Chapter 170: The Long Easter (Part 5)

"First of all, what I want to tell you is that, just as you guessed, now, your stronghold has become completely sealed, like a can."

"And the oxygen in the can is limited. How many people are there now? Hmm? I guess at least 20, right?"

"According to this number, the existing oxygen in the can can only keep you alive for three hours at most."

"You thought you hid this stronghold very secretly, but we discovered it long ago."

"And just as you guessed, this is a premeditated trap, and now, I want to play a game with you."

"An oxygen pipeline is leading to this can, but the pipe opening for oxygen delivery is hidden in the wall. You must dig the wall yourself to find this pipeline, otherwise, after three hours, the oxygen will be completely exhausted."

Tomato free reading

"Owls also need to breathe, right?"

The woman wearing the bird-shaped mask's fingers began to tremble a bit, but the voice in the radio hadn't stopped. Everyone heard him say: "Don't fantasize that your companions or the assassins you trained will come to save you. Judging from the thickness and hardness of the ice layer surrounding you, no one, not even a machine, will be able to dig to you within three hours."

The voice in the recorder began to become rhythmic, echoing in the conference room, darker and more terrifying than the nursery rhyme spread by the Court of Owls.

"In the past, you stood on the high-rise buildings of Cat Getan City, looking down at all living beings, watching the suffering people digging for food that could fill their stomachs in the land."

"Later, you hid underground, looking up at countless pairs of scarred feet of mortals, rushing for survival."

"And now, you will experience the taste of obtaining survival opportunities with your own hands."

They heard the voice in the recorder become gentle, even a bit tender, like sleep-talking: "…My little birds, dig, in order to obtain a trace of the most ordinary and cheap air, dig until your fingers break."

"Or, use your death… to offer a sacrifice for Cat Getan's resurrection."

After the voice fell, someone in the conference room finally couldn't hold it anymore. A man wearing a mask threw the recorder out with a trembling body, and it fell to the ground. The others looked at his crazy behavior and remained silent.

"…Do we really have to dig?" The female voice's tone became a bit trembling. She said: "There are no tools here. How are we going to dig open these walls…"

"We are already trapped. If we don't dig, we will suffocate to death!"

"But what if he is lying to us?" An old voice said.

"But if we wait here, we will definitely die! This is a carefully designed trap. They won't let us go!"

"Do you want me to use my fingers to dig those wall bricks?!" Another man shouted. Then, he stood up, waving his somewhat fat arms and said: "I am one of the members of the 13th Jury! And I am the most senior one! My family is too. You all go dig! I order you!"

Others stood up one after another, refuting what he said. Someone said: "My family is the richest now, it should be you who go dig!"

Others also said: "It should be the strong ones who go dig!"

"Why should I go?"

"This matter is all your fault! You should go!"

"You are also…"

In the gap of the argument, suddenly, silence shrouded for a few seconds.

Obviously, someone among them thought of a way to prolong their life that was easier than digging walls.

In the office of the Cat Getan Police Department, everyone was silent. Gordon shuddered. He looked at Schiller and said: "I think the problem of the Court of Owls might not be too serious. What is serious is…"

"You wouldn't have planned this long ago, would you?" Victor also turned to look at Schiller.

Schiller rolled his eyes and said: "I lied to them. Who knows where those hidden strongholds are hidden? How could I spend so much effort to lay an oxygen pipeline for them?"

"Alright, let's not mention this. The remaining link is bargaining. Detective Gordon, I remember you said before that several gang bosses are particularly difficult to deal with and like to negotiate with the police?"

"Don't mention it." Gordon rubbed his temples and said: "I get a headache whenever I mention them."

"That's good, then it's them. Let them take turns arguing with the Court of Owls and tell them that the final compensation will be increased by 5 points."

"Hiss…" Gordon gasped and said: "The Court of Owls will lose their pants!"

Then Gordon clicked his tongue and said: "I always feel you planned this long ago."

"Do you want to hear me tell a fairy tale?" Schiller blinked with a smile.

"That was a group of little birds with golden feathers. The poor little birds fell into the hands of the hunter because of carelessness. They begged for the hunter's forgiveness and were willing to pull out their precious feathers to exchange for the hunter letting them go…"

Schiller suddenly changed the topic again and said: "What do you plan to eat for Easter?"

He asked and answered himself: "Anyway, I plan to eat roast chicken."

One night passed. The next morning, the news of a large-scale terrorist attack in Cat Getan made the front page of major newspapers.

Mayor Luo Yi cried bitterly at the press conference, condemning the casualties caused by terrorists, and also blamed the federal government for failing to fulfill its security obligations, calling Cat Getan a 'discarded city'.

Collapsed buildings, broken walls on the streets, submerged shops, and frozen cars—with the release of disaster photos, the Court of Owls also became cruel terrorists despised by everyone.

Various confusing news reports emerged one after another, and the casualty figures began to become more and more exaggerated. From the initial tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, by the end, more than half of Cat Getan's citizens were dead or injured.

However, strangely, compared to disaster relief operations, various fundraising activities started faster. Major newspapers published fundraising channels, and Cat Getan held dozens of charity dinners within a week before Easter.

On a cold morning on the weekend, the report on the desk of the municipal office flipped with the breeze outside the window.

The thin paper flipped page by page, the numbers kept growing, and finally, a seal "clattered" on it. Luo Yi raised his hand, handed the report to his subordinate, and said: "Happy Easter."

As his voice fell, the branches outside the window began to grow, and tender green buds stretched out from the branches. Cat Getan's largest reconstruction in history began.

Before, Cat Getan's renovation was basically patching where it was wrong. If there was an open space here, a warehouse would be built; if there was an open space there, a station would be opened. This made the professors at Cat Getan University who studied urban planning have a headache. This patching reconstruction method was actually the method with the worst effect, but at that time, there was no other way.

But this time it was different. Due to a flood plus a freeze, the volume expansion caused by the process of water turning into ice cracked most of the surface. If it wasn't repaired, it would be impossible to pass through.

Even if you didn't want your territory to be renovated, there was no way. The destruction of the road had reached the point where you couldn't even walk. If you didn't participate in the renovation, you could only stay at home and wait for starvation.

Things had come to this point. It was already broken. If you wanted to continue living, you had to repair it.

Overnight, Cat Getan's unemployment rate almost became 0, because manpower was needed everywhere—rebuilding sewers, repairing roads and collapsed houses, building new logistics facilities according to new plans…

This sounded very unreasonable because there was no output in a short time, but the organizer needed to pay a large amount of labor costs. The upfront investment required for this was an astronomical figure.

But thanks to the Court of Owls, which had already been plucked bald, the unlucky guys who were locked up in this dog-rich joint organization cried and plucked all their feathers, providing ample funds for Cat Getan's reconstruction plan. Even if it couldn't be profitable in the short term, it could still persist.

Money was in place, people were in place, and the reconstruction plan would proceed very smoothly, and the benefits brought by the underground ice layer were more than one.

Cat Getan belongs to an East Coast city with a monsoon humid climate, with four distinct seasons, that is, cold in winter and hot in summer.

In the past, in April, the temperature had risen significantly and began to enter the hot summer, but the huge underground ice layer changed the local climate, causing Cat Getan's average temperature to drop by more than 10 degrees, returning to the temperature of early winter.

Cat Getan citizens were not used to this climate, and colds were frequent these days.

But some people were looking for a place to escape the heat.

The East Coast was not all a climate with four distinct seasons like Cat Getan. There were also places that were very hot. By April, it was already summer. These people had to go further north to escape the heat, and now, Cat Getan had become the closest low-temperature city to them.

Of course, they didn't dare to come to Cat Getan for tourism, but Cat Getan's climate change also affected the surrounding areas, such as Blüdhaven. For a time, Blüdhaven's tourism industry actually flourished.

Blüdhaven was almost dizzy from the pie falling from the sky.

This place was actually just a small city. Because it was too close to Cat Getan, there were no outsiders, so the degree of development was relatively low, possessing many natural rural landscapes, and it was not like Cat Getan, which was cloudy and rainy every day.

Since Cat Getan's climate changed, Blüdhaven had sunny days during the day and cool breezes in the morning and evening, making people feel very comfortable, attracting many tourists from surrounding cities.

Because Blüdhaven was too close to Cat Getan, many of Cat Getan's news reached here in the first time.

But these tourists didn't see a terrifying city full of murders or daily bloodshed. All the news circulating from Cat Getan could be summarized in two big words—short of people.

As mentioned before, although there were many local residents in Cat Getan, they had been idle for too long, and their work efficiency was too low. Even with full employment, it was still not enough to rebuild such a large city.

Although Cat Getan was a mega-city, there were not many migrant workers. In this era of comprehensive infrastructure upgrades, the lack of labor had become the biggest obstacle to efficiency. Major gangs were looking for people like crazy, even offering high prices to hire outsiders.

As the saying goes, there are all kinds of birds in a big forest. When there are many people, there are always a few who are not afraid of death. There were really a few people who dared to come to Cat Getan to work at the risk of their lives.

After the outsiders came to Cat Getan, they found that this city was not what they imagined. Before, they thought it should be a city with gunfights every day and zero-dollar shopping as the theme. But after coming here, they found that Cat Getan had order.

Compared with other regions, Cat Getan was indeed strange. The maintainers of order here were gangs. They were tough, violent, had many ideas, and were crazy, but violent order was still order.

When the whole city entered a fanatical atmosphere of making a big cake together, many shortcomings brought by violent order were covered up, and the remaining advantages were amazing, such as efficiency and stability.

Using the adjective "stable" for such a city sounded absurd, but it was a fact. Outsiders found that the order built by gangs was actually very stable, at least when funds were abundant and everyone had work to do.

The world was not short of desperate people who fought for money. The news that Cat Getan had money to earn spread quickly, and many such people began to move, wanting to come to Cat Getan to try their luck.

The influx of more and more outsiders began to make Cat Getan's internal situation noticed and discussed by people. The mysterious veil of this city of sin was gradually uncovered, and the figure of this city began to appear in major media and newspapers.

Many people thought this was a barbaric land of drinking blood, some thought this was a city of crime where sin was bred, but more people saw from these reports about Cat Getan a chaotic but wealthy super metropolis.

The gang leaders here drove luxury cars, smoked cigars, took a stack of banknotes and sprinkled them from the roof, rock singers sang heavy metal in the money rain, behind them were various chaotic and gorgeous graffiti, neon lights reflected the endless traffic on the road, and the crowd shouted crazily on the side of the road…

Just like Schiller, people began to realize that this was not only a city of crime but also a city of genius. This was a city of sin and also a city of art.

There had never been a city in the world that possessed Cat Getan's absurd and strange beauty. This was the soil of performance art and the paradise of misunderstood madmen.

Even many people found resonance from this temperament. They began to try to deconstruct the causes and status quo of such a unique city, and then were infected by the madness overflowing here, becoming spiritual residents of the city of sin.

Artists worshiped madness, intellectuals shouted for freedom, fools lived absurdly, smart people gathered wealth, and Cat Getan's chaos bred countless distinct souls. Never had people in any place been so different.

When this temperament began to be recognized by people, Cat Getan's image also changed from the evil city of human depravity before to the root of sin with a touch of divinity and mystery.

It was hard to say this was a good change, but at least there was a change.

This change in external image also brought other changes, such as the phone at Cat Getan University's admissions consultation office began to ring non-stop. Some young people who pursued rebellion and curiosity began to include Cat Getan University in their list of schools to apply for.

But the teachers at Cat Getan University had no time to answer questions. Freezing Cat Getan naturally also affected Cat Getan University's teaching facilities, mainly the road cracking problem, which was very headache-inducing.

Because the school square and playground had large-scale cracks, students couldn't move, and the teaching building became a dangerous building overnight due to foundation damage, and no one dared to go. Teaching activities were temporarily stalled, and no one else could spare manpower to help, so teachers and students could only do it themselves.

The original Easter activities were almost all canceled. The restaurant building collapsed a corner, so don't mention organizing any dinner party. Everyone seemed to have forgotten Easter. At this time, everyone was focusing on rebuilding the campus.

Schiller led several students to walk quickly through the hallway and came to the door of the large classroom. After pushing the door open, the students saw it was him and shouted hurriedly: "Professor! Here! We can't hold him anymore!"

Schiller walked over. Several students were pressing down on a boy who was struggling crazily. He kept waving his arms and shouting, twitching with foam at the mouth, looking exactly like a mental illness attack.

Schiller said: "Subdue him first, then lift him to the car and send him to the hospital."

After Schiller followed the car to Arkham Asylum, before he went to treat him, another phone call came. Victor said on the other side: "Another person in Building 2 of the dormitory area has fallen ill. It seems to be a sophomore girl. What is going on?"

"It might be a sequela of being caught in the rain. I must conduct a detailed examination. Once there are more cases, send them directly to the hospital."

After Schiller hung up the phone, he came to the boy's ward. Through the observation window, he saw the boy hiding on one side of the bed with a face full of fear, constantly shouting meaningless syllables loudly. Schiller shook his head and whispered: "This symptom is a bit wrong…"

He called Victor and asked: "Have these students come into contact with anything lately?"

"Didn't you say it was being caught in the rain…"

"This symptom is not quite the same as being caught in the rain. Although there are symptoms of twitching and excitement, there are some differences in details."

"Contacted anything…" Victor on the other side sounded very confused. He said: "I'll help you ask. These two students are not in the same class… Oh! Wait! What did you say? Damn it… another person has fallen ill! Where is he? Take me there quickly…"

Then Victor said to the other side of the phone while running: "Another student has fallen ill. Once I find the common point, I will tell you…"

－－－－－－Author's Note－－－－－－

10,000 words delivered today!

Recently, new subscriptions have fallen by a quarter.

I found that DC really has fewer people watching than Marvel.

But I still want to write DC.

I love DC. ===== CHAPTER 171 =====

I love DC.