Chapter 4206

"Why are you shouting so loudly?" Schiller picked his ears and hung the cleaned wine glass back on the shelf.

Strange stood in front of the bar counter, looking at him angrily.

"Drink something?" Schiller turned to ask him.

"Is this your good deed!" Strange threw a gossip tabloid onto the bar counter.

Schiller shook his head and said: "No."

Strange was stunned. He looked at Schiller suspiciously. Generally speaking, Schiller wouldn't deny what he really did; he might beat around the bush or change the subject, but he wouldn't deny it so bluntly. Could it really not be him?

"The report was written by Eddie," Schiller said, "I saw that he has the potential to be a gossip tabloid reporter, so I provided him with an opportunity."

"So it is your idea after all?!"

"That depends on how you define it..."

"Does Loki know about this?"

"Is that what you care about?"

Strange seemed to be so angry he had no moves. He closed his eyes and leaned back, covered his forehead, then rubbed his face hard, waved his cloak, sat in front of the bar counter, and said through gritted teeth: "Do you know, this might make Thor find me for a duel!"

"So you were afraid you couldn't beat Thor. You don't have to worry about that; before Loki returns safely, Thor definitely won't have time to find trouble with you."

"Then what about after?!"

"Loki is back, he definitely won't sit by and watch Thor beat you up."

"Yeah, he'll help Thor beat me up!"

"Really?"

The two eyes met. The moment he saw Schiller's gray eyes, Strange felt like he was scalded and twisted his head away fiercely.

"Even if this helps Loki get acquitted, our reputations will be tied together from now on."

"Oh, I see, are you worried that his reputation will drag you down?"

Before Strange could say anything, several condemning gazes came from around the bar counter. He hammered the table fiercely and then said: "He and I have nothing! I..."

"No wonder Thor disagrees." Polaris shrugged and said.

Strange covered his forehead.

"This is just a rumor," Schiller said, "At the level of the entire economic society, gossip tabloids will write anyone's relationship very ambiguously, even including the Supreme Intelligence and the Skrull Emperor. No one will take this seriously."

"The jury members will be influenced by this matter because they want to take it seriously. Because then they can have an excuse to favor Loki, just like shooting an arrow first and then drawing the target."

"People will even suspect that this is a piece of gossip created by the Interstellar Court itself. This can allow them to acquit Loki, but also show that they are forced to do so, so as not to be retaliated against by the Skrull Empire. Anyone who pays attention to this kind of gossip is more concerned with its political significance than the truth."

Schiller put a beer in front of Strange, and the bottom of the glass hit the table with a "clang". "... Unless someone has a guilty conscience."

Strange took a deep breath and said: "Yeah, if it weren't for someone having a guilty conscience, why would they insist on hiding it from Loki?"

"I didn't hide it from him."

"You mean he knew and agreed to this plan?"

"Regardless of whether he knew before, he definitely knows now. As for whether he agreed... since he didn't refute it, he must have agreed."

Strange couldn't help but sigh: "He's in jail now, how could he refute it?!"

"Oh, also. If he suddenly said to the jailer now, 'I have absolutely nothing to do with the Sorcerer Supreme', the Skrull Empire might release him overnight to prevent you from really killing your way to their capital."

"Alright, things have come to this, let's eat first." Schiller served a steak to Strange and then said, "If you and Thor fight, I will definitely help you. Don't worry."

Strange sneered, stopped talking, and focused on eating. Polaris whispered on the side: "I think they have something going on."

"Who are you referring to?"

"Everyone and everyone."

"If Batman asked me what intelligence I collected in this universe, I wouldn't know where to start," the Arkham Knight couldn't help but say, "Every family has its own difficult scripture to read."

The few Robins who came finished their meal here and went to the warehouse in the back to get equipment. Then, one after another, some teams came over to prepare, and there were also wounded people coming to recover.

The one injured was Batwoman's Robin. That's right, after she returned to her universe, she also found a few assistants. But it wasn't a gender-swapped version of Dick and the others, but two Atlantean girls, a pair of sisters.

Logically speaking, they are both superpowered, so it's not easy for them to get hurt, but unfortunately, their superpowers are water control, and water is very scarce in the universe, so their abilities had no place to be used, and as a result, they were ambushed by the aliens' traps.

Other Robins in the tavern helped the two sisters upstairs. Schiller gave them a shot of healing potion, but perhaps because of their Atlantean bloodline, the effect of the healing potion wasn't very good, and they could only wait for them to heal themselves.

More squads brought those black boxes. Their structures were all the same, but they were buried in different locations. As more and more boxes were dug out, Schiller realized that he probably needed to find professionals to take a look.

By the evening, a portal appeared at the tavern entrance, and Reed walked out of it.

Schiller didn't talk nonsense with him either, and directly placed the pile of boxes in front of him. Reed waved his hand and said: "I'm not interested in this pile of junk; this thing might be able to affect mages' portals, but it's ineffective against my portals."

"... Why? Peter said this can interfere with all energy constructs."

"My portals are not energy constructs."

"Ah?"

"I've researched it; we can't use the kind of big portals the Shi'ar Empire has. On one hand, the maintenance cost is too high, and on the other hand, if it explodes, the entire galaxy will be affected; the safety is really too low, didn't the Shi'ar Empire fail to protect it?"

"Then what do you plan to do?"

"Punch a hole directly in space."

Although he had long known Reed's nature, Schiller still couldn't help but cover his forehead. Reed said very firmly: "We can only use this method; only this is the safest."

Schiller had a look of "Do you want to hear what you're saying?".

"Actually, portals in the past also punched holes in space," Reed changed his wording, took a napkin from the side, folded it, then used a knife to pierce through two layers of paper, and then said, "This is the principle of ordinary portals. Fold two spaces together, then punch a hole, and you can go from one end to the other."

"Then where are you going to punch a hole?"

Reed took another napkin, but this time laid it flat on the table, held the knife handle, and stabbed down fiercely. The bar counter used ordinary wood, so after the paper was pierced, a small hole was also poked in the wood, and the knife just stood there like that.

Now Schiller was a bit unable to understand; mainly because this way of expression was a bit abstract, he said: "You might as well just tell me the principle."

"We go through the antimatter universe," Reed said, "According to my calculations, the cosmic constants of the antimatter universe are different from our universe; to put it simply, if we move one meter here, it might be one hundred meters there. In fact, the principle is much more complex than this, involving the structure of time and space, but you can just take it as such."

"So where is the safety in this?"

"The energy of a portal is used to fold dimensions, so once the energy is drawn away, or the structure is destroyed, this folding becomes unstable." Reed picked up the napkin from before again, then twisted it gently, the two folded sides moved in different directions, and the hole poked before was misaligned, becoming unable to let light through anymore. He continued: "This is the problem that most portals will have."

"And mine, because it doesn't involve dimensional folding, but directly opens to the antimatter universe, this opening is one-time; even if energy is not provided later, this hole will still exist. And as long as this kind of channel is generated at a specific location in a specific way, the channel will be very stable, no different from material constructs. No one can interfere with or close it."

"You mean we punch a hole to the antimatter universe, and because the constants there are different from ours, walking a short distance there is equivalent to walking a long time here, and we can reach further places, and after arriving, we come out from the hole there. Let alone what's inside the antimatter universe, don't you think this takes too much time?"

"I said, this involves the concepts of time and space, not only space concepts, but also time concepts. The time required to travel there is relatively static here. And when our biological organisms travel there, they don't need to walk on the material level, but only have thought activities. It's equivalent to a game's loading screen. I don't deny that this might be a bit slower than traveling through ordinary portals, but the safety has been greatly improved."

"Sounds too incredible," Schiller couldn't help but say, he really couldn't imagine what kind of principle this was.

"And therefore we won't encounter anything in the antimatter universe, including those bugs. Because in fact, we didn't really go over; we just borrowed the constants of that universe to convert ourselves. This is a mathematical process. You can understand it as, we want to transfer a file from one folder to another on a mobile phone, but in the process, we borrow the computing power of a computer..."

"The more you say, the more outrageous it gets," Schiller said, "Alright, even if the process you're talking about can be established, how can you guarantee that those bugs in the antimatter universe won't rush over?"

"You still didn't understand. We punched out a channel, but that channel is not a channel, it's equivalent to a transcoder. We didn't transport the person themselves over, so the bugs naturally can't come over..."

"Alright, let's stop discussing technical issues, you just need to tell me truthfully whether this thing is safe or not."

"I can't say there's absolutely no risk," Reed said, "But I can guarantee it's much safer than existing portals. The efficiency is slightly reduced, but the stability and reliability have been greatly increased."

"What about the disadvantages?"

"It will occupy the computing power of the antimatter universe. But I don't think those bugs will mind. And there is also an application problem, that is, the singularities that can open channels in a certain area are limited, and the locations are relatively fixed."

"You mean we can't choose the location freely, but have to open portals at the fixed locations you calculated?"

"That's right. In this way, the safety will be higher. However, the distribution of singularities is relatively uniform, and there is no problem in building a transportation system within the galaxy range."

As he spoke, Reed took out a tablet from his bag, placed it on the bar counter, pointed to it and said: "This is the galactic high-speed traffic network map I planned, what do you think?"

Schiller went over to take a look; it was a three-dimensional map of the galaxy. He walked over and simply dragged it to look, and found that it was indeed as Reed said, the distribution was relatively uniform, and important star systems were included.

However, after zooming in a little, he discovered a problem. Schiller pointed to one of the places and said: "Don't you think there's something wrong with the singularity in this place?"

"It's impossible for there to be anything wrong, I've calculated it, and I even calculated it twice," Reed shook his head.

"Then what if there was something there originally?"

"Just move it."

Schiller stared at him, showed a smile that didn't reach his eyes, continued to zoom in on the pattern, pointed to the mark on it and said: "Then when you were marking the results, did you check what the name of the planet where this singularity is located is?"

"... What is it?"

Reed leaned over to take a look, and then he discovered that the star system Schiller zoomed in on looked a bit familiar, and the planet at the location of the mark was written impressively—"Earth".