In the pitch-black truck compartment, the three sat in silence for a while.
Shiller looked down at the alarm clock in his hand. It was a palm-sized mini clock with a shiny silver casing. Although it had two small ears and a hammer in the middle like an old-fashioned clock, they were merely decorations, and the sound was electronic.
Shiller gently pressed the button on the alarm clock.
"Dingling!"
Injustice Superman instinctively shivered, unable to refrain from glaring at Shiller. However, he didn't actually feel much anger. Since agreeing with Charles to seal his emotions, he rarely experienced intense feelings.
In their place was a sense of emptiness and irritation.
"What is this?" Injustice Batman seemed to ask, knowing the answer already.
"You probably don't want me to answer 'this is an alarm clock.' But in fact, it truly is an alarm clock." Shiller appeared to be circling around, but Injustice Batman understood what he was implying.
"What is my alarm clock?" Injustice Batman asked.
"If you allow me to visit your dreams, perhaps I can answer that question. But not now." Shiller responded truthfully.
Injustice Superman had no idea what kind of riddles they were playing.
Shiller placed the clock in front of him, but what he saw weren't merely the clock itself, but countless intertwined emotional threads. This was an extremely complex mental structure.
Everyone has their own mental weaknesses.
Mental weaknesses can be innate or acquired. Some people are naturally unstable mentally, and if they do not receive proper guidance and treatment afterwards, those fragile parts will accompany them for life.
This doesn't mean they will go insane, just that they will have more weaknesses. For instance, some people are born with a fear of heights, and as long as they stand at a high place, they will tremble, thus having one more mental weakness than others.
Some mental weaknesses emerge later in life. For example, getting hurt in a failed relationship may make similar encounters uncomfortable and even cause a breakdown.
It can be said that any intelligent creature that possesses both logic and emotion must have their own mental weaknesses.
It's just that some people's weaknesses are hidden too deeply, some are good at concealing, making them look perfect on the surface.
The creator is unfair. In this cosmos, the strong are too strong, and the weak, too weak. But he is also fair, as all beings will have the same dream.
In dreams, those things described as abstract or outright untold in the real world manifest as their own entities here.
The alarm clock in Shiller's hand was the trigger for Injustice Superman's mental weakness.
Because he consistently avoided confronting Batman, the mental stress during face-to-face conversations with Batman was too great, leading him to form a conditioned reflex to the sound of the alarm clock that woke him up each day.
The bell rings to signal getting up, waking up meant facing Batman, and in facing Batman, it was a struggle to speak, an irritation impossible to endure.
It eventually simplified to: when the bell rings, he feels irritable and uncomfortable.
Injustice Superman's mental weakness is Injustice Batman, but the trigger for this weakness is the alarm clock in his home.
This kind of thing that can directly hit others' mental weaknesses is like an "alarm clock." As soon as it rings, its owner's psychic battlefield is disturbed. Each person has such an "alarm clock" deep within their psychic battlefield.
Injustice Superman never deliberately hid his mental weakness; he might not even know he had this weakness. So even in the shallow dreamworld, there was an alarm clock.
However, because his spiritual power was too strong, Shiller could not invade the field he was most familiar with during the shallow dreamworld phase, and couldn't take this alarm clock, having to drag him into a deeper dreamworld.
As we all know, people control their conscious awareness better than their subconscious. Subconscious remains the subconscious because it is a field that intelligent creatures cannot control.
Even an existence with a super brain like Superman has fields in his consciousness that he cannot reach; otherwise, he would not dream. A dream is the most typical manifestation of the subconscious.
Shallow dreams are closer to conscious awareness. There they can better control their consciousness, while deeper dreams are closer to the subconscious, where control is weaker, hence more chaotic and out of control.
Control originates from certain "anchor points" in the real world that give them a sense of security.
For instance, Injustice Superman's anchor point is Lois.
As soon as he dreams, he appears beside Lois because lying beside her makes him feel safe, better able to control his mind and emotions.
And the anchor point creates a mental defense line. Injustice Superman's mental defense is his bedroom. As long as the anchor point exists, the mental defense won't be easily breached, and naturally, no one can easily take away the alarm clock.
Conversely, losing control stems from "weaknesses."
Injustice Superman's weakness is Injustice Batman.
In the deeper layers of Dreamworld, when Injustice Batman appeared, Injustice Superman returned to the numerous scenes at the Justice League base where he argued with him. This lowered the stability of his psyche.
As a result, Shiller was able to gradually breach his mental defenses, first coming into his living room, then into his bedroom, and taking the alarm clock from his nightstand.
With the alarm clock, Shiller could easily disturb Injustice Superman's mental state.
This is why Injustice Batman asked Shiller, "What is my alarm clock?"
He was actually asking, "What can strike at my psychological weakness?"
This is the key point.
Almost everyone knows Batman's psychological weakness, which is nothing more than the death of his parents.
Many people want to exploit this psychological weakness to strike him, but very few have truly succeeded because they haven't found the right fuse; they haven't obtained the true alarm clock.
There are many things related to the death of his parents, but no one knows which can truly stimulate Batman's psyche.
Is it the alley? Is it the gunshot? Is it the pearl necklace? Is it the movie ticket? Or could it be some kind of light that flashed for a moment that night? Some sound? Some words?
Perhaps each Batman is different. Without delving into deep dreams, there is no way to find the right thing.
And the alarm clock corresponding to a psychological weakness is often very abstract; it is very likely not strongly related to the psychological weakness itself.
Just like Injustice Superman, before Shiller entered the deep dream, he wouldn't have thought that the trigger for Injustice Superman's conditioned reflex was just the clock in his own home.
This is why most people who try to invade others' psychic worlds and find and exploit weaknesses rarely succeed.
Because the clock may not be directly related to the psychological weakness. Injustice Superman's psychological weakness is Injustice Batman, but his alarm clock is indeed just a clock, in his own home.
If it were someone unprofessional, even if they sensed that Injustice Superman's weakness might be Injustice Batman, they would probably look for something with a Bat tag or something representing Batman, rather than think of looking for the clock in Injustice Superman's house.
Injustice Batman looked at the clock in Shiller's hand.
When Lois mentioned the clock, Injustice Batman had already sensed the pressure Injustice Superman was under, knew that he had become Injustice Superman's psychological weakness, and knew that the trigger for this psychological weakness was the clock in Injustice Superman's house.
He intentionally mentioned this before they entered into dreams to see how capable the visitors were and how much the so-called Dreamworld's rules were similar to reality.
The result did not surprise him; this mysterious professor was a true Mind Catcher.
In a very short time, he pulled Injustice Superman into a deep dream and precisely found the clock. This proved that his research into the psychic world and dreams was very deep, most likely a professional.
And the rules of the Dreamworld were somewhat similar to the conclusions drawn from research into dreams in the real world. It's still the whole conscious and subconscious setup, seemingly wacky but interconnected.
Injustice Batman also understood their true purpose on this mission—to find Hai'er's alarm clock.
But it's far from simple.
Injustice Superman's mental state was already unstable, first greatly stimulated by the tragedy of Lois, then in this cosmos, further messed with by Malafax's brainwave interference, and then his emotions sealed by Charles.
His psychic battlefield was full of holes. If he weren't in dire need of a sense of security, he wouldn't dream of Lois so easily, nor allow Shiller to succeed so effortlessly.
Before Shiller, Injustice Superman was full of vulnerabilities. But dealing with Hai'er is different from dealing with Injustice Superman.
Hai'er is stronger than Injustice Superman. His sheer physical strength means he has a stronger sense of mental security. His anchor points are more stable and harder to shake.
At the same time, he possesses powerful psychic abilities that other Kryptonians do not. Every mind power user is a natural psychologist, with a much keener insight into their own mental state than ordinary individuals. This is more troublesome.
However, Barry's plan coincided with Shiller's. He specifically traveled through time to bring the future Hai'er to the past, letting him know his true origins. This was also a stimulus to his psyche.
This made a slight crack in Hai'er's otherwise impregnable psychic battlefield, giving Shiller an opportunity to take advantage.
The truck came to a stop. As the three of them stepped out of the compartment, they saw a somewhat desolate land. It felt like stepping onto loose sandstone weathered over the years.
The view spread out in a dull yellow, as if thrown into a cosmic sandstorm that had raged for hundreds of thousands of years and never settled. Everything around had been swept barren and chaotic.
Walking a few steps further, they could see they were on a cliff, and ahead was a chasm with no visible end.
To see the full length of the chasm, the truck, like a beast, would become a tiny black dot, with people blending into a handful of sand, just a few larger grains.
A gust of wind blew through, filling the air with dryness. Jack stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down, and then said, "This is the entrance to Hai'er's dream."
"You mean we have to jump down?" Injustice Batman asked.
"Yes." Jack glanced at Injustice Batman and said, "You're probably thinking this is a trap set by the Joker. But actually, I need to go down too."
Shiller turned to look at him. Jack sighed and said, "The Kingdom of Dreams exists deeper in everyone's subconscious. If we enter the dream in the usual way, we might directly enter his deep dream."
"But that guy's deep dream may be far more dangerous than you can imagine. If you start exploring from there, you might not even find what you're looking for before you're torn to pieces."
"So I have to drive you to a safe place. It might be a shallow dream near the surface consciousness, or maybe a mid-layer dream. Either way, it's a place where you can stay."
Injustice Batman also turned to look at him. He suddenly realized a shocking fact—the Joker of this cosmos seemed more reliable than everyone in the entire Justice League combined.