down at the warm, jade-like ring in his palm.
He casually fiddled with the cool outer shell, then raised an eyebrow in slight confusion.
"... This is the artifact you were talking about that recognizes its master?"
John spread his palms out, his expression somewhat strange:
"The conditions you mentioned are quite demanding; it shouldn't have chosen me... But could it be that it crashed?"
"D... crashed?"
This is a divine artifact personally crafted by the Guardians of the Universe!
How could it possibly crash!
Abin Sue roared inwardly from inside the snow pit.
He stared intently at the quiet ring in John's palm, his withered face beginning to twitch violently.
Why didn't it fly away?
"No, it didn't activate the recall protocol at all; instead, it removed its own defense mechanisms."
Then, they unilaterally handed over the lowest level of control to you?!
"It's... waiting for your instructions?!"
This is Abin Su's second worldview collapse.
No ring has ever been like this before...
Meek, trembling, it lay limp in my palm like a docile feline.
Then, he suddenly remembered something.
That was hundreds of thousands of years ago.
A Supreme Guardians once left behind a maxim when explaining the inherent flaws of the Emotional Spectrum:
"The green light pursues will, because the will of mortals has fissures; it can be guided, resonated with, and assimilated by the rules."
"But what if one day, in some corner of this starry sky, an absolute will that transcends the laws of the Spectrum is born..."
"That state of perfect mental self-consistency, where fear itself is regarded as nothing, and it is not attached to any discipline."
"I am the only one who matters, looking down upon all things, and I will never accept the constraints of any external authority..."
"At that time, the Creator will be unable to define him, for his mind will have transcended everything."
He also could not be classified as a guard, because he was unwilling to be bound by any dogmatic constraints.
"Faced with the irreversible absolute... it can only choose to bow its head in submission."
"Submit... submit..."
Abin Su struggled to squeeze out those two syllables from his throat.
He slowly raised his head, his eyes revealing an indescribable tremor and bewilderment.
He stared blankly at the man in front of him.
"Who... exactly are you...?"
Abin Sue muttered to himself, his voice so faint it was barely audible.
At this moment, the wound on his chest finally burst open.
The remaining luteal matter, like a group of greedy venomous snakes, instantly bit through his last core and began to feast on it.
"Crack..."
Abin Su's arm, which had been hanging in mid-air, fell heavily back onto the cold snow as if it had lost all its strength.
His head tilted slightly to one side, and his gray eyes completely lost focus, finally freezing the image in the swirling snow.
(Starting now, I'm challenging myself to ignore comments urging me to update, and I'll keep going until I reach 99+ to satisfy my little vanity.)
(I almost always reply to comments)