Greed spat out a mouthful of water, then coughed violently for a long time, almost choking himself to death.
"You call this 'nothing to hide'?!"
"There's really nothing worth hiding. Stop pretending. Are you really the kind of pathetic soul who would get all worked up over the end of the world?"
"But that's just... How did it even get destroyed?"
"Two countries started a war." Anatoli shrugged, "A little friction happened at sea. Someone fired without superior approval, and his subordinates faithfully executed his orders. Then things spiraled out of control, and it was beyond repair."
Suddenly, Greed remembered that the plane he was on, which led to his crossing, seemed to have been destroyed in the middle of the shelling. Now he knew where the shells came from.
Anatoli seemed to see right through his thoughts and said, "You died quite early. To be precise, the day I sent you back was early, so you didn't know what happened afterwards. It was a brutal fight."
"A nuclear war?"
"Of course. In the end, that's the only outcome." Anatoli lowered his eyes, "Nurse Chen's little son went to the battlefield. When he barely had a breath left, I fished him out, but his body was already dead and he couldn't stay in the original world, so I sent him over to you."
"No wonder." Greed shook his head and said, "Didn't you do anything to stop this war?"
"That's the problem. I tried basically everything, but it seemed inevitable. After some investigation, I found out it might be our issue."
"What do you mean?"
"Our constant crossing back and forth caused the stability of that universe to plummet. Once stability decreases, chaos ensues, and certain nodes begin to slide towards doom. In my investigation, in most universes, the commander who chose to fire was stopped by his subordinates, but the one in our universe wasn't. So the war broke out."
"I tried going back to the past to kill that commander or impersonate his subordinate to stop him, but nothing worked. If subsequent nodes all slide towards the bad direction, then a world war is inevitable."
Greed held his head and said, "But I didn't choose to travel. Isn't this a problem for God?"
"Then why do you think the God of DC is hiding?"
"Didn't he go looking for his son?"
"Do you really believe he cares about Gabriel that much? If that were the case, he wouldn't have let Gabriel go in the first place. He's hiding from me."
"Then why is he unwilling to help?"
"Perhaps because I beat up his favorite son, went around the cosmos borrowing money in his name, fired a blast at the center of the stars drawing the attention of an Outer God, and then faked my death and brought you along."
"...Then it's no wonder he isn't willing to help."
"I think he might have his difficulties too." Anatoli said, "As the stability of the world decreases, you have to find ways to compensate. To gather the power to mend the world, you have to rob Peter to pay Paul. As the boss, he has to keep up appearances and can't favor one universe too much. It's not appropriate for him to do this, but I have no such constraints."
"So that's why you've gathered so much power. How's the mending going?"
"Absolutely clueless." Anatoli said, "I'm not a universe administrator, how would I know where the holes are? Moreover, even though I've gathered so much power, it's just a drop in the ocean for that universe. So I came back again, researching other methods."
Greed pondered and said, "Can Lucifer help?"
"He only has authority in that one world. The only cross-world sovereign is God. Unless he personally takes action, even if he tells me how, I can't do it. Our forms of life are fundamentally different."
"This is quite troublesome." Greed said, "If mending is impossible, can we switch houses?"
"I thought the same, but it's not that simple. Life and the universe are like a peg and a hole; even if you wipe out a universe and move people over, it can never replace the original life."
"Create a universe yourself?"
"The energy required for that is astronomical." Anatoli said, "Don't be misled by mutants saying they create universes whenever they want, those they create are pocket universes. If the original universe is a villa, pocket universes are at best equivalent to a flowerpot—very limited development and not as good as the original house."
"Hmm..." Greed took a breath and said, "I wonder why I erased my memory back then. This isn't that hard to accept after all, there will always be a way. Erasing this memory might actually delay progress."
"I wouldn't know. Maybe you had a way, but you couldn't have any memory of it, otherwise the solution wouldn't work."
"If even you have no way, how could I possibly have a way?"
The two fell silent together. After a pause, Greed asked, "One more question, where did those comics come from?"
"What?"
"The comics I read when I was a kid."
"Of course I found them for you."
"But some of those comics hadn't even been published before the plane crash, right?"
"I got those from other universes. After all, that place is your home, and you'll have to return eventually. So, I naturally had to gather more information for you."
"You can travel between different universes?"
"Of course. I can also travel to different points in time. However, it's very hard to interfere with the past; history will take a detour, and the final outcome remains unchanged. But I can go back for a look."
"Are you really just an ordinary soldier?"
"Of course. I just had some adventures later on," Anatoli chuckled, "You'd never guess who I am."
Greed squinted his eyes; he was too familiar with Anatoli's smile. Every time Anatoli said there was a "big surprise," he showed this smile. And his surprises usually had shock without joy. Last time for Greed's eleventh birthday, Anatoli made him a vodka-flavored cake. Back then, Greed was just curious, one dared to make it, the other dared to eat it, and in the end, both were scolded by Nurse Chen.
Greed began to ponder. From the very first few questions Anatoli asked, Greed knew that the other party might have always been watching him, so he couldn't be too far away. If it wasn't Brand, but actually Nya, he would surely suspect Brand.
Could it be Anna? But thinking about it, it seemed impossible. Though Anatoli was a Soviet, his math skills were average; otherwise, he would have become a mathematician long ago. His math level shouldn't be enough to teach college mathematics, and besides, Anna didn't touch alcohol, which completely ruled her out.
Who else could it be? Greed thought for a long time but couldn't think of anyone around him who resembled Anatoli. Those closer to him were either famous superheroes or had personalities that were worlds apart from Anatoli's, almost all impossible.
After ruling out the most intimate people, it could be those not too far nor too close, capable of keeping tabs but not frequent contacts. Greed started to eliminate them one by one, but still couldn't find a suitable target.
Then he realized there might be a problem with his elimination method because if anyone around him was acting abnormally, he would have noticed long ago, not just today. So he began considering events, thinking about the things he had experienced and whether there were any unsolved mysteries, which could be the result of Anatoli's interference.
After thinking for a long time, he suddenly recalled a very insignificant fragment in the depths of his memory.
Back then, Yellow Lantern Avenger Sinestro suddenly came to Earth, claiming to have discovered the Lantern Corps' conspiracy, that the Little Blue People were not the creators or even the discoverers of the Emotional Spectrum but had always manipulated it, forcing the Lantern Corps to work for them.
According to the normal timeline, Sinestro had not yet defected from the Green Lantern Corps at that time. After inquiries, it turned out that someone had informed him of this truth in advance, leading to his early defection and the early formation of the Yellow Lantern Corps. But who that person was remained a complete mystery.
Back then, Shiller speculated that it might have been The First Lantern causing trouble. At that time, he had just excavated the Laughing Egg from Bruce, instinctively feeling the two events might be connected.
It was later confirmed that in Shiller's universe, those dangerous things becoming eggs was actually because Anatoli had blown up the universe's original dark side, sealing those dangerous things. So could it be that the person who informed Sinestro of the Lantern Corps' truth in advance was Anatoli?
"You wouldn't be The First Lantern, would you?!" Greed raised his voice.
"Hahaha, didn't see that coming, did you?" Anatoli laughed happily, "Back then, I thought you would investigate. After all, you just discovered the dark side was sealed, Sinestro went there, and you would definitely link the two events, suspecting it was The First Lantern's doing, and come find me. But I waited a long time, and you didn't budge."
"That was Arrogant not moving," Greed said, "From the start, I shouldn't have sent him. If I'd gone, we would have met up long ago."
"No way. If you went, Bruce would have been killed by the Joker you turned him into, wouldn't he?" Anatoli shook his head.
Greed was speechless. Initially, choosing Arrogant was because he was strong and more adept at handling tough places like Gotham. Unexpectedly, Arrogant was extremely lazy, having no motivation to dig into things. Unless villains came to make trouble, even if there were clues, he was too lazy to check. This led to his and Anatoli's meeting being delayed by over a decade.
"But how could you be The First Lantern?" Greed asked.
"Just like what you did," Anatoli said, "Get a certain status first, then modify your origin story. Besides, the origin story wasn't much changed; I was a traveler from Different Worlds."
Only then did Greed recall that the origin story of The First Lantern was actually vague. The comics described him as "from an unknown future." Right, just that sentence; it didn't say where his hometown was or the source of his superpower. Now it seems Anatoli couldn't come up with it, could he?
"Then the other universe's First Lanterns..."
"They're all me. During every major event, I have to rush over; there's no time to proactively find you. Even then, sometimes I can't make it in time. Actually, during the Primary Universe Batman and Darkseid's attack on Oa Star, I should have been in the Little Blue People's cage. But then the Third Legion in another universe rose, so I had to go to harvest energy from them, and thus missed it. But no worries, Batman would surely think the Little Blue People were too cunning, trapping me elsewhere. One day I'll guide him to dig me out."
Greed couldn't help but cover his forehead and said, "So the First Lantern I saw in comics was also you? But why is the real universe a comic in another world?"