Chapter 2296: Jin Cheng Visits in the Autumn Evening (49)_1

Dealing with Bruce was difficult, but Barbados did it because Bruce was not the first Batman Barbados had encountered; the dark universe was full of experts.

The dark origin of DC generally presents the following characteristics: it has the ability to corrupt the light but prefers to flow toward areas that are also rich with dark energy. Essentially, it shows a kind of regional aggregation inertia rather than an outward diffusive corruptiveness.

In other words, Barbados's desire to use dark power to corrupt the Light Universe is not like dripping dye into water but more like tirelessly pushing a shot put, which is actually a burdensome and laborious process.

Otherwise, given Barbados's status, although it's not to say he could take down the entire Light Universe, he could easily occupy a few unimportant strongholds within it, especially since there's also darkness within the Light Universe itself.

Of course, the reality is that when Barbados was created, his intelligence ranked only for seniority, and the editors couldn't explain why such an awesome character had done nothing significant for such a long time, remained unknown, and waited until the Dark Knight Metal event to suddenly perform spectacularly.

In terms of intelligence ranking, Barbados does not even make the list, let alone compare to Blacknia; he would be several Batmans behind even someone like Luther.

In the power ranking, entities like Barbados and those transcendent beings from Heaven and Hell generally do not participate in rankings. Their character settings are rather vague, often alluding to powers of laws and rules, and it's not seen that they can physically overpower anyone; their strength is essentially described indirectly.

The only somewhat distinctive setting is the mind corruption, which has some gravitas, but when put into the storyline, looks no different than ordinary brainwashing, and there isn't a large-scale operation with a contaminating effect.

All in all, Barbados's character seems more like a patch designed to fill in gaps for a major event's backstory—forget comparing him to orthodox heroes; he doesn't even have the trendiness quotient that Darkseid does.

For this reason, Barbados has more than once pinned his hopes on Batman, the most fashionable hero across all of DC comics, if not the entire comic industry. However, due to the dark energy source accumulation theory, the Batmans of the dark universe mostly look bizarre.

Batman is inherently a source and conduit of darkness, his own darkness is more like something directly bestowed by the editorial department. Thus, the Batman in the dark universe becomes a central aggregation point of dark power.

As long as dark power exists in Barbados, it will continuously be funnelled into the dark universe's Batman, but this does not make them stronger, because the Batman's greatest strength is his brain, and dark energy can hardly enhance their intelligence while keeping them sane.

In simple terms, farmers can only fantasize about emperors tilling the soil with golden hoes; as a representative of dark energy, Barbados is not very smart. How could the energy he represents possibly refine a peerless genius that reigns supreme over all the universes?

Of course, when mentioning this, one cannot help but think of the Mad Laugh, but in reality, the Mad Laugh has little to do with Barbados, who is simply an old man with a ring that appears at the end of the origin story.

Although it's said that each dark universe was contaminated by Barbados's dark energy, which led to various tragedies for Batman, to be fair, the Batman who became the Mad Laugh apparently had some innate combativeness; Barbados isn't to blame.

After all, with so many dark multiverses doing fine until they reached his realm, even if it's an inverse failure, it's enough to show that Barbados can't really be called the father of the Mad Laugh.

Returning to Barbados's earlier plan to search for a vanguard in the dark universe, he truly did search, but the entire process of searching and selecting could essentially be seen as ancient gods witnessing the diversity of the human race.

Barbados is not human; although he is an intelligent being with emotions, he really struggles to understand certain human behaviors.

From his perspective, it's as if one day Batman just went crazy and started slaughtering his friends, relatives, and even various unrelated people, followed by the slaughtered people's friends and family seeking revenge, leading to a noisy and chaotic fight.

If Batman couldn't fight anymore, he would either modify himself or others, and both sides would howl and insist on clashing with each other, eventually trashing the entire Earth to the point where Barbados had to clean up the mess.

Isn't that why the Light Universe's Batman is seen as the unattainable ideal? Barbados wants to invade the Light Universe, which requires planning and execution, but devising and implementing plans require intelligence and action, yet the Batmans of the dark multiverse are mostly insane and lack both, yet to get a normal Batman, one has to invade the Light Universe...

Obviously, this resulted in a vicious cycle, so Barbados was so delighted with Bruce's arrival and immediately entrusted him with a significant task, because no matter how troublesome he may be, at least he was a sane person.

Barbados didn't even dare use his mind corruption on Bruce; aside from Bruce having the status of an angel, tapping into Bruce's mental network might very well result in dialing up God. Not to mention, the chaos and madness within Bruce's dark attributes made him too risky to tamper with—what if he drove another Batman insane?

Now, Barbados treats Bruce like he's afraid of breaking him if he falls and afraid of melting him if he's in his mouth; though Bruce is annoying, he tolerates him.

So, did Bruce actually achieve something in the end?

He did, but not much.

Many might wonder if Bruce is tirelessly working himself to death, could all that effort be in vain? Could the reports he sent to Barbados be nothing but a ruse?

That would be seriously underestimating Batman. The plans that Bruce devised were not only precise and ruthless but also well executed and thoroughly carried out. Staff allocation was meticulous, his methods scientific, and his efficiency maxed out.

Based on this, Barbados should have been able to ascend to the Light Universe any day now, yet somehow the progress bar advances only to retract again, with Barbados finding no faults whatsoever.

This brings us to the time when the trial version of Battleworld was launched, and Bruce's fortuitous encounter with Nick Fury from Shiller's universe in the Battleworld office.

Yes, it's the same old S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra routine.

However, as of today, the Unscrupulous Quartet, having fully embraced their agency, has refined and expanded this system into something even more comprehensive, turning it into a systematic teaching framework, with Bruce being the first to benefit.

Who is Bruce? He is Batman, the one man in this world who grasps concepts at the slightest touch, and he has even refined the plans of the Unscrupulous Quartet to be more context-specific while introducing many details they overlooked.

The underlying theory is essentially about inviting the wolf into the house to stage a grand spectacle of good versus evil, dramatically increasing visible resource consumption, and using this opportunity to secretly reallocate resources for other purposes.

Then, with the misallocated resources, he created even more job opportunities, keeping everyone busy with nonexistent tasks, delaying the evil side from other activities, and showcasing to the side of justice how much he had accomplished.

Naturally, Bruce applied this strategy, albeit in reverse, siding with the Court of Owls and reporting to Barbados as his boss.

In this analogy, Barbados is akin to Congress that approves funding, the Owls are similar to SHIELD Agents, while the Batsmen of different universes resisting the Owls are naturally akin to Hydra, occasionally bringing in Superman Wonder Woman or Green Lantern to play roles akin to the KGB.

The general method involves using a detailed and sensible plan to identify real issues within a cosmic Owl, issues that are indeed addressed with the allocated budget.

This budget isn't embezzled but used properly, and with Batman's wisdom and execution, it would only take a couple of weeks to increase the Owls' fighting capability by dozens of times.

The members of the Court of Owls aren't pushovers either; the stronger they get, the bigger their ambitions, inevitably clashing with the forces of justice. Barbados thought the same way. If Under Batman's leadership, the Owls had the capability to confront superheroes head-on, why not do it?

After years of surreptitiously transporting energy and polluting, Barbados finally found a chance to regain dignity. If they were too weak to win before, now that they were strong, it was time to reclaim what they were owed.

Thus, both Barbados and the Court of Owls had no objections to stepping into the limelight, because in their view, challenging human societal order was inevitable—it wasn't as if they could hide forever.

And so, under Bruce's command, the majority of the Court of Owls surfaced, becoming a globally recognized terrorist organization, which naturally attracted the high scrutiny of Batman.

With a bit more cunning, Bruce led Batman to believe that the death of his parents might have been orchestrated by the Owls—although some of it could be true, parts that weren't could still be manipulated into misunderstandings.

Being his city involved in large-scale terrorism and possibly by his parents' killers, Batman couldn't ignore it, both emotionally and rationally.

In theory, this is an internal matter for Gotham, but if Bruce would let Batman handle it so easily, something would be wrong. Under his leadership, the Court of Owls became extremely high profile.

Forget the NAZI, Helada, genocide, or alien conspiracies—however Hollywood depicts us, we are relentless evildoers beyond redemption. Would it even be justice if you didn't bring in a battalion of superheroes to handle us?

The consequence of such high visibility meant that the majority of superheroes with a sense of justice kept a continuous watch over the situation, preventing Batman from tackling the Court of Owls alone. And when superheroes like Superman entered the fray, the scale of events could only become epic.

Consequently, the Court of Owls became the mightiest and most stylish villain on Earth in these universes, while superhero organizations like the Justice League tirelessly opposed them day and night.

In gaming terms, even if a character becomes one of the top-tier choices in the current version after an update and the overall difficulty of the raids increases, it's as if nothing changed.

And as expected, most character updates aren't really about balance adjustments—the ultimate goal is simply to bait players into spending more money.