Chapter 3319: Bloody New City (79)

The cold moonlight penetrated the clouds and shone into the hall on the first floor of Arkham Asylum, but stopped abruptly as it flowed down the stairs, failing to bring any light to the underground prison.

Schiller squatted down, his fingertips brushing over the black crystals protruding from the pit wall, and the gray mist lingered on his fingertips, as if it were his other sensory organ.

"Radiation value exceeds conventional meteorites by four hundred times." The gray mist whispered in his ear, "These crystals are continuously releasing unknown rays, and exposure to this radiation environment will cause unpredictable consequences for ordinary people."

Schiller's fingertips felt a needle-like burning pain, which was the feeling belonging to ordinary people that the gray mist faithfully transmitted back to him.

He withdrew his hand, and fine gray smoke suddenly rose from the bottom of the pit, twisting into a series of runes. They were very similar to the runes in the magic circle in Batman's photos.

"This is not a naturally fallen meteorite." Schiller picked up a small piece of crystal and crushed it into powder, watching them glow with a deep red in the faint light, "Perhaps the Order of Order summoned this meteorite, this is part of their conspiracy."

The urgent sirens were still tearing through the Cat Getan night sky. The hunt for the Angel of Death, Paul, continued, and it would inevitably become more and more rigorous as time passed. Before he was arrested, Schiller had to figure out the truth.

When Schiller walked out of Arkham Asylum, three police cars with the GTO logo brushed past him. The deputy director of the police station, Harvey Bullock, was probably unable to withstand the pressure from the state legislature. The participation of GTO meant that the Angel of Death didn't have much time left.

Schiller opened the car door and sat in, the dashboard showed 1:17 AM—43 minutes left before the Cat Getan History Museum closed.

The underground archive of the Cat Getan History Museum was filled with a musty smell, as if the history deposited here was still constantly fermenting.

Schiller took the pass from the pocket of the unconscious security guard in front of him. About 20 minutes later, he stood in the faint light, his eyes flowing over the yellowed "Cat Getan Valley" bound volume.

The headline in April 1718 suddenly made him stop his gaze: "Fireball falls from the sky! Mysterious meteorite falls into Cat Getan Valley! The general has not yet announced evacuation, please pay attention to the situation at any time!"

In the accompanying picture of the report, a surveyor wearing a triangular hat was drawing a sketch of the meteorite crater with a pencil. Schiller zoomed in on the details of the drawing and found that the marked point of the meteorite fall completely overlapped with the terrain of Arkham Asylum.

When he called up the architectural files, he immediately discovered something—the completion date of Arkham Fortress was exactly the 91st day after the meteorite fell.

Suddenly, footsteps came from the spiral staircase.

"I thought the closing time was written very clearly." The file manager holding a flashlight was an old lady with silver hair, and the badge on her chest read "Maggie Collins—42 years of service."

Schiller just turned his head and looked at her quietly, but saw the old man walk straight to a bookshelf, take out a tape that looked very retro from there. Put it into that even more retro machine.

"Is this what you are looking for?"

Her withered fingers pressed the button, and a yellowed image appeared on the wall—General Arkham suddenly convulsed at the fortress completion ceremony, roaring "He is summoning!" with his eyes rolled back.

"For twenty-five years, you are the third person to check these materials." Maggie lit a mint cigarette, and in the smoke, the old scar on her neck was revealed.

"Third?" Schiller narrowed his eyes slightly. He had already guessed that the Pale Knight might have investigated these. Who else was the remaining one? Who else would care about these old things?

Cat Getan started raining again, and the cold rain of this autumn night obviously added a lot of trouble to the hunt, which might be God's last protection for the Angel of Death.

The rain washed the windshield, and the light of the street lamp swept over Schiller's hand holding the steering wheel again and again.

The car radio played a piece of sound wave data restored by the gray mist, which was the infrasound wave extracted from the soil of the meteorite crater using spectral analysis. When the frequency suddenly increased to 22.3 Hz, the special substance Schiller got suddenly trembled in the bottle.

"The matching degree of experimental data on low-frequency sound waves inducing delirium is too high."

"Speak human language."

"Stimulating meteorite crystals with specific frequencies can induce mental illness."

Schiller sighed. "This thing has quite a lot of functions. It can create cancer and induce mental illness."

Schiller slammed on the brakes. The windshield wipers swung regularly, making a dull sound.

The warning of museum manager Maggie echoed in his mind: "This meteorite is not a relic, but a seed. It is rewriting everything about humans with radiation..."

"Batman and Paul's mental illness is not an accident." Schiller's fingers tapped on the steering wheel, "The Order of Order used the crystals in the meteorite to artificially create two mental patients."

"No, it should be three." Schiller suddenly said, "General Arkham was the first. Not long after the meteorite fell, news about his corruption was rampant."

The gray mist didn't answer. He felt the very restrained anger signal released by Schiller's brain waves, knowing that he should become very busy for a period of time.

Returning to the meteorite crater again. Schiller stared at the dark hollow for a long time without speaking. He said: "Can you judge where the meteorite fell from?"

"I can guess." The gray mist answered, "Fomalhaut, Cthugha's hometown."

"Very smart, but..."

"What?"

"I'm starting to understand Anatoly a little bit."

When the morning light pierced the clouds, Schiller stood on the top floor of the City Hall overlooking Cat Getan. The rain made the car body as bright as a mirror, and the police cars were still shuttling through the narrow streets of Cat Getan like a school of fish.

"There is another worse news." The gray mist said, "The building of Arkham Asylum is not enough to block the radiation. And the low-frequency sound waves continuously emitted by the soil of the meteorite crater have been stimulating the spirit of everything around the crystals, including the criminals in Arkham Asylum."

"That is to say, they might not have been crazy, or not so crazy, but after being thrown in, the crystal radiation made everything worse?"

"That's right. Who do you think benefits from them becoming crazier?"

"Of course it's the elite. Still the same thing, in Cat Getan, crime is an investment, and criminals are of course the crazier the better."

Schiller paused and then continued: "This matter must not let Batman know. His depression is already gradually worsening, if he knows that he personally sent criminals into a crazy hell leading to more people being harmed, he will be even harder to recover."

"What do you plan to do next?"

"First, do the doctor's job well. Find the crystal that continuously affects Batman's mental state and destroy it to ensure that his mental state will not worsen. Then talk about other things."

"That thing must be very close to him. What do you think it will be?"

"If they want Alfred to die because of the diary Blood gave him. Wanting Fox and Dr. Thompkins to die because they can provide more help to Bruce Wayne, then what about Jason?"

"I guess that guy must have been infinitely close to the truth." The gray mist quickly became proud, he said, "Although you don't like being a detective, I secretly looked at Batman's brain, I will be a good detective."

"...... Whose brain did you look at?"

"Main universe Batman... and Arkham Batman, I guarantee I only learned their detective wisdom."

"You'd better be."

The glass curtain wall of the City Hall building refracted Cat Getan's midday sun, which was not bright, into light golden spots. Schiller tapped his fingertips on the edge of the coffee cup, and the latte in the cup rippled.

When Jason pushed open the shop door, the vibration frequency of the wind chime also seemed a bit dull. Schiller narrowed his eyes, looking at the mud on the young man's tactical boots, leaving the gray-blue traces unique to Cat Getan's underground sedimentary rocks on the tiles—this is evidence of just crawling out of the Diamond District sewer, the gray mist told him.

"The Angel of Death changed his hiding place." Jason pulled the chair and sat down, the tactical gloves thrown on the dining table shook the tableware, "Nightwing cracked his fire trap in Crime Alley, now GTO's drones are checking the port area warehouse."

Schiller pushed over a hot cocoa that had been ordered long ago, and a group of gray mist was steaming on the milk foam of the cup. The moment Jason held the cup handle, the 3D map of Cat Getan's underground pipe network floated in the heat of the cocoa. Jason instinctively looked at a certain place, Schiller knew that should be the Angel of Death's previous hiding place.

Not surprisingly, Paul was originally a mouse in the Lower District. The sewer is his best hiding place.

"The idiots from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are still checking financial accounts." Jason sneered and poked the floating projection, "But Nightwing found this—" he threw out a deformed metal piece, engraved with a familiar pattern, which is the logo of the Order of Order.

Still not surprisingly. Paul knew who his real enemy was. He would remind himself at all times that he must not stop until the sinner received the punishment he deserved.

"Seems to be a special metal."

"That's right, part of the Batmobile, to be precise, it was pried off Nightwing's vehicle, this guy's method of borrowing materials is too violent." Jason drank half a cup of cocoa in one breath, his Adam's apple rolled, revealing the new burn on the side of his neck, "That madman modified his long sword with this material, he is becoming more and more difficult to deal with."

Schiller shifted the topic calmly: "Tell me about the days before you were kidnapped—was it raining the last time you entered the Batcave?"

Jason's hand holding the cup tightened suddenly, the ceramic surface bloomed with spider web cracks, memory has never been a good choice for him.

"It was a blizzard night." The teenager's pupils dilated slightly, "Batman borrowed the life-sustaining energy again, the heater was broken, I was wrapped in Alfred's wool blanket shivering. Bruce was analyzing Black Mask's cargo list in front of the Batcomputer, and I..." he suddenly grabbed the sugar jar and poured three packs of sugar into the cocoa, "and I stole the palladium scraps from the workbench."

Schiller noticed Jason unconsciously rubbing the scar on the right tiger's mouth, which was left by long-term use of a precision welding gun.

"You used the scraps to make a Batarang." Schiller used a declarative sentence. He saw the teenager look up suddenly, and a few drops of cocoa splashed on the table.

Jason pulled open the high-collar sweater and pulled out a black silver chain. The pendant was a miniature Batarang, with the abbreviation "J. T." engraved on the blade: "I spent two weeks adjusting the aerodynamic structure, but the result was that I cut off the Batmobile's rearview mirror, this is the remaining scrap."

Schiller used the gray mist's vision to look there, and in nano-level imaging, the dart body was full of black filaments—it was crystals.

"Bruce took it away." Jason's voice suddenly became hoarse, "He said that as Robin, I don't need this kind of dangerous toy." The teenager's nails pinched deeply into his palm, "But two weeks later, I saw him stuffing this thing into the Bat-belt."

Schiller's coffee cup made a subtle crisp sound. He suddenly understood everything.

"Guilt is a good knife." Schiller wiped the coffee stains splashed on the back of his hand, "Every time he uses your gift, he is letting his brain accept more crystal radiation, until recently, he is about to completely become a wild beast that has lost his sanity."

Jason just wanted to stand up, but bumped into the damping force field woven by gray mist. In the teenager's beast-like panting, Schiller looked calmly out the window. The conspiracy vein unfolded before his eyes.

Using a child's simple love to send deadly poison to his father's side, and then taking the child away. Let the father only be full of guilt for the last souvenir—this ensures that Batman will definitely carry that dart at all times.

"Where did you get the materials?" Schiller looked at Jason and asked.

"Most of them are from the Batcave. But I added some carbon powder myself. I bought it myself... on the way back, I ran into the Joker who was robbing a bank, he was holding a gun to a female clerk's head."

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 3320 =====