Colt and Timothy exchanged a glance.
We'll play at home." Colt pointed downward. "We'll go to the machine room, okay?
Once the exams are over, we can relax—go on dates, travel, see the sights from all over the world," Joseph muttered, but he still nodded. "As long as we don't cause too much of a scene.
Both of them nodded at the same time.
Timothy said, "I will supervise him."
Joseph looked at his son, feeling that the boy had been a bit unruly lately. He looked at Timothy, finding him both well-behaved and steady.
“I'm going to New York this afternoon; the experiments there have hit a bottleneck, so I might not be back tonight.” Joseph patted Timothy's shoulder, “I'm leaving Colt to you; don't let him take any more risks.”
Timothy did not beat his chest in a guarantee, he only nodded solemnly, yet Joseph actually left with a look of relief on his face.
Colt threw the rag onto the table.
Since when did you get so close with my dad?
"When someone fainted and fell unconscious." Timothy put the dishes into the dishwasher.
Colt immediately felt guilty and picked up a rag to bury his head in wiping the table, then asked Birdie, who refused to eat birdseed and insisted on eating the leftovers on the table, "We're going to stay in the basement until tonight. Are you going to stay with us, or play upstairs?"
Birdie looked at the television.
Colt shook his head: "No, Robin said you can't miss even a single day of training. I'll have the AI supervise your training."
Birdie flapped its wings and rushed back to the nest, carrying a small Robin Cape in its beak.
Colt put a small cape on Birdie: "Are you going to find Red Robin?"
Birdie rubbed its little head against his finger.
Timothy rested his chin on Colt's shoulder and flicked a droplet of water toward Birdie with his finger, "You are our bird, not the Demon Brat's!"
Birdie shook its feathers, turning its backside toward Timothy, flicked its tail tip against Timothy's hand before taking flight and rushing out through the dedicated bird passage.
The Robin Bird's strength has increased again." Timothy showed his reddened hand to Colt. "I suspect I have a fracture.
“No fractures,” Colt said, taking his hand and kissing it before summoning his Flying Skateboard and rushing out, “I'll take Robin Bird to Wayne and be right back.”
Timothy brought the kissed hand to his lips, gently biting it, his eyes fixed on the direction where Colt had disappeared, his gaze remaining there for a long time.
What he wanted to do had never failed, this time was no different.
-----------------------
Author's Note: The author has never participated in the American Gaokao. Any parts of the book that do not align with reality should all be considered unique features of Gotham.
Chapter 65
In the third basement level, Virtual Earth No. 1736 rotated quietly, completing one revolution approximately every four minutes.
Colt and Timothy are opening treasure chests; they have seven chests to open.
Colt rubbed the Silver Bat with both hands, sounding skeptical: "I've been in a stupor for seven days. This one is from yesterday, there is still one missing."
“A four-hour loading time is too long. On the first day, I could only spare half an hour to make sure you hadn't entered the Dream Station.” Timothy pulled Colt into his arms, took his Silver Bat, slipped his own hand into his palm. “I am the master of the Dream Station. My luck is definitely better than Batman's. Touch me.”
You don't understand. While Batman's luck is unpredictable, his strength grows in the face of greater power; as long as it isn't an ambush, he can strike down even a god.
Colt gave Timothy a perfunctory pat on the head and, following chronological order, opened the first treasure chest.
Blinding light poured out, making the Dream Station feel as if it had been hit by a flashbang. It took a full half-minute for the radiant light to gradually fade.
Before Colt could even see anything, he hugged Timothy and kissed him intensely. "Tim! You are my god of luck! Let me have another taste, I'll call you Godfather!"
“No need for the 'godfather' part.” Timothy acted like a good-tempered cat, allowing Colt to nuzzle, pet, suck on him, even holding his waist to make it easier for him to rub against him.
So, what is it?
Colt gave Timothy a heavy kiss before finally taking out the object that was still glowing; it was a mass of energy encased in a transparent protective shield, with a red gem at its core that contained an incredibly massive power.
“This thing has existed since the dawn of the universe, Tim, why did you dream of it? To even have it appear in a treasure chest?”
Superman's Krypton Fortress records many cosmic secrets, Green Lantern's cosmic database also contains records of many cosmic treasures. I needed something that could keep you intact, then I found it in a dream." Timothy was very satisfied to have found this treasure, his tone becoming lighthearted: "You'd better take it back to the Dream Station; if this level of power leaks out, it will easily attract powerful enemies.
We are in a Ghost field; the power won't leak out so easily.
Colt retorted in his mind, but his hands moved swiftly to store the red gem back into the Dream Station, fearing that any delay might attract some Purple Potato Spirit, Dark Demon Lord, or Cosmic Overlord.
I checked the surveillance. You were gone for a day and came back with a gemstone and a Magic Potion for healing the soul. Dad said the gemstone was absorbed by me, allowing me to regain a physical form. It's normal that you sponsored a Magic Potion Master and obtained a Magic Potion, but where did that gemstone come from?
"Red Robin has many friends, so I called in a few favors to have someone borrow it from the treasury of Asgard." Timothy said nonchalantly, making no mention at all of how difficult the process had been.
I hope that when you say "borrow," you mean a real loan, not "borrowing" without asking.
Colt looked at Timothy with the gaze of someone observing a god.
“Stark wanted to create the perfect robot back then, which almost triggered the Machine Crisis. You swallowed a gem during that upheaval, which caused your powers to upgrade, allowing you to interact with physical objects. I've looked into some data; that gem is a mimicry of a certain primordial cosmic energy, there are six such energies in the universe." Timothy shrugged, "Fortunately, the intelligence provided by Dream Station didn't lie to me; it was indeed in Asgard, it really was useful to you."
Colt cupped Timothy's face and gave him a kiss: "Tim, the best thing I've ever done in my life was binding you to Dream Station."
"I agree." Timothy believed this was not only the right choice, but should have been the only choice.
The mysterious gems seemed to have exhausted Colt's luck. The next few treasure chests were all basic daily necessities: pens, notebooks, empty backpacks, empty photo albums, toy Ghost figures.
Colt used the excuse of needing a drink of water to seize the opportunity to leave Timothy's embrace, clutching the Silver Bat badge in his hands and rubbing it over and over.
Before Colt could kiss him, Timothy reached out to stop him, making Colt kiss his palm instead, explained with a sour expression, "It has nothing to do with luck; the gemstone just emptied the prize pool."
That made a lot of sense, but Colt still wanted to kiss Silver Bat to borrow some luck from his "Big Daddy."
Timothy smiled and made a suggestion, "Bruce should be in the Batcave right now. How about we head over there now and let you hold the real thing while you do it?"
Colt shook his head repeatedly; even if Batman couldn't feel it, he wouldn't dare hold Batman and suck on him.
Timothy sincerely suggested, "Go ahead, I won't be angry. After all, he is Batman; who couldn't love Batman?"
Colt shook his head even faster.
Timothy's voice was thick with jealousy, invisible black smoke seemed to rise from behind him; it would be strange if he weren't angry.
Since you don't want to absorb Batman, then you can only choose your god of luck." Timothy pulled Colt back onto his lap and took his hand, hooking it around his neck, "Come on, let's open the last one.
Colt opened last night's treasure chest with little hope.
A storage device popped out.
Did you know what was inside all along?
It's very convenient for polishing reports and processing files using the Dream Station.
Timothy inserted the storage device into the Quantum Superbrain's interface and began reading the contents.
Inside were analysis reports of different worlds, a master list of crisis records, draft proposals for new worlds. Dream Station had optimized the information, providing definitive answers to ambiguous points and exact parameters for vague data, making it more detailed than what Colt had organized from memory.
In the Earth Simulator, there are a total of 1,735 parallel worlds, 1,024 of which have already been destroyed. In the historical archives, they saw the Cruel Knight, they saw a Batman who used profanity to cripple people, they saw a Batman who supported crime and had multiple personalities, they even saw the Jokerized Mad Bat..
The existence of the Dark Bat Legion is terrifying.
In the Reverse World, the Justice League became the Criminal Syndicate, Joker was actually the Cruel Knight, which was even more hair-raising.
Not all worlds are as terrible as the Dark Multiverse; the furry ones in Beast World make people feel warm, the Lego Bat World is as beautiful as a fairy tale, the joyful Blue Bat World can also make people relax and smile..
Timothy collected a lot of dirt on the counterparts of his siblings, especially Dick, Arkham Knight, Bruce, who had retired early after having his sharp edges smoothed out by Reverse Damian.
He selectively ignored his counterpart who had been driven mad by Joker, just as he ignored his counterpart in the Lonely Habitat who was calm to the point of being cruel.
There was no Colt in any parallel world, Timothy was very satisfied that Colt was his one and only treasure.
Of course, collecting dirt and watching multiverse blockbusters were merely ways for them to relax their tense nerves. The two of them held the Earth Debuff Compendium, using intelligence from various sources like the Bat Information Bank, the Watchtower, the Avengers Information Bank to confirm, one by one, whether each [debuff] existed.
Taking Gotham as an example—government corruption, high suicide rates, an excessive number of homeless people, frequent gang activity, a corrupt education system, severe drug abuse, subway and railway systems that are never on time, lax ethical oversight of laboratories.. one could pull thousands of actual examples for any of these, they could be confirmed incredibly quickly.
Next is the issue of pollution. Gotham has two nuclear power plants: one has a certain level of radioactivity due to improper maintenance, the other is an abandoned nuclear power plant that has experienced a leak.
Wayne Group has already purchased the abandoned nuclear power plant and has begun addressing the leakage issue. They have also donated a special fund to Gotham Energy for the maintenance of the nuclear power plants, while simultaneously constructing two new, safer, more stable nuclear fusion power plants.
Nuclear leakage issues can be solved with money, but Wayne cannot solve the problem of air pollution.
The Environmental Protection Agency is practically non-existent in Gotham; the data they submit is all manually filled out by regulatory staff.
The Environmental Protection Agency's Information Bank is worthless, but fortunately, Batman periodically collects air samples from various parts of Gotham for testing. Wayne's electronic manufacturing plants, precision instrument factories, hospitals all have requirements for air quality. Under Wayne, the Survival Assurance Department has arranged eighteen monitoring points in Gotham to monitor the city's air in real time.
The air in Gotham is filled with all kinds of industrial waste gas, trace amounts of unneutralizable Joker Gas and Fear Gas have already become part of Gotham's existence; Flash once complained that the air in Gotham makes him sneeze and gives him a runny nose.
Both the airports and the docks of Gotham have oxygen specialty stores, where most outsiders buy a canister upon arrival; they sell even better than guns.
Water pollution is even more severe than air pollution.
Gotham's water contains industrial wastewater, trace amounts of Scarecrow's Fear Gas, Joker's gas, Bane's Venom, Mudface's residues, the Lazarus Pool water from the League of Assassins once leaked into Gotham's water supply system.
That is what Batman has recorded and what Timothy knows.
Timothy also didn't know that Madness Swamp and Slaughter Swamp were both leaking into the water supply system.
Gotham has two swamps. One is located in the East End, next to the Jordanino Botanical Garden, only two blocks away from Crime Alley, where bodies are frequently dumped. The other is downstream from the Gotham River, located on the outskirts of Gotham City; it is the birthplace of the undead zombie Solomon Grundy, who possesses self-awareness and consciousness, it is a popular site for cultists to perform sacrifices to evil gods.
Colt and Timothy rushed to the two swamps to confirm that Madness Swamp corresponded to the mire in the East End, while Slaughter Swamp was the birthplace of Solomon Grundy.
Deep within Slaughter Swamp lurks an ancient, dangerous, evil power—the corpse of an Old God.
This is definitely a debuff; it needs to be cleared.
The two spoke in unison, marking Slaughter Swamp in the directory with a pending star.
The corpse of an Old God was like a key.
As Colt and Timothy began their underground exploration of Gotham, they quickly discovered that the curses of Gotham in parallel worlds could almost all find their counterparts in their own world.
This world hasn't been destroyed like the Earth in the Dark Multiverse; it's practically a miracle!
Starting from the sewers, mutated rats and Killer Croc are merely the lightest problems. The sewers lead to the underground temple of the Court of Owls, dedicated to the Bat God, there are ruins of a lost civilization intertwined with the sewers. The entire Gotham is built upon the burial grounds of dead Native Americans, with a group of cultists living 3,000 feet underground, deep beneath the earth lies a mirrored, distorted Gotham.
In addition to that, Gotham has gates to Hell, bottomless pits leading to the Dark Abyss, rifts leading to the Spirit World.. Beneath Arkham, more than a dozen demons are directly sealed away.
..
A Silver Bat appeared on the chest of the Knowledge Explorer, a Ghost force field enveloped the massive Leap Mech, which shuttled through the underground of Gotham every day, conducting an anatomical inspection of the city.
Colt and Timothy were only observing and recording, not taking any action to deal with these crises.
Spending a long time together made them more familiar with each other and more in sync; Timothy could always identify problems immediately, while Colt's superbrain would quickly provide the answers.