Chapter 81: Justice League Newly Formed, The Goal Surprisingly To Defeat Me
Black ink dripped down between the fingers,
falling onto the silver steel rims of the wheelchair. Brucepushed the wheels, sliding out from the shadows in front of the surveillance screen.
The rubber tires rolled over the damp concrete floor, emitting a slight rustling sound.
This was eighty meters underground in Gotham City, an abandoned Cold War nuclear bunker.
The cement on the walls had peeled off, revealing the rusted threaded steel bars inside.
A few tungsten lightbulbs hung overhead, emitting a dim, somewhat ethereal light.
The air was mixed with the fishy smell of Earth, the scent of medical alcohol, and a lingering sense of decay.
This was a sanctuary belonging to losers.
The wheelchair stopped in front of a sheet-iron round table in the center of the nuclear bunker.
A group of people surrounded the table.
This had once been a group of the proudest and most powerful people on Earth. Now, they were like a pack of stray dogs with broken spines.
Barry Allen sat on a broken wooden chair on the left.
Those legs of his that had once been able to outrun the speed of light now hung limply beneath the chair.
His kneecaps had been completely crushed into powder. Even with the self-healing system of the Speed Force, it could only keep him from bleeding to death.
The bones would not grow back. He stared blankly at a dead cockroach on the ground with hollow eyes.
On the right, Hal Jordan half-leaned against the concrete wall.
His Green Lantern uniform was covered in dried bloodstains and dirt.
A circle of bloody gauze was wrapped around the index finger of his right hand. That ring, which represented the strongest willpower in the Universe, had already become a pinch of debris in the carpet of Vought Tower.
He lowered his head, his fingers scratching at the wall plaster.
Arthur Curry sat on an upside-down sheet-iron gasoline drum.
Thick bandages were bound across Aquaman's broad chest.
The pain of his broken sternum made him clench his teeth with every breath. He held half a bottle of cheap whiskey in his hand and took a large gulp. The liquor flowed down his stubble into his neck.
Diana sat opposite him.
Her red and blue battle armor was full of dents and charred marks. The golden eagle emblem on her chest had turned into an ugly lump of iron.
That had been melted alive by Chloe with Heat Vision.
On the wrists of both her hands were still deep purple bloodstains choked out by the lasso of truth. The flesh was rolled outward, without scabbing over.
The female warrior god's arrogance had been half-shattered. She stared at the iron tabletop in front of her, not knowing what she was thinking.
In the shadows of the farthest corner stood Clark.
He had changed into an ordinary black-and-gray plaid shirt. The red cape was gone.
His tall figure shrank in the darkness, like a farmhand who had made a mistake. He kept his head down and had not said a single word since coming in.
A suffocating dead silence permeated the air.
No one spoke because they did not know what to say.
They could not fight back, reasoning made no sense, and they didn't even know where to run to escape.
That man named Shen Che was like an iron mountain pressing down on the heads of all humanity. Even the rhythm of their breathing had to be determined by him.
"Tap. Tap."
Bruce's fingers tapped twice on the metal armrests of the wheelchair.
The sound was very loud in the empty nuclear bunker.
Several people raised their heads, looking at him.
"Fighting single-handedly," Bruce's voice was hoarse, as if his throat contained a mouthful of sand,
"is just lining up to be entertainment for him."
He pushed his wheelchair, sliding to the exact front of the sheet-iron table.
"My tactics. Arthur's strength. Clark's bloodline."
His gaze swept over this group of defeated soldiers and stragglers.
"Hal's willpower. Diana's magic."
"We've tried them all. They're all a puddle of mud."
Bruce's words were very harsh, as if skinning them alive.
Hal clenched his teeth, and a trace of blood red seeped from the gauze in his hand. But he did not refute.
Because this was the truth.
"He is building a slave yard where only he can make the rules."
Bruce stopped his wheelchair.
"If we don't break this rule of fear, Earth... even the entire Universe..."
"will all become a number on his ledger."
Diana raised her head, her black eyes looking at Bruce.
"How do we fight? My sword can't even pierce his clothes."
Her voice exuded exhaustion.
"He is not human. He is a monster that has jumped out of all dimensional laws."
"Monsters also have weaknesses."
Bruce pulled a stack of water-stained blueprints from the side pocket of his wheelchair,
flinging them onto the sheet-iron tabletop.
"He has no flaws. Then we'll use our lives to smash out a flaw for him."
He looked at everyone.
"We form an alliance."
"Not for alien invasion. Not for maintaining peace."
Bruce spoke word by word, biting every single word heavily.
"Only to... pull Shen Che down... from that throne."
The nuclear bunker grew quiet.
Arthur put down the wine bottle. Hal stopped scratching the wall plaster. Clark raised his head from the shadows.
Justice League.
In such a dark, damp, despair-filled Underground Room, it was hastily built.
There were no cheers, no ribbon-cutting.
There were only a few disabled people and defeated generals gathered together for an almost impossible goal.
Bruce turned his wheelchair, sliding in front of a rusted whiteboard,
holding a black marker in his hand.
"He is arrogant. He thinks nothing can hurt him."
Bruce drew a sketch of Vought Tower on the whiteboard.
"This is our only chance."
The pen tip rubbed against the whiteboard, emitting a squeaking sound.
"Barry. The residual energy of your Speed Force is still there."
Bruce looked at the Flash.
"You channel this energy into Victor's mother box remains. We need an electronic pulse that can instantly cut off his network surveillance."
"Arthur. Diana. You two are responsible for pinning down that crazy woman in blue clothes."
Bruce pointed to Chloe's photo.
"She has a weakness. She cares too much about Shen Che. As long as you pretend to attack Shen Che, she will definitely lose her sanity and give up defense."
Finally, the tip of his pen heavily tapped the position representing Shen Che on the whiteboard.
"Clark."
Bruce looked at the constantly silent Superman.
"You are the main attacker. You must entangle him at all costs, even if you are beaten to death by him."
"I want two seconds. Just a two-second close-combat opportunity."
Bruce patted a small lead box beneath his wheelchair.
"I will send this thing... directly into his cerebral cortex."
This was a desperate, do-or-die assassination plan.
There was no way out. Once they failed, everyone would turn into charcoal on Vought Square.
But in this dark Underground Room,
as Bruce drew one red tactical route after another on the whiteboard,
the heroes who had been beaten down to the bottom of the valley,
in their eyes, that ashen despair slowly faded away.
Replaced by a trace of a faint yet extremely crazy flame of hope.
Just like a drowning person grabbing a barbed piece of driftwood.
Even if their hands were bleeding profusely from the thorns, they would hold on tightly.
Diana clenched her fists. Hal bit his lip.
Barry raised his head, his gaze becoming resolute.
They looked at the red lines on the whiteboard, as if they had already seen the moment Shen Che fell.
Hope can always make people forget fear.
But they did not know,
right at the very top of this rusted whiteboard, in the corner of that white plastic frame,
rested a fly.
A mechanical fly one size smaller than a pinky fingernail.
In the fly's compound eyes flickered a red light so faint that the naked eye could not perceive it.
High-definition cameras and micro-recorders were turning everything in this Underground Room—
Bruce's whiteboard, Diana's expression, and that so-called do-or-die plan—
without any omission,
into a string of encrypted digital signals,
transmitting in real-time back to three hundred kilometers away, to the top-floor office of Vought Tower in Manhattan, New York.
Chapter 82: Let Them Form an Alliance, Because I Like to Crush Hope All at Once
The red light in the mechanical fly's compound eyes flickered slightly.
The footage in the Gotham sewer was cut into countless pixels in real-time.
After being decoded by the servers on the top floor of Vought Tower.
A clear blue holographic image was projected onto the obsidian desktop in the CEO's office.
Shen Che sat in a leather swivel chair.
Holding a freshly brewed cup of Darjeeling black tea in his hand. White steam rose from the rim of the bone china cup.
He took a leisurely sip. The tea was slightly hot, carrying a hint of bitterness.
His pitch-black eyes looked at the holographic projection.
Inside the projection, Bruce was drawing red tactical routes on that whiteboard.
This group of remnant soldiers gathered in the dark nuclear bunker, and the flames of hope reignited in their eyes.
This kind of flame, in Shen Che's view, was like the match struck by the little match girl in winter.
False, ridiculous, and extinguished at the blow of a wind.
Chloe stood by the table.
She didn't look at the tactics on the whiteboard, nor did she look at the cripple sitting in the wheelchair.
Her blue eyes stared fixedly at Diana in the corner of the projection.
That woman, who was once hung outside the window with a face full of blood, actually still had the strength now to sit in a chair and discuss how to deal with Shen Che.
Chloe's breathing instantly became heavier.
Her chest rose and fell, and her nostrils flared rapidly.
The blue-and-red-star uniform was stretched so tight by her muscles that it was about to tear.
The red light deep in her pupils lit up without warning like two burning fireballs.
The air in the office began to heat up sharply.
Tiny cracks appeared on the wall of the coffee cup on the table.
"Bitch."
Chloe squeezed out two words from between her teeth.
She raised her hand, pointing at the projector's emission aperture. Her fingertips trembled with anger.
"Shen. Let me go."
She turned her head and looked at Shen Che, her eye sockets red.
"I'll go to Gotham right now. That sewer along with this group of rats."
"Burned to ashes together."
Her voice revealed an undisguised murderous intent and morbid possessiveness.
Shen Che put down the black tea cup in his hand.
The bottom of the cup hit the obsidian desktop, making a muffled thud.
He raised his right hand and pressed it on the back of Chloe's hand, which was burning hot from congestion.
Chloe's hand stiffened.
The red light in the depths of her eyes flickered twice, slowly extinguishing like a forcibly suppressed volcano.
"What's the rush."
Shen Che's voice was very calm. There was no reprimand, nor any appeasement.
Just as if he were talking about an inconsequential trifle.
He pushed Chloe's hand away from above the projector.
"Squeezing them to death one by one is too boring."
Shen Che leaned back against the back of the chair, his legs crossed.
He looked at the faces in the projection that had become firm again because of Bruce's plan.
"Kill them. These rats hiding in the sewer will become martyrs."
Shen Che's fingers tapped on the armrest of the chair.
"Tap. Tap."
The rhythm was slow, carrying a kind of ruthlessness of a superior.
"Civilians are foolish. If you kill a few heroes, they will hide under the covers and fantasize that there will still be a hundred heroes standing up to overthrow me."
"This kind of fantasy is like wild grass. Cut one crop, and another will grow."
Shen Che looked at Chloe.
"If killing people doesn't pierce the heart, rule won't be stable."
Chloe was stunned. Her brain wasn't that complicated.
She only knew that whoever made Shen Che unhappy, she would chop them into pieces and feed them to the dogs.
"Then... just watch them be so arrogant?" Chloe pouted.
Shen Che twitched the corner of his mouth, revealing a scalp-numbing sneer.
"Aren't they going to form an alliance?"
"Aren't they going to gather all the remaining hope of all mankind on that crappy whiteboard?"
Shen Che stood up.
His tall figure blocked the Manhattan night view shining in from outside the window.
The shadow shrouded the holographic projection, covering the image of the Justice League tightly.
"Then let them form an alliance."
"Give them time. Let them prepare those ridiculous tactics. Let them polish the scrap metal in their hands."
Shen Che pressed both hands on the obsidian desktop.
His body leaned forward slightly.
"When they think everything is foolproof. When they think they can drag the gods down from the throne."
"When the civilians of the whole World pin their hopes on this so-called alliance of theirs."
Shen Che's voice lowered, flowing through the office like ice water.
"I will at a moment watched by everyone."
"In front of billions of people around the globe."
"With a kick."
Shen Che's right hand made a phantom stomping motion in mid-air.
"Trample this hope, along with their proud trump card."
"Into pieces."
This was the ending he wanted.
Not a simple slaughter, but a desperate display that shattered the backbone of humanity.
Only when people saw with their own eyes that their last straw was ground into powder.
Would they completely give up illusions, obediently kneel on Vought Company's ledger, and be slaves for a lifetime.
Eternal hegemony needs to be built on absolute despair.
Chloe understood.
She looked at Shen Che. The obsession in her blue eyes was like honey about to overflow.
She loved his arrogance of playing with everyone like bugs.
This was her god.
Shen Che tapped a key on the keyboard.
"Snap."
The holographic projection went out instantly. The footage of the Gotham sewer disappeared into the air.
He pressed the extension phone at the corner of the desk.
"Let Ashley come up."
In less than a minute.
Public Relations Director Ashley stepped on high heels and ran into the office panting.
She tightly hugged a stack of documents in her hands. Her hairline seemed to have receded another half an inch, and her forehead was covered with fine sweat.
"President Shen. You're looking for me." Ashley swallowed a mouthful of saliva.
Shen Che didn't look at her.
"Go prepare a global live broadcast."
He picked up the cup of black tea. The tea was a bit cold.
"Choose the venue in Metropolis downtown square. It's spacious there."
Ashley was stunned.
"Live broadcast... broadcasting some new product?"
Her brain spun rapidly. Vought Company's new security robot? Or the upgraded package of Supreme VIP insurance?
"Not a product."
Shen Che took a sip of the cold tea.
"It's a funeral."
He looked at the pitch-black sky outside the window.
"Prepare a grander funeral for a newly established circus."
Ashley didn't understand what circus meant.
But she understood the word funeral.
She shivered, her back feeling cold.
"Understood... President Shen. I'll arrange it right away."
She backed out of the door, her high heels making panicked fleeing sounds in the corridor.
Shen Che put down the teacup.
He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.
Manhattan's neon lights flickered under his feet like a glowing piece of electronic components.
This World is really too boring.
Only this kind of cat-and-mouse game can bring him a little insignificant fun.
Hopefully that group of people staying in the sewer.
Can play this show a bit more wonderfully.
Don't even be unable to withstand a kick from him. That would be too disappointing.
Chapter 83: The Boys Join the Justice League, The Grand Gathering of the Resistance
Shen Che stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window.
The neon lights of Manhattan flickered beneath his feet.
Red and green, they looked like a patch of glowing, cheap plastic.
The high-altitude wind drilled inward along the gaps in the glass.
Carrying a hint of the sour smell of car exhaust.
He raised his hand to latch the window.
The sound of the wind stopped.
"I hope your play won't be too short," Shen Che said in a low voice.
Gotham.
Abandoned nuclear bunker.
The smell of engine oil and mold in the air had not completely dissipated.
Bruce sat in a wheelchair.
Holding a whiteboard marker in his hand.
He was about to finish the red tactical route.
"Bang!"
The rusty, thick iron door of the nuclear bunker.
Was kicked open from the outside by someone.
The door hinges emitted a harsh friction sound.
The iron door slammed against the cement wall, shaking off a patch of white dust.
Several figures walked in from the dark hallway outside the door.
Leading the way was Billy Butcher.
He was wearing that black trench coat that had not been washed in ages.
His chin was covered in dark stubble.
His body was reeking of cheap whiskey mixed with the gunpowder smell of high explosives.
He strode in.
His leather boots stepped on the concrete floor, making a clattering sound.
Following behind were Hughie and Frenchie.
And that mute girl who was like a feral cat, Kimiko.
Bruce's hand paused on the whiteboard.
He turned his wheelchair.
His eyes looked at this group of uninvited guests with vigilance.
Clark in the corner straightened his body.
Arthur clenched the empty wine bottle in his hand.
The atmosphere in the nuclear bunker instantly tightened.
Like a bow pulled to its limit.
Butcher ignored this tense standoff.
He walked over to the sheet iron table.
"Clatter."
A black canvas bag was heavily thrown by him onto the tabletop.
The mouth of the bag loosened.
Rolling out from inside were a dozen sugar-cube-sized miniature C4 explosives.
And several metal syringes filled with a transparent liquid.
That was the superpower inhibitor that Frenchie had concocted from the black market after pulling several all-nighters.
Although this thing was useless against that monster, it was enough to deal with the other lackeys of the Vought Company.
"I heard you are holding a resistance meeting?"
Butcher bit on an unlit cigar.
He said vaguely.
He braced both hands on the sheet iron table.
Swept his gaze over the superheroes present.
His gaze circled around the wheelchair-bound Batman and the leg-broken Flash.
He twitched the corners of his mouth, revealing a malicious sneer.
"Looks like flying solo never ends well, tin can."
Bruce stared at the explosives on the table.
"Get out. Murderers are not welcome here," Bruce's voice was hoarse.
He knew the background of The Boys.
This group of people had no bottom line in doing things.
Kidnapping, extortion, assassination.
This ran counter to the no-killing principle Batman had adhered to his whole life.
Their paths were different.
Upon hearing this, Butcher didn't leave.
Instead, he pulled over a broken wooden chair.
Sat down swaggeringly.
Propped his two legs on the sheet iron table.
The soles of his boots happened to brush next to Bruce's tactical blueprints.
"Save me the fucking hypocritical moral purity."
Butcher spat the cigar onto the ground.
"Your principles. In front of that monster that can blow out the Sun like a candle. It's worth shit."
He pointed at the wheelchair.
"Your spine has been stepped on and broken. Are you still playing the saint here?"
Bruce's jaws tightened.
His gums ached from biting down.
Butcher's words were very harsh.
Like sandpaper scraping his skin.
But what Butcher said was the truth.
"Working alone has no way out. Everyone has to die."
Butcher pulled back his legs.
Leaned his body forward.
"Count us in. We're joining."
The nuclear bunker fell silent.
Only the dripping sound of the underground water pipe leaking.
Bruce looked at this group of bottomless desperadoes.
Frenchie was fiddling with the syringe nearby.
Hughie was so nervous he kept wiping the sweat from his hands.
If it were in the past, Batman would definitely have tied them up and sent them into Blackgate Prison.
But now.
He needed cannon fodder.
He needed those despicable means.
In this nearly hopeless endgame.
Any resource that could cause trouble for Shen Che was extremely precious.
Bruce closed his eyes.
Took a deep breath.
The moldy smell in the air made his lungs feel astringent.
Principles?
In the face of the fear of extinction.
Principles were meant to be broken.
He opened his eyes.
"Frenchie," Bruce looked toward the Frenchman.
"Give me your inhibitor extract.
I want to smear it on the Batarangs and Arthur's incomplete trident."
Frenchie was stunned for a moment.
Then he grinned.
Revealing yellowed teeth.
"Glad to be of service, old bat."
Resources began to integrate.
Two groups of people who were originally incompatible put down their status and pride.
Butcher and Hughie were responsible for the periphery.
Using C4 explosives to destroy the power facilities around Vought Tower.
Creating chaos and holding down security.
Diana and Arthur's main attack direction remained unchanged.
Fight to the death against Chloe.
The plan on the whiteboard was filled with red and blue handwriting.
In front of the sheet iron table.
This group of resistance fighters gathered around.
The dim yellow tungsten filament light overhead shone on their faces.
Reflecting faces full of scars, exhaustion, yet full of fanaticism.
In everyone's eyes.
Flashed a tragic sense of burning their boats.
They thought this was a grand gathering where humanity sounded the horn of counterattack.
They thought as long as they risked their lives, they could bite a piece of flesh off that higher-dimensional god.
Hope. In this gloomy Underground Room, inflated weirdly.
"Click."
Butcher pulled the rifle bolt.
A gleaming yellow bullet was pushed into the chamber.
He patted the rifle stock.
"Three days later, we make our move."
Hughie stood behind him.
Palms full of cold sweat.
Rubbed them hard against his jeans.
"Can we really... win?" Hughie's voice trembled.
"Even if we can't win, we have to do it," Butcher bit his back teeth.
"At worst, we go to hell together."
Three hundred kilometers away.
New York.
The one hundred and twelfth floor of Vought Tower.
Shen Che sat behind the obsidian table.
The blue holographic projection in front of him.
Was clearly playing this scene in the Gotham basement.
Even the sound of Butcher pulling the rifle bolt was crystal clear.
Shen Che looked at those impassioned faces in the projection.
He reached out.
His thumb pressed the red internal broadcast button at the corner of the table.
"Ashley," Shen Che said toward the microphone.
"Set up the live broadcast equipment in Metropolis Square in advance."
Chapter 84: Hold a press conference, I will solo the entire Justice League
The blue holographic image transmitted by the mechanical fly faded on the obsidian tabletop.
The fanatical faces in the Gotham Underground Roomdisappeared into thin air.
Shen Che retracted his thumb from the red button.
His fingertips gently stroked the edge of the button twice.
"President Shen, the live broadcast line has been connected."
Ashley's voice came through the intercom broadcast, carrying an obvious tremor.
Her hands were shaking violently, bringing a rustling noise into the microphone.
Vought's stock price had been roller-coastering wildly over the past few days, and billions of people worldwide were now staring at this frequency.
If Shen Che said anything else in front of the camera to stimulate the nerves of all mankind, the company building would probably be surrounded by rioters again.
"Good."
Shen Che only replied with one word.
He stood up.
He didn't take the black suit jacket draped over the back of the chair.
He just wore that pure white high-end handmade shirt.
Two buttons at the collar were undone, and the cuffs were casually rolled up to his elbows.
He wore no tie.
This outfit didn't look like a chaebol president about to give a speech to the World.
Instead, he looked like an idler who had just finished a game of golf and was ready to go to the lounge for a glass of ice water to relax.
Careless. Bored.
Shen Che walked to the private elevator.
He pressed the button.
The numbers dropped all the way from one hundred and twelve.
The elevator doors slid open. First-floor news hall.
Outside the door, reporters from hundreds of mainstream media outlets were packed tightly.
Long guns and short cannons were set up everywhere, and the flashlights merged into a dazzling daytime the moment the elevator doors opened.
The sound of shutters pounded on the eardrums like a heavy rainstorm.
Click. Click.
Shen Che stepped out of the elevator. Leather shoes stepped on the red carpet.
He ignored the microphones desperately extended from both sides.
Security personnel held riot shields, forcefully carving out a passage in the sea of people.
Shen Che walked along the passage towards the podium in the dead center.
He stood in front of the microphone.
His hands supported on the wooden platform, his body leaned forward slightly.
He didn't look at the speech in his hand, because he hadn't prepared one at all.
The whole audience fell into instant dead silence.
Everyone held their breath, waiting to see what fatal rule this deity who could casually blow out solar flares would set this time.
New York streets. Paris square. Tokyo crossroads.
On hundreds of huge LED screens around the World, Shen Che's expressionless face appeared simultaneously.
Shen Che raised his hand and flicked his index finger against the metal mesh of the microphone.
"Dong."
The dull echo spread across the globe.
"I'm in a hurry," Shen Che spoke.
His voice was steady, without any of the modulation that public relations speeches should have.
"Gotham City. East District sewers. Third Avenue abandoned nuclear bunker."
He directly reported a string of precise coordinates.
The reporters below looked at each other in dismay, not knowing what this meant.
But far away hundreds of kilometers away,
In the Gotham Underground Room,
Bruce Wayne's hand holding the marker suddenly froze in mid-air.
The cigar in Butcher's mouth fell down, hitting his leather boots, and the sparks burned through his trouser legs.
"He... how does he know?" Hughie stammered, his face pale.
Inside the screen, Shen Che sneered.
The corners of his mouth pulled into an arc that made one's scalp tingle.
"Bruce Wayne. Clark Kent. Billy Butcher."
He read out the names of those meeting in the Underground Room one by one.
"And that Amazon woman holding a broken half-sword, and that cripple who only knows how to discharge electricity."
The World was in an uproar.
Ordinary people couldn't understand these names.
But in the monitoring rooms of intelligence agencies and underground forces of various countries, it was like dropping a nuclear bomb.
Batman isn't dead? Superman is still alive?
What were they gathering in the sewer for?
"Don't go to great lengths to pull off any sneak attacks."
Shen Che looked at the camera, as if looking directly into Bruce's bloodshot eyes.
"Nor do you need to prepare those inferior explosives that can't even poison rats."
"Didn't you guys form some kind of... Justice League?"
The mockery in Shen Che's tone was thick and unresolvable.
"Wanting to pull me down from this position, wanting to carry the hope of all humanity on your shoulders."
He stretched out his right hand, pointing his index finger at the camera.
"I'm giving you a chance."
"Don't hide like rats in the sewer."
"Three days later. Metropolis Starlight Plaza."
Shen Che spoke word by word, every word hitting the heart of the World like a hammer.
"Me alone."
"Solo your crappy league."
"Plus The Boys."
The reporters in the audience gasped.
The sound of gasping gathered into a breeze in the news hall.
Solo?
One person fighting dozens of monsters with superpowers plus top tactical masters?
Is this arrogance, or pure courting death?
Shen Che put both hands into his suit trouser pockets.
Straightening his body.
"Show all your trump cards hidden in your crotches."
"Bring all usable scrap metal, radiation stones, and magicitems."
"Come and court death."
He didn't say another half sentence of nonsense.
Not even a public relations closing statement.
Leaving behind the sentence "Don't make me wait too long".
Shen Che turned around and left the podium.
Leaving only a back in a white shirt, chased by flashes, disappearing behind the elevator doors.
Gotham. Abandoned nuclear bunker.
Dead silence.
Death-like silence. Even the sound of the groundwater pipe leaking couldn't be heard.
On the television screen, Shen Che's extremely arrogant declaration of war was still looping.
"Come and court death."
The three words were like three rusty iron blades, scraping back and forth in the minds of this group of rebels.
This is an open conspiracy.
A bare-faced open conspiracy.
Not only did he see through their trump cards, he even knew where they were hiding.
He could fly over and wipe them all out at any time.
But he didn't.
He wanted to crush them fair and square in front of the whole World, in the plaza that attracted everyone's attention.
To crush them and the trace of hope that all humanity had just ignited,
completely stepping it into the mud.
This was the most cruel execution of killing both body and soul.
Butcher's breathing became heavy.
He turned his head and looked at Bruce.
"Old bat, we've been played like monkeys."
Bruce sat in the wheelchair.
He didn't look at Butcher, his eyes fixed on those red tactical routes on the whiteboard.
Those hopes he had pieced together after pulling several all-nighters.
In the face of Shen Che's words just now, they had turned into a ridiculous elementary school doodle.
The black marker in his hand was gripped out of shape.
The plastic shell let out a creaking scream.
"Snap."
With a crisp sound,
the marker was forcibly snapped into two halves.
Black ink flowed out, blackening Bruce's Kevlar gloves.
Chapter 85: Global Live Broadcast, Watch Me Tear This Group of Saintly Heroes Apart With My Bare Hands
The broken black marker dropped onto the concrete ground.
With a crisp sound, ink splattered onto Bruce's tattered tactical boots.
The air inside the nuclear bunker felt like solidified lead.
The fanaticism of discussing tactics just minutes ago was now thoroughly drenched by a bucket of ice water.
Everyone's trump cards—the hope Bruce had pieced together after pulling several all-nighters—
were treated like garbage by Shen Che,
completely exposed in front of billions of people around the World.
"He is toying with us." Arthur crushed the empty wine bottle in his hand. Glass shards pierced his palm, and he didn't even feel the pain as blood streamed down.
"Are we going or not?" Butcher spat out the unlit cigar in his mouth.
"Not going means waiting for death. Going is a suicide mission." Frenchie collapsed heavily onto an iron storage box.
Bruce looked at the red tactical routes on the whiteboard.
That was their only chance, even if it was an open conspiracy.
He turned his wheelchair to face the crowd.
"We go." Bruce's voice was hoarse.
Three days later. Starlight Plaza in Metropolis.
The sky was grayish-dim, and the clouds hung very low.
There were no civilians here. As early as a day ago, security from Vought Company had cleared out a three-kilometer radius.
Yet, it was livelier here than ever before.
Three hundred ultra-high-definition cameras were set up at command heights around the plaza in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree blindspot-free array.
In mid-air, dozens of wind-resistant drones custom-made by Vought Company swarmed like a pack of black hornets.
Their buzzing intertwined, framing the entire plaza within a gigantic live-broadcast lens.
This was a global live broadcast show designed to kill both body and spirit.
The director of this play was the man sitting on the plutocrat's throne.
Exactly ten o'clock in the morning.
"Boom."
A ring of white sonic boom clouds burst open in the air at the center of the plaza.
Shen Che landed right on time.
He wore no battle armor and carried no weapons.
Today, he had changed into a dark blue handmade suit with the collar of his white shirt wide open.
His leather shoes stepped onto the floor tiles that he had previously smashed and the engineering team had temporarily filled in.
With both hands tucked into his suit trousers' pockets,
he looked at the empty street across the plaza.
"You've arrived right on time." Shen Che twitched the corner of his mouth.
At the end of the street,
a few figures walked out from the morning mist.
There was no retreat, no disguise.
Justice League and The Boys made their entrance simultaneously under the gaze of the entire World.
Diana walked at the very front.
The sword of hephaestus was broken. She carried a spare bronze spear brought from Paradise Island, its tip dragging harshly across the ground and producing a piercing scraping sound.
Clark followed alongside her.
He had taken off that cropped red cape and changed into a black Kryptonian suit found inside the spaceship.
The black tight-fitting suit tightly outlined his muscular lines, and the silver "S" symbol on his chest exuded a muffled sense of resolve.
Arthur's sternum had not yet fully healed. Bare-chested, he gripped a trident temporarily cobbled together from discarded steel bars.
Butcher wore his perpetually unwashed black windbreaker,
holding a six-barreled heavy machine gun with several liquid nitrogen bombs custom-made by Frenchie strapped to the barrels.
Hughie and Frenchie followed behind pushing a modified armored vehicle.
On top of the vehicle, Bruce sat in a wheelchair.
His lower body was paralyzed, and his upper body wore a crude, temporary exoskeleton armor.
That was what he had welded out of scrap iron in the Underground Room over the past three days.
In his hand, he held a black metal launcher, his finger locked tightly onto the trigger.
The two factions, separated by a distance of one hundred meters,
stood in a standoff across this plaza that had once witnessed solar flares being blown out.
There was no pre-battle taunting segment.
The second Bruce's wheelchair came to a stop,
"Do it!"
Bruce's voice boomed like a thunderclap through the armor's megaphone.
Tactics initiated, with zero reservations.
According to the saturated attack contingency plan Brucehad busted his gut over these past few days,
they had to pour all their firepower onto Shen Che at the exact same second,
just to smash open a flaw that might only last two seconds.
"Bang, bang, bang, bang!"
Butcher opened fire first.
The heavy machine gun's barrels instantly turned red, and hundreds of depleted uranium armor-piercing rounds per second lashed out like a whip of fire,
carrying a piercing screech as they viciously lashed toward Shen Che.
The armor-piercing rounds struck the absolute force field ten meters away from Shen Che,
bursting into blinding clusters of sparks. The warheads were directly crushed into iron patties, clattering down onto the ground.
Butcher didn't expect the bullets to injure him.
He pulled the secondary trigger beneath the barrels.
Four specialized liquid nitrogen bombs were hurled out, detonating with a roar around Shen Che.
An ultra-low temperature white fog of minus two hundred degrees Celsius instantly spread, enveloping Shen Che's figure within.
At the same time,
Frenchie pressed the detonator behind the armored vehicle.
"Boom!"
High-energy electromagnetic pulse landmines buried in advance within the sewers beneath the plaza detonated simultaneously.
Blue electric arcs burst out of the ground, turning half of the plaza into a thunderstorm zone.
"Charge!"
Diana did not wait for the white fog to dissipate.
With a loud cry, her tactical boots slammed fiercely against the ground, and her entire body shot forward like a cannonball out of a barrel.
Taking advantage of the cover from the electromagnetic interference and the liquid nitrogen white fog,
she gripped the bronze spear tightly with both hands, exerting force from her waist.
Carrying kinetic energy enough to shake the heavens and earth, the spear pierced straight toward the center of the white fog.
Clark followed closely behind.
He did not use Heat Vision; he knew it was useless.
He concentrated all his strength into his right fist, the black suit being stretched almost to the point of tearing by his muscles.
A heavy punch that broke the sound barrier slammed toward the exact same point, right alongside Diana's spear.
Aquaman Arthur outflanked from the flank, his makeshift steel-bar trident whistling through the air as it swept horizontally toward the lower half of the white fog.
Firepower coverage, melee blitz.
Their coordination was flawless. This was already the most perfect combination skill humans and super-humans could possibly execute.
Flames soared within the white fog, and the floor tiles were smashed into powder.
The massive Impact flipped over the surrounding abandoned police cars.
Everyone in Justice League held their breath.
Butcher released the trigger of the emptied machine gun, his fingers feeling somewhat numb.
Bruce sat in the wheelchair atop the armored vehicle.
He stared fixedly at that rolling cloud of dust and smoke; the mental disruptor in his hand had already lit up with a red light.
Waiting precisely for this moment.
As long as the opponent's force field showed even a trace of disorder, as long as he took half a step back,
the disruptor would blast high-frequency brainwaves directly into that monster's brain.
The dust and smoke had yet to clear.
Flames flickered within the mist.
"Clang!"
A crisp sound of metal collision, devoid of any worldly aura,
came from the center of the white fog.
The sound wasn't loud, yet it clearly pounded against everyone's eardrums.
Bruce's heart violently clutched.
An ominous premonition bit into the back of his head like a venomous snake.
A hand.
A bare, white, slender hand
stretched out leisurely from the dense smoke.
The cuff of that pure white handmade shirt didn't even have a single wrinkle, let alone any scorch marks or frost.
That hand—
index and middle fingers pressed together,
just like that, so casually in mid-air,
against Diana's bronze spear that stabbed forward with overwhelming force—
flicked its fingers.