Chapter 296: My Head Itches, I Feel Like I'm Growing a Brain

PS: Chapter 2 will be a bit late, sorry.

Just as Barry was about to reach out and shut the roof skylight tight, the voice of a news reporter suddenly came from the television nearby.

"Viewers, this is live coverage of the Star Labs press conference. We were just informed by lab personnel to evacuate the site immediately because the storm caused a failure in the main cooling system of the particle accelerator—officials are currently attempting to shut down the particle accelerator, but so far, no success in restarting the system has been reported from inside the lab—"

The image of the live news broadcast suddenly distorted and went black, and the anchor's voice cut off abruptly.

Barry, gripping the iron chain, looked startled and uncertain; he instinctively raised his head, his gaze passing through the iron racks holding various chemical agents, toward the window nearby—this was a high floor of the police station, with excellent visibility, allowing direct observation of the massive particle accelerator in the city center.

If something major had really happened at the particle accelerator, he should be able to see it from here—and indeed, he did see it.

Boom—!

Brilliant firelight lit up his pupils; the thunder in the sky and the flames on the ground merged, forming a terrifying yet beautiful white pillar of light that shot straight up, blowing away part of the dark clouds above the lab, then began to recklessly unleash its heat upon the surroundings of the laboratory.

Destructive energy instantly evaporated the rain within hundreds of meters; shockwaves and electromagnetic pulses, carrying certain formless substances, erupted and spread from the light pillar, radiating outward to distances of several thousand meters, tens of thousands of meters, even up to a hundred kilometers.

At this very moment, even Ma Ma Zhaodi in the suburbs and Joe, speeding toward the hospital in his car, saw the strange phenomenon in the sky.

The pillar of light reaching from earth to sky illuminated vast stretches of clouds; the city center was now as bright as day, and the energy storm it generated was not satisfied with that, beginning to sweep toward even farther places. The dark clouds in the night sky began to light up, becoming like fire-lit clouds, allowing people to observe with the naked eye the entire process of this formless shockwave moving at high speed through the air.

And within seconds, as the electromagnetic pulse spread, all electrical appliances in the city began to malfunction gradually, with the particle accelerator as the center: first near Star Labs, then the entire city center, and finally spreading to every corner of the central urban area.

Both Joe and Ma Ma Zhaodi could see that within seconds, the brightly lit city in the distance had plunged completely into darkness—if this were not the suburbs, even Joe's car would have been affected.

Unfortunately, the Ma Dong brothers were not so lucky; their plane flew much faster than cars.

Boom—!

An invisible shock swept through the cloud layer; fire-lit clouds ignited above the plane, which was about to enter the city—immediately, the internal circuits of this agricultural aircraft overloaded and exploded into a brilliant fireball.

Joe witnessed the plane disintegrating in the firelight and crashing to the ground in scattered pieces, and couldn't help but instinctively exclaim in shock.

"My god..."

He knew that under such circumstances, the Ma Dong brothers were probably facing dire odds, with little chance of survival.

Ma Ma Zhaodi was currently taking shelter from the rain on the farm; he also stared fixedly at the sky, but the direction he looked was not toward the Ma Dong brothers.

"Sky-high fire... explosions and deafening roars?"

At this very moment, he recalled the strange phenomenon that occurred at the location of the particle accelerator in the central city of another world on the day the Drake couple went missing—exactly the same as what was happening right now.

"The particle accelerator in this universe exploded, then projected into another universe?"

Thoughts surged in his mind as he desperately pondered the current situation: "But the time point I arrived was completely before the explosion... yet now I am witnessing the explosion with my own eyes?"

At this very moment, Ma Ma Zhaodi felt he was standing in the crack between times, bewildered and at a loss; before he arrived, the explosion of the particle accelerator had already projected into his universe; but after he arrived, the explosion had not yet occurred.

Did this mean he existed simultaneously in two universes at this moment?

"System, did you specifically move my smuggled arrival time point forward?"

【Negative. This is a spacetime distortion phenomenon in the Flash's world; the system did not interfere with your smuggled time node—please note, you possess your own independent timeline, unaffected by changes in the universe's timeline; your temporal continuity cannot be destroyed】 【You are the only one.】

When the system mentioned "possessing your own timeline," Ma Ma Zhaodi immediately recalled the time he was on a business trip to the Laughter Mystery War; back then, there seemed to have been a prompt.

【Confirming world structure based on the timeline of individual "Ma Ma Zhaodi".】

"My head is so itchy..." he scratched his head in confusion: "I feel like I'm about to grow a brain."

When Barry saw the bright pillar of light from Star Labs, he froze in place; only after two or three seconds did he realize what had happened.

The engineering project carefully designed by Dr. Wells had just been utterly destroyed—the particle accelerator had exploded.

"Oh my god..."

As he struggled to digest this news, the iron rack before him again caught his attention.

A certain peculiar and mysterious substance, sweeping along with the electromagnetic pulse, passed over his body and also over the chemical agents on the iron rack; the liquid in the cup instantly defied gravity, floating gently upward as if in a zero-gravity environment.

Boom—!

The light of the lightning cast Barry's shadow on the ground; when he raised his head, he could only see a spherical, dazzling golden light.

Crack!

The arc of the ball lightning struck down along the iron chain; the golden thunder of Lei Ting shattered the skylight above his head, then pierced through and spread across Barry's entire body. Severely impacted, Barry was flung outward, knocking over the iron rack holding the chemical agents, causing the multi-colored reagents to splash all over his body.

The gears of fate began to turn at this very moment.

At this time, the police station also plunged into darkness; the electromagnetic pulse had caused a major power outage here as well.

The police officers downstairs quickly mobilized; they too had heard the thunderous explosion and seen the firelight from the particle accelerator.

When an officer wanted to call CSI personnel to head to the explosion site at Star Labs, Barry, lying in the spilled reagents, was finally discovered and then urgently transported to the hospital.

In a hospital in the central city, the corridor lights were dim—after the major power outage, backup power needed to be prioritized for more critical medical equipment, so many corners here remained pitch black, giving off a somewhat apocalyptic flavor after a disaster.

"What's the situation with this person?"

The emergency doctor, seeing police officers pushing a young man whose body was charred and burned, with tense expressions and hurried steps, asked: "What's the situation with this person?"

"He was struck directly by lightning."

"He didn't die from that?"

The doctor looked at the young man on the gurney; beneath his skin, a strange golden current seemed to flash.

"What is that thing?"

He rubbed his eyes, and when he looked at the young man again, he could no longer see any abnormality.

(End of this chapter)