Chapter 1470: Birds Returning (Part 32)

In Hell, there is a huge abyss that spans the entire Hell, known as the "Hell within Hell," and some call it the "Eternal Night Black Abyss."

And in the deepest part of the abyss, on a cliff, stands a huge palace where the extremely ancient demon king Beelzebub resides.

Beelzebub has many demon generals under his command, but compared to his peers, he is not considered warlike. Every few hundred years, Beelzebub gathers them together under various names to hold celebrations, and the abyss that has just finished the celebration seems a bit deserted.

Following the long black obsidian palace corridor all the way forward, passing through the flames emerging from the ram skulls, and going up the stairs along the carpet woven with sun god patterns, one can reach Beelzebub's throne hall.

The tall demon guard leaned against the door and dozed off. Suddenly, a roar came from the throne hall.

"... What's the why?!

Batman, are you deliberately looking for trouble?!

Just do as I say!

!"

The guard was so startled he shivered, dropping his spear to the ground. After picking it up, he couldn't help but curiously peek through the door crack into the throne hall.

In these past few days, the name 'Batman' had appeared countless times in the roars of the Demon King, but each time, only his voice was heard and never his person.

The demon guard observed for a while and discovered that Your Majesty Beelzebub seemed to be responding to a believer's prayer.

Beelzebub was indeed on the phone with Batman, and this was already the fourth prayer call he had received today.

It wasn't that Beelzebub had absolutely no human believers, but generally speaking, he only needed a single thought to respond to a human believer's long-winded prayers. In any case, human believers mostly prayed to him for protection and strength; as long as it wasn't too excessive, he would grant it, since the little bit of strength humans wanted was merely a drop in the ocean to him.

But Batman was different; he didn't want strength, nor did he want protection—he wanted knowledge.

Throughout history, there had been no shortage of such freaks, and Beelzebub had also bestowed countless secret knowledge upon his believers. But what other believers wanted was nothing more than answers—such as whether a certain action would succeed, whether a certain piece of history was true, or what the truth behind the war between angels and demons really was.

Knowledge that could be called secret to humans was nothing more than a past memory to Beelzebub, and he could answer these questions very easily.

But what made Batman different was that he didn't just want the answer; he wanted the process. Having the answer without the steps didn't count.

When he asked Beelzebub about the future of a certain event, his focus wasn't on whether the future was good or bad—Beelzebub even suspected that Batman didn't believe at all in his judgment of whether a future was good or bad. What Batman cared about was how exactly Beelzebub made that judgment.

Beelzebub had, of course, explained to him that the life forms of humans and demons were different, and their ranks were different. To a demon like Beelzebub, time did not move linearly, so he could naturally see certain futures.

But Batman just wanted to figure out the principle behind non-linear time prophecy, where the gap in life forms between humans and demons lay, and what exactly a rank was—often, Beelzebub answering one question for him would lead to countless other questions.

Beelzebub would roar at him, "You don't need to understand magic so clearly!" and Batman would reply, "If you don't understand the principles, how can you be sure your answer is correct?"

Beelzebub tried to convince him with practice, such as making a prophecy and then waiting for a period of time for it to come true, but Batman would then question: even if it came true this time, what about the next?

Without a process that could be fully deduced, how could one ensure the stability of the result?

This theory did indeed stump Beelzebub. The power he possessed and everything he could do were actually instinctive; he had never thought about where his power came from or how it operated.

And Batman went a step further, saying: "If you don't understand the principles of all this, then one day when this power disappears, you won't even have a way to recover it."

Beelzebub certainly wanted to swear, "This power will not disappear." He had thought so for thousands of years; he would be the King of Hell forever, an existence whose rank far exceeded other beings in the universe.

But the death of Belial made him feel a bit uncertain.

From his common sense, the three great Demon Kings of Hell could not die; they were the pillars of Hell and should be as eternal as the universe itself. But Belial had simply vanished, vanished without a sound.

It was hard for Beelzebub not to feel a sense of crisis. Even if Batman wouldn't go crazy and eat him again, how could he guarantee that nothing else would threaten his survival next time?

Every intelligent life form has a survival instinct, and life forms with emotions inevitably feel fear. Belial had vanished too easily; the powerful strength he mastered and his rank, which was similar to Beelzebub's, had failed to provide him with any protection. Why was that?

Once this thought appeared in Beelzebub's mind, it was hard for him not to ponder: if one day he faced a madman like Batman, and excluding his power and rank, what would he have left?

If there really came a day when his power and rank disappeared, would he really only be able to stay where he was, waiting for danger to arrive in total ignorance, completely unable to recover?

Thinking of his current situation, Beelzebub thought, I'm afraid so. He had no idea where his power came from. If it were naturally generated, would it always be generated? If it were bestowed by someone, would it always be bestowed?

These questions swirled in Beelzebub's mind like a curse. Every time Batman made a call to ask those questions Beelzebub had never even thought of, the curse became a little clearer.

When a Demon King begins to think about the source of his power, he inevitably uses his instinctive, powerful strength, using a vision far beyond that of humans to trace the roots of the universe.

But unfortunately, Beelzebub's rank was high, but not high enough. No matter how he utilized his special vision and powerful strength to explore the mysteries of the universe, he was still unable to accurately state "how everything that exists came to exist."

This made Beelzebub feel irritable, even self-abandoning, but Batman still tirelessly called him to ask questions that sounded simple but which no one could answer.

Gradually, Beelzebub stopped being so angry. After all, if a tiny human could be so persistent—even making dozens of harassing calls to his god every day just to get the answer to a question—wouldn't he, as the god himself, look stupid in the human's eyes for being so irritable?

Although, Beelzebub felt that in Batman's eyes, all life should be stupid, because he was a bit too smart for his own good.

When Beelzebub actually committed Batman's questions and the offhand explanations he gave to memory and understood them, he discovered that this human was truly ridiculously smart.

Many things that were impossible to see through from a human perspective, Batman could deduce the answer to directly. Knowledge that was impossible for a human life form to understand, Batman forcibly understood with his terrifying comprehension ability.

He might be the smartest person in the universe, Beelzebub thought.

Then perhaps, he could utilize his wisdom to solve those mysteries of the universe that even he couldn't research.

Yes, this was beneficial to him, Beelzebub thought. Not every Demon King had such a smart Pope; he should firmly grasp this opportunity, and perhaps he might even have a chance to go further.

Thinking of this, Beelzebub's heart grew a bit warm.

But at this time, Batman's calls stopped coming so frequently.

Beelzebub could only sit in his throne hall, suspicious and paranoid, until one day, he finally couldn't help but ask Batman: "Why haven't you prayed lately?"

He tried hard to control his tone so he wouldn't sound like a crazy woman calling every five minutes to check up on someone, but what Batman said made his heart go cold.

"I think those questions might indeed be too difficult for a Demon King. After all, you are also quite far from the origin of the universe."

"However, in recent academic discussions, my teacher recommended a good candidate to me, and I'm planning to fly to the West Coast to ask Lucifer."

Beelzebub felt his heart tighten. He knew that as God's most beloved youngest son, Lucifer could be called truly omniscient and omnipotent.

At this moment, Beelzebub wasn't afraid that Batman wouldn't get an answer; he was afraid that he really would.

Would there still be a place for him, this god, by then?

Beelzebub held a pessimistic view of this, so he immediately said to Batman: "There's no need to trouble His Majesty Satan with such trifles. What was that rune language you mentioned the day before yesterday?... Jealousy? Hatred? That's Azazel's domain; I'll ask him later."

"Oh, that one." Batman's nonchalant tone came from the other end: "That topic has already been conquered by Tim, but..."

Beelzebub's mood was like a roller coaster, and he immediately asked: "But what?"

"Nothing, it's my personal business."

"As Pope, you should of course be more devout to your god. Isn't prayer meant for telling your god your difficulties without reservation?"

"Alright, actually it's about some problems in my mental world. A while ago, I split some personality traits, and I've been researching how to make them work together, but you know, the human mental world is very fragile, so my research process ran into a tiny little problem..."

"What problem?" Beelzebub's tone contained a hint of glee. Batman, you have days like this too?

"It's hard to say." Batman's tone was a bit troubled. He was silent for a moment, then said: "Why don't you come into my brain and take a look?"

Beelzebub didn't find this invitation strange at all; many humans would summon demons into their bodies to seek more power.

Beelzebub was even a bit surprised—Batman was actually willing to let him enter his body? Many humans were very resistant to this.

But the opportunity was once in a lifetime. Beelzebub really wanted to know what exactly was so special about this human called Batman.

Thus, Beelzebub made up his mind and said to Batman: "I'll give you a spell; you just need to recite it completely, and I can enter your soul to check the situation. Don't worry, there's no soul problem I can't solve."

Batman recited the spell, and Beelzebub successfully entered his soul—only to be drowned by an endless mountain of spaghetti code.

"Help me refactor the code until it works, thanks."

"Oh... holy shit... what is th..."

"By the way, this is a closed system. You can't get out until you're done refactoring. I'm going to do other work, bye-bye."

"Batman!

Bat... ugh!

!"