Chapter 2026: Knight's Nightmare Night (5)

The truck's lights illuminated the dark street, drawing a standard circular arc at the street corner. As the light of the lifting rod lit up, the light like thin gauze lightly crossed the name engraved on the factory gate—"ACE Chemicals".

The rapid raindrops kept knocking on the top of the carriage. In the corner of the closed carriage of the truck, two figures with their arms tied behind their backs curled up. The light leaking from the door crack caused by the vehicle's bumps turned round after round on their faces.

"What exactly did you feed him?" Poison Ivy looked at Peter beside her with a complicated expression, and adjusted her posture with her tied arms, allowing the blood to flow smoothly.

"You can understand it as a living drug." Peter kept staring at the door crack where light leaked out, his eyelashes illuminated like a sharp sword, "It will initially lurk in the body, completely undiscovered, and then gradually affect the mind with its own characteristics."

"So is it a living thing or a drug?"

"It's a living thing." Peter looked at Poison Ivy and said: "It's a kind of intelligent creature called a symbiote. It has wisdom, can communicate, and its main way of survival is parasitism."

Poison Ivy shivered, and Peter continued: "The biggest characteristic of this kind of life is that it can perfectly inherit the personality traits of the previous host and silently affect the next host."

"Red Bee has been in my body for a long time, so even if the other party is a heinous villain, just wait for a period of time, and they will definitely find their conscience."

"You still have a conscience?!" Poison Ivy said with heartache: "You just destroyed Cat Getan a few dozen minutes ago. Scarecrow is too conservative compared to you, and the Joker is not as quick as you!" 【202

Peter blinked, a glimmer flashing across his eyelashes. He shifted his body slightly and then said, "Shh, we're almost at the station."

The truck slowly drove into the underground parking lot of the ACE Chemical Plant, turned in a tunnel full of warning signs, and waited until the red light of the garage door lit up before the vehicle slowly came to a stop.

The driver got out, and for a long time, there was no movement. After a while, the sound of the gate opening came again, and getting closer was a voice full of exasperation.

"... They all fell down in an instant, it's simply insane. I don't know what happened, it must be that damn Strange's doing! Fortunately, to prevent them from being attacked by the fear toxin, I gave them masks in advance."

"But this makes no sense at all. He couldn't have opened the laboratory door alone and completed the plan. What on earth did he use to make the whole city fall?!"

"Are you afraid?" A deep voice sounded again.

"Of course I'm not." The other party clearly raised his voice and said, "But this was not in my plan at all. I gave Batman a twenty-four-hour buffer period just to stall; this was just a smokescreen."

"I need time to wait for the final completion of the cloudburst device, and I also need time to take down the people most important to Batman one by one. This is his punishment!"

"And now Cat Getan is about to be destroyed, Batman must be going crazy. If everyone he cares about dies, he won't let us live either!"

"You sound like a coward afraid of death."

"You... fine, clever Arkham Knight, tell me where you caught Batman's little sidekick, and how did you get into the Batcave?"

"I didn't go in; they ran out on their own."

"Hmph, they are indeed just as stupid." The person opposite sighed and said.

"If everyone else in Cat Getan City falls into a coma, life or death unknown, Batman won't be distracted by anything. He will hunt us down with all his might; we must find a trump card to save our lives."

"Open the door, they are our last chance."

Accompanied by the click of a latch, the door of the truck's cargo hold was opened. Peter squinted his eyes to adjust to the sudden light. After the glaring light dissipated, he saw a man wearing a burlap hood.

"Scarecrow..." Poison Ivy called out his name and said in a cold tone, "It's been a long time."

"Hahaha, Poison Ivy, why are you here again? How could your old flame Batman tolerate you falling into my clutches once more?" Scarecrow's tone was always cold, and he exuded an aura as withered as real straw.

The two were dragged out of the cargo hold by Scarecrow's men and thrown onto the ground. Scarecrow walked up to Peter and lifted Peter's face with his withered hands.

"Look, another fresh flower. Seriously, doesn't that rich guy have some special hobby? The boys he picks are all quite spicy. Throwing them to Penguin would make his strip club a fortune."

By this time, Peter had already shed his green youth and started to truly move toward maturity; both his appearance and physique had begun to possess the charm of a mature man.

And he also had a special temperament, where the rationality of a scholar and the wildness of a beast overlapped, and when he looked at someone intently, there was a mysterious, cold chill that was hard to fathom.

Scarecrow flicked his hand, Peter's head turned to the side, and a shallow bloodstain was left on his jawline.

Poison Ivy's mouth twitched, and she said, "I didn't expect you to have this hobby too. You didn't deceive many students when you were at the university, did you? Are you planning to let me watch you flirt all night here?"

Although he was wearing a mask, one could clearly feel that Scarecrow's expression had darkened. He said in a low voice, "You should talk more, because soon you will never be able to talk again."

"A threat with no force behind it." Poison Ivy turned her head to the side.

Scarecrow turned to look at the man beside him called the Arkham Knight and said, "Did you notify Batman?"

"Of course, he should have received the news by now. Have you and your men laid out the clues?"

"My movements are faster than yours." Scarecrow turned his head to look at the solution tanks placed against the wall and said, "Batman will soon follow the tire tracks here, and then discover that he has fallen into a trap again. There is nothing here except for an explosion."

"Although I would love to see his disappointed expression, in order to continue stalling for time, we must hurry and take the hostages away."

"Of course." The Arkham Knight nodded, then said, "But I don't think you'll mind if I leave a message for that old man. Maybe he'll be so angry he'll call you."

Scarecrow sneered and said, "Suit yourself, let's go."

After saying this, he took his men and hauled Poison Ivy and Peter onto another vehicle, while the Arkham Knight remained on the spot. He then walked to the wall, dipped his fingers into some kind of unknown fluorescent solution, and wrote a line of text on the wall.

"I once trusted you so much."

When the last stroke fell, the Arkham Knight did not take his hand away for a long time, and scene after scene flashed before his eyes.

In a daze, he heard a voice asking.

"Then why not tell him yourself?"

"Don't joke around, he is Batman." The Arkham Knight heard himself answer like this.

He shook his head vigorously, looked back at the empty underground parking lot, pressed his mask to confirm that the filter device against the fear toxin had not failed, and turned to leave.

A black shadow departed, a black shadow descended. The water splashed by the sudden braking sprayed at the corner, and heavy footsteps echoed in the empty underground parking lot.

There was nothing here. Batman turned his head, only to see that line of text glowing with fluorescence in the darkness.

"I once trusted you so much."

Batman walked up to the line of text and gently touched the liquid with his finger. His finger was stained with a bit of the fluorescent paint, and what he didn't notice was that a bit of red in the paint was gradually turning into fluorescent green, slowly sinking under his glove and disappearing into his body.

The next second, the firelight of a massive explosion became the last light in the rainy night.

The military off-road vehicle sped along the street. Peter and Poison Ivy, tied in the back seat, looked at each other. Peter blinked at her a few times and gently nudged Poison Ivy's arm with his elbow.

Poison Ivy turned to look at him and discovered Peter was signaling toward the window. Poison Ivy raised an eyebrow, and Peter helplessly pursed his lips and pointed at the window again.

Wait, reaching out?

"Ugh!!!"

The driver was tightly choked by Peter. Tiny vines instantly unlocked the car door. With a bang, the door was kicked open, and Poison Ivy felt as if she had been grabbed by the arm and thrown out.

Peter followed and snatched the door out—he truly snatched the door out. He used the car door as a shield, held it forward, and blocked the bullets fired by the men in Scarecrow's convoy behind him.

The two rushed into the building in front of them, leaving behind only a series of braking sounds and Scarecrow's exasperated cursing.

Because the power maintenance system wasn't working, the two could only run up the stairs the whole way, running in one breath to the tenth floor or so before stopping in the stairwell to catch their breath.

"Good kid, Batman must have seen a ghost to find you as an assistant." Poison Ivy panted and sighed, "You offended both sides of good and evil in just one hour. What do we do now?"

Peter was just about to answer when he heard Schiller's voice in his ear: "Peter, how are you? What are you doing now?"

"Running away, Doctor."

"Very good, remember to run fast."

Poison Ivy looked at Peter, who was in a daze, with a probing gaze. After Peter came back to his senses, he also exhaled and said, "If I said that using plant toxins to anesthetize the whole city was actually just the first step of the plan, would you fight me to the death?"

"I really, really want to beat you up right now." Poison Ivy supported her knees with both hands and continued to pant, saying, "Otherwise, why don't you try putting down this damn shield?"

Peter immediately held the shield in front of him and said, "I'm not that stupid, and you definitely can't beat me. I've seriously practiced using a shield as a weapon."

"Can you talk about serious business?"

"The second step is to drug Batman."

Poison Ivy coughed violently.

"And it has already succeeded."

Poison Ivy almost choked herself to death.

"This magical race called the Symbiote can produce offspring by splitting itself." Peter sat on the windowsill behind him to rest and said, "It only takes splitting off a few factors to produce a brand-new offspring, and according to my research, the direct descendants of Symbiotes often have strong hostility, or appetite, toward their predecessors."

"It can also be understood as them wanting to return to the main body and merge with their predecessors again. The more power they consume, the stronger this desire becomes. This intense desire, which humans cannot understand, will subtly influence the host's mind, making them start to hunt blindly."

"So?"

"I put the Symbiote into the Arkham Knight's body and let the Symbiote leave behind split factors in the underground garage. If nothing goes wrong, the offspring Symbiote is already inside Batman's body now."

"Ah?"

"So for the next period of time, Batman will follow the Symbiote's instincts to find the Arkham Knight. They should fight for several rounds, and we can catch our breath for a while."