Chapter 580

As mentioned before, Gotham has many laws, but above these laws, there is another law that can be said to be above all standards and rules, and that is that Batman is above all laws.

In Gotham, the priority of Batman and everything he creates is higher than everything else.

The liquid storage device manufactured by Victor was very sturdy. He had long considered the issue of safety. Some might wonder, why didn't he just wrap this device with the hardest iron sheet, but instead used transparent glass material? Isn't this disregarding safety for the sake of looking cool?

But in fact, that layer of transparent glass material was much harder than any steel. It was an extremely sturdy material developed by Victor on the basis of dense ice, possessing even more toughness than hard diamond, making it not brittle even if it was very thin, and it possessed excellent sealing, definitely not something that could be easily destroyed.

However, once its opponent became a batarang made by Batman's own hands, it would become truly as brittle as glass.

Victor could think of everything, but he could never have imagined that Batman would use a batarang to attack this thing. He even anticipated that someone might use a nuclear bomb here, so this material was even high-temperature resistant, impact-resistant, and radiation-resistant, but it just wasn't batarang-resistant.

Batman and everything he creates are the natural nemesis of everything in Gotham. So, the moment the batarang touched this sturdy material, it shattered.

It shattering didn't matter; the liquid inside sprayed out. The liquid spraying out didn't matter either, but Gotham has another law: a villain's backstory will never be wasted; what should come will always come.

In the backstory of Mr. Freeze, Victor became Mr. Freeze because of a frozen gas leak after a power outage. And this time, it was also Victor's laboratory, also a frozen material leak, and very unsurprisingly, it created another Mr. Freeze.

Or rather, more than one.

The one who was cleansed and transformed by this material was Thomas. He possessed all the conditions to become Mr. Freeze, perfectly inheriting Mr. Freeze's backstory, although this story was slightly bizarre and tortuous.

The only one who had a problem was Lex.

Previously, Lex had encountered the original Schiller who was about to leave Metropolis several years ago. At that time, the original Schiller discovered that Lex had been given an excessive amount of sedatives, causing his development and body organs to be severely affected.

Perhaps out of sympathy, Schiller fed Lex a certain amount of fine wine, which was the Wine Factor.

Because the amount Lex used was very small, the improvement it brought him wasn't great, slightly accelerating his recovery ability, and giving him some night vision ability.

Even Alberto, who had once fallen directly into a pool of fine wine full of Wine Factor, didn't become a monster with super recovery ability like Deadpool. Looking at it this way, the self-healing effect brought by the Wine Factor seemed not to be that strong at all.

However, the Wine Factor couldn't exert its effect, not because the two couldn't absorb it, but because, apart from its pharmacological and pathological effects, the Wine Factor was more like a mystical existence. It could only exert its effect on designated people, and that was the Joker.

If it wasn't the Joker, even if one possessed the Wine Factor, the improvement brought was not great, and one couldn't achieve the Joker's ability to be beaten half-dead by Batman one day and continue to jump around making trouble the next.

However, Lex's encounter this time conformed to another backstory, and that was the Joker.

Don't forget, the Joker has an origin story, which is falling into a chemical pool. Although Lex didn't fall in this time, he was completely submerged by chemical agents, and the effect was the same.

And this accident was caused by Batman's own hands, which was equivalent to overlapping with the Red Hood's background. Lex also became a person chosen by Batman.

One can view the birth process of a Gotham villain as cooking: one ingredient, plus another ingredient, put into a pot and stir-fried, and one can stir-fry a villain.

Sometimes, a dish only needs one ingredient, just like Mr. Freeze; one only needs to throw in a "low-temperature laboratory raw material leak," and one can stir-fry a dish.

And the dish of the Joker needs two ingredients to be stir-fried well. First, throw a main ingredient that must be there into the pot, and that is "Batman's selection." For the rest, one can choose traits like the "falling into a chemical pool" backstory, "Wine Factor," or "being mentally abnormal in the first place."

Main ingredient plus any one secondary ingredient can stir-fry a dish named Joker. And now, Lex not only added the main ingredient but also added two secondary ingredients, which were the "falling into a chemical pool" backstory and the "Wine Factor." Therefore, unsurprisingly, another Joker was born.

But at the same time, Lex also conformed to Mr. Freeze's backstory. The chemical pool that the Joker in the original backstory fell into, apart from dyeing his hair and face a color, had no other effect. But the one Victor manufactured this time was different; this chemical pool could manufacture Mr. Freeze.

Thus, Lex, who simultaneously possessed two backstories and stir-fried two dishes with the same materials, became an unprecedented trinity villain—the Frozen Joker Luthor.

At this time, that blue liquid was absorbed clean by the two people close to the liquid storage device. As the liquid became less and less, the two people covered underneath gradually revealed their true faces.

The first to recover his sanity was Thomas. After being stunned in place for a moment, he began to scream crazily.

That kind of screaming was as if a person had been thrown into a wok of oil. He kept curling up his body, constantly scratching his skin. Smoke began to rise visibly from his body, as if he were on fire.

But this was not strange. In the original comic, Mr. Freeze had one biggest weakness, and that was that he must wear low-temperature armor. Once the room temperature was higher than 0 degrees and there was no protective device, he would die.

If the person suffering this was indeed Victor, he could immediately analyze what was going on and then find the fastest way to maintain his life. After all, he was the world's most powerful cryogenics expert, and this was his base camp.

But Thomas was different. He was a college student, and his major had absolutely nothing to do with physics and chemistry. Although his grades were much better than Bruce's, he was just at the level of an ordinary college student and had nothing to do with cryogenics. Moreover, he was also here for the first time, so he couldn't find anything useful here.

He didn't even know what had happened, and the cells that had been transformed by low temperature had already begun to die gradually. But at this time, Batman walked over, grabbed Thomas, and threw him into that liquid storage device, where there was still a little blue liquid left.

Batman's level was certainly much higher than Thomas's, so he saw the problem at the first moment. Sure enough, after Thomas was soaked in the remaining blue liquid, he stopped screaming, but lay there blankly looking at the ceiling.

In the final analysis, Mr. Freeze's power lay in his technical level, not in himself. The low-temperature transformation he received could be said to be a burden.

If one only obtained this kind of low-temperature transformation, it would be worse than an ordinary person. Thomas was in this situation now; leaving this blue liquid, he was completely unable to survive.

Batman didn't pay attention to Thomas's hateful gaze. He turned his head and looked at another figure standing in the shadows of the room. The laughter that had just rung out made his back feel cold.

Now, Lex's skin was paler than before. When he looked up, Batman saw the familiar crazy smile on his face.

The reason Lex didn't fear room temperature and didn't almost self-combust like Thomas was precisely because the Wine Factor in his body was exerting its full effect. And this contest between low-temperature transformation and self-healing ability brought him even more powerful abilities.

Taking advantage of the moment Batman was stunned looking at that smile, Lex stretched out a hand, and cold mist drifted toward Batman. In just one second, a thin layer of ice formed on the outside of the bat suit.

Batman retreated at extreme speed. When he landed and stabilized his figure, he exhaled a white mist visible to the naked eye. At this time, the temperature in the room had already dropped to near freezing.

That blue liquid absorbed into Lex's body didn't completely transform his cells because the Wine Factor in his body was constantly making his cells heal themselves. Therefore, this liquid capable of achieving freezing was stored in Lex's body and turned into a kind of power for him.

Simply put, Lex had now turned himself into a fuel-sufficient freeze gun, and the processing was not limited by the form of the weapon; he could also change various forms of freezing.

Mr. Freeze's technology, the Joker's madness, plus Luthor's wisdom—Batman took a deep breath. He knew that next, a bitter battle was about to come.

"This Star Wants to Retire"

At this time, in a ward of the Gotham City Central Hospital, Schiller was sitting in front of a hospital bed. Gordon was standing opposite the hospital bed, and lying on the bed was the third victim, the girl who had been stabbed a few times. The information in Schiller's hand showed that her name was Angel.

Gordon widened his eyes and asked exaggeratedly, "You mean, no one wanted to kill you, it was you who stabbed yourself???? You..."

He paused, then said, "Angel, I know Gotham is a very dangerous place. There are many people here who might take your life. Maybe they threatened you, making you unable to tell the truth, but with Professor Schiller and me here, you should trust us."

"Tell the truth, we will bring the real culprit to justice, you are safe..."

The pale-faced Angel shook her head, her expression somewhat dazed. She said, "No, what I said is true. The one who wanted to kill me was myself. I might be crazy."

"Tell me specifically, what exactly is going on?" Schiller didn't refute Angel like Gordon did, because he could see that Angel's mental state was indeed not good.

Her face was pale, not entirely because of excessive blood loss from being stabbed a few times. Judging from the details of her skin, her poor complexion should have lasted for a period of time.

Angel closed her eyes and said in a very weak voice, "About a few days ago, I started to have a strange feeling. Every time I saw my good friend Belanna, I had a kind of... a kind of..."

Angel revealed a very painful expression and said with a crying voice:

"I just... had an urge to kill her."