Chapter 618

In Gotham's hospital, Lex was bandaged around his forehead, Bruce bandaged around his arm; their shouting echoed down two corridors, though whether anyone understood them was another matter entirely.

Clark stood outside the door, arms crossed, speaking to the bat-cat on his shoulder: "I really don't get what they're arguing about—I don't understand any of the things they're saying…"

Yet the bat-cat on his shoulder stepped onto his shoulder, scratched its claws against the wall, then said: "What the hell is Lex even talking about???"

"You don't understand either, right? Even if there's academic disagreement, you can discuss it calmly—why resort to violence? Fighting is wrong."

Suddenly, the bat-cat leapt off his shoulder with a "whoosh," dashed into the ward, and began meowing furiously at Lex. Bruce turned to Lex and said: "See? Even he agrees with me. Your method is far too extreme—have you ever considered the consequences of energy leakage?"

"I already said my safety measures are fine—it's you who's too conservative, and as for the issue of human experimentation…"

"You want to conduct human experiments?" Clark had come to catch the bat-cat, but hearing Lex mention human experimentation, he immediately declared sternly: "No matter what, absolutely not!"

Lex took a deep breath and said: "I mean legitimate, lawful human experimentation—don't you even know what clinical trials are?!"

"If we don't use humans for testing, how else can we know how this energy affects the human body? Why not recruit volunteers?"

"That's not like drugs," Clark rebutted. "That energy looks dangerously unstable—I still support destroying it all by dumping it into the sun."

"No," Bruce countered Clark. "We can't refuse to study something just because it's dangerous. Nuclear energy was once considered dangerous to humanity too—but we still learned to harness it for many purposes."

"Then you should stand with me!" Lex shouted. "Build an underground experimental base covering all of Gotham, and recruit clinical volunteers at the same time…"

"Gotham's underground is far too complex, and my current lab is sufficient," Bruce rejected the proposal.

"Yeah, you've got your cave—I suggested building a base here and you refused. Bruce, you're using this underhanded tactic to stall my progress. I can only say you're guilty of conscience…"

"I won't allow you to establish a base in Gotham, Luthor. I know what kind of man you are—if the Luthor family sets up a base here, your next step will be to 'recruit' volunteers through illegal means." Bruce looked at Lex and asked: "Can you guarantee you won't do that?"

Lex stared straight ahead without answering. But as Bruce said, he didn't care about the lives of ordinary people—he was not on the same side as Batman or Superman.

"I proposed you take some of the dark energy back to Metropolis, but you refused that too," Bruce said.

"Was it me who refused?!" Lex raised his voice, and then Clark spoke: "Bruce, how can you say that? You should support me—destroy this energy. Now you're actually suggesting he take it back to Metropolis? Are you afraid it won't harm ordinary people enough?"

Both Lex and Bruce took a deep breath.

These three were locked in an unsolvable cycle of argument: Lex was the radical, Bruce the moderate, Clark the conservative—each held fundamentally opposing positions.