Chapter 2031

Fine rain dripped onto the metal armor. On this turbulent night, cold iron was like a blade.

"You injected Batman with fear gas?"

Arkham Knight looked at Spider-Man's bright uniform, a color that was originally out of place with Cat Getan's gray tone, but at this moment, it actually matched very well with the neon signs of Chinatown behind him.

That wasn't a straightforward coldness and seriousness; it had never been the Bat-style. Had Batman really not noticed all along?

Arkham Knight couldn't accept Batman being deceived, and even less could he accept him falling for such ridiculous means. So he stepped forward, and his pistol was loaded.

"That was just a small repayment," Spider-Man said.

Arkham Knight heard an indescribable indifference in this sentence. His memory began to become a bit chaotic again.

"He abandoned you, you useless, pathetic worm. You once trusted him so much, but he didn't come to find you, didn't come to save you. Is this the repayment for your love and trust?"

That sharp, hoarse voice rang out in his ear again. Arkham Knight struggled to tighten his eyelids, almost able to clearly hear the sound of blood flowing through his own cerebral cortex.

"Jason, Jason Todd, your departure was exactly what he wanted. Your disappearance was too. He has already appeared over Cat Getan again with his new Robin."

The skin on the right side of his waist and abdomen began to twitch uncontrollably. Arkham Knight took a deep breath.

"Read the content of this newspaper to me, good boy. See how they report the heroic posture of Batman and his new Robin. Either you memorize it, or I will sew it into your body."

Breathing began to become more and more rapid. Arkham Knight heard his own heartbeat again, and then came that kind of dizziness with euphoria. All pain disappeared, and his memory began to become more and more blurry.

"No... don't..." Arkham Knight muttered to himself.

Then he swung the gun in his hand forcefully, aimed it straight at Spider-Man's forehead, and said, "What did you do to me?"

"Everything has started to go wrong since I met you. What exactly did you do?"

"Do you think there is anything about you that is right?" Spider-Man's tone contained disdain. He said, "You have already proven that you aren't as powerful as I am. Now do you want to argue that you are more noble than I am?"

"Your master is already dead. He has already turned into ashes and been buried in a sea of fire. But this doesn't mean you aren't a lackey for a super-criminal, Jason Todd. We are all the same."

"What are you talking about?!" Arkham Knight's anger grew thicker, but the pain-suppressing substances excessively secreted within his body made him sound a bit weak, so he had to mobilize more of his emotions to restore his prestige.

"I have already investigated," Spider-Man said with his arms crossed. "You defected to the Joker about a year ago, but he was a fool who burned himself to death, so you could only find yourself a new backer."

Anger exploded in Arkham Knight's head, but Spider-Man was still chattering on: "You want to say you weren't willing, but at the beginning, no one was. Being chosen, being hurt, choosing betrayal, changing camps—we do it for ourselves."

"But I have waited for this opportunity for too long, Jason Todd. I won't let you ruin the plan I have prepared for so long. Go to hell with your master."

BOOM!!!!

The violent explosion attracted Batman and Nightwing's attention, but when they rushed to the vicinity of Chinatown, only a piece of charred wreckage remained here.

Batman jumped down from the rooftop and walked to the side of the wreckage of an exploded car. He bent down and picked up a gleaming metal fragment from the ground.

When the fabric of his gauntlet brushed lightly against the metal surface, Batman revealed a thoughtful expression.

When the scene before his eyes distorted along with the rain lines, it began to ripple continuously.

A youth covered in blood was sitting on a chair with his hands hung up, and another figure walked slowly out of the darkness behind him.

It was thinner than Batman had expected—it wasn't Penguin, but the Joker.

Batman's heart felt as if it were being tightly gripped by a giant hand. He heard the Joker's whisper again.

"It has already been six months. While you forgot him, what was he experiencing? Let me tell you, Batman."

"Do you know? Human pain reflex can be established after birth. When you break through the bottom line of hypocritical humanitarianism, you will find that the human spirit is so fragile and unbearable, as primitive as a beast."

"When he guards his food, you swing the whip. One day, he will be tamed by you. As long as you apply enough pain when he recalls a certain memory, he will eventually forget."

"And then what? Right, of course, it's implanting new memories, but that isn't boring fabrication out of thin air, but strengthening his anger and resentment. He will imagine everything into an even darker appearance himself."

"This is all thanks to you, Batman. You didn't come to find him, couldn't save him. Now look at my great achievement."

Batman felt every inch of skin on his body in pain. When certain memory fragments flashed by, this kind of pain made one want to go crazy.

Suddenly, the pain weakened, and his heart rate began to slow down gradually. A hazy halo appeared before his eyes. Batman looked down, and the painkiller injection button on his gauntlet didn't light up.

"What did you do to me?" Batman asked, muttering to himself.

Nightwing called him from behind, but he didn't react, just standing where he was and waiting quietly. Clearly, he had already discovered the abnormality in his own body.

A series of blurry thoughts appeared in Batman's mind. They sounded so immature and simple, but carried a kind of unknown terror.

"Don't... think... he is... bad."

"Who are you?"

"I need... energy... to grow."

Very good, Batman thought. Joker virus, fear gas, and now another inexplicable parasite. Do bacterial colonies always grow exceptionally vigorously in environments that are even more arduous?

Exactly which hallucinations were caused by the Joker virus? Which were fear gas? Which physical reactions were brought by the symbiote? What exactly was the relationship between them?

Batman thought of a plan he once had, but now he had to find Barbara's whereabouts, so he turned to Nightwing and said, "Regardless of whether Barbara was taken away by Harley Quinn or she left the base on her own, she must have had time to leave clues."

"I will have Peter watch the Eye system in the Batcave to find Harley Quinn's whereabouts. You go to the Clock Tower. Contact me immediately after finding useful clues."

Nightwing nodded and turned to leave. Batman boarded the Batmobile again. He pressed the button on the communicator and said, "Peter, are you there?... Peter?"

Batman frowned. He switched channels and dialed Peter's private communication number.

"Hello?"

Just as Peter spoke, Batman heard wind on the other side, and Peter's tone was abnormal, seemingly in the middle of strenuous exercise.

"Peter, answer me. Where are you now?"

"I am... I am being chased! That psychopath called Arkham Knight is chasing me!"

"You left the Batcave?"

"Yes, because Poison Ivy said she wanted me to help her save the plants in Cat Getan, and I thought she saved me, so I had to help..."

Batman subconsciously pressed his finger to his forehead. After a silence, he asked, "Can't you subdue him?"

"He's like a madman! He's crazily trying to attack me. I'm afraid I can't control the power of my counterattack. I can't kill him, can I?!"

"What happened to him?"

"I don't know!" Spider-Man, who was running, looked back at Arkham Knight chasing behind him. The originally gleaming metal armor was now pitch black, and the lining in some places was tattered, but Arkham Knight could still move freely, his face filled with wild rage.

It seemed the power of the seven exploding cars was still a bit small, Spider-Man thought. Perhaps it was because Red Bee had eaten too well inside his body, helping Arkham Knight bear a great impact, so the other party's chasing speed was a bit beyond his expectations.

"Can you shake him off?" Batman asked, but then added, "Move toward Chinatown. I will wait for you on the rooftop there."

Turning the head of the Batmobile, not long after, Batman saw a red and blue figure on the horizon. A glowing fine thread stuck to the tail of the Batmobile, and he heard Peter shout, "Take off!!"

The Batmobile soared into the air. Spider-Man grabbed the web and looked at the ground. The sound of bullets whizzing by rang out, but the Batmobile accelerated suddenly, and Arkham Knight on the ground became more and more distant.

Retracting the web, he jumped onto the roof of the car, then opened the door and climbed into the seat. Peter took off his mask, let out a long breath, and said, "Thanks. I thought he would chase me all the way to California."

"I told you to stay in the Batcave."

"I wanted to, but I think Poison Ivy made sense. Plants are innocent, after all."

Batman remained silent. Peter glanced at the navigation map in the Batmobile and asked, "Where are we going now?"

"I am waiting for Nightwing's news. Before that, we have to catch Penguin. I want to figure out what exactly is going on."

Peter suddenly said, "Uh, then can you drop me off first? The fear toxin still needs analysis."

Batman's movements paused. He sensed Peter was a bit unnatural, but he still said, "Then get off here. Be careful on the way back."

Peter looked out the car window. He wasn't far from the Batcave, so he nodded. When the Batmobile hovered above the rooftop, he got out of the car, and his figure disappeared into the vast, rainy night.

Batman watched his back for a long time before withdrawing his gaze and driving toward the Bingshan Lounge.

But when he landed in front of the Bingshan Lounge and looked inside, he discovered that the gang thugs he had knocked down earlier and the guests who had been drugged unconscious were all gone.

Passing through the bar's dance floor and walking toward the back of the restaurant, he remembered that at that time, he had just broken Penguin's legs, and Nightwing said he had discovered signs of the bank vault door being violently broken into, so Batman went to investigate.

According to Batman's usual behavior, he should have sent Penguin to the Cat Getan Police Department first, but he had solved all the thugs here, and the vast majority of people in Cat Getan City were unconscious. Penguin had been beaten with broken legs and couldn't run. It wouldn't be a problem to leave him here for now since no one would come to save him.

But not long after he left, Penguin appeared on the screen, full of vigor. Even if he could barely sit up and talk, the building where he appeared had long since lost power. Who restored the power? It couldn't be that Penguin dragged two broken legs to connect the power himself, right?

Clearly, someone was helping Penguin behind the scenes, and the other party had quite extraordinary mobility and technical skills; otherwise, they wouldn't have grasped Batman's movement trajectory so accurately and pulled off such a thing right under his nose.

To know what happened where Penguin was when he left, Batman had to return here. The vast majority of criminal lairs had surveillance from the Eye, but Penguin renovated his safehouses every month, and Batman hadn't had time to install surveillance this month.

But Batman knew that Penguin certainly installed surveillance himself, so he only needed to hack into the surveillance system to see what exactly happened at that time.

Batman passed through a messy first floor, entered the safehouse where he had dismantled the door, then followed the wires to the electrical room in the back, found the circuit for the surveillance camera, and then found the controlling computer.

Opening the computer, Batman hacked into the system very easily, but the recording files very coincidentally missed the footage of the few dozen minutes after he left. So Batman began to call up the access records.

At this moment, Nightwing called.

"Batman, I discovered abnormal access records on Oracle's computer. Someone deleted quite a few surveillance recording files. Who do you think did it?"

Batman frowned deeply.