Looking at the seven lantern furnaces in front of him, Hal's jaw almost dropped in shock. He stammered and pointed, "This... this this this this this..."
"Batman did it," Shiller said straightforwardly.
Hal was about to say something but then remembered how Sinestro had attacked Apocalypse Star without hesitation, disregarding Earth. He took a deep breath and said, "It's really impressive."
"But I heard he was going to extract vitality..."
"He's not stupid, why would he ignore the Power of Seven Lanterns and insist on extracting his own vitality?"
"Oh, right." Hal came to his senses and said, "We'll have to make sure Clark understands later. He's worried to death."
Shiller shook his head and said, "Don't tell him."
Hal looked at him in confusion, and Shiller said, "Superman needs a force derived from idealism. He needs a more definite and significant goal to unleash his greatest strength."
"Isn't this a bit wrong?" Hal hesitated, clearly troubled by his conscience. He said, "Will Clark really accept this behavior that borders on deceit, or do you think you can keep it from him forever?"
"You don't understand him or his relationship with Batman," Shiller said as he passed by the table, "When he learns that it was Batman who misled him, that Batman hasn't extracted his own vitality, he'll feel relieved."
Hal opened his mouth but could not argue. If it were someone else, he felt Clark would definitely be angry, but with Batman, it's hard to say. Their relationship is so peculiar it's beyond others' judgment.
"Did you call me here just for this?"
"Just to remind you not to hold back," Shiller said, tapping the lantern furnaces, "The Green Lantern energy here is almost endless. If it's not enough, you can draw from the Emotional Spectrum. You can go all out and show them the might of the Earth Green Lantern."
Hal immediately rubbed his hands together and said, "Fantastic, finally no need to worry about quotas. Now I can show them what the Earth Green Lantern is capable of."
"There's one more thing," Shiller continued, "Did Sinestro ever mention anything to you about lantern rings outside of the Color Lantern Corps?"
Hal paused and then shook his head, saying, "Honestly, I don't know much about the Colored Lantern Corps either."
Shiller was referring to the "Colored Lantern Corps," officially known as the "Colored Lantern Ring Corps," also called the "Rainbow Light Corps," which includes the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet corps. The powers they use are collectively called the "Power of Seven Lanterns."
Since there is the Colored Lantern Corps, there is the Colorless Lantern Corps. The Black Death Emperor uses the Black Lamp Power, which belongs to the colorless lamps. Besides the colorless lamps, there are invisible lights.
Currently, in most universes, only the Colored Lantern Corps are known. The Batmen are still researching the Power of Seven Lanterns. As for colorless and invisible lights, most universes have yet to explore them. This universe is the same.
"The Black Death Emperor is the manipulator of the Black Lamp Power," Shiller said, looking at Hal, "It belongs to one kind of the Colorless Lantern Corps. And Batman has learned from some universe that besides Black Lamps, there are White Lamps."
"White Lamps? Can they counteract Black Lamps?"
"Yes. White Lamps' attribute is vitality, which corresponds directly to the Power of Death. Batman and I are searching for the existence of White Lamps. But like other corps, the White Lamp Power requires a carrier to exert its power."
Hal suddenly understood and said, "Are you considering me? But I've already been contaminated by the Power of Death, can I really pass the White Lamp's test?"
"You've been contaminated by the Power of Death? Really?"
Hal glanced down at his arm; although the corpse spots weren't heavy, they did exist. He sighed silently, realizing he might have been the first to be contaminated. If only he'd been more alert back then, it might not have come to this.
Shiller turned around and took a bottle of wine from the nearby cabinet. Hal wasn't sure what he was up to. Seeing Hal lost in thought, Shiller reminded him, "Don't you remember what you drank at the Christmas dinner party?"
"Christmas dinner party?" Hal was genuinely a little lost. Even though it hadn't been long, he'd been through so much recently, it felt like it had been years, and he really couldn't recall what had happened at the Christmas dinner party.
Shiller handed the bottle to him; Hal peered inside and saw there was just a little wine left. He carefully recalled and suddenly remembered. Wasn't this the bottle he took home? How did it end up in Shiller's hands?
Hal instinctively felt something was off. He remembered feeling frustrated with his training and drinking some of that expensive red wine he'd brought back from the party. Later, when he tried to find the bottle, it was gone. He thought he might have misplaced it while drunk, but how did Shiller get hold of it?
"Why did you take this?" Hal asked instinctively, before realizing, "Did you go to my apartment?"
Hal's face suddenly turned somewhat unpleasant. Even though there wasn't anything particularly shameful in his apartment, the act of intruding into personal territory was still quite unnerving.
"I poisoned you," Shiller's words almost made Hal choke.
"To be precise, it's Batman and me together," Shiller said with lowered eyes. "During our first meeting, he discerned your taste and deliberately chose a bottle of red wine that suits you. He added his special toxin to it."
Hal was completely stupefied, his brain unable to process such a ludicrous piece of information. After a while, he finally asked, "Toxin? What toxin?"
"The toxin that makes your training difficult," Shiller said, looking at him with a calm expression. "The issues you experience during training, like fatigue, body stiffness, and irregular breathing, are due to your poisoning."
Hal felt as if he had been struck by lightning. Before he could ask, Shiller continued, "Of course, since you drown your sorrows in alcohol due to training difficulties, even more toxin entered your body, leading to symptoms like muscle inactivity and skin bruising."
"Why did you... Why did you do this?!"
Hal remembered that when he wanted to go to the hospital for a check-up because of various symptoms, Batman intercepted him and led him to the Batcave for examination instead. No wonder, that made sense.
If he went to the hospital for a check-up, the doctor might notice that he was poisoned. But at the Batcave, Batman came to an absurd conclusion, "He is already dead."
"To make you believe," Shiller said, looking into Hal's eyes. "The power of the Green Lantern comes from belief. Only if you believe yourself will symptoms appear, undetected by anyone."
Hal was still bewildered. He said, "Then why did you make me exhibit these symptoms?"
"It's all for today," Shiller said. "You need to make the Black Death Emperor believe that you have been tainted by the Power of Death. They will think your downfall is inevitable and won't focus on you."
Hal finally understood. A strategic deception, indeed Batman and Shiller took such an approach.
What was even scarier was how early this plan started. Could they have predicted the coming of the Black Death Emperor even then?
"It was me," Shiller said. "Back then, I roughly guessed where the Power of Death really came from, so I set up this scheme with Batman to confuse them."
Naturally, Shiller was talking about the Black Death Emperor. Although at that time the Justice League's close friends hadn't been resurrected, the power of darkness was lurking in the shadows and hadn't surfaced. But Shiller understood comic plotlines. Frankly, in the Multiverse, there are only a few villains with such pure negative power, and Barbados had already been ruled out, leaving the Black Death Emperor's probability very high.
Therefore, he proposed this idea to Batman. Although Batman didn't know where he got the information, preparing early wouldn't hurt. Based on the intelligence Shiller provided, Batman researched some toxins that could give the human body cadaver-like characteristics and put them into Hal's favorite wine.
After Hal drank the wine, his body felt uncomfortable everywhere, and he was deceived into going to the Batcave for a check-up, arriving at a ridiculous conclusion. But since the conclusion was reached by Batman, and all evidence suggested that what he said was true, plus when he later went to the Green Lantern Headquarters, Sinestro didn't notice any wrongdoing, Hal naturally believed he had indeed fallen victim to the Behind-the-scenes Manipulator's plot.
Sinestro had once said that Green Lantern energy requires belief and imagination, which means it requires depth and breadth of imagination. Once Hal firmly believes in something, the Green Lantern energy will react accordingly. If he believes he has become a corpse, cadaver characteristics will gradually appear on him, so even if the toxin weakens through metabolism, these characteristics will persist with Hal's belief.
"I don't understand," Hal said. "Doesn't the Black Death Emperor know whether he has acted against me or not? Doesn't he know if the power on me is real?"
"You're not deceiving the Black Death Emperor, but his subordinates, the Black Death Day Legion," Shiller said with a smile. "As long as they see the traces on you, they will think you have been tainted and naturally won't focus on you."
Hal furrowed his brow deeply and then said, "Then won't the Black Death Emperor tell them?"
"Do you think the Black Death Emperor can communicate directly with his subordinates?"
This question plunged Hal into contemplation. His instinctive reaction was, "Why wouldn't he be able to?"
That should be the case indeed. How can a Behind-the-scenes Manipulator not personally communicate with subordinates? If communication is impossible, how can a war be fought?
But on careful thought, something seemed amiss. Just by the behavior of those resurrected relatives, it didn't seem like they had been guided by an expert. If the Black Death Emperor could constantly guide their actions in their minds, things wouldn't be done that way.
The most obvious example was Amanda. Amanda wasn't without ability; otherwise, she wouldn't have climbed from the bottom-tier ordinary agent to her current position. But Amanda's biggest flaw is arrogance upon achievement. When someone suppresses him and makes him an executor, his abilities are still good.
But once he makes plans himself, he messes everything up. Judging by his performance this time, he is clearly not completely controlled by the Black Death Emperor, or hasn't been influenced too much; otherwise, things wouldn't be done this way.
Moreover, Damian and Steve's vacillation indicates that the Black Death Emperor isn't constantly monitoring and manipulating them, and it's likely he hasn't communicated with them from the beginning.
Is it because he doesn't want to, or because he can't?
Or perhaps it's both. Hal thought back to the day he absorbed the Yellow Light Power to defeat the Savage Wolf. At that time, he could feel that the life form of the Yellow Lantern Beast Parallax was completely different from the Human race.
In the eyes of theses entities, there is no necessity nor way to communicate with humans. They can use simple methods to provoke the strife of wise beings but cannot command them directly, because wise beings are too insignificant to them.
It's like cricket fighting; a person can choose a strong cricket, prepare the cage, and even manipulate the grass where the cricket fights, but you cannot control every subtle movement of the cricket, nor understand its chirps. This is the essential difference in life forms.
In addition, the Black Death Emperor hasn't fully escaped. The methods he can employ within the Multiverse are very limited, probably truly unable to micromanage each subordinate. Even if he could control them, there would be delays. Shiller and Batman were likely aiming to exploit this time lag.