The voice was distant, muffled, as if spoken through layers of water and delirium.  

“It would be so pathetic if we died here.”  

The words slithered into Jason’s consciousness, barely coherent, before his body jerked awake—only for him to realize, with a surge of primal terror, that he wasn’t breathing.  

His eyes flew open, but all he saw was an eerie, pulsating glow, liquid emerald swallowing his vision. 

The cold, thick weight of the Lazarus Pit pressed against his skin, seeping into his wounds, his lungs, his very bones. 

Then—

The pain hit him like a wave—white-hot and merciless, as if every nerve in his body had been set ablaze. His chest convulsed, screaming for air, but the Pit’s waters filled his throat instead, thick and metallic, like drinking liquid fire.  

He thrashed, limbs heavy and uncoordinated, his muscles remembering survival before his mind did. 

His hands clawed upward, desperate for the surface, but the water resisted, viscous as oil. For a heart-stopping second, he wondered if this was death—if he had already drowned, and this was some cruel afterlife.  

Then his fingers broke through.  

He erupted from the depths with a ragged, choking gasp, his body heaving as he dragged in air that burned just as much as the water had. 

The cavern around him swam in and out of focus—a jagged, obsidian maw of rock, the walls slick with moisture, the only light coming from the Pit itself, its luminescence casting writhing shadows across the stone.  

His arms gave out, and he collapsed onto the rocky shore, his body convulsing as he coughed up mouthfuls of bitter, glowing fluid. 

His stomach heaved, and he retched violently, the Pit’s waters leaving his throat raw, his insides feeling scraped hollow. The taste lingered—like copper and rot and something unnervingly alive.  

He rolled onto his back, chest heaving, and stared up at the cavern ceiling, his thoughts a fractured mess.  

How the hell did I end up here?  

The last thing he remembered was heading to the infirmary. His own hands, slick with red, pressing uselessly against the wound. The creeping numbness as his vision darkened at the edges.  

He had been dying.  

And now he wasn’t.  

The realization hit him like a second drowning. His fingers trembled as he pressed them to his chest, searching for the injury—but there was nothing. No gaping wound, no torn flesh. Just smooth, unbroken skin, damp with the Pit’s residue.  

A shudder ran through him, deeper than the cold.  

The Lazarus Pit didn’t just heal. It changed things.  

And someone had thrown him into it.  

He pushed himself up on shaking arms, his breath still uneven, and scanned the cavern. No footsteps. No voices. Just the quiet drip of water from stalactites and the low, almost rhythmic pulse of the Pit’s glow.  

He was alone.  

Alive.  

And he had no idea why.  

His fingers brushed against his side, probing for the wound—only to find smooth, unbroken skin. 

Even the persistent ache in his knee had vanished, as though it had never existed. A frown creased his brow as he glanced around the cavern, the dim light casting long shadows across the uneven stone.  

What the hell happened?  

The silence of the cave offered no answers. His gaze drifted to the far end, where a freshly dug grave lay nestled against the rock. 

‘Talia must have buried Ra’s here before sealing the cavern.’ The thought twisted something inside him—gratitude and resentment tangled into one.  

Then it struck him.  

The exit.  

He turned sharply toward the collapsed rubble that had once been the way out. No passage remained, no gap to squeeze through. The realization settled heavily in his chest.  

Then how did I get in here?  

His eyes narrowed as he studied the cavern’s entrance—the one Talia and the League had used. Something about it felt off. The positioning was wrong. It wasn’t the same as the hidden passage Ra’s had led him through before.  

If memory serves right…  

Pushing himself up, he limped toward the wall, tracing the rough stone with his fingertips. The texture here was different—unnatural. Too precise. Too deliberate.  

A slow smirk tugged at his lips.  

Ra’s had always been a man of secrets, of illusions. False walls, hidden pathways—everything was a game to him. And games had rules.  

Mimicking the old man’s movements from memory, he pressed his palm against a cluster of protruding rocks. 

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, with a faint grind of stone, his hand sank inward. The wall yielded, sliding aside with a whisper of dust.  

You sly old man.  

Before him, a narrow stairway spiraled upward into darkness. He didn’t hesitate. Each step echoed faintly as he ascended, the air growing cooler, thinner. At the top, another false wall waited.  

Again, he repeated the motion—the same pressure, the same angle. The mechanism responded with a quiet click, and the wall retreated, revealing the dimly lit hallway beyond.  

He stepped through, blinking against the sudden light. The hallway was empty, silent. No one in sight. 

“How did I end up in that cavern?”

The question gnawed at him, but for now, it didn’t matter. He was alive. And he owed Ra’s a debt—one that could only be repaid in death.  

– – –

The morning light filtered through the high arched windows of Jason’s chamber, casting elongated golden streaks across the stone floor. 

He stirred, blinking slowly as consciousness fully settled in. For the first time in what felt like years, his body didn’t ache with the familiar tension of old wounds. 

The Lazarus Pit hadn’t just healed him—it had renewed him. His muscles were loose, his mind unnervingly sharp, as if someone had scrubbed away the fog of exhaustion and doubt that had clung to him for so long.  

He sat up, running a hand through his disheveled hair, and exhaled. The air itself felt different—charged, like the static before a storm. 

His thoughts, usually a tangled mess of unease and suppressed rage, now rang with startling clarity. It was almost intoxicating.  

Then his gaze landed on it.  

The artifact.  

It sat on the table across the room, bathed in the pale morning glow. He had carried it for days, turning it over in his hands, searching for answers, yet never truly seeing it. But now, from this angle, in this light—something was different.  

A pattern.  

Subtle, almost invisible unless the light hit it just right. A series of interwoven lines and symbols that tugged at his memory. He knew this. Not just from handling the artifact, but from… somewhere.  

Frowning, he swung his legs off the bed and crossed the room in quick strides. The stone was cool under his fingertips as he lifted it, tilting it toward the light. The design wasn’t just decorative—it was a map. Or part of one. 

His pulse quickened.  

He had seen this before. Not on a mission, not in some dusty archive—but here, in the heart of Ra’s al Ghul’s stronghold.  

The gallery.  

Without another thought, he was out the door, moving swiftly through the dimly lit corridors. 

The fortress was quiet, the only sounds the distant birds chirping in the morning air.

The gallery was a vast hall lined with paintings, tapestries, and relics from centuries past. 

Jason’s boots clicked against the marble as he scanned the walls, his eyes darting from one piece to another. He tore through them, frustration mounting with each passing second.  

Nothing.  

Had he imagined it? Was his mind playing tricks on him, still riding the high of the Pit?  

He exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair. Then, just as he turned to leave—  

A flicker. A shift in the light.  

His breath caught.  

There, on the far wall, was a painting—unremarkable at first glance. But as he stepped sideways, the angle changed, and the image morphed. The brushstrokes rearranged themselves into the same intricate pattern that adorned the artifact.  

“There it is,” he muttered, striding toward it.  

He reached out, fingers brushing the frame before carefully lifting it from the wall. The back was aged, the wood slightly warped with time. And there, etched into the corners—  

Two words.  

His lips curled into a slow, knowing smirk.  

– – – 

[At the same time]

The rotors of the helicopter thundered overhead as the chopper descended onto the cracked tarmac of the abandoned military base. 

The hangar loomed ahead, its metal skeleton rusted and half-collapsed, a relic of a war long forgotten.  

Slade Wilson stepped out, his combat boots crunching on broken concrete. The wind whipped at his jacket as he strode forward, his single visible eye scanning the perimeter with cold precision. 

The soldiers stationed there stiffened as he passed—some out of respect, others out of fear.  

He didn’t bother with greetings.  

The office door slammed shut behind him as he entered, his gaze locking onto the man hunched over a bank of flickering monitors.  

“You better be certain about this,” Slade said, his voice a low growl.  

Jones didn’t look up, fingers flying over the keyboard. “Of course.” A pause. Then, with a smirk, “Have I ever let you down?”  

Slade’s eye narrowed.  

Jones chuckled, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. Apart from those times.”  

Slade ignored the jab. “How did we miss this before?”  

Jones swiveled in his chair, tapping the screen. “Because it wasn’t just hidden—it was erased. Scrubbed from every map, every satellite feed. The system didn’t just fail to locate it—it just couldn’t.”  

He punched a series of commands into the console. The screen flashed red—ERROR.  

Then, with a few more keystrokes, the display shifted. A satellite image filled the monitor—endless ocean, stretching into oblivion.  

And then, a single red marker pulsed to life.  

Slade’s lips twitched.  

“You brilliant bastard,” he murmured, staring at the coordinates.  

– – –  

Jason’s fingers traced the engraved words on the back of the painting, realization hitting him.  

At the same moment, thousands of miles away, Slade’s screen displayed the same two words in bold, glowing text.  

Their voices, though separated by distance, echoed the same name—  

“Lian Yu!!” 

The island of death. The place where everything had begun.  

And where, it seemed, it would all end.  

The moment the name Lian Yu seared itself into Jason’s mind, he was already moving. 

His body thrummed with restless energy, the kind that came from standing on the precipice of a revelation too dangerous to ignore. 

The dim glow of the library’s ancient lanterns painted the room in flickering amber, casting long, wavering shadows across the towering shelves of forgotten knowledge. The air smelled of aged parchment, brittle leather, and the faint metallic tang of ink that had dried centuries ago.

Ra’s al Ghul’s library was a fortress of secrets—each book, each scroll, a silent witness to histories too dark for the world to remember. 

And if there was any truth about Lian Yu still in existence, it would be buried here, hidden between the lines of some crumbling manuscript or locked away in a cipher only the most determined could unravel.

Jason’s fingers moved with practiced precision, tracing the spines of books, pulling volumes from their resting places with a quiet urgency. 

The silence of the library was oppressive, broken only by the whisper of turning pages and the occasional creak of the old wooden desk beneath his weight. Time blurred. 

Minutes stretched into what felt like hours, the monotony of research gnawing at his patience. His eyes burned from strain, his muscles tense with the need for action rather than this slow, methodical search.

Then—

A brittle, leather-bound ledger, its cover cracked with age, nearly disintegrated at his touch. The pages were yellowed, the ink faded, but the words were unmistakable.

Lian Yu. North China Sea. Imperial Japanese black site. 

Project designation: Imperial Japanese Military. 

Objective: Development of enhanced combatants through biochemical augmentation. 

Termination ordered. 

Records purged.

Jason exhaled sharply, his grip tightening on the ledger. The implications crashed over him like a wave.

Lian Yu wasn’t just an island—it was a graveyard of horrors. A place where men had been turned into weapons, their bodies and minds reshaped in the name of war. 

The Japanese had sought an unstoppable army, soldiers who moved faster, hit harder, thought sharper. But something had gone wrong. The project had been buried, erased from history as if it had never existed.

And yet, Slade had something to do with this Mirakuru serum. Which the Japanese referred to as the Miracle serum.

Jason’s mind raced, piecing together the fragments. Ra’s’ intel had painted Slade as a soldier turned mercenary, a man whose skills defied natural limits. His reflexes, his strength—they weren’t just the result of training. They were engineered.

A cold realization settled in Jason’s gut.

Slade wasn’t just a killer for hire. He was a success. A living testament to whatever nightmare science had been wrought on Lian Yu. And now, armed with that knowledge, he wasn’t content with being the only one.

He wanted an army.

Jason could see it now—rows of soldiers, each one a mirror of Slade’s lethal perfection. 

An unstoppable force, answering only to him. 

The ledger slipped from his fingers, landing on the desk with a soft thud. Outside, the wind howled through the mountains, a hollow echo of the storm that was coming.

Lian Yu had been the beginning.

And if Jason didn’t act fast, he would lose the opportunity to enact his revenge.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep