Papua New Guinea is mostly made up of plains and lowlands, rich in forest resources. Tropical virgin forests cover about 77% of the country's land area.
High Plains.
Seen from a high altitude, it looked like a sailing ship cruising across an ocean. Ripples spread to the left, right, and behind it, as if the entire plain ocean was being torn apart by its passage, splitting into snow-white shockwaves.
At speeds exceeding Mach 800, the human eye can no longer track anything.
Barry's blurry figure, surrounded by yellow arcs of electricity, burst forth with inertia powerful enough to pierce the fabric of space-time.
Suddenly—
The speed within Barry's body faltered. The yellow arcs crackling on his skin began to flicker erratically. His steps faltered, and his entire body, thrown forward by inertia, slammed into the plains. His body skidded along the ground, tearing through the terrain like the tip of a pencil grinding down. After a long distance, he finally crashed into a towering cypress tree, fifteen meters tall.
Squeeze...
The tremendous force bent the trunk of the cypress. At the point of impact, the bark split open from the strain, revealing the pale inner wood. Milky-white sap oozed out as the trunk bent and cracked under the pressure.
The tree supported Barry's body, bending sharply as if it were about to spring back and rebound him into the air.
Crack
In the end, the tall cypress couldn't bounce Barry back. It was completely crushed under the force, the trunk snapping and crashing to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Barry groaned in pain. His internal organs churned, and a wave of nausea surged up from his stomach. His face flushed, muscles cramping and trembling. Even the marrow in his bones ached, leaving him too weak to think. Sparks flickered weakly across his skin, scraping it open in places.
At over Mach 800—272,240 meters per second—the resulting inertia would have torn him apart at the molecular level if not for the protection of the Speed Force constantly wrapping around him.
Barry pulled himself up from the fallen tree, gasping for breath. He forcibly suppressed the nausea and dizziness, gulping down lungfuls of air. His chest rose and fell rapidly. Pain radiated from his limbs all the way to his bones. Panic filled his eyes as he looked down at his trembling hands.
"Why... can't I go back in time?!"
A yellow arc flashed across his hand. His face twisted in disbelief, eyes wide with terror.
The greatness of the Speed Force—no one could challenge it.
It was the external embodiment of time, manifested through speed. It connected the entire universe, and the whole cosmos existed under its influence.
Barry had once ventured deep into the Speed Force, witnessing its separation from the heat death of the Big Bang, through the era of strong interaction forces, the birth of particles, the formation of protons, neutrons, and their antiparticles, bosons, neutrinos, electrons, quarks, and gluons. He saw the first moment when time began. He had seen the energy of the Speed Force surpass the speed of light, forming the Wall of the Speed Force, the physical manifestation of time itself.
The Wall of the Speed Force extended through every corner of the universe, through every moving particle, every concept, even every human thought. The moment thought occurred, so too did the passage of time.
No one was immune to time.
If he could just return to the past, stop Barmulodi from being born, prevent his arrival, prevent him from becoming the ruler of Metropolis, then the world could return to its original trajectory.
Return to the correct timeline, where superheroes were born properly. Now, most of them—hero or villain—had been killed outright by Barmulodi, their minds twisted, the world reshaped, forced into alignment with Barmulodi's twisted vision.
"He... is not affected by time!"
Barry's eyes were wide with horror, yellow arcs flickering frantically in them. His thoughts accelerated, spanning entire years in seconds, until he arrived at a terrifying realization.
Barmulodi was unaffected by the timeline of this world.
He wasn't from this world, or even from this universe. He wasn't Kryptonian.
Barry could vaguely feel that even when traveling through time, he needed Barmulodi's cooperation. He needed Barmulodi to voluntarily pull out the "nail" and allow the timeline to shift. Only then could Barry go back into the past.
In other words.
Barmulodi had stabilized the entire universe by himself.
Maybe he wasn't aware of it, but he possessed something special that kept time fixed, kept the entire universe steady for reasons Barry and Bardi couldn't understand. And that stability made it impossible to travel back to the past or into the future.
Imagine the universe as a single page of a comic book.
Then Bardi was the nail.
That nail pinned the page to the wall, unmoving and fixed.
"How is this possible?!"
Barry gasped in shock, his body trembling. His eyes were filled with disbelief. Even if Barmulodi had the power to destroy Earth, it shouldn't be possible to halt the workings of the universe. That was terrifying on a different scale.
It was hard to accept—what kind of power could influence the entire operation of the universe and force it to run smoothly and unmoved?
At that moment, a massive shockwave split the sky.
A white figure, trailing a long, white sonic boom tail, streaked through the sky with terrifying speed.
From high above, it dived down toward Barry like a fighter jet, its intent obvious and overwhelming.
The yellow electricity around Barry suddenly surged. His eyes, crackling with arcs of lightning, narrowed in fear. He vanished from his original position, fleeing hundreds of meters away.
But even from that distance, he felt the tremor beneath his feet—the ground suddenly gave way.
From the sky, the white figure plummeted.
Boom
The impact shattered rock, sending debris flying and uprooting the surrounding cypress trees. A massive shockwave rolled through the air, blasting through the forest like a category 20 typhoon. Trees bent under the pressure, birds scattered in panic.
The ground collapsed instantly, a massive crater forming with a radius of ten kilometers and a depth of hundreds of meters. Cracks spider-webbed outward from the impact.
The shockwave shook the entire island. A city nearly a hundred miles away trembled violently, with terrified people stumbling and buildings toppling.
The force of the impact spread all the way to the Atlantic coast, rippling from land to sea, stirring the ocean into massive tidal waves, preparing the onset of a tsunami.
In the next moment, a wall of dust surged forth, engulfing Barry and Bardi.
Within the swirling dust, a towering figure rose, like a giant standing on the horizon, stomping across the earth.
Even though Barry hovered above the figure, enough to look down, he still felt the oppressive, awe-inspiring presence. It crushed the earth beneath it, suppressed his will, and nearly stopped his heart from fear.
(To be continued.)
***
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