Two days passed in the blink of an eye.
That morning, just after breakfast, Lucas was about to make some fresh juice when the intelligent housekeeper's notification sounded.
"Sir, Bruce Wayne is here. Would you like to see him?"
Lucas nodded casually. "Let him in."
Soon, dressed in formal attire, Bruce Wayne was led into Lucas's living room by the smart system.
"A rare guest," Lucas said indifferently from the kitchen, still focused on preparing his freshly squeezed juice.
"What brings you to my place, Bruce Wayne?"
Bruce frowned slightly.
Lucas's attitude alone already revealed quite a lot.
Over the past two days, Bruce had been under immense pressure.
Since the day before yesterday, the FBI, CIA, and IRS had been visiting Wayne Enterprises one after another.
The CIA was manageable—their authority within U.S. borders was limited, and the company's legal team had no trouble sending them away empty-handed.
The FBI was more troublesome, but still within tolerance.
After all, even the FBI couldn't do whatever it wanted, especially when dealing with a conglomerate like Wayne Enterprises, which had powerful backing of its own.
After the share buyback, Bruce had assembled a team of elite professionals to thoroughly clean up internal problems and loopholes within the company.
As a result, no matter how hard the FBI investigated, there was little to fear—at most, it disrupted work efficiency.
But the IRS was a completely different matter.
Once they truly targeted an individual or a company, serious trouble followed.
Almost immediately, many subsidiaries under Wayne Enterprises were dragged into tax investigations.
Occasionally, one or two problematic subsidiaries could be managed.
But once the IRS conducted a full-scale audit, nearly none of them could escape scrutiny.
Although the parent company wouldn't be shut down outright, the impact was severe.
The finance department was forced into constant overtime, and many factories were ordered to suspend operations for inspections.
In effect, nearly 60% of Wayne Enterprises had been paralyzed.
On top of that, the company was also being aggressively targeted in the market by another conglomerate of comparable size.
The damage was substantial.
What was worse, the opposing side was clearly willing to suffer losses of its own just to hurt Wayne Enterprises even more.
Through political connections and other channels, Bruce quickly uncovered the cause behind all of this.
After giving it some thought, he spoke.
"Mr. Lucas, I don't believe there's any major grudge between us, is there?"
Lucas stopped what he was doing and looked up at Bruce.
"A grudge?" Lucas chuckled lightly.
"No, not really. But you made me unhappy."
Bruce frowned. "Just because you're unhappy, you're using every possible means to target Wayne Enterprises?"
"And why not?" Lucas replied calmly, his gaze locked onto Bruce's.
At that moment, Bruce felt as if a heavy shackle had been placed around his entire body.
Taking a deep breath, he said, "I know I used certain methods during Gotham's reconstruction."
"But given your level of power and influence, surely you wouldn't care about a city's reconstruction projects."
Lucas tossed the last apple into the blender and pressed the switch.
"I don't care much about the reconstruction itself," he said flatly.
"But you don't get to ignore me."
"You squeezing out others with underhanded methods is one thing."
"But it was me who drove back Atlantis's army."
"You took those projects without even giving me a courtesy notice."
"That tells me one thing."
"You didn't take me seriously."
Bruce's brows knitted tightly.
He hadn't expected Lucas's sense of pride to be this strong.
As someone well-versed in psychology, Bruce immediately understood—what angered Lucas wasn't the profits themselves, but the fact that Bruce had taken a massive slice of the pie without even acknowledging him.
Even so, Bruce found it difficult to formulate a proper countermeasure on the spot.
'This just became very hard to resolve,' he thought.
Then, an idea struck him.
"Mr. Lucas," Bruce said quickly,
"if my previous actions offended you, what would it take to make you let this go?"
Lucas said nothing, continuing to prepare his juice.
'So normal negotiation won't work,' Bruce concluded internally.
He tried again, his tone earnest.
"Mr. Lucas, please believe in my sincerity for coming here in person. I'm not joking."
Only then did Lucas look up again.
He asked leisurely, "What can you give me?"
"I don't lack money. I don't lack people."
"Everything you have, I have. Everything you don't have, I also have."
"So tell me—what exactly can you offer?"
Bruce met Lucas's interested gaze and paused briefly before answering.
"I can help you deal with extraterrestrials."
Lucas laughed softly. "What—are you saying you have that kind of power?"
Bruce shook his head. "No. I don't have your level of strength."
"But I have this."
He tapped his temple.
"Take the Kryptonian invasion, for example. Your team clearly had the ability to reduce Earth's losses significantly—yet the outcome was still disastrous."
"If I had been in command, I wouldn't claim I could defeat the invaders outright."
"But I could have reduced human casualties by at least thirty percent."
Lucas didn't deny that.
During the battle against General Zod, Clark and the others had shown glaring flaws in both planning and tactics.
Many people misunderstood what "super-intelligence" truly meant.
To put it differently:
Super intelligence, super reaction speed, and super processing speed were not the same thing.
Even Lucas himself possessed what could be called a "super brain."
After all, if his brain weren't advanced enough, it wouldn't be able to keep up with his body during combat.
But he would never claim to possess true super-intelligence.
That required an entirely different mode of thinking—vast knowledge reserves, extraordinary analytical frameworks, and the decisiveness to act without hesitation.
As these thoughts crossed his mind, Lucas picked up the freshly made juice, walked over to the sofa, and sat down, crossing his legs.
In truth, from the moment he decided to move against Wayne Enterprises, Lucas had already anticipated that Bruce Wayne might come knocking in person.
What he hadn't expected—
Was that Bruce would come this directly.
....
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