Chapter 2082: Superman

A truly peculiar scene appeared within Cat Getan.

The team of scientists led by Peter dissolved the hallucinogenic drugs used to isolate the mysterious components of the plant toxins into orange juice, distributing it in large quantities to the lower-class citizens of Cat Getan, hoping they could shake off their madness as soon as possible.

The Joker Gang, represented by Harley Quinn, followed their long-standing principle of "watching the fun without fearing the chaos," believing that the public had the right to enjoy the madness of freedom, and thus they constantly attacked the teams distributing the orange juice.

At first, the scientists were at a disadvantage because most members of the Joker Gang were local thugs from Cat Getan's lower depths who possessed the home-field advantage, targeting the trucks transporting the orange juice for fierce assaults.

The members of the Joker Gang were also clever; they often struck and retreated, not wasting unnecessary time on killing or silencing witnesses, simply snatching the orange juice to delay the detoxification process.

The scientist team responded by adapting to the situation, changing their surface transport to using vines and roots controlled by Poison Ivy, moving the orange juice through Cat Getan's sewers.

However, the Joker Gang members turned their attention to the vulnerable groups in the retail chain—the children recruited temporarily due to a lack of manpower—attacking several orphanages and stealing the orange juice from there.

If it were just a confrontation between these two sides, it might have been fine, but in this chaotic city, there had never been a clean stage. No one had the self-awareness to leave space for the duelists; most just added fuel to the fire, fearing they weren't causing enough trouble.

First was the Robin Gang, who had also been drugged and thus weren't exactly clear-headed. Their main confidence came from the fact that Batman wasn't home today, and their methods were something the Joker would praise as "top-notch."

They primarily targeted the super-criminals existing in Cat Getan—Batman's old rivals: the Penguin, the Riddler, Two-Face, as well as the previously incarcerated Mad Hatter, Hugo, and the Ventriloquist; in short, the whole Arkham crew.

Since their brains also had some issues, their methods of punishing evil and promoting good were quite innovative, making these super-criminals who wanted to show off while Batman was away suffer miserably.

But the super-criminals weren't pushovers. After they reacted, they launched a retaliation against these reckless birds, using every trick in the book to hunt them down throughout the city.

The struggle between the Robin Gang and the Arkham Asylum criminals also affected the scientist team and the Joker Gang. With this group of people all mixed together, the scene was simply chaotic beyond compare, too painful to watch.

Clark, who had destroyed an orphanage with one punch and was looking for other housing for the children, listened to the children chattering for a long time before he roughly understood what was going on.

In short, the people who had them sell orange juice were at odds with the thugs of the Joker Gang, and for some purpose, the Joker Gang chose to snatch their cargo.

Clark didn't know much about Cat Getan's villains, so he didn't guess from the children's description of the roots that Poison Ivy was the one providing the orange juice for the children.

But the roots were indeed an important clue, so Clark decided to go deep into the sewers to investigate what the culprit providing drugs to the children was plotting in this dark place.

The history of Cat Getan's sewers was quite long, and in Cat Getan, the term "long history" couldn't be considered a compliment; it usually meant that the thing had already been pickled by the darkness of this city.

As everyone knew, Superman's power came from the sun, but there was no sun in the sewers. Not being able to replenish energy at any time meant that endurance was a big problem. Clark understood he had to finish the battle quickly.

His plan was to return to the ruins of the orphanage, enter from the sewer entrance where the children moved the orange juice out, head east all the way, and enter the center of the slums through the sewers.

In this way, he could both explore the secrets in the sewers and take a different path to strike at the heart, avoiding encountering those Gothamites with worrying mental states on the way to the slums.

The plan was good, but there was always a gap between plan and practice. Clark, coming from Metropolis, didn't realize that the Cat Getan sewers weren't just a public welfare facility; more and darker secrets were hidden there.

That's right, the ones who didn't mourn for even a second for Batman abandoning Cat Getan to head to Washington to become a good American president, and immediately rushed over to worry about the chaotic and crazy mental state of the Gothamites, were—the Court of Owls!

In fact, it wasn't that they didn't want to mourn. Theoretically, the ones who least wanted Batman to leave Cat Getan were the Court of Owls, but this long night was still a bit too fast-paced for them.

A country might be large, but forgetting war is dangerous. The Court of Owls was accustomed to long-term planning, leading to their insufficient ability to respond to short-term explosive disasters: the fear gas disaster, followed by the plant toxin disaster, then the three-way game between the military, the FBI, and Wei En Enterprises, then Bruce heading to Washington, and finally Wei En Enterprises being forced into a dead end, with Batman being crowned.

This series of operations gave the Court of Owls no time to react. By the time they woke up from their long slumber, everything was settled.

And it wasn't that they wanted to worry about the mental state of the Gothamites, or rather, they were the culprits behind the Gothamites going crazy; after all, the dark metal in Cat Getan was something they had mixed in.

But now the problem was, they mixed materials into Cat Getan's buildings to keep Batman busy fighting crime, thereby falling into self-doubt, shaking his will, and giving them an opportunity.

But now, it was the Court of Owls whose will was shaken.

They didn't know why the people above their heads had overnight turned from violent and crazy ruthless criminals into masters of "living" who could lose their lives but couldn't lose their "gigs."

Cat Getan's dark atmosphere used to be oppressive, with most people indifferent and numb, but in the last two months, it was as if this string had suddenly snapped, and things began to develop in the direction of black humor.

Suffering was never worth praising, but those commoners who could still find joy in the midst of deep, dark suffering, although often mocked as "morning mushrooms not knowing the beginning or end of the year," how were they not another form of contentment?

Unable to recognize, unable to change, bowing their heads to fate, and then surprisingly able to discover things worth investing courage and adventure in from this humble and painful path, and regardless of whether the result was good or bad, being able to feel happy from the heart, was more like a pilgrimage verifying human vitality.

This wasn't what the Owls wanted.

So these night-walking creatures hiding their heads and revealing their tails squatted in their lair again, starting to study what was going on.

Of course, they discovered that it was impossible for Gothamites to become like this out of thin air. The most likely thing was that someone else had drugged them, making them completely break through the bottom line of madness, to the point where they didn't even have basic logic, leading to them being unable to complete crimes well, and the soil where darkness took root was gradually disappearing.

But then again, how come there were people stealing their business after not seeing them for a few years?

People always had a kind of cognitive inertia. When guessing the behavior of others, they would bring in things they had done themselves, which could also be considered a kind of empiricism.

The Court of Owls believed that someone might be planning in the same era as them, and had also mixed another kind of poison into Cat Getan's buildings or other things, letting the toxin explode at this juncture, leading to the current situation.

But guessing was just guessing; they had to find a solution. The Owl Priest, feeling very frustrated with the current situation, slapped his forehead, deciding to first grab a few test subjects to see if they could find a way to detoxify.

But Bruce Wei En becoming president was also one of the factors that needed to be considered. After all, the members of the Court of Owls were all dignitaries of Cat Getan. It was too late to hug the new president's thigh; at least on the surface, they couldn't offend him.

Fortunately, the Owls also had their own set of action methods. The Talons they trained could leap between attics, using the mezzanines they hid in various high-rise buildings to hide the traces of their actions.

Relying on past experience, the Court of Owls sent a team of Talons to grab people in Cat Getan.

But soon they discovered that they lacked understanding of the Gothamites' ability to "perform" this time.

If there were strange noises coming from your attic occasionally, what would you do?

Gothamites of the past would at most take a gun up to see, blasting everything living they saw, but obviously, Talons weren't afraid of guns, so their whereabouts had never been exposed.

But this time, the Talon who took the road in the suburbs had just jumped into the attic of a household when he found it piled with feces and urine as deep as his calves.

The Talon's raised leg trembled slightly; their uniforms were completely waterproof, but their spirits were not.

Finally, after investigation by the Talon, the owner of this house had connected the outlet of their home's sewer pipe to their attic.

The reason was also very simple: he claimed that someone would come to steal his home's urinal, and as long as he connected the sewer pipe to the attic, the other party would think their home's toilet was in the attic, so when the other party searched there, they would step on a bear trap.

The most bizarre thing about this was that someone really came, and really stepped on it, and the other party was really a killer.

The owner of the house easily captured the Talon who unfortunately stepped on the bear trap.

And it couldn't be entirely blamed on the Talons for stepping on it. Any normal person's first reaction after jumping into a window and stepping into a pool of feces would be to retreat and run away, and the bear trap was placed under the curtains.

This led to a very terrible thing: the house owner's "urinal thief threat theory" was verified. Now, everyone in this entire community had connected their home's sewer pipes to their attics and filled the space under the feces with bear traps.

The Court of Owls learned of this news too late. They had actually lost four or five killers just like this, and only then did they react to take a detour.

Don't ask why it was an "actual loss." Talons could indeed be resurrected, but fishing a corpse out of feces and resurrecting a Talon who choked to death on feces was a bit too advanced for the Court of Owls.

The second route they chose was to walk the commercial street, which was to use the mezzanines hidden in those high-rise buildings to observe the targets to be captured.

Fortunately, the company employees weren't crazy enough to connect sewer pipes to the mezzanines, and these companies were mostly under the control of members of the Court of Owls. They could require employees to leave early after work, so the buildings were vacated, providing ample activity space for the killers.

But this was an ideal situation. In reality, the residents who connected sewer pipes to the attics couldn't smell the stench, but the reason they could live normally was that they didn't go home at all.

To avoid having feces poured on their heads, they lived at the company.

The Talons made the residents believe that the urinal thief was real, and the trick of connecting the sewer pipe to the attic and putting bear traps on it was useful, so they all followed suit, turning their homes into cesspools.

And to avoid a decline in their living quality, they chose to live at the company, which led to the Talons who couldn't use the suburban strongholds reuniting with them in the company buildings after a long absence. ===== CHAPTER 2083 =====