Chapter 1 Gotham's Night

Even the "bright" Gotham City will eventually have its nights.

Whenever darkness descends, the gloomy sky and howling north wind... always remind some people of a past era.

In the not-so-distant past, this place was still a city of sin, rife with corruption.

Back then, officials fraternized with gangsters, and the police were the protectors of criminals... the entire Gotham was like a grim and ruthless concrete jungle, and at night, the streets were filled with low or mournful roars... seemingly endless.

But, those have become the past... at least, on the surface.

…………

Late, 7:30 PM, Gotham's "East End."

Three years ago, the East End was a terrible place, one could even say... the worst place in all of Gotham.

If you think the thugs in front of Robinson Park are bad, it's because you haven't seen the half-begging, half-robbing junkies in front of Finger Memorial; if you think those junkies are already terrible, it's because you haven't seen the homeless lying on the ground like stranded dead fish in front of the Sprang Aid Station.

However, compared to the situation in the East End, the above people could already be considered "doing okay."

Back then, the East End was a red-light district that even corrupt police officers were reluctant to set foot in. Prostitutes with bruised faces (it was common for these women to be beaten by pimps), and even child prostitutes, were everywhere on the streets; fierce and crazy thugs dared to commit crimes in broad daylight, while the people around them would turn a blind eye and remain indifferent.

Even today, three years later, with some restraint in the aforementioned situations, it is still the district with the highest crime rate in Gotham.

Cheap bars, cheap hotels, cheap apartments, cheap shops... everything here is cheap; it is this "cheapness" that allows those at the bottom of Gotham to survive.

But "survival" and "life" are different, and poverty is a very easy breeding ground for crime, which is an unchanging truth.

Therefore, this "cheap" place has logically become Gotham's last gray area.

…………

"Hah... this is the air of the slums..." Stepping into this place, Feng Bujue consciously took a deep breath of the turbid air and looked up at the neon-lit streets, sighing with emotion, "Although it doesn't smell good, it can make people feel at ease from the bottom of their hearts..."

Of course, he knew that to find clues about those "super villains," he had to come to the East End.

However, he didn't head straight here as soon as he entered Gotham City... Before coming to the East End, Feng Bujue went to two other places.

The first place was a research institute owned by a pharmaceutical company on the edge of the city.

It was not far from the sewer exit that Brother Jue passed through when entering the city, so he basically went in on the way.

As someone who already knew a lot about the various plots of the DC Universe, Feng Bujue certainly knew that Mister Freeze worked for this company; villains like this, who once had proper jobs, are actually very easy to find...

Infiltrating such a private enterprise facility was not difficult, it was like taking something out of a pocket to Brother Jue... He got a cleaner's jumpsuit from the tool room and put it on, blended into the office area, and soon found the person he was looking for in the second-floor lounge – the cryogenics expert Victor Fries.

After talking with him and several of his colleagues, Feng Bujue quickly learned the following information: the Fries in this universe obviously did not become a cold-blooded being due to a laboratory accident, and his wife did not die; although his wife still had a serious degenerative disease like in the setting Brother Jue knew, coincidentally... shortly after her illness was diagnosed, the Wayne Group's research and development department developed a special medicine that could cure the disease, so Fries' wife was saved, and his family and work are now very stable.

After collecting this information, Feng Bujue's hidden mission progress reached 3/10, indicating that Mister Freeze's whereabouts had been found.

Then, he went to the second place... Gotham University.

If infiltrating a private enterprise facility was like taking something out of a pocket, then sneaking into a university was like picking boogers out of his nose for Brother Jue; he spent twenty minutes finding one of his targets on campus – Pamela Lillian Isley, the one he knew as Poison Ivy.

The Pamela in this universe was not selected as an experimental subject by the botanist Jason Wood, because that Jason Wood died in a fire several years ago, and his research data was burned along with him.

In other words, the person who should have used Pamela was already dead, and the plant toxin that caused Pamela to mutate was never invented.

In the library, Feng Bujue pretended to be a student and chatted with Pamela for a while, obtaining the above information, and he was naturally mistaken for a not-so-clever pick-up artist who was just trying to make conversation.

Brother Jue ended the conversation before the other party's attitude gradually turned cold and the atmosphere became awkward, taking his mission progress of 4/10 to find another target who was also at Gotham University – Jonathan Crane, AKA... Scarecrow.

Feng Bujue was also quite curious about why Scarecrow hadn't turned evil, because this character basically went to extremes because of the various bullying he suffered during his student days... rather than being blackened by a sudden event he experienced as an adult.

As a result, after chatting with this psychology professor from Gotham University in the cafeteria for more than half an hour, Brother Jue finally indirectly elicited the answer – those boys who had bullied Jonathan in the past, and the girls who had rejected and teased him... all encountered a mountain accident during a class reunion trip many years later, and when the police found their bodies, many of them had been eaten by wild animals in the mountains, leaving only their clothes.

And our Jonathan... or rather, this gentleman who should have been Scarecrow, because his student days were like hell, and he had no feelings for these classmates, he did not go on that trip... thus, he luckily escaped.

After that incident, Jonathan's disposition changed a lot, as if some kind of knot in his heart had been untied... of course, it could also be said to be a mentality of "great revenge, Heaven has eyes."

In any case, that's roughly why Scarecrow didn't turn evil... after inquiring about these things, Feng Bujue's mission progress also updated to 5/10.

…………

When he left Gotham University, the sun was setting, Brother Jue felt that the time was about right, so he headed to his third stop – the East End.

"Hey! Are you blind?" Just as Feng Bujue was standing on the road, gazing into the distance, someone suddenly bumped into him hard with their shoulder and spoke first.

Brother Jue was very familiar with this routine... anyway, it's either a scam or looking for trouble.

Feng Bujue might not even be polite to ordinary people, let alone to someone who clearly wanted to stir up trouble... one can imagine his attitude.

"Huh?" In the next second, Brother Jue's delinquent youth accent went online, he turned his head, squinted at the person who had just passed him, and replied, "Are you talking to me?"

"Nonsense!" That was a bald man, who was shirtless even though it was quite cold, his torso covered in tattoos, and it was almost impossible to find a good piece of skin below his neck, "You're not just blind... you're also deaf?"

The moment he finished speaking, he was kicked in the crotch.

Then, he instinctively covered his groin and knelt down...

"Huh? What did you say? I still can't hear you..." Feng Bujue's groin-kicking leg was extremely sudden, and after kicking, he put on an indifferent look, speaking in a tone as if he were a deaf old man, "...say it again louder."

"You... you this..." The bald man wanted to curse, but the intense pain in his balls only allowed him to squeeze out sporadic words, he also wanted to stand up and hit someone, but before the severe pain in his crotch subsided... he would probably have to maintain this kneeling posture with his legs together for a while.

"Come find me when you can speak fluently." Feng Bujue looked down at the other party with a condescending gaze, shrugged, casually left those words, and then turned to leave.

He knew that this hoodlum would definitely chase after him to take revenge in a while, and he would most likely call some accomplices... and this was exactly what he was expecting.