Chapter 4094

Greed spat out a mouthful of water, then coughed violently for a long time, nearly choking himself to death.

"You call this 'nothing worth hiding'?!"

"There really is nothing worth hiding. Stop pretending. Don't tell me you're the type of pathetic little thing that gets triggered by the world ending?"

"But this is just too... You tell me first how it was destroyed."

"Two countries started fighting, that's all." Anatoly shrugged and said, "There was a tiny bit of friction at sea. One person opened fire without authorization from their superiors, and their subordinates faithfully carried out the order. Then, a gun went off by accident, and in the end, it spiraled out of control."

Greed suddenly remembered that the plane that caused his transmigration seemed to have been blown up in the middle of a barrage of shells. Now he knew where the shells came from.

Anatoly seemed to see through what he was thinking, and he said, "You died relatively early. To be precise, the day I sent you back was quite early, so you don't know what happened later. The fighting was absolutely brutal."

"Nuclear war?"

"Of course. In the end, that was the only result." Anatoly lowered his eyes and said, "Nurse Chen's youngest son went to the battlefield. I fished him back when he had only one breath left, but his body was already dead and couldn't remain in the original world, so I could only send him over to you."

"No wonder." Greed shook his head and said, "Then why didn't you do something to stop this war?"

"That is the problem. I tried basically every method, but it seemed unavoidable. After I investigated, I discovered that this might be a problem between the two of us."

"What do you mean?"

"Our back-and-forth transmigrations caused the stability of that universe to drop rapidly. Once stability drops, chaos follows, and certain nodes will slide toward the direction of doom. In my investigation, in the vast majority of universes, that commander who chose to open fire was stopped by his subordinates, but the one in our universe was not. Thus, the war broke out."

"I tried returning to a point in time in the past to kill that commander, or to pose as his subordinate to stop him, but it was all useless. If every subsequent node slides toward a bad direction, then a world war is unavoidable."

Greed covered his forehead and said, "But that wasn't what I wanted to transmigrate for; isn't this God's problem?"

"Then why do you think DC's God is hiding?"

"Didn't he go to find his son?"

"You really think he values Gabriel that much? If that were true, he wouldn't have let Gabriel leave in the first place. He is hiding from me."

"Then why is he unwilling to help?"

"Maybe because I beat up his favorite son, borrowed debts all over the universe in his name, finally fired a shot at the center of the stars that provoked the Outer Gods, blew myself up in a fake death to run away, and even brought you over."

"……Then it's normal that he's unwilling to help."

"I think it might be because he has his own difficulties too." Anatoly said, "When world stability drops, you have to find a way to make up for it. If you want to get the power to patch the sky, you have to rob Peter to pay Paul. As the boss, he still has to be fair on the surface and cannot be overly biased toward any one universe. It's naturally inappropriate for him to do this, but it doesn't matter for me."

"So that's why you collected so much power. Then how is your patching going?"

"No clue." Anatoly said, "I'm not a universe administrator; how would I know where the loopholes are? Besides, even if I have already collected so much power, it's just a drop in the bucket for that universe. So I came back again, and I'm currently researching other methods."

Greed thought for a moment and said, "Can Lucifer help?"

"He only has authority in that one world; the only co-master across worlds is God. Unless he takes action himself, even if he tells me the method, I can't do it. Our life forms have essential differences."

"This is a bit troublesome." Greed said, "Since repairing isn't possible, can we change to a different house?"

"I thought so too, but how could it be that simple. Life and the universe are like a radish in a hole; even if you killed everyone in a certain universe and then migrated people over, you still couldn't replace the original life."

"What about building a universe yourself?"

"The energy required for that is an astronomical price." Anatoly said, "Don't look at those mutants saying they create a universe and then they create a universe; those are all pocket universes. If the original universe is a villa, then a pocket universe is at most equivalent to a flowerpot; the development limit is too limited, and it's not even as good as the original house."

"Hiss..." Greed took a breath and said, "I'm wondering why I deleted my memories back then. This matter really isn't that hard to accept; anyway, there will always be a way. I deleted this memory, but it might have actually delayed progress."

"I don't know about that; maybe you had some way, but you couldn't have the memory, otherwise this way wouldn't work."

"You don't even have a way, what way could I have?"

The two fell silent together. After a pause, Greed asked, "There's one more question, where did those comics come from?"

"What?"

"Those comics I read when I was a kid."

"Of course I found them for you."

"But some comics hadn't been released before the plane crash, right?"

"That's because I found them from other universes. After all, that side is your home; you'll have to go back sooner or later, so of course I have to find more information for you."

"You can travel through different universes?"

"Of course I can. I can also travel through different points in time. However, it's very difficult for me to interfere with the past; history will take a detour, and the final result remains unchanged. But going back to take a look is still possible."

"Are you really just an ordinary soldier?"

"Of course. I just had some strange encounters later on." Anatoly smiled and said, "You would never guess who I am."

Greed narrowed his eyes; he was too familiar with this smile of Anatoly's. Every time he told himself he had a "big surprise," he would show this smile, and his surprises usually only had the shock and no joy. The last time was on his birthday, when Anatoly made him a vodka-flavored cake. He himself was curious back then; one dared to make it, one dared to eat it, and in the end, both of them were scolded by the nurse together.

Greed began to ponder. From the few questions Anatoly asked at the beginning, he knew that the other party might have been paying attention to him all along, so it couldn't be too far away. If it wasn't Brand, but actually Nyarlathotep, he would definitely suspect Brand.

Could it be Anna? But after thinking about it, he felt it was impossible. Don't look at Anatoly being a Soviet, but actually, his math was average; otherwise, he would have gone to be a mathematician long ago. His math level shouldn't be enough to teach university math, and besides, Anna didn't touch a drop of alcohol, which completely ruled out her possibility.

Who else could it be? Greed thought for a long time, but couldn't think of anyone around him who was very much like Anatoly. Those who were closer to him were either famous superheroes or had personalities that were worlds apart from Anatoly's, making it almost impossible.

Having ruled out the closest group of people, it might be that group who were not too close or too far, who could pay attention but didn't come into contact often. Greed began to rule them out one by one, but still couldn't find a suitable target.

Then he discovered that his way of ruling out might be problematic, because if there were any abnormalities in the people around him, he would have discovered them long ago; it was impossible to wait until today to notice. So he began to start from events, thinking about the things he had experienced, whether there were any unsolved mysteries, which might be the result of Anatoly's interference.

After thinking for a long time, he suddenly dug out a very inconspicuous fragment from the depths of his memory.

Back then, the Yellow Lantern Sinestro suddenly came to Earth, claiming that he had discovered a conspiracy of the Lantern Corps, which was that the Little Blue Men were not the creators of the emotional spectrum at all, and not even the discoverers, but they had always controlled the emotional spectrum, forcing the Lantern Corps to do things for them.

Actually, according to the normal timeline, Sinestro at that time hadn't rebelled from the Green Lantern Corps. After some questioning, it was learned that someone had told him this truth in advance, which eventually led to his early rebellion and the early establishment of the Yellow Lantern Corps. As for who that person was, there was still no clue to this day.

At that time, Schiller had a guess, feeling that it might be the First Lantern causing trouble. At that time, he had just dug the Egg of the Batman Who Laughs out of Bruce's body, and he instinctively felt that these two things might be related.

Later it was confirmed that in the universe where Schiller was, those dangerous things becoming eggs was actually because Anatoly had blown up the original dark side of this universe, so these dangerous things were all sealed. Then could it be that the person who told Sinestro the truth about the Lantern Corps in advance was Anatoly?

"You wouldn't be the First Lantern, would you?!" Greed raised his voice and said.

"Hahahaha, didn't expect that, did you!" Anatoly laughed happily and said, "At that time, I thought you would investigate; after all, you had just discovered that the dark side was sealed, and Sinestro went over there; you would definitely connect these two things together, then guess it was the First Lantern's doing, and come over to find me. As a result, I waited for a long time and you didn't move."

"That was Pride not moving." Greed said, "He shouldn't have been allowed to go in the first place; if I had been allowed to go, we would have met up long ago."

"No way. If you had gone, wouldn't Bruce have been beaten to death by the Joker you turned into?" Anatoly shook his head and said.

Greed choked; actually, choosing to let Pride go back then was because he felt he was very strong and better at dealing with a den of tigers and dragons like Gotham. Unexpectedly, Pride's inertia was truly too strong, and he had absolutely no motivation to get to the bottom of things; if the villain didn't come over to cause trouble, even if there were clues, he was too lazy to investigate. This led to him and Anatoly meeting up more than ten years late.

"But how could you be the First Lantern?" Greed asked.

"Just like what you did," Anatoly said, "First obtain a certain status, then modify your origin story. Besides, the origin story didn't change much; I was originally a traveler from another world."

Greed then remembered that actually, the First Lantern's origin story was very vague; the description in the comics was "from an unknown future." That's right, just that one sentence; it didn't say where his hometown was, and it didn't say where his superpowers came from. Now it seems, it was because Anatoly couldn't make it up, right?

"Then the First Lanterns of other universes..."

"Actually, they are all me. Every time there's a big event, I have to rush to the scene, and I don't have much time to take the initiative to find you. Just like that, sometimes I still can't make it. Actually, when the main universe Batman and Darkseid broke through Oa, I should have been staying in the Little Blue Men's cage, but it just happened that the Third Army of another universe was rising, and I had to go let them draw energy, so I missed it. But it's okay, Batman definitely thinks the Little Blue Men are too cunning and locked me in another place; some day I'll just guide him to dig me out."

Greed couldn't help but cover his forehead again and said, "So the First Lantern I saw in the comics was also you? But why is the real universe in another world a comic?"