5 a. m., Kansas.
The morning mist had not yet completely dissipated, and the air was filled with a fishy smell, a mixture of wheat straw and dew.
It's strong, but it smells quite nice.
At the Kent Farm, the wooden door to the barn was ajar.
A dim, yellowish White Lantern illuminated the interior.
"Click click..."
John was wearing a pair of lightly oxidized coarse cloth work pants, with the cuffs rolled up at the elbows.
He slid backward onto the chassis of a tracked harvester.
Holding a heavy box wrench, he skillfully disassembled the old gearbox.
The copper bushings on the gearbox have aged, and the edges are even chipped with tiny burrs from the durable steel teeth.
"Click click..."
The first one, the second one.
Just as John loosened the third bolt, his pupils suddenly contracted.
He stopped what he was doing and then closed his eyes.
In his heightened perception... all the sounds around him were suddenly amplified ten thousand times.
Deep underground, the rustling sound of earthworms burrowing through the soil; on the barn roof, the faint rustling sound of sparrows preening their feathers.
Even the crisp sound of a truck running over gravel on the highway three miles away...
But that's far from enough.
These sounds are ultimately limited by the density of the atmosphere and the medium through which sound waves propagate; their range is barely acceptable, and their location is extremely vague.
The location of the epicenter could not be determined at all.
Thinking of this, John paused slightly, gently placing the wrench on the old newspaper stained with machine oil.
Next second.
The matte lead-green ring on her middle finger gleamed with a bluish tint that leaned towards green.
A thought!
[ Insight ]
Soon, a stream of light, condensed to a tangible form, spread backward along his finger bones, instantly filling his entire field of vision.
In an instant, all bodily sensations were withdrawn from the barrier of the farmhouse.
Field of vision folding.
All the landscapes are deconstructed under [ Insight ] into a holographic grid composed of lines of curvature, gravity, and energy.
The wood grain of the barn transforms into translucent molecules, while the wheat fields and morning mist become undulating low radii, crisscrossing and interwoven.
Three thousand kilometers away, deep in the heart of the Atlantic Ocean.
The entire geomagnetic field was forcibly carved out into a huge cavity.
Through [ Insight ]'s multidimensional perspective, John clearly "saw" those concentric rings of gravitational pull that were pressing down from an altitude of 10,000 meters.
The ensuing tremors pierced through the thick continental shelf, spreading along the mantle Quake and into his eyelids through the endless wilderness.
That... is Krypton spaceship.
They really came!
"Buzz--!!"
Immediately afterwards, the ring on John's middle finger suddenly emitted a loud buzzing sound without warning.
The green lattice vibrated rapidly on the surface of the ring.
John's eyes suddenly turned cold. He stared at the ring on his hand with interest, a dangerous smile playing on his lips.
If the ring resonates, it means...
Other holders of the Lantern Ring also came to Earth.
John knew that Sinestro had returned.
He not only knew, but he also knew that this red-skinned alien bug had no good intentions whatsoever.
As soon as he got back to that lush green doghouse, he became a traitor and sold him out.
Okay... that's fucking great...
Fortunately, he had been careful and deliberately tampered with the ring that Sinestro symbolized "submission".
He incorporated a wisp of blue light, separated from his own will, into Sinestro's ring.
It was all to "listen" to this red-skinned bedbug, and those self-important big bedbugs behind him.
How exactly will they portray him?
As John predicted, the so-called Guardians...
He's just a fucking piece of arrogant, stupid blue-skinned dog shit sitting on the toilet, pointing fingers and gesturing wildly.
Want to use him? To use him as a pawn?
John slid off the floorboards and immediately stood up.
The original color of his pupils faded instantly, replaced by a deep, calm, dark blue, like the Deep.
One by one... they're all trying to take advantage of me, do they think I'm made of clay...?
Zod Oa
John lowered his gaze, looking at his fair, smooth hand, which was completely free of any machine oil.
This planet belongs to Lao Tzu...
The next instant, his five fingers clenched tightly.
The camera follows John's figure and suddenly cuts into a macro slow-motion shot.
The morning light slanted in through the gaps in the barn, and dust particles bobbed and swayed in the blinding stream of light.
Then.
"Whoosh--!!!"
All the chaotic sounds between heaven and earth seemed to recede like the tide, and the churning dust stopped in mid-air, frozen in stillness.
A gentle breeze swept by.
By the time the dust settled back into its swirling current, John's figure had already vanished from the spot.
The canvas extends right up to the very top of the sky.
The clouds were smashed apart by a brute force that seemed to twist and twist.
The enormous ring, spanning dozens of miles, bloomed wildly like an ice crown, dispelling the haze at the edge of the horizon.
Atlantic Ocean, at the edge of the Stormfront's eye.
Heavy, leaden clouds descended, and a torrential downpour swept in.
On the sea, towering, jet-black waves rose tens of meters high.
Above the surging waves, a hundred-meter-long black giant ship, like a broken halberd, was firmly nailed to the ground a hundred meters above the water.
No matter how heavy the rain or how turbulent the waves, it remains completely still.
"Shuashua--"
A blazing beam of light shot up from the ship's hull, piercing vertically through the rain.
In the ultra-dense downward pressure field, a semi-circular wave crater with a diameter of 100 meters was forcibly rammed into the sea surface.
Thousands of tons of seawater were forcibly compressed into inward-curving boiling walls.
And also amidst the howling wind and rain.
A black batwing fighter jet transformed into a black path piercing through the clouds, diving down at an extremely tricky angle, skimming the surface of the sea.
"Click-clack!"
Beneath the jet's jet-black wings.
Two deeply concealed Hive transmitters slid outwards smoothly, accompanied by the hum of hydraulic shafts moving.
The interior of the cockpit.
The crimson electronic cursor flashed rapidly across Bruce's face. His expression darkened, and his finger pressed firmly on the firing button.
"Lock onto target's gravitational field, launch armor-piercing flux Pulse missile!"
With the sound of pressure being released from the valve.
Two special Negasonic Teenage Warhead equipped with multi-stage magnetic flux compression detached from the rails and then ignited.
The orange-white tail flames sliced through the torrential rain, trailing a shrill aftertaste as they hurtled towards the hull of the reconnaissance boat.
These two Negasonic Teenage Warhead are equipped with Wayne Military Industries's most advanced ultra-high frequency directional microwave technology.
A single magnetic blast is enough to completely disable the radar and electrical systems of an entire carrier strike group within half a second.
However.
The anticipated overload did not occur.
In the void less than a meter from the missile tip to the ship's hull.
The originally transparent atmosphere suddenly became covered by a dense, dark honeycomb-like field that seemed to flow like a living organism.
The two electromagnetic currents struck the surface of the force field, but before they could even cause a ripple, they were forcibly crushed apart by the extremely high gravitational and repulsive forces.
Between heaven and earth, only the howling of the Stormfront could be heard.
"Warning! Warning! Target energy level exceeds the upper limit of measurement; conventional strikes are ineffective!"
As the alarm flashed bright red on the dashboard, the onboard AI's mechanical voice rang out urgently in the cockpit.
At this moment, the deadly "tacit understanding" was broken.
The giant ship that had been hovering over the ocean began to move.
On both sides of the hull, thick plates, like living armor, flipped and cracked open, quickly revealing four heavy cannons gleaming with a ghostly light.
The violent plasma rapidly contracted inward at the center of the cannon muzzle.
The howling rain surrounding the cannon evaporated completely under the terrifying ionization before it even touched the gun barrel.
Immediately afterwards.
The four blinding energy rails suddenly locked onto the fighter jet's fuselage.
It even covered the area around the fighter jet, including all blind spots where it could escape.