Chapter 142: Those Who Play Tactics Have Dirty Hearts

Inside the cylindrical chamber with its ice-blue transparent outer wall, everything about the woman was completely frozen in place.

Under the illumination of the lights, the pure and clear liquid within the chamber was utterly free of impurities; through it, one could directly see the woman inside wearing a gown, her eyes tightly closed, her expression calm, her beautiful hair floating slightly upward, standing quietly within this special crystal coffin. Every single strand of hair, every single eyelash, every texture of her skin was perfectly clear; if not for the consideration that she was still alive, describing her as "lifelike" would surely be appropriate.

She would not blink, would not make a sound, had no breath, no heartbeat; all vital signs had vanished from her body, and in this low-temperature world, someone had pressed the pause button on her life.

A hand gently stroked the cryo-chamber. A man wearing special armor looked at this sleeping beauty, looked at her eyebrows and eyes, looked at her graceful gown, and suddenly, the days and nights from many years ago appeared before his eyes: she often pulled him to dance, her beautiful long golden hair and red dress swaying wildly, so vivid, so full of vitality.

Thinking carefully, the first time the two met was also on the ice; she was one of the sports rising stars at that university, while he was an introverted bookworm (adding armor again, this is also from the Eagle's perspective).

"Student, you haven't learned ice skating before, right?"

"Y-yes."

"That's great, uh, I mean, I can teach you."

That day was his first time learning to ice skate, and also the first time he met a girl he liked; he probably fell a few times—he couldn't remember, and it didn't matter, because from beginning to end, she never cared how many times he fell.

He had lived since childhood under his father's control, his mother's quarrels, his teachers' scolding, and his classmates' beatings; it seemed he rarely encountered anything related to "warmth." Only Nora made him feel warmth for the first time; to this day, she remains the only light in his life.

It was also hard for him to distinguish how his childhood quirk of freezing small animals into ice specimens was formed: was it because of his father's stubborn, almost pathological, super-strong desire for control, or because he was naturally a psychologically twisted freak, or perhaps both?

He simply felt that death was the only terrifying endpoint, while the method of freezing could allow things to exist forever. And by freezing life to keep it fixed in place, he could feel stability and peace of mind.

Regardless, he had originally been prepared to spend the rest of his life with Nora, but all of this was destroyed, destroyed by sudden cancer, destroyed by the inhumane GothCorp.

Perhaps it was also destroyed by his own incompetence.

In the dead of night, Victor would occasionally think of the three companies that had once rejected him: Wayne Technologies, Star Labs, LexCorp. If any one of those three companies had hired him, would things have come to this? Would he have become the person he is now?

Through the cryo-chamber, he touched his wife's face; the smooth surface of the chamber also reflected his own face, overlapping and merging with his wife's features.

The man gazed at the face reflected in the chamber. On his smooth, bald face, there was neither hair nor eyebrows nor beard, only a pair of round red goggles; and the strangest part was the strange armor he wore, which sealed him tightly from head to toe, with a transparent large dome covering his head serving as a helmet, allowing him to maintain normal vision.

Observing through this helmet, one would discover the visible, terrifying cold air inside the armor. In fact, the temperature inside the entire suit was maintained at a stable zero degrees Celsius; for an ordinary person, putting on this armor would lead to only one outcome: freezing to death inside this low-temperature iron coffin.

But for ordinary people, this low-temperature armor was lethal; now, however, it had become the life-support device he relied on to survive. If placed in ordinary room temperature, Mr. Freeze would very quickly die.

This was also the masterpiece of that accident.

When his thoughts sank deeper, he suddenly heard a voice in his ear.

"Victor Fries." He heard someone call his name; this was something that had not happened for a long time, because he had been reading newspapers and watching the news on television, and he knew how everyone viewed him now.

The super-criminal Mr. Freeze—that was the impression everyone in Gotham City had of him now; his real name, on the contrary, was forgotten by no one.

"Mr. Victor, I know you might be feeling melancholy right now, but I have been standing here for a long time. Even if you don't want to give me face, can you at least give me a chair?"

"Who?"

Victor turned his head in shock and saw an utterly ordinary man standing silently behind him.

Who was this person? Had he seen him before? How did he sneak in?

He realized these questions could not be answered through thinking, so he grabbed the massive freeze gun hanging on his body and pointed it directly at the man in front of him.

Ma Ma Zhaodi reacted quickly; seeing Mr. Freeze reach for his gun immediately, he instantly relied on his own agile reflexes and extraordinary speed to raise both hands first and shouted out those words.

"I might be able to save Nora!"

One sentence made Mr. Freeze temporarily abandon the idea of pulling the trigger.

"Who are you? How did you get in? Why come looking for me? On what basis do you dare claim you can save my wife?"

"My name is Ma Ma Zhaodi. I came through the main door. I want to discuss a deal with you. I cannot guarantee your wife's recovery, but there is great hope."

"This warehouse clearly has my alarm and surveillance devices; you could not have entered through the main door."

"I hacked those devices."

He is a hacker—Victor immediately made this judgment in his mind.

"Why should I believe you?"

"Is it not enough sincerity that I came alone?" Ma Ma Zhaodi retorted: "You just robbed a bank this morning. If I had malicious intent toward you, or wanted to threaten you, wouldn't I have just called the police directly?"

Victor immediately understood: "I left traces when I robbed the bank. Next time, I will not make the same mistake again."

"If your wife recovers, you won't need to rob again—in fact, I suggest you return the money this very time."

"You have not yet proven you can save her. When I searched the entire global medical community for all authoritative doctors and famous figures back then, they all said they were powerless. You are not even one of them."

"Before Victor Fries became famous, which one of Wayne Technologies, Star Labs, or LexCorp would have thought he could become a genius cryogenics researcher capable of developing groundbreaking research results?"

Hearing Ma Ma Zhaodi's words, Victor's expression softened.

There was no way; he had been truly lacking in love his whole life. Ma Ma Zhaodi's words indeed gave him considerable affirmation.

He finally put down the gun in his hand, which relaxed both of them.

One was Ma Ma Zhaodi in front of him, and the other was Batman, ready to attack at any moment from the beam above.

(End of this chapter)