The deep space of the universe was vast and deathly silent, the galaxy like an endless river paved with crushed diamonds, slowly rotating. In this immense backdrop, a floating fragment of a planet suspended quietly, like a tombstone left behind by an ancient war.
Its surface was riddled with cracks, magma flowing between the fissures like blood, reflecting an eerie red light. The Injustice Superman lay upon this shattered land, his chest heaving violently, beads of sweat rolling off his forehead like rain, each drop carrying a faint electric arc that evaporated into fine mist in the vacuum.
"Hold on. If you can't hold on, just pretend you can, and then you'll find you've held on." Ian delivered his medical advice, a classic case of [Listening to one's own nonsense].
He didn't have a white lab coat of his own. This was a loss for Earth's medical system—at least in his eyes—so he pulled out a white bedsheet originally intended for enemies or the tragically deceased and draped it over himself. With a few manual adjustments as a temporary tailor, he looked the part.
Ian's fingers brushed lightly over the edge of the Injustice Superman's abdominal cavity, the metallic sensation causing him to shiver slightly. Although a Kryptonian's skin was as tough as an unscientific anomaly, it was no match for Lord Ian.
The edge of All-Black the Necrosword in Ian's hand pulsed with a powerful dark light. Like an anatomist, he precisely sliced open the Injustice Superman's ulcerated abdomen, the edges of the wound shimmering with fine golden dust from the radiation of the Golden Superman.
A long, thin incision split open soundlessly, revealing the deep cavity within. His gaze was focused, like a surgeon inspecting a precision instrument, or a gardener surveying land about to be sown.
As the sword tip flicked open the final layer of the peritoneum, Ian couldn't help but marvel at the ergonomic design of the Kryptonian body. The internal structure, even down to the fat layers, looked perfectly standardized.
"Look at this perfect empty space; it's enough to serve as a cradle for twelve babies." His fingertips poked into the gap below the Kryptonian's diaphragm, the sticky texture reminding him of the playdough he used to fiddle with as a child.
The Injustice Superman's mangled fingers twitched. Those ten finger bones, personally snapped by Ian and then hastily set back, scraped against the metallic surface of the "operating table" with an excruciatingly ear-piercing sound. Don't ask where Ian got an operating table in the vacuum of space—wasn't the legacy armor left behind by Uncle Batman just a giant metal table anyway?
"What are you... doing..." The Injustice Superman's shattered vocal cords squeezed out a few syllables.
Before he could finish, Ian pressed a blood-stained finger against his cracked lips.
"Is the anesthesia wearing off again? I didn't expect him to be so resistant." Ian used his [Kryptonite Hammer] to give the Injustice Superman another solid "anesthetic" blow.
The Injustice Superman fell back into a baby-like slumber. Then, Ian's other hand pulled a linen bag from his dimensional pocket. The moment the bag opened, a vast quantity of secret treasures collected from his own factory—numerous feathers shimmering with pearlescent luster—drifted out, glowing with a holy light in the radiation-choked vacuum.
"Do you know why he was controlled by the Batman Who Laughs? Because he lacked family bonds." Ian wasn't sure who he was explaining this to, but luckily there was no one nearby to witness or criticize his worsening mental state.
Like a real doctor, Ian continuously inspected the Injustice Superman's abdominal cavity, reaching in to feel the space where quite a few organs were already crowded. Avoiding the impulse of [Kryptonian kidneys could sell for a high price; the rich surely believe they are a tonic], he kept searching and exploring. Finally, he found a void suitable for implantation.
"Right here!" Ian was overjoyed.
He began using the angel feathers to build a nest inside the Injustice Superman's abdominal cavity. He firmly believed that a nest forged from angel feathers would surely hatch the most virtuous dodecatuplets.
Ian's movements were gentle yet firm, like weaving an invisible holy garment. He interlaced the feathers into a spiraling nest structure, each one precisely embedded and resonating with the others to form a miniature, glowing cradle of life. This nest was not made of flesh and blood, but was a spiritual vessel constructed from magic and holy relics.
As the feathers filled the space, the nest took shape. Ian hummed a "Lullaby" as he carefully placed the feather nest in the cavity between the Kryptonian's liver and spleen. When the last feather tip touched the peritoneum, the entire nest suddenly emitted a soft holy light, illuminating the cosmic dust floating above the operating table.
It suspended in the center of the abdominal cavity like a miniature nebula, emitting soft, ever-changing iridescent hues.
Red like the rising sun, blue like the tranquility of the deep sea, gold like the glow of faith, green like the buds of new life... twelve colors symbolizing twelve possible virtues: Courage, Compassion, Wisdom, Resilience, Humility, Honesty, Tolerance, Hope, Temperance, Justice, Loyalty, and Benevolence.
As Ian's Miraculous Touch was completed, the nest closed perfectly like a gestating cosmic egg. Given the Kryptonian physique, there would certainly be no shortage of nutrition for the children's development. Ian began suturing blood vessels to supply energy—this was also a problem that couldn't stump him.
Although there were no extra blood vessels in a Kryptonian body, Ian had studied history and knew that while there weren't many canals in the world to begin with, once enough self-improving people worked at it, canals appeared.
Thus, he pulled out several Five-Poison PET plastic tubes and began drainage within the Injustice Superman's liver. He didn't care if it was actually blood; he simply provided eighteen nutrient channels for the nest forged from angel feathers. There was nothing wrong with this. Science had developed to this point; Ian would be the one truly in the wrong if he didn't use it.
"Twelve children, no more, no less. Too few, and they won't form a society; too many, and they'll easily fall into conflict. Twelve is the number of completion, the rotation of the zodiac, the balance of judgment and redemption."
Speaking of such "stories" akin to brands, enterprises, and products, the big capitalist spoke effortlessly, finding a perfectly suitable meaning for the number he chose. Of course, that was the public explanation.
In reality, Lord Ian was a rather superstitious man; he just felt that a population of twelve could complete a "Prismatic Synergy" within the Injustice Superman.
Any transmigrator who had played Teamfight Tactics before crossing over would know that Prismatic Synergies are much stronger than regular ones. Ian believed this would definitely put the Injustice Superman back on the right path.
Due to Ian's heavy-handed operations, blood suddenly seeped from the abdominal cavity. Ian frowned and quickly stuffed two clumps of sterilized sanitary pads inside to stop the bleeding.
He had actually wanted to use marshmallows, which are at least closer to medical cotton in some respects, but those were melting food items, and their hemostatic effect wasn't as good as Ian's "Supreme Hemostatic Artifact."
"Surgery must be fast!"
Ian pinched the Fishing Line. With a flick of his fingers, the thread automatically passed through the eye of the Adamantium staple. This metal came from the hardest alloy in a certain universe, usually used to forge Wolverine's claws, but today, it would become the surgical staples for the Injustice Superman's abdomen.
With a *click* of the stapler, Ian pinned the split abdominal muscles together. As the staples pierced the Kryptonian skin, they made a crisp metallic clinking sound. Fortunately, the echoes in the universe could only be captured by Kryptonian hearing.
The Injustice Superman lay back on the operating table, his eyelids beginning to flutter. He realized his stomach had been cut open, but he did not realize that Lord Ian had bestowed upon him a Prismatic Synergy.
This would incidentally allow the Injustice Superman to become a "Proper Superman" and increase his World Favorability—it was Lord Ian's way of making the Injustice Superman win twice over as compensation for accidentally wounding him.
"What did you do to me?" The Injustice Superman's eyelids were still hard to open. Mainly, they were severely swollen.
"Don't worry, Adamantium won't rust, and it won't be corroded by your stomach acid." Ian tugged the line to ensure the sutures were firm enough.
As the final stitch was completed, the Injustice Superman's abdomen was finally closed again, leaving only a faint trace of the sutures. Ian stepped back two paces, tilted his head to observe for a moment, and suddenly pulled a small jar of paint from his pocket.
"Almost forgot, I need to make you look presentable." He dabbed a bit of flesh-colored paint and gently applied it over the suture line. As soon as the paint touched the Kryptonian skin, it automatically blended in. In the blink of an eye, that hideous wound disappeared—at least from a distance, no abnormality could be seen.
Seeing that he also had the talent of a painter, Ian graciously helped paint the normal color over the burn scars across the man's entire body.
[Illegal Medical Log Entry #207 — Experiment proves I am a medical genius...]
Writing in a journal was Ian's habit, as was leaving behind evidence of his crimes. Who wasn't an evil god who loved writing logs?
"What on earth did you do to me?" The Injustice Superman raised his hand in a daze, his vein-popping fingers suddenly gripping Ian's wrist. His pupils contracted violently, his voice raspy as if squeezed out from hell.
He had thought Ian, like those mad scientists, was cutting his flesh to perform experiments—perhaps to study Kryptonian genes or extract DNA for other purposes.
However, Ian's answer made his blood freeze instantly.
"Don't worry, the surgery was perfect! The embryos have plenty of nutrition! So much that it's almost over-nutrition!" Ian slapped the Kryptonian blood off his gloves. While comforting the other, he began disinfecting himself with alcohol.
After all, no one knew if there were Kryptonian viruses in the Injustice Superman's blood; being careful was the standard for practicing medicine without a license while away from home. American health insurance certainly wouldn't cover a medical accident like his.
"Embryos?! What embryos?!" The Injustice Superman's voice rose sharply. He struggled to sit up, only to feel a strange squirming sensation in his abdomen. It felt as if something inside his body had given a light kick.
The Injustice Superman's face turned deathly pale, his fingers instinctively moving to his flat stomach. Reason told him there could be no life there, yet his keen Kryptonian senses captured twelve faint heartbeats.
Those heartbeats interlaced like a lullaby.
"!!!!?????"
At this moment, the Injustice Superman was terrified beyond measure. He didn't dare imagine what Ian had actually done; he only realized what it felt like to be Ian's enemy. Beads of cold sweat formed on his forehead, sliding down his temples and washing a muddy streak through the disguise paint Ian had applied.
"Sigh, the paint isn't even dry yet. The patient needs rest." Ian sighed, like facing a disobedient child. He pulled a syringe from his pocket, the tube sloshing with 200mg of clear liquid—theoretically just ordinary saline, but with fine kryptonite powder dissolved inside. In Ian's eyes, it pulsed with an eerie green fluorescence.
The Injustice Superman didn't even have time to struggle. The moment the needle pierced the vein in his neck, the kryptonite radiation flowed through his blood to his entire body.
His muscles relaxed instantly, his pupils dilated, and the last shred of consciousness was swallowed by darkness. His head slumped to the side, his breathing becoming long and steady—steadier than a baby's sleep.
Of course, it was also deeper than a dead man's slumber. Toward this parallel universe Superman who had once plagued his own family, Ian felt he was being sufficiently kind and inclusive. A villain simply changed their face; in his eyes, there was no chance for them to "turn over a new leaf" so easily.
"Good. I believe that with children, this guy definitely won't have time to plague my universe... I mean, the universe we all share." Ian nodded with satisfaction, tossing the empty syringe into the void. The reason for the timely correction was mainly fear that his father's super-hearing would misunderstand his magnanimity.
Seeing that the Injustice Superman was no longer moving, Ian's gaze returned to the Black Box. On the display screen, the battle had completely spiraled out of control. In the footage, his father and the Golden Superman were still on Apokolips. Because of the pincer attack, Darkseid had crashed into his most prized Omega Armory.
This shouldn't have happened. But the idealistic power of the two Golden Supermen was too unreasonable; their conviction even twisted the laws of reality, giving this Lord of Darkness his first taste of being suppressed.
Could he accept this? Of course not.
The enraged Darkseid rose from the ruins, the Omega Beams in his eyes no longer a common scarlet, but a deeper, more primal crimson. When Darkseid released the Omega Beams, the vivid red visual effect was extremely impactful.
This red not only resonated with his overall dark, evil, and intensely oppressive image, but also symbolized the power, danger, and destructiveness of this force. There was a surging power pulsing within Darkseid, as if his true self—the real god seated high above infinite dimensions—was exerting power through his projection in this reality.
Even if Darkseid didn't yet realize how prestigious his origins were, a lifeform with such a background was like that; even if he didn't realize it, the power would erupt when it was time.
"You... seek death!" His voice was no longer a single sound wave, but a declaration of destruction vibrating from countless dimensions simultaneously. In the next instant, this powered-up Lord of Darkness appeared before the two Supermen. His transformation seemed to silently express: *Who said I can't use idealistic "Grand Truths" too?*
Darkseid's palms clamped onto the heads of the two Golden Supermen. With barbaric momentum, he slammed them through the spatial barriers, crushing stars all the way into deep space.
The first impact shattered the spiral arms of the Andromeda Galaxy. Hundreds of stars were extinguished under the pure kinetic shock, and nebulae were torn into tattered ribbons. The shockwave swept across thousands of light-years; planets shattered like glass beads, gravitational fields were forcibly distorted, the event horizons of black holes were torn open, and civilizations turned to ash in an instant.
The visual impact was gargantuan. Nebulae were churned into whirlpools, and star clusters collapsed like sandcastles. Wherever their trajectory passed, galaxies were like mirrors struck by a giant hammer, fragments flying everywhere. Countless regions of space across light-year scales were riddled with cracks.
However, this was nothing compared to the second impact as he held a Superman in each hand. The second impact pierced directly through the quantum foam layer. Yes, it truly shattered the quantum structure; it wasn't Lord Ian using AI for narration—reality shattered like glass, and chaotic energy from the dimensional gaps spewed forth.
This energy directly swallowed three pocket universes. Darkseid was not satisfied. He roared, blasting the dimensional barriers with Omega Beams, forcibly punching through the gap between reality and nothingness.
"Die, hope of the ants!" Darkseid roared, his arms swinging as he carried the two Supermen as a streak of destructive light, charging into the unknowable place deeper than darkness.
They crossed the "Sea of the Void"—a realm of death with no matter, no energy, only pure entropy. They streaked past the "Abyss of Time," where countless images of the past and future flashed around them like shattered film reels. They even crashed into the "Conceptual Realm." There, rules were formed by thought, logic was the weapon, and Darkseid's will was the most powerful violence.
Finally, they reached the end—the light of the two Golden Supermen dimmed slightly under such a violent impact, but their bodies remained intact; idealistic power made them immune to physical damage.
However, on this battlefield deliberately guided by Darkseid, a more insidious weakening was taking effect.
Darkseid finally stopped. He stopped at the "Lightless Realm" located beyond known dimensions. There was no sun, no stars, no photons, no heat, no flow of time, not even the concept of "existence." The darkness was absolute; the silence was eternal.
The air—if it could still be called that—was as solid as lead. The direction of gravity was chaotic and twisted. Clearly, this was a "Lightless Domain" deliberately carved out, where even the concept of hope could not take root. The manifestation of despair was the grave of hope.
"Dammit... how did he suddenly become so strong?"
"I don't know either!"
The two Golden Supermen floated in the void, their light—those radiant energies symbolizing conviction and ideals—being slowly devoured by the environment. Although not injured, their power was declining, like torches thrown into the deep sea; the flames weren't extinguished, but they could no longer illuminate the distance.
"What could you know? You are just larger ants!" Darkseid slammed the two Supermen ruthlessly against this ground of nothingness—a platform made of solidified darkness. The Supermen's bodies immediately sank into it, struggling as if ordinary people were stuck in asphalt.
"Your light shall be extinguished here. The sun in your hearts shall be crushed by my own hands."
Darkseid's feet stepped heavily onto the chests of the two Supermen. The shadow of the Lord of Darkness loomed over them, the Omega Effect brewing in his eye sockets—no longer simple destruction beams, but something far more terrifying. He was like a deity standing upon an altar, his eyes slowly gathering a dangerous luster.
"Let me see, once the sun in your hearts is extinguished, what will you have left?" The beams slowly took form, not attacking the flesh, but aiming directly at the soul. It sought to destroy "Hope" itself, the core of conviction that made Superman who he was. That light grew brighter and colder, as if it intended to erase all warmth from the Supermen's hearts.
"Dammit! I feel my thoughts stagnating!"
"What exactly is this place?"
The two Golden Supermen were pinned down by Darkseid, their bodies deep in the void of darkness like two golden thumbtacks pinned to the canvas of the universe. Ian's father and his previous opponent could only struggle now. They propped up their arms, trying to overturn the Lord of Darkness's suppression, but this lightless world was devouring their strength—the Supermen's light grew weaker with every flicker.
The Omega Beams in Darkseid's eyes had accumulated to the limit, the scarlet light churning in his sockets, as brilliant as two cosmic singularities about to erupt.
"Your light... will eventually fade." His voice didn't come from his throat, but was an echo seeping from the cracks in the universe, like billions of dead stars whispering at once.
The two Golden Supermen gritted their teeth, a scorching light also igniting in their pupils—Heat Vision! They tried to counterattack with their last energy, two golden-red beams erupting from their eyes and slamming into Darkseid's Omega Beams!
*BOOM—!!!*
Three destructive energies collided in the void, the resulting shockwave causing even the surrounding darkness to twist for a moment. But soon, the scales of victory began to tilt—the Golden Supermen's light was fading, their heat vision seemingly swallowed by some invisible force, pushed back and suppressed bit by bit.
In a one-against-two, Darkseid, who was starting to gain the upper hand, pulled his mouth into a hideous smirk. He had brought the two here knowing that even with his power-up, he couldn't kill two burning, idealistic suns.
Now, utilizing the uniqueness of this dimension, Darkseid knew that victory would be the same as always—standing forever on his side. The moment the suns in the Supermen's hearts were extinguished would be the moment of his triumph.
"I am in my element here!" The Dark Lord's power continued to climb, the scarlet torrent of Omega Beams crushing the Golden Supermen's resistance. The confrontation began to lose all suspense.
Seeing that the Omega Beams were about to completely swallow the two Supermen, a variable eager to save his father made a move from outside the dimension. He himself certainly didn't have the ability to join the fight, but...
"Black Box! You're wonderful!"
Since he could lock onto and capture the location of Darkseid and the two Supermen, Ian used his newly acquired artifact. He whispered a sentence to Gungnir and then hurled it.
The moment the tip of Gungnir pierced the dimensional barrier, the entire Lightless Realm trembled. That trajectory cutting through eternal darkness brought a glimmer of light from the physical dimension. The spear's body was entwined with runes, striking at Darkseid's vitals at a speed surpassing physical laws—more accurately, it was aimed straight at a certain unspeakable spot between the gaps of the Dark Lord's armor.
Ian was still shooting people in the rear.
Facing this sudden attack, Darkseid's Omega Beams continued to output, the scarlet light suppressing the fading glow of the two Golden Supermen. Feeling the lethal threat coming from behind, the Dark Lord didn't even turn his head. He simply grabbed backward, his palm encased in divine power catching the lunging Gungnir mid-air.
"Such a small trick..." The spear tip was only a hair's breadth from the target, yet it vibrated violently between Darkseid's fingers. The runes erupted with a succession of piercing lights, the spear body bending into an incredible curve under the immense pressure. When the Dark Lord was forced to add a second hand, Gungnir finally emitted an overburdened hum. It was completely frozen in the void.
"This is merely a meaningless struggle and..." Before Darkseid could finish, the dimensional crack torn by the spear suddenly widened. All-Black the Necrosword, which had been thrown in, shot inside like a shark scenting blood, wrapped in the black mist that devours all.
"That's the drawback of only having two hands." Amidst the mockery of an indescribable being, this creation of the God of Symbiotes traced an eerie arc through the air, precisely embedding itself into the void beside Clark Kent's hand.
"It seems you didn't plan for everything!" Clark did not hesitate. The moment his fingers touched the hilt, the Necrosword began to squirm frantically. The sword instantly extended countless black threads to entwine the arm of the authentic Superman in Ian's heart; that substance from the darkest corners of the universe now fit perfectly against the Kryptonian's palm.
"Dammit! What is this!" Darkseid finally showed an expression of shock.
In his pupils, the reflection of a Superman swinging a sword at him with all his might appeared.
***
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