Starting from scratch, Batman crushed my dream of getting rich

Chapter 292 My head is so itchy, I feel like I'm growing a brain.

P.S.: Chapter 2 will be a little late, sorry.

Just as Barry was about to reach out and close the skylight in the roof, the voice of a news reporter suddenly came from the television next to him.

"Viewers, this is live coverage of the Star Labs press conference. We have just been informed by lab personnel to evacuate the site immediately because the storm has caused a malfunction in the particle accelerator's main cooling system. Officials are currently attempting to shut down the particle accelerator, but so far, there has been no news from inside the lab of a successful system restart."

The live news broadcast suddenly went black with distorted images, and the anchor's voice abruptly stopped.

Barry, gripping the iron chain, looked on in surprise and uncertainty. He subconsciously raised his head, his gaze passing through the iron rack containing various chemical reagents to the window beside him—this was a high floor of the police station, with an excellent view that allowed a direct observation of the huge particle accelerator in the city center.

If something really big had happened at the particle accelerator, he should have been able to see it from here—and he did.

Boom——!
A brilliant burst of light illuminated his pupils. The lightning in the sky and the flames on the ground merged and formed a terrifying yet beautiful white pillar of light. It directly pierced through part of the dark clouds above the laboratory and then began to unleash its heat recklessly around the laboratory.

The destructive energy instantly evaporated the rainwater within a radius of hundreds of meters. The shock wave and electromagnetic pulse, carrying some invisible matter, burst out from the pillar of light and spread out to a radius of thousands, tens of kilometers, or even hundreds of kilometers.

At that moment, even Ma Zhaodi in the suburbs and Joe, who was speeding towards the hospital, saw the strange phenomenon in the sky.

A beam of light, reaching to the heavens and the earth, illuminated vast stretches of clouds, making the city center as bright as day. But the energy storm it generated wasn't content with that; it began to sweep further afield. The dark clouds in the night sky began to light up, becoming like fiery clouds, allowing people to observe with the naked eye the entire process of this invisible shockwave moving at high speed through the air.

Within seconds, as the electromagnetic pulse spread, all electrical appliances in the city began to malfunction, starting with the area around the particle accelerator, then spreading to the entire city center, and finally reaching every corner of the central urban area.

Both Joe and Ma Zhaodi could see that within seconds, the brightly lit city in the distance had been completely plunged into darkness—if this hadn't been the suburbs, even Joe's car would have been affected.

Unfortunately, the Ma brothers were not so lucky; their planes flew much faster than their cars.

Boom——!
An invisible shock swept through the clouds, and the sky above the plane, which was about to fly into the city, lit up with fiery clouds—immediately afterwards, the internal circuitry of the agricultural aircraft overloaded, and then exploded into a dazzling fireball.

Joe witnessed the plane disintegrate in flames and crash to the ground in pieces, and couldn't help but exclaim in surprise.

"OMG."

He knew that under such circumstances, the Ma brothers were probably in grave danger and had little chance of survival.

Ma Zhaodi was taking shelter from the rain on the farm, and he was staring intently at the sky, but not in the direction of the Ma Dong brothers.

"A towering flame, an explosion, and a deafening roar?"

At this moment, he recalled the strange phenomenon that occurred at the particle accelerator location in the central city of another world on the day the Drakes disappeared—exactly the same as what was happening right now.

"The particle accelerator in this universe exploded and was then projected into another universe?"

His mind raced as he desperately tried to process the situation: "But I arrived just before the explosion. And now I'm witnessing it happen?"

At this moment, Ma Zhaodi felt as if he were caught in a time warp, bewildered and at a loss. Before he arrived, the explosion of the particle accelerator had already been projected into his universe; but after he arrived, the explosion had not even happened yet.

Does this mean that he exists in two universes at the same time?

"Chief, did you deliberately move the time when I smuggled myself here forward?"

[No, this is a spacetime distortion phenomenon in the Flash universe. The system did not interfere with your smuggling timeline—please note that you possess an independent timeline, unaffected by changes in the cosmic timeline; your time continuity cannot be disrupted.] [You are unique.]

When the system mentioned "built-in timeline", Ma Zhaodi immediately recalled a similar prompt when he was on a business trip to the Laughing Battle.

[Confirming the world structure based on the timeline of the individual "Ma Zhaodi"]

"My head is so itchy." He scratched his head in bewilderment. "I feel like I'm growing a brain."

When Barry saw the bright beam of light from the Star Labs, he froze on the spot. It took him two or three seconds to realize what had happened.

Dr. Wells's meticulously designed project has just been destroyed—the particle accelerator exploded.

"Oh my god."

As he struggled to process the news, the metal frame in front of him caught his attention again.

A strange and mysterious substance swept across his body along with the electromagnetic pulse, as well as the chemicals on the iron rack. The liquid in the cup immediately defied gravity, as if it were in an anti-gravity environment, and gently floated upwards.

Boom——!
The lightning cast Barry's shadow on the ground, and when he looked up, he could only see a dazzling sphere of golden light.

Click!

An arc of ball lightning struck down along the chain, golden thunderbolts shattering the skylight above his head before coursing through Barry's entire body. The violent impact sent Barry flying, crashing into a metal rack containing chemicals, splashing the colorful reagents all over him.

The gears of fate began to turn at this moment.

At this moment, the police station was also plunged into darkness, as the electromagnetic pulse also caused a major power outage.

The police officers downstairs acted quickly; they had also heard the thunderous explosion and seen the flames from the particle accelerator.

When a police officer tried to call CSI personnel to go to the explosion site at Star Labs, Barry, who was lying in the reagents, was finally discovered and rushed to the hospital.

In a hospital in the city center, the corridors were dimly lit—after the major power outage, backup power needed to be prioritized for more important medical appliances, so many corners remained dark, giving it a post-apocalyptic feel.

"What's going on with this guy?"

When the emergency room doctor saw the police officers pushing a young man covered in charred burns, looking tense and moving hurriedly, he asked, "What's wrong with this person?"

"He was struck directly by lightning."

"He's not dead?"

The doctor looked at the young man in the car and saw what appeared to be a strange golden current flashing beneath his skin.

"What the hell?"

He rubbed his eyes and looked at the young man again, but he could no longer see anything unusual.

(End of this chapter)