MM Racing Chapter 3330 Bloody New City (79)
Chapter 3330 Bloody New City (79)
Chapter 3330 Bloody New City (Seventy-nine)
The cold moonlight penetrated the clouds and shone into the hall on the first floor of Arkham Asylum, but it stopped abruptly as it flowed down the stairs, failing to bring any light to the underground prison.
Schiller squatted down and stroked the protruding black crystals on the pit wall with his fingertips. The gray mist lingered around his fingertips, like another tactile organ of his.
"The radiation value is four hundred times higher than that of ordinary meteorites." Gray Mist whispered in his ear, "These crystals are continuously releasing unknown rays. If ordinary people are exposed to this radiation environment, unpredictable consequences will occur."
Schiller felt a burning pain like a needle prick in his fingertips. This was the feeling that ordinary people had, which the gray fog conveyed to him truthfully.
He withdrew his hand, and suddenly dense gray smoke rose from the bottom of the pit, twisting into a series of runes that looked very similar to the runes in the magic circle in the Batman photo.
"This is not a naturally fallen meteorite." Schiller picked up a small piece of crystal and crushed it into powder, watching it glow a deep red in the dim light. "Perhaps the Order Cult summoned this meteorite. This is part of their conspiracy."
The sirens are still tearing through the Gotham night sky. The hunt for the Angel of Death Paul continues, and will surely get tighter as time goes by. Schiller must find out the truth before he is arrested.
When Schiller walked out of Arkham Asylum, three police cars with GTO logos passed by him. Deputy Chief of Police Harvey Bullock was afraid that he could no longer withstand the pressure from the State Assembly. The participation of GTO meant that the Angel of Death did not have much time left.
Schiller opened the car door and got in. The dashboard showed 1:17 a.m. - forty-three minutes left before the Gotham Historical Museum closed.
The underground archives of the Gotham History Museum smell musty, as if the history deposited here is still fermenting.
Schiller took the pass from the pocket of the unconscious security guard in front of him. About 20 minutes later, he stood in the dim light, his eyes moving on the yellowed bound volume of Gotham Valley.
The headlines of April 1718 suddenly stopped him in his tracks: "Fireballs falling from the sky! Mysterious meteorites falling into Gotham Valley! The general has not yet declared an evacuation, so please keep an eye on the situation!"
In the picture accompanying the report, a surveyor wearing a tricorn hat was drawing a sketch of the meteorite crater with a pencil. Schiller zoomed in on the details of the drawing and found that the marked point where the meteorite fell completely overlapped with the terrain of Arkham Asylum.
When he called up the construction files, he immediately discovered something - the completion date of Arkham Fortress was exactly 91 days after the meteorite fell.
Suddenly, footsteps were heard coming from the spiral staircase.
"I thought the closing times were clearly stated." The archivist holding the flashlight was a silver-haired old lady with a name tag that read "Maggie Collins - 42 years in office."
Schiller just turned his head and looked at her quietly, but he saw the old man walked straight to a bookshelf, took out a retro-looking videotape from there, and put it into the even more retro machine.
"Is this what you're looking for?"
Her skinny fingers pressed the button, and a yellowed image appeared on the wall - General Arkham suddenly twitched at the fortress completion ceremony, his eyes rolled back and he screamed "He is calling!".
"You're the third person to look up this information in the past 25 years." Maggie lit a mint cigarette, and the old scar on her neck was revealed in the smoke.
"The third one?" Schiller narrowed his eyes slightly. He had guessed that the Pale Knight might have investigated these. Who was the remaining one? Who else would care about these old things?
It started raining again in Gotham. The cold rain in this autumn night obviously added a lot of trouble to the pursuit. This might be the last blessing God gave to the angel of death.
Heavy rain washed the windshield, and the light from the street lamps swept across Schiller's hands holding the steering wheel again and again.
The car radio was playing a piece of soundprint data restored by Gray Fog, which was the infrasound extracted from the soil of the meteorite crater using spectral analysis. When the frequency suddenly increased to 22.3 Hz, the special substance that Schiller got suddenly vibrated in the bottle.
“The experimental data on low-frequency sound waves inducing delirium match too closely.”
"speak English."
"Using special frequencies to stimulate meteorite crystals can induce psychosis."
Schiller sighed. "This thing has many functions. It can cause cancer and induce mental illness."
Schiller slammed on the brakes. The windshield wipers swung regularly, making a dull sound.
The warning of Maggie, the museum administrator, echoed in his mind: "This meteorite is not a relic, but a seed. It is using radiation to rewrite everything for mankind..."
"Batman and Paul's mental illness is not an accident." Schiller tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "The Order used the crystals in the meteorite to artificially create two mentally ill patients."
"No, there should be three." Schiller said suddenly, "General Arkham was the first. Shortly after the meteorite landed, news about his corruption was rampant."
Gray Wu did not answer. He felt the very restrained anger signals released by Schiller's brain waves and knew that he would be very busy in the next period of time.
Back in front of the crater, Schiller stared at the dark hole for a long time without saying a word. He said, "Can you tell where the meteorite fell from?"
"I can guess it." Gray Mist replied, "Folmalmünster, Cthugha's hometown."
"That's clever, but..."
"what?"
"I'm beginning to understand Anatoly a little bit."
As the morning light pierced through the clouds, Schiller stood on the rooftop of City Hall and looked down at Gotham. The rain made the bodies of the police cars as bright as mirrors, and the police cars still shuttled through the narrow streets of Gotham like a school of fish.
"There's even worse news," Gray Mist said. "The buildings in Arkham Asylum are not strong enough to block radiation. The soil in the crater continues to emit low-frequency sound waves, causing the radiation produced by the crystals to constantly stimulate the spirits of all living things around them, including the criminals in Arkham Asylum."
"So they might not have been crazy originally, or not that crazy, but after being thrown in, the crystal radiation made everything worse?"
"Exactly. Who do you think it benefits them to go even crazier?"
"Of course they are the elite. As I said before, in Gotham, crime is an investment, and the crazier the criminal, the better."
Schiller paused and then continued, "Batman must not know this. His depression is getting worse. If he knows that he personally sent criminals into a crazy hell and caused more people to suffer, it will be even more difficult for him to get better."
"What are you going to do next?"
"First, we have to do our job as a doctor. Find the crystal that continues to affect Batman's mental state and destroy it. Make sure his mental state doesn't deteriorate. Then we can talk about other things."
"That thing must be very close to him. What do you think it is?"
"If they wanted Alfred dead because of the diary Brad gave him. If they wanted Fox and Dr. Tompkins dead because he could provide more help to Bruce Wayne, then what about Jason?"
"I guess that guy must have been very close to the truth." Gray Mist quickly became proud and said, "Although you don't like being a detective, I secretly looked into Batman's mind. I will be a good detective."
"…Which Batman's brain?"
"The Prime Universe Batman... and Arkham Batman, I promise I only learned their detective wisdom."
"You better be."
The glass curtain wall of the city hall building refracted Gotham's not-so-bright midday sunlight into faint golden spots. Schiller tapped the rim of the coffee cup with his fingertips, causing ripples to appear in the latte in the cup.
When Jason pushed open the door, the vibration frequency of the wind chimes also seemed a little dull. Schiller squinted his eyes and looked at the mud on the young man's tactical boots, leaving a gray-blue mark on the tiles that was unique to the sedimentary rocks under Gotham - this was evidence that he had just crawled out of the Diamond District sewer, Gray Mist told him.
"The Angel of Death has changed his hiding spot." Jason pulled out a chair and sat down, slamming his tactical gloves on the dining table, making the cutlery jingle. "Nightwing has cracked the fire trap he left in Crime Alley, and now the GTO drone is checking the warehouse in the port area."
Schiller pushed over a cup of hot cocoa that had been ordered long ago. A gray mist was floating on the milk foam in the cup. When Jason held the handle of the cup, a three-dimensional map of Gotham's underground pipeline network emerged in the hot cocoa. Jason instinctively looked at a certain place in it. Schiller knew that it should be the last hiding place of the Angel of Death.
Not surprisingly, Paul was a downtown rat, and the sewers were his best hiding place.
“Those idiots at the FBI are still checking the financial accounts.” Jason sneered and poked at the floating projection, “But Nightwing found this—” He threw out a deformed piece of metal with a familiar pattern engraved on it. It was the logo of the Order.
As expected, Paul knew who his real enemy was. He would remind himself all the time that he must not stop until the sinners received the punishment they deserved.
"It seems to be a special metal."
"Yes, a part of the Batmobile. To be exact, it was pried off from Nightwing's car. The way this guy borrowed the material was too violent." Jason drank half a cup of cocoa in one gulp, and his Adam's apple rolled, revealing the new burn on the side of his neck. "The madman used this material to transform his long sword. He is becoming more and more difficult to deal with."
Schiller calmly changed the subject: "Tell me about the days before you were kidnapped - was it raining the last time you entered the Batcave?"
Jason's grip on the cup suddenly tightened, spider-web cracks appeared on the ceramic surface. Memories have never been a good option for him.
"It was a blizzard night." The boy's pupils dilated slightly. "Batman once again borrowed energy to sustain life. The heater was broken, and I was shivering in Alfred's wool blanket. Bruce was analyzing Black Mask's shipping manifest in front of the Batcomputer, and I..." He suddenly grabbed the sugar bowl and poured three bags of sugar into the cocoa, "and I stole the palladium scraps from the workbench."
Schiller noticed that Jason unconsciously rubbed the base of his right hand, which was a scar left by long-term use of a precision welding gun.
"You made a batarang out of scraps." Schiller used a declarative sentence. He saw a few drops of cocoa splash on the table when the boy suddenly raised his head.
Jason ripped open his turtleneck sweater and pulled out a blackened silver chain. The pendant was a miniature batarang with the initials "JT" engraved on the blade: "It took me two weeks to adjust the aerodynamic structure, and I ended up chipping off the Batmobile's rearview mirror during testing. This is the leftover scraps."
Schiller looked over there with the help of the vision through the gray fog. In the nanoscale imaging, the inside of the dart was covered with black filaments - crystals.
"Bruce took it away." Jason's voice suddenly became hoarse. "He said that as Robin, he didn't need such a dangerous toy." The boy dug his nails deep into his palm. "But two weeks later I caught him stuffing this thing in his bat belt."
Schiller's coffee cup made a slight crisp sound. He suddenly understood everything.
"Guilt is a good knife." Schiller wiped the coffee stains on the back of his hand. "Every time he used your gift, his brain was exposed to more crystal radiation. Until recently, he was almost completely transformed into a beast without reason."
Jason was about to stand up when he bumped into the damping force field woven by the gray fog. Amid the young man's beast-like panting, Schiller looked out the window calmly. The conspiracy unfolded before his eyes.
Taking advantage of a child's innocent love, delivering a deadly poison to the father, and then taking the child away, leaving the father with only the guilt of the final souvenir - this ensures that Batman will always carry the dart with him.
"Where did you get the materials?" Schiller looked at Jason and asked.
"Mostly from the Batcave. But I added some toner myself. I bought it myself...On the way back, I ran into the Joker robbing a bank, and he was holding a gun to the head of a female employee."