Chapter 2494: The Battle for the Cape (Part 61)

Bruce's arms hung down. He stared at Shiler in silence, seemingly trying to discern something from him, but unfortunately, he saw only a void—like wind, like mist—yet there was nothing there, just as it was when he looked at this group of madmen.

This was not a man who could be called special; he was even so ordinary that he seemed completely out of place in this room. He looked like someone who should appear in an office at some university or library, rather than being among them, appearing at the final moment of this drama.

Bruce saw that Shiler was holding a roll of film in his hand, as if it had just been removed from somewhere. It was printed with quite a few frames, looking like the beginning of a story.

"Where should I start..." Bruce heard Shiler mutter to himself, "If I have to start from the beginning, it would be too long."

"Please, sit." Shiler pointed to the chair beside him.

Bruce flashed a smile. He stood where he was, watching Shiler. After a moment, he walked over, sat in the chair, crossed his legs, and said, "I thought the atmosphere between us would be a bit more tense. Or is it the skin I'm wearing that's doing the work?"

"I'm afraid it was originally the opposite." Shiler also pulled his chair closer and sat down, picking up a pen from the tabletop. "If it were truly my good-for-nothing student who appeared here, he would have been dragged in."

Bruce gave Jack the Joker a look of unknown meaning and curled his lip, thinking he was being subtle. Shiler turned his head to the other side, and a black cat jumped fluidly onto his lap.

Shiler stroked the Bat-Cat's head. The Bat-Cat tilted its head up, narrowed its eyes, and then stared fixedly at Bruce with those deep blue eyes.

"The story starts with a cat," Shiler said. "You discovered the existence of the Dream World long ago. When you first learned of the wonders of the Dream World, you knew this would be the perfect stage. So, you buried your foreshadowing in Maocheng Cat Getan..."

Bruce's azure eyes reflected the murderous gaze of the Bat-Cat, but the cats he had seen before were not this vibrant. Most of them were screaming and wailing, lying on the verge of death in cages, placed on sacrificial altars to become the source of power for the Court of Owls to pollute the Dream of a Thousand Cats.

Morpheus, the Dream King, had once wandered the vast territories of the dream space. This was the divine kingdom he ruled. Valleys, rivers, and deserts were just as real in the Dream World, only combined in a strange and bizarre way.

Behind him followed a giant cat, often nagging him about overturning the Dream of a Thousand People and turning the entire world back into a kingdom of cats.

But behind their leisurely stroll, a black shadow was constantly lurking. That was the first time he felt curious about what lay beneath his own subconscious and began to explore. He was gifted; it took him only one try to reach the Dream Kingdom.

Meeting the god of the Dream Kingdom and his cat was his luck, but he was always very good at turning his own luck into someone else's misfortune. Once he knew what kind of power the Dream of a Thousand Cats possessed, a plan took shape in his mind.

The Dream of a Thousand Cats was the collective body of all cats' dreams, and as long as enough cats were having nightmares, it would inevitably be affected. As long as it was polluted, the Dream World would have a loophole.

But Morpheus, the Dream King, would not let go of anyone who dared to meddle here. In front of this master of the Dream Kingdom, who was so powerful that even Lucifer was unwilling to easily touch his edge, all resistance would appear too insignificant. He could not afford to make another enemy like this for himself.

So, he placed an egg inside the belly of a cat—a poor stray cat living in Cat Getan, harboring countless grievances and anger amidst hunger and cold. Until the child it gave birth to was stuffed into a bag by a man and thrown into the lake, he set off for the Dream King's kingdom for the first time and found the Dream Cat.

There, he learned that cats were the original masters of this world, only a thousand people had the same dream, using the Dream of a Thousand People to overthrow the cats' rule.

From then on, he began to travel across lakes, canyons, and graveyards, wanting to find a thousand cats to have the same dream, to bring the world back to the era of cat rule. This was the origin of the Dream of a Thousand Cats.

And in that bag thrown into the lake by the man, the ordinary cat cubs naturally drowned, but that cat, which was not born of the mother cat but was merely an egg borrowing a womb to be born, did not die so easily.

He survived and became the most special one in the Dream of a Thousand Cats, because that egg was essentially Batman.

Where there is Batman, there will be Cat Getan, even if this Batman is a cat. So, even if everything turned into what a cat sees, Cat Getan remained as dark and bizarre as ever.

Everything in the Dream World was not solid enough and could disappear completely with the shattering of a dream. But Maocheng Cat Getan, which came from the Bat-Cat's dream, could remain the same day after day. This was like a dark nail, deeply driven into the territory of the Dream Kingdom. The pollution began from that moment.

With a stable base, it was natural to start sending a steady stream of polluting power into the Dream Kingdom. What followed became very simple. It was not difficult to bewitch those Owls who firmly believed in a certain god, making them believe that sacrificing the souls of painful cats could obtain greater power.

After all, compared to humans, cats were so weak. Whether by catching or buying, they got enough cats, tortured them, abused them, and let them spend one terrible dream after another while on the verge of death.

Just like that, the Dream of a Thousand Cats had cracks that neither he nor the Dream King had noticed. The authority of the Dream World was shaken from that moment.

The Bat-Cat that maintained Maocheng Cat Getan was actually just a cat-form avatar hatched from the egg. Although the Bat-Cat himself did not know this, as long as he existed, he could steal a part of the authority of the Dream of a Thousand Cats, make some small moves at the cracks, and build a new Dream World within the scope of Maocheng Cat Getan.

Shiler had talked to the Bat-Cat about his origins long ago. The Bat-Cat didn't know and wasn't interested. It wasn't until Krypto came and insisted on fighting crime in the Dream World every day that he encountered a cat that smelled somewhat similar to the Bat-Cat.

Krypto insisted on taking the Bat-Cat over to see that Siamese cat whose scent he felt was familiar. And when the Bat-Cat appeared in front of this Siamese cat, he heard a familiar cry.

This evoked some hazy memories in the Bat-Cat—the screams the mother cat made when she gave birth to him, who had grown too large.

The Siamese found her child. She rushed up almost impatiently, rubbing hard against the Bat-Cat, licking his fur, and telling the story of that year. To this day, this cat mother had not given up; she still wanted to create a world ruled by cats to take revenge on the murderer who killed her child back then.

The Bat-Cat enjoyed his mother's affection for a while, but he was still Batman. He began to think about more things, such as why he was so much bigger than the other cubs, why his fur color was different from all the other cats, why he felt he was a Bat-Cat, and why he appeared in a city called Cat Getan as soon as he had consciousness.

All of this clearly had traces to follow. From then on, the Bat-Cat suspected that everything he had in the past and present was arranged by the same conspirator.

So, after recovering his identity as the Bat-Cat, he also began to rule the city as Bruce Wayne, using his technology and wealth to monitor every move in the city.

Until one day, a human sneaked into the city.

But what he did was more than just transporting another person here. He fabricated a bubble of the Dream World here and hid it under the entire city, then opened a passage upward, leading directly to a universe where Batman was a bit special.

The Bat-Cat sat on the table in front of Shiler, licking his paws, while Bruce, with his legs crossed, narrowed his eyes and looked at him, saying, "So you found out when I opened the passage."

The Bat-Cat looked up at him and said nothing.

Shiler put down the film in his hand, picked up another roll, and said, "Then let's see how you locked onto this special universe."

The first act of this story did not happen in the DC world, but rather, Stark appeared, which was very rare. Even more bizarrely, Stark and Shiler fought until they were covered in blood.

Stark, who originally just wanted to follow Shiler downstairs to throw out the trash, was tricked into the Zombie Universe and had a fierce conflict with Shiler, only to find that this Shiler was not his good doctor, but a personality trait called Gluttony.

It just so happened that Shiler threw the test subjects Nick had created into this universe as trash, but after Gluttony appeared, he was eager to get something to eat. Therefore, Stark discovered the mystery of ghosts; in a sense, they were a special kind of electrical wave.

From this, Stark deduced the Ghost Electrical Wave Theory and then began to study the relationship between brain waves and souls.

But he was not the first to do so. To be precise, at the same moment, he was not the one who had gone the furthest.

Someone had discovered the influence of brain waves long before this. Almost all human souls and spirits relied on this to exist. If one could compile brain waves, it would be equivalent to being able to control all intelligent life.

Of course, this was very difficult, but after he conducted research for a period of time, he began to experiment widely in various universes, seeking to achieve true brain wave compilation.

The difficulty of this technology exceeded his imagination, but it didn't matter; he had other methods. As long as he could send carrier items carrying special virus bands to others and have them in long-term contact, he could partially change their brain wave frequency and wavelength, achieving the goal of influencing their minds.

His experiment was a great success, and it was successful several times, but he still had not reached the point where he could compile brain waves at will. It just gave him a new technology—wide-area brain wave search and reading.

He could search brain waves and partially read the other party's inner thoughts and understand their state through the searching machine without coming into contact with them.

For a long time, this became his invincible weapon. Think about it, you don't even need to come into contact with the other party; you only need to stand in the distance and look at him to know his thoughts and his next actions. Isn't this a skill born for a mastermind behind the scenes?

When the stage was set in the Dream World, he knew he could use this skill to select all the characters he wanted.