The aliens who were picked up by Superman at the beginning

Black Mercy is truly toxic.

Thanks to the illusionary principle of Black Compassion, it is based on the deepest subconscious of a person's mind, causing them to fall into a nightmare from which they cannot escape.

So after calming down for a while, Li Zhen found herself recalling more of her past life's impressions of the DC universe.

There's nothing shameful about being instantly defeated by Black Mercy.

If those unearthed ancient memories are correct, then there is that black-clad superhero who still lurks on Earth, so powerful that Li Zhen can never match him.

I've been knocked down by this thing before.

It seems that after being hugged, he took Louise back to Krypton, a planet that shouldn't exist, in the illusion, and they lived a happy life as a young couple.

Even after realizing it was an illusion, they were unwilling to break free.

And then there's Batman, who dreams back to the days before his parents died, becoming an ordinary, happy, wealthy second-generation heir in Gotham.

Even after Batman realized the illusion, it took him a great deal of effort, with his world-class willpower, to convince himself to break free.

Li Zhen fared even worse.

Whether Black Mercy was unable to do so or was doing it intentionally, it did not erase his memories at all. Instead, it kept digging deeper and unearthed all the memories that Li Zhen had deliberately forgotten on Vitrum due to excessive panic.

His twenty years of illusion were not a re-enactment of his youth.

Instead, it directly connects to the moment before his rebirth on Witrum.

……

Li Zhen suddenly stood up from her workstation.

He looked around at the unfamiliar yet somewhat familiar faces with a hint of doubt, then quickly left his seat, rushed out of the automatic door, and ran down the corridor.

"Rachel! Rachel!"

He remembered instructing Rachel that if Mongo really used Black Mercy against him, she should release herself at the most opportune moment.

Ultimately, Black Mercy is just a plant, and Rachel, hiding in the Shadow Dimension, theoretically has plenty of ways to release herself.

For example, those weapons on Apokolips that one wouldn't want to touch directly based on one's combat instincts, those that contain destructive power.

Li Zhen ran around the corridor, but still didn't wake up.

So he simply stopped. Li Zhen, of course, trusted Rachel.

Therefore, he estimated that either the war fortress was currently in considerable chaos.

Rachel couldn't find a safe enough opportunity to make a move.

Either the illusion created by Black Compassion has a high-speed time difference with external reality.

So Li Zhen decided to wait patiently.

Ultimately, as long as this thing doesn't create nightmares, it won't harm the host.

Moreover, if I remember correctly, before her consciousness faded, Li Zhen turned around and saw that Meng Ge was also being embraced by Black Mercy.

Although I don't know why this cosmic tyrant is so temperamental, he ended up shooting himself in the foot.

Even if Mongo has a backup plan, Rachel will definitely make sure she gets out of there first.

"Then let's wait and see."

Li Zhen calmed down.

But the illusion was dynamic. A short, stout, bald middle-aged man chased after him, shouting at him not to cause a disturbance and to go back to his workstation.

Perhaps Li Zhen knew this guy in her past life, but during the more than ten years at Witrum, Li Zhen, who was repeatedly on the verge of collapse, naturally forgot about this insignificant guy due to her brain's self-protection mechanism.

So Li Zhen scoffed at the fat man's scolding, kicked him over, and swaggered away from the office building.

Half an hour later, he was stopped by several policemen while strolling on the street.

In the illusion, Li Zhen no longer possessed the great power of the Witrum bloodline, leaving only the instinct to kill and draw blood.

Since he knew from beginning to end that this was an illusion, he did not choose to give in.

Finally, he was pinned to the ground by a group of high-ranking police officers armed with riot shields and steel forks.

Uniform, detain, transfer.

Li Zhen was completely indifferent to this. He had been imprisoned on Vitrum before, so he wasn't afraid of how the treatment here might affect him.

It wasn't until Black Mercy unearthed the image of an old woman from his mind and brought her to the visiting window after Lee Jung was transferred to a mental hospital.

The moment Lee Jung saw her, he learned the underlying logic of the illusion that Black Mercy had specially created for him.

Because those ethereal voices appeared directly in his mind. "I know you know this is an illusion, and I'm telling you, kill the woman who came to visit you with your own hands, and you can leave this illusion."

Li Zhen watched helplessly as the old woman groveled before various important figures outside the ward, begging them to let her in.

"Don't expect Rachel to come to your rescue. How do you know she'll find the right opportunity?"

He watched as she used her dry, cracked fingers to hold a pen and sign her name crookedly on one guarantee agreement after another.

"How do you know the exact time ratio between this illusion and the outside world?"

He watched as she carried the local produce she had brought from home, yet seemed afraid of not being presentable enough, and forced a smile as she handed red envelopes to the doctors and nurses.

"What if I could let you spend a hundred years in this place in just one second in the real world?"

"Can you really endure this loneliness?"

During that time, every time the old woman passed by the window of the ward, she would take the opportunity to peer through the small, narrow, transparent glass and call out his name.

"Didn't you always secretly despise Batman's supposed superhuman willpower? You thought that something that couldn't be quantified and was invisible and intangible was just a setting that an editor casually threw out."

Finally, he watched as she, with her head full of white hair, finally received permission to enter the ward and walked towards him step by step, her steps trembling.

"I'm telling you now, it took Batman ten years to finally get rid of me, and you have a chance to prove you're much stronger than him, even faster than he did." Li Zhen was bound by restraints, with only half of her hand exposed, receiving regular injections of a sedative that she didn't actually feel in the illusion.

The old woman was unable to get close to the bedside for the time being.

There was also a group of people who were conducting real-time mental assessments of him, keeping her at the very edge of the crowd and repeatedly warning the old woman that he was a vicious, madman who killed people on the street.

She just nodded blankly, her attention entirely focused on Li Zhen on the hospital bed.

"You will be free soon, with your willpower."

Black Mercy was no longer aggressive; instead, it lowered its voice.

The ward went from noisy to quiet.

He watched as she tremblingly took a piece of paper from the departing doctors in white coats, then, with her eyes burning red, she took small steps toward Li Zhen.

"How about we lower our demands a little further?"

This is the penultimate sentence that Black Mercy spoke to Li Zhen in the illusion.

"As long as you refuse her, you can escape this illusion. There's no better offer than that."

The old woman spoke up too. "My son, they said that as long as you repeat after me... repeat the words on this, it will prove that you are conscious now, and they will untie your restraints... My son, be a good boy and repeat after Mommy, okay? Mommy wants to hug you."

In the end, Li Zhen lived in the illusion for twenty years.

Because his mental health assessment was overturned, he was subsequently imprisoned as a matter of course.

But because someone always came to visit him regularly, Li Zhen felt pretty good.

I also asked a friend to send him some DC-related comic books to read.

Of course, Black Mercy couldn't uncover anything he hadn't seen before, so most of his comic books were incomplete, fragmented, and pieced together from various sources.

But at least it solidified some of the plot points I already knew.

Because of his good attitude, he received a reduced sentence and was eventually released early, spending another five years with the aging old lady.