Chapter 4491: The Blackest Night (26)

Most of the city was submerged in darkness, only Cat Getan's skyline was sharp as if to pierce the night. The snow kept falling, and to provide heat, the smoke from the huge chimneys kept rising, circling in the sky for a long time, as if smearing furnace ash on a painting of the starry sky, dirty as another kind of art.

Suddenly, this leaden gray that permeated the night became even more intense, even the dense black was dissolved, and the night sky was plated with a faint silver-blue. The global temperature drop stopped.

Brainiac immediately sent news to everyone globally that "the dense ice shield has been successfully established." This was more than an hour later than expected, and the rate of temperature drop was faster than anticipated, which caused the temperature near the Earth's equator to drop to about 10 degrees, and the temperature in many extremely cold regions was no longer suitable for human survival.

Because Cat Getan had a separate protective cover, the temperature remained at about minus 10 degrees. But other East Coast regions were not so lucky, most of them reaching minus tens of degrees. Canada and regions to the north were even worse, most people could only hide in city shelters and could not leave at all.

The scene predicted by Jonathan arrived as scheduled. In a situation where the temperature in most parts of the world became unsuitable for humans to go out and be active, Cat Getan became the only remaining utopia. After all, in an environment of minus 50 degrees, asking people to commit murder was still a bit too much.

It's like how the UK is the country where mystery novels are most prevalent, and many mystery novel masters are British, because the atmosphere of this country is very suitable for writing mystery novels. The atmosphere is cold, the environment is isolated, and the population is dense, so if a murder case occurs, everyone can be circled together for reasoning.

It wouldn't work in Russia, where there are few people, the weather is cold, and without modern industry, the snow can't even be shoveled. If you die in a snow nest, you might not be found until the spring of the following year, and there's no reasoning to be done at all.

The current situation is that most parts of the world have become Siberia, and going out carries the risk of death. Only Cat Getan, which had the shield up first, had a climate that was barely normal, and people could go out and be active freely. Indeed, only here was there room for death and homicide.

And the people of Cat Getan lived up to expectations; in such a short time, there had already been twelve homicide cases. Only two cases had found the murderer, and the others were all headless cases, barely classifiable as being committed by a few serial killers.

Among them, the Resume Killer had committed four cases, the copycat had committed two, Jonathan had committed one, and the remaining five should have been committed by two people. But this number was still increasing.

Brainiac wanted to stop it at first, but later he found that none of the people who died were innocent.

This is a logic that is easy to figure out. Except for the necessary industries to ensure people's livelihood, Cat Getan had completely stopped work. In this weather, in this situation, those who would take the initiative to go out on the street and run to those tricky places all thought they were hunters. This was simply a large-scale serial killer ranking tournament, and whoever died could greatly improve regional public security.

Finding that this was the situation, Brainiac didn't care much. Because, the mastermind obviously didn't have only this one plan. A homicide broke out in the citizen shelter in Metropolis next door, obviously, there were living corpses hiding among ordinary people, taking advantage of the crowd rushing to the shelter to take action. This kind of case was more important, because if not handled well, it would lead to a large-scale spread of living corpses. Brainiac focused on checking every shelter. As for Cat Getan, no one knew if God would bless Cat Getan, anyway, I couldn't bless it.

What prompted Brainiac to give up was not only that the deceased were not innocent, but also that he couldn't play an important role. Cat Getan's serial murders had completely returned to the old version, which meant that the cases emphasized artistry and philosophical thinking. Behavioral analysis couldn't be said to be completely useless, it was just too laborious, requiring the collection of a large number of samples for comparison, and there was no great progress. And Brainiac didn't understand psychoanalysis at all, so even if he wanted to manage it, he couldn't be of much use, so it was better to give up temporarily and solve the chaos in other places first.

Schiller stood on the deck, looking up at the dense ice covering the sky. Although it was called dense ice, it could also be described as the Earth's defense network, just not in the form of magic, but a victory of physics.

And precisely because it started from physics, it could only guard against physical means. For example, it could isolate heat, help the Earth keep warm, and could also block radiation, preventing the sun from suddenly recovering or expanding excessively and roasting the Earth.

But that was all. The biggest problem with this kind of shield was that it could only deal with disasters and couldn't be used daily. If you put this thing on normally, the sun's heat wouldn't be able to get in at all, then Victor would be the undisputed number one terrorist of the 21st century.

But it was just right to use it at this time, after all, the heat outside couldn't get in, and the heat inside couldn't get out, which was equivalent to adding a super atmosphere to the Earth.

In fact, the dense ice shield should have been set up an hour ago, but Victor dragged it out for a while, which caused a delay of more than an hour, and this was Schiller's suggestion to him.

"If the climate isn't cold enough that people can't live in their own homes, people won't choose to go to shelters. And in this situation, an isolated social environment might give the mastermind more opportunities. It's not difficult to kill loners and resurrect them. Once it spreads, I'm afraid it will be difficult to end."

"You mean we should deliberately delay for a while?"

"Yes. Ensure that the temperature in most parts of the world has reached disaster level, and people will take the initiative to enter the shelter, managed centrally by Brainiac. The earlier people gather, the fewer opportunities the mastermind has to take action."

"What if the mastermind has already taken action and takes the opportunity to cause trouble in the crowded shelter?"

"That would be just right," Schiller said. "It's better for it to break out early than late. Once such a case appears, Brainiac will definitely raise the monitoring to an extremely strict level. The number of victims will only get fewer and fewer."

Victor nodded, he felt that what Schiller said made sense. During the war, it was actually a centralized management mode, but everyone was in the factory. When dealing with crises, humans are more suitable for centralized management, rather than letting things slide. At least with Brainiac, wanting freedom but not life is absolutely impossible.

So Victor did just that. He overturned the original time plan and deliberately dragged it out for a while. Brainiac might have seen it, but didn't care. Perhaps he also wanted to take this opportunity to let people go to the shelter. And when the shield was set up, the temperature was indeed much lower than previously expected.

Subtropical and some temperate regions of the world did not have centralized heating measures. After the temperature plummeted, the indoor and outdoor temperatures were below zero, and people couldn't stay in their residences at all, so they could only go to the shelter as rehearsed in the emergency drill before.

And in other parts of the temperate, subarctic, and frigid zones, although there were centralized heating measures, it was difficult to resist the temperature of minus forty or fifty degrees, so people also chose to go to the shelter.

Because the temperature didn't drop to this level suddenly, but dropped at a rate of 5 to 10 degrees per hour, there was reaction time. Most people were freezing, so they naturally ran to the shelter. And by the time the shield was set up, there were very few people left outside the shelter.

Even if the shield had been successfully set up, they wouldn't choose to go out. Because even the current temperature was already difficult to bear, and if it didn't rise, they could only stay in the shelter.

Fortunately, the shelter built by Brainiac was good, although it didn't reach the hotel level, at least it was a homestay level. And how to allocate houses, how to live in the shelter, etc., had been rehearsed many times before. Residents had also experienced it once during the war, and moving in went very smoothly. Except for the living corpses taking the opportunity to sneak attack, there was no major chaos.

It could be seen that the living corpses just wanted to fish in troubled waters during the busiest and most chaotic time at the beginning. But the Brainiac War had just ended not long ago, and people hadn't even completely gotten rid of the wartime state. The previous cosmic coalition hadn't thought less about doing things on the surface, and humans had seen big storms. Although it caused some waves, there was no large-scale panic and loss of control, and the move-in to the shelter was completed smoothly.

And when Victor and Schiller returned to Cat Getan, the number of homicide cases had reached 22. This was a very shocking number, because not only were the murderers serial killers, but the victims might also be. Without a ranking tournament, no one knew there were so many tiger-striped sharks in the pool.

Victor and Schiller both sat in the single armchairs in Schiller's office, clinking glasses with the hot coffee in their hands. Victor looked at the fur cutting board and nodded: "This looks much more pleasing to the eye."

"Aren't you going to rest for a while?" Schiller asked.

"No, I have to make a video call to Billy later to remind him not to run around."

Schiller nodded and said: "Now is not a good time to show off superpowers."

"I'm discussing with Brainiac to let the two of them take a portal to Krypton, it's safer there. Anyway, don't stay in Cat Getan, this place can write ten volumes of detective stories in an hour."

Victor went out to make a call. Schiller took a nap in the chair and took the opportunity to consult Brainiac about the current situation.

"Has the chaos in the shelter been resolved?"

"Almost," Brainiac replied. "I am now convinced that this resurrection ability is simply perfect. None of my existing technological means can distinguish the living corpses. It's really strange."

"Where is it strange?"

"It shouldn't be like this," Brainiac shook his head. "How can the dead be the same as the living? Even if it's magic, there should always be some abnormal energy. But there is nothing."

Schiller heard Brainiac's confusion and said: "Haven't thought about looking for foreign aid? Or are you really planning to wait until the day before Christmas Eve to invite the Super-Body to the Christmas dance?"

"I'm just saying," Brainiac said. "I don't have time to fall in love now, I'm going to fight the living corpses for three hundred rounds."

"I don't even know when you had such a thing as self-esteem," Schiller sighed, taking a sip of coffee.

"This has nothing to do with self-esteem," Brainiac emphasized. "The current situation doesn't require another super-life to take action, it's completely under my control."

"But you can't deal with living corpses while falling in love, which proves that you are not that comfortable yet."

"Don't use reverse psychology on me."

"As you wish," Schiller shook his head and stood up, saying, "Remember, the chaos that broke out in the shelter is just your temporary escape from Cat Getan's utopia, but you will eventually return here."

"... Should I dress up before going to pick up the Super-Body?" ===== CHAPTER 4492 =====