Chapter 96: Joker strapped a nuclear bomb to himself, wanting to play a human nature game with me
The harsh roar of the diesel engine penetrated the bulletproof glass on the first floor.
Along the smooth glass curtain wall of Vought Tower, it traveled all the way up to the one hundred and twelfth floor.
Shen Che stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window.
He held a freshly brewed cup of black coffee in his hand. The coffee had no sugar added, and steam was rising from it.
He lowered his head. His gaze crossed the window ledge.
A heavy-duty truck with its front painted with exaggerated smiley-face graffiti.
Was parked on the steps of Starlight Plaza downstairs from the building. White smoke was leaking from the water tank.
More than a dozen security personnel holding guns surrounded the truck in a circle. No one dared to shoot.
The truck door was kicked open with a single kick.
Joker jumped down. His purple suit was wrinkled.
He was holding a detonator flashing with a red light in his hand.
He fished a portable megaphone out of his pocket and brought it to his mouth.
The megaphone emitted a crackling current noise.
"Big boss up there! Good morning!"
Joker's strange voice echoed across the plaza, carrying a comical theatrical cadence.
He pointed at the truck container behind him.
"This is not two tons of C4."
Joker split his mouth painted with red greasepaint.
"That's too low-grade. It doesn't match you, the newly appointed financial tycoon god."
He extended two fingers.
"This is one. A micro nuclear bomb I went through a lot of trouble to get from the Russia black market."
When the security personnel below heard the words "nuclear bomb", their legs turned to jelly.
Two of them directly dropped their guns and turned to run.
Joker didn't care about the fleeing people. He waved the detonator as he held it up.
"This thing is connected to my cardiac pacemaker."
He patted his own chest.
"As long as I die, or this detonator leaves me by half a meter—"
"Boom."
Joker made an exploding gesture.
"Half of Manhattan, along with your Vought Tower, will turn into a pile of glowing radioactive glass balls."
One hundred and twelfth floor.
Shen Che took a sip of coffee.
The bitter taste spread across the tip of his tongue.
He looked at the clown jumping up and down below, his gaze calm, just like looking at a monkey performing street juggling.
This damn thing didn't even qualify to make him frown.
The voice from the megaphone continued to come through.
"I saw your press conference. You said you don't save people, you only recognize money."
Joker spun around in place, the hem of his purple suit flying up.
"I don't believe it."
He stopped, staring straight at the floor-to-ceiling window overhead.
"I don't believe anyone in this world can be cold-blooded to the point of having no bottom line at all. Even a god can't."
"So, let's play a game."
Joker fished a remote control out of his pocket.
He pressed the button.
The large screen next to the plaza lit up.
The screen split into two halves.
On the left was a luxury cruise ship full of Wall Streetelites in suits and leather shoes.
On the right was a ferry crowded with civilians and children.
Both ships were sailing on the New York East River.
Both ship hulls were strapped with explosives.
"These are two ships. The bomb countdown is ten minutes."
Joker's voice carried a morbid excitement.
"If you save those rich people on the left who can pay you protection money, the poor people's ship on the right will blow up."
"If you show mercy and save the poor, those sponsors of yours on the left will turn into pieces of meat."
He spread his arms wide.
"If you want to save both, or come directly to kill me—"
He patted the truck behind him.
"The nuclear bomb will raze this place to the ground."
This was Joker's specialty—human nature testing.
He loved watching those who claimed to be the strong struggle in this cliché moral dilemma.
Anger, compromise, or revealing their hypocritical underwear.
He had driven Batman crazy countless times in Gotham; he enjoyed the thrill of dragging someone high above down into the mire.
"Choose! Great deity!"
Joker laughed wildly downstairs.
The laughter was magnified through the loudspeaker, as harsh as fingernails scraping a blackboard.
He was waiting.
Waiting for Shen Che's entanglement, waiting for his annoyance after weighing the pros and cons.
As long as Shen Che made a choice, even if it was abandoning one side.
Then Shen Che would no longer be a god, but a mortal played by his Joker within the rules.
Shen Che put the coffee cup back on the obsidian tabletop.
The porcelain cup collided with the stone surface, making a slight crisp sound.
He put both hands into his suit pants pockets.
Watching the Joker downstairs who was laughing so hard he was almost splitting his sides.
This game was too old.
So old it even made people feel bored.
Shen Che didn't take the elevator.
He directly took a step forward.
His leather shoes stepped on the dilapidated window frame.
His legs bent slightly.
High up in the skies of Manhattan, over a hundred floors high.
The air twisted abruptly.
A short sonic boom exploded beneath the clouds.
The white airflow ring had not completely dissipated yet.
"Bang."
Shen Che had already landed in front of Joker.
The distance was less than two meters.
His leather shoes crushed a marble floor tile on the steps.
There were no violent winds; the kinetic energy was controlled just right, only lifting the hem of Joker's purple suit.
Joker's laughter came to an abrupt halt.
He looked at Shen Che, who was close at hand.
On that stern face, there was no entanglement as Jokerhad expected, nor was there anger.
Not even a trace of solemnity.
There was only an annoyance as if looking at an idiot.
Just like eating a fly in a high-end restaurant.
"You—" Joker raised the detonator in his hand, his thumb pressing down hard on it.
He tried to find a trace of dread in Shen Che's eyes.
"You don't care about those people's lives? You don't care about this nuclear bomb?"
Shen Che looked at him.
His eyes were like two bottomless dry wells, as cold as falling ice slag.
"A game?"
Shen Che twitched the corner of his mouth, revealing a trace of undisguised mockery.
"In my territory, are you even qualified to set the rules?"
Chapter 97: Is human nature inherently evil? I directly slap Joker into a puddle of meat
Joker's laughter stuck in his throat.
He looked at the man in the black suit before him.
In those pitch-black eyes, there wasn't a ripple of fluctuation, nor any annoyance at being blackmailed.
Only a pure disregard.
This made Joker feel very uncomfortable.
He was used to controlling the rhythm, used to seeing others collapse in his madness.
Batman would angrily grab his collar and roar; the Policewould despairingly shoot at him.
But the man in front of him was like a piece of iron without temperature.
"You don't care about those two ships?" Joker shook the detonator in his hand, the red light flashing.
"There are politicians on the ship, there are tycoons. They pay you tens of millions in protection fees every year."
Joker took a step forward, his toes resting on the cracked marble floor tiles.
"Didn't you say you pay money to live? If they die, your rules become a joke."
He tried to provoke Shen Che.
"And this nuclear bomb. Even if you can survive, your Vought Tower, your treasury, will all turn into wasteland."
Joker split his mouth painted with red greasepaint.
"Choose. Human nature is inherently evil. Let me see where the selfish bottom line of your pseudo-god is."
Shen Che had his hands in his suit pants pockets.
He didn't even lift an eyelid.
"Are you done talking?" Shen Che's voice was flat.
These understatement four words were like a heavy slap, striking Joker's self-esteem.
The smile on Joker's face distorted.
White powder fell straight off.
His thumb pressed hard against the edge of the detonator's button, his knuckles turning white.
"You really think I don't dare to press it?" Joker's voice became sharp.
"If I die, everyone finishes together. How fun is that!"
Shen Che finally pulled his right hand out of his pocket.
He looked at Joker, his eyes revealing a deep sense of annoyance.
"A pervert like you who has stayed in the sewer for too long—"
Shen Che's tone was like talking about a bag of stinking garbage.
"Always likes to play these self-righteous either-or games."
He took a step forward.
His leather shoes stepped on the broken bricks, making a slight crunching sound.
"You think human nature is inherently evil? You think you can use death to threaten me?"
Shen Che twitched the corner of his mouth, revealing a smile cold to the extreme.
"I'm not choosing."
As soon as the words fell.
Shen Che's right hand lifted up.
No sonic boom. No afterimage. Not even the sound of wind.
Silver Age Superman's absolute speed broke the constraints of the physical dimension in this instant.
Joker's nerve signals hadn't even had time to transmit from his retina to the cerebral cortex.
That slender hand had already arrived in front of him.
Not to grab that detonator flashing with red light.
But instead—
Palm open.
Carrying a terrifying kinetic energy that ignored any resistance.
"Slap—"
With a slap,
It landed squarely on Joker's greasepaint-covered face.
The sound was as loud as two steel plates weighing several tons colliding head-on.
A huge shock wave exploded fiercely between the two of them.
Joker's two-hundred-pound body, the moment it made contact with the palm,
His bones emitted a series of scalp-tingling cracking sounds.
His cervical spine, spine, and ribs were directly crushed at the same time by this dimensional-reduction strike of power.
His entire body flew backward like a purple-red cannonball out of the chamber.
At a speed breaking the sound barrier.
"Boom!"
Joker's body heavily smashed against the front of the heavy truck loaded with the nuclear bomb.
There was no scream.
Because zero point one seconds before the Impactoccurred,
The moisture and blood in his body instantly vaporized under the pressure of the terrifying kinetic energy.
The power of that slap directly patted him into a pool of bloody, mangled mush.
Purple suit rags and flesh and blood mixed together, like an abstract red graffiti, pasted tightly on the truck's crash-proof steel beam.
Not even a complete bone was left.
The detonator fell from between Joker's shattered finger gaps.
With a "clatter", it hit the cement ground, rolled twice, and stopped.
The micro nuclear bomb's detonation sequence was instantly activated due to the sudden stop of Joker's heartbeat.
The red light in the container began to flash frantically, and the countdown returned to zero.
"Beep—"
A sharp buzz.
The conventional explosives inside the nuclear bomb detonated, preparing to compress the nuclear material.
Right at this critical juncture,
Deep within Shen Che's eyes, two scarlet points of light exploded without warning.
The red light did not shoot out,
But turned into two extremely thin Heat Vision beams, accurately penetrating the thick iron sheet of the container.
Not to melt it, but with a high-dimensional energy interference,
It directly interrupted the chain reaction process inside the nuclear bomb.
That mass of nuclear explosion energy sufficient to raze Manhattan to the ground, the moment it was generated,
Was directly choked back to its origin by this unreasonable high temperature.
"Poof."
Only a faint muffled sound came from inside the container.
Like a dud, emitting a faint trace of white smoke.
The nuclear bomb became scrap iron.
The red light in the depths of Shen Che's eyes extinguished.
He lowered his right hand, took out a white handkerchief,
Wiped the palm of his hand, and casually threw the handkerchief onto the ground.
All of this happened too fast.
From Shen Che making his move, to Joker turning into mush, to the nuclear bomb being forcibly silenced,
Less than two seconds.
The security personnel in the distance were still holding their guns, dumbfounded in place.
On the large screen, those two cruise ships strapped with bombs were still sailing on the East River.
No countdown. No explosion.
Because the detonation signal had already been completely cut off by Shen Che hacking into the satellite system via his super brain's bio-electrical waves the moment the detonator dropped.
Shen Che looked at the pool of purple-red mush on the truck's hood.
"Playing a game,"
His voice was flat, echoing in the quiet plaza.
"You have to be worthy."
He turned around without taking another look.
This was his response to this kind of cliché moral kidnapping.
No entanglement. No compromise. Not playing by your rules.
As long as you slap the person who posed the question to death, the question ceases to exist.
Simple, crude,
Yet effectively despair-inducing.
Chapter 97: Is Human Nature Inherently Evil? I Directly Slapped the Joker into a Pulp
The residual wave of distorted air swept past.
The wind carried a pungent smell of tar, ruffling the Joker's greasy green hair.
Shen Che landed on the asphalt road.
There was no heavy thud of landing; his black leather shoes stepped steadily between the cracks in the stone slabs.
His tailored black suit didn't even have a single wrinkle on its hem.
The distance was less than two meters.
The Joker stood in front of the truck, clutching the detonator with a flashing red light tightly in his hand.
An exaggerated grin cracked open on his face, which was slathered in white greasepaint.
Cheap red lipstick was drawn all the way to his earlobes.
He saw Shen Che's instantaneous landing, but he didn't feel afraid.
At this distance, as long as his heart stopped or his hand loosened, everyone would turn into ashes under the nuclear blast together.
"Ha... haha."
The Joker squeezed a dry laugh out of his throat.
He opened his mouth, revealing a few gold-capped rotten teeth.
He prepared to start his favorite speech—that set of "human nature is inherently evil" nonsense that he had used countless times in Gotham to torment Batman.
"You don't want to choose? You think a god can step out of—"
Before he could finish.
Shen Che gave him no chance whatsoever to spout those clichés.
A look of deep annoyance flashed in his eyes.
It was like dining at a fine restaurant when a buzzing blowfly suddenly flies in.
Too noisy, too sickening.
This kind of pervert who thought he saw through human nature and loved playing binary choice games with hundreds of thousands of lives...
In Shen Che's eyes, was just an utterly worthless pile of dog shit.
Before Silver Age Superman's unreasonable, absolute power...
Whatever bullshit miniature nuclear bomb, whatever psychological mind games questioning human nature...
They were all completely useless.
Shen Che pulled his right hand out of his suit pants pocket.
No wind-up. No stance.
He didn't even exert much force from his shoulder muscles.
He simply raised his hand and brought his fingers together.
A backhand.
He swung a slap across.
*Slap—!*
The crisp sound exploded over the quiet Starlight Plaza.
No earth-shattering sonic boom. No wild winds flipping trucks.
Because Shen Che had controlled his force to absolute perfection.
All kinetic energy—one hundred percent of it—without a single trace leaking out...
Was dumped entirely into the Joker's white-powdered face.
The Joker's laughter got caught in his throat.
He didn't even have time to blink.
The moment the slap made contact with his skin...
The paint and flesh on the Joker's face rippled violently like water waves.
Immediately following—
*Squelch.*
A dull, scalp-numbing sound echoed.
A two-hundred-pound adult male body, under pure violence that defied the limits of physics...
His bones skipped the process of fracturing and shattered straight into powder finer than sand.
His internal organs burst in an instant under the terrifying pressure.
Along with that rumpled purple suit.
The Joker's entire body...
Was forced directly into the asphalt pavement below by this single strike.
He didn't fly backward.
Right on the spot.
He was reduced to a bloody, mangled pulp of purplish-red flesh.
Firmly embedded between the black asphalt and crushed gravel.
Blood mixed with yellowish-white fat and brain matter, seeping outward along the cracks in the road.
That exaggerated grinning face was gone.
That rhetoric used to threaten gods was permanently smashed into the dirt.
The Joker didn't even have time to utter half a last word.
He didn't even have time for the triumphant smugness in his eyes—the belief that he controlled everything—to fade.
Just like that, cleanly and swiftly...
He became a mushy mess that no longer bore any human resemblance.
The detonator slipped from the Joker's shattered fingers.
*Clatter.*
It struck the asphalt road, rolled twice, and stopped beside Shen Che's leather shoe.
The red light on top connected to the Joker's heartbeat...
Due to the instantaneous destruction of his heart...
Its flashing frequency abruptly accelerated, staying permanently lit at its limit.
The detonation signal had been sent.
Chapter 98: Playing Out of Order, Joker Didn't Even Finish His Last Words
Joker's laughter stuck in his throat.
He didn't even have time to blink an eye.
The moment this slap made contact with the skin.
The white greasepaint and flesh on Joker's face rippled violently like waves.
Right after that.
"Pfft."
A dull thud that made one's scalp tingle.
A two-hundred-pound adult body, under sheer violence that broke physical extremes.
Bones. Without the process of breaking, directly pulverized into bone powder finer than sand.
Internal organs. Burst instantly under terrifying pressure.
Along with that wrinkled purple suit.
Joker's entire body.
Was slapped, quite literally, straight into the asphalt road beneath his feet by this slap.
Not flying out. Right in place.
Turned into a pool of bloody, mangled purplish-red meat paste.
Firmly embedded between the black asphalt and crushed gravel.
Blood mixed with yellowish-white fat and brain matter oozed out along the cracks in the road.
That exaggerated smiling face was gone.
That rhetoric used to coerce the gods was shattered forever into the mud.
Joker didn't even have time to say half a last word.
Not even the smugness in his eyes of thinking he controlled everything had time to dissipate.
Just like that. So cleanly. He became a paste that no longer looked human.
The detonator fell from between Joker's shattered fingers.
"Clang."
It hit the asphalt road, rolled twice, and stopped beside Shen Che's leather shoes.
The red light on it connected to Joker's heartbeat.
Because of the instant destruction of the heart.
The flashing frequency suddenly accelerated, reaching an extreme steady-on state.
The dead man's switch was activated.
The detonation signal cut into the truck container along the radio waves.
"Click. Click."
The dull meshing sound of mechanical gears came out through the thick iron sheet.
Followed by a sharp current buzz.
The primer of the conventional explosive was struck bright by the firing pin. Primary blasting was about to compress the nuclear material.
A micro nuclear explosion. In less than a second, it would evaporate this half of Manhattan into flat ground.
The edge of Starlight Plaza.
Over a dozen security guards of Vought Company held guns, their calves trembling incessantly.
"Nuclear bomb! Run!"
The security Captain's voice cracked. Dropping his riot shield, he turned and scrambled out.
In the first-floor lobby of Vought Tower.
The front desk clerks and executives were scared out of their wits.
High heels stepped off onto the ground with no one to pick them up. Screams connected into one piece, like an exploded chicken coop.
Hundreds of people squeezed desperately toward the back door, wanting to escape this countdown crematorium.
Shen Che didn't move.
Lowering his head, he glanced at that pool of purplish-red meat paste by his feet.
Joker's pride-worthy madness. That set of moral questions testing human nature.
In this bloody pit, it looked comical and ridiculous.
Shen Che had no interest in doing any either-or multiple choice questions.
He slapped the question setter to death.
Now. He was going to solve the carrier of this question.
He raised his right hand and casually flicked it twice.
As if shaking off the non-existent smell of blood on his hands.
The sound of gears meshing became increasingly urgent.
The surface of the container's iron sheet bulged into an obvious arc due to the expansion of the internal primary explosive.
The destructive strong light was about to tear through the iron sheet.
Shen Che took a step forward.
His leather shoes crushed the always-on red light of the detonator. The plastic shell shattered into powder.
He walked to the side of the truck.
This was a U.S. heavy truck weighing over ten tons.
Shen Che didn't build up force. He didn't squat to leverage strength.
He reached out with one hand.
Slender fingers directly hooked onto the hard load-bearing steel beam of the truck chassis.
Thumb and index finger stuck to the edge of the steel beam.
Zero point one second before the nuclear bomb was about to burst into flames.
The high temperature of the primary explosive had already licked the outer shell of the nuclear material.
The muscles of Shen Che's arms tightened slightly under his white shirt.
"Up."
His voice was flat. Like picking up an empty soda can on the roadside.
Exerting force with a single arm, he flicked upwards.
"Boom!"
The truck weighing over ten tons. Along with the micro nuclear bomb inside about to explode.
Was directly uprooted by this unreasonable absolute violence.
The tires spun wildly in the air, kicking up a circle of dust.
The truck broke away from Earth's gravity.
No parabola. No flight trajectory.
Shen Che's wrist flicked fiercely.
"Whoosh——!"
The piercing sonic boom exploded around the truck. White airflow rings burst open instantly.
The truck turned into a blurry black shadow.
With terrifying kinetic energy breaking through the second cosmic velocity.
Straightly.
Was thrown directly into outer space by Shen Che like throwing trash.
The air was forcibly torn open by this brute force, forming a brief vacuum channel.
The wind roared over Manhattan.
The security personnel had just run to the street corner.
The employees in the building were still clustered in a group at the door.
Turning their heads back, they only saw a long white contrail left in the sky.
Three seconds later.
Outside Earth's atmosphere. On a low-Earth orbit hundreds of kilometers away.
In the black deep space of the Universe.
Suddenly, a ball of extremely dazzling strong light burst open.
The light was like a miniature Sun, briefly illuminating the night side of half of Earth.
But under an absolute vacuum environment.
There was no medium for shockwave transmission. No Earth-shattering mushroom cloud.
The energy of the nuclear explosion could only expand rapidly in a vacuum, and then be quickly absorbed and cooled by the cold Universe.
Turning into a gorgeous but completely non-lethal patch of light.
Very much like a muffled dud firecracker set off during the Chinese New Year.
On Earth.
Manhattan's streets. Vought Tower. Starlight Plaza.
Not even the thinnest piece of glass was shattered.
Even the water column sprayed by the fire hydrant just damaged by the truck was not affected at all.
Everything was calm and tranquil.
Except for that pool of Joker's meat paste on the ground.
The security personnel on the plaza stood frozen in place.
The crowd in the lobby stopped screaming.
They looked at the gradually dimming patch of light in the sky.
And turned their heads to look at Shen Che clapping his hands, standing at the truck's original position.
A few seconds ago, they thought they were going to turn into radioactive ashes.
A few seconds later. That nuclear bomb capable of flattening half a city.
Was casually thrown into space by this man like letting off fireworks.
This kind of dimensional strike-like power refreshed humanity's understanding of this plutocrat god once again.
Shen Che finished clapping his hands.
Straightened his cuffs.
He didn't bother with that disgusting rotting meat on the ground, nor did he look at the terrified people around.
Turning around, he strode with long legs, stepping on the steps.
Walking towards the revolving glass door of Vought Tower.
His back was cold and firm. Just like someone who just went out to take out a bag of trash and was now going back inside to continue drinking coffee.
Inside the building, all employees automatically cleared a spacious passage.
Everyone lowered their heads, suppressing their breathing to the lowest.
No one dared to look him directly in the eye.
Shen Che walked into the private elevator.
Pressed the button for the one hundred twelfth floor.
The car doors slowly closed, isolating the dead silence outside.
Two hundred kilometers away.
Gotham City. An abandoned nuclear bunker deep in the sewers.
Bruce Wayne sat in a wheelchair.
Several surveillance screens hung on the wall in front of him.
One of them was playing the surveillance footage of Manhattan's Starlight Plaza.
Although there was no sound, he saw everything that had just happened clearly.
Joker's truck. The red light of the detonator.
Shen Che's slap.
Finally, that truck thrown into space and that patch of white light.
Bruce's hands gripped the metal armrests of the wheelchair tightly.
His knuckles turned a dead gray from excessive force.
The muscles on his face were twitching. His eye sockets were filled with bloodshot veins.
That was his lifelong archenemy.
Joker, who could churn up clouds and rain in Gotham, playing human nature in the palm of his hand.
Just like that. Like swatting a mosquito to death.
Without even finishing half a last word. Without even starting his proudest game.
He was slapped into a pool of mush.
The no-kill principle he had adhered to for a lifetime.
In front of Shen Che's simple, crude, and absolute power.
Appeared so pale. So ridiculous.
Bruce stared at the pool of purplish-red blood on the screen.
His chest heaved violently.
"Without breaking the rules... there's no way to win against him."
Bruce's voice was hoarse.
He released the tightly gripped armrests and turned his wheelchair.
With his back to the wall of monitors flashing with despairing images.
He pushed his wheelchair, driving towards the deepest part of the nuclear bunker, the password-protected secret room he had sealed shut for a full decade.
Chapter 99: Batman is Crazy, How Dare You Break the No-Kill Rule
A hoarse, low roar echoed within the abandoned nuclear bunker.
Like a dying Beast.
Bruce Wayne's hands tightly gripped the wheelchair's metal armrests.
His finger bones glowed with a terrifying, deathly gray.
He pushed the wheelchair, its tires grinding over the damp concrete ground.
He had originally intended to open the password-locked secret room that had been sealed for ten years, but he didn't go.
The wheelchair stopped in place, and he turned around.
His bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the surveillance screen on the wall.
The image was frozen on Starlight Plaza.
That pool of purplish-red meat paste was deeply embedded in the black asphalt road surface.
Joker.
That archenemy who had churned up winds and rains in Gotham and caused him to wake up terrified in the middle of the night countless times.
Was just gone like this.
No conspiracy, no poison gas, no mind-breaking riddles and laughter.
Just a single slap.
Bruce's chest heaved violently, his lungs feeling as if they were stuffed with rusted wire.
Every breath pulled at his fractured lumbar vertebrae, and the titanium alloy exoskeleton emitted a creaking protest.
He didn't care about the pain.
What he cared about was that line—the bottom line he had guarded with his life for his entire existence.
"The No-Kill Rule."
Bruce's lips moved, spitting out those four words in a dry voice.
This was the shackle he had placed upon himself on the first day he became Batman.
He had broken Joker's limbs and smashed his teeth.
He had thrown that madman into an Arkham solitary confinement cell countless times.
Even when Joker bombed hospitals, killed civilians, and even harmed those around him.
He had never dealt a fatal blow.
He firmly believed that as long as he didn't cross that murderous red line, he wouldn't be considered fallen.
Gotham City's sins still had hope of being saved by procedural justice.
This was his faith and the only anchor that allowed him to remain clear-headed in the darkness.
But now.
That anchor had been kicked apart by Shen Che in a single kick.
Uprooted and pulverized.
That man in a custom-tailored suit hadn't even spared Joker a second glance.
Just like swatting to death a fly resting on a dining table.
No trial, no nonsense.
He didn't even let Joker finish his proudest dying words of "Human nature is inherently evil."
Bruce found it absurd.
The evil he had spent half his life fighting looked as comical as a three-year-old child's prank in the face of this absolute power.
This made him feel even more despair than Shen Cheeating Kryptonite raw.
"How dare you..."
Bruce gritted his teeth, droplets of blood seeping from the tip of his bitten tongue.
"That is a human life! Even if he's a madman, you have no right to deprive him of his life!"
He roared at the unresponsive screen.
His voice crashed against the concrete walls in the empty Underground Room.
He felt that Shen Che was more evil than Joker.
Joker's evil was a traceable chaos.
Whereas Shen Che's evil was a dimensional-reduction arrogance that ignored all rules.
He treated human lives as numbers and trampled the law beneath his leather shoes.
This kind of slaughter without any procedure, this kind of dictatorship holding the power of life and death in one's own hands.
Was the true abyss.
Bruce's hand slipped from the armrest.
With a sweep, he knocked several tactical blueprints off the iron desk.
The blueprints scattered across the floor, on which the containment plans against Shen Che drawn in red pen.
Now looked like a pile of meaningless waste paper.
He slammed both hands onto the keyboard.
"Bang. Bang. Bang."
The keyboard's plastic keys were smashed and sent flying in all directions.
The skin on his knuckles broke, leaving bloodstains on the keyboard.
The code on the computer screen flashed frantically.
"Beep. Beep."
The system emitted a harsh error warning sound.
Bruce's psyche was stretched to its limit, that string named sanity.
Was about to snap.
How much price had he paid to uphold that no-kill rule?
Losing comrades, losing loved ones, and even now, becoming paralyzed from the waist down.
And the result?
That tyrant from outer space used only a single slap.
To turn his lifelong persistence into a complete and utter joke.
Bruce collapsed in the wheelchair, covering his face with both hands.
His shoulders heaved violently.
He wasn't crying, but suppressing an impending madness about to erupt.
If he didn't break his bottom line, he could never win against that monster.
But once he broke that bottom line, what difference would there be between him and that monster?
This paradox was like a knife sawing back and forth inside his brain.
Gotham City.
The heavy rain had just stopped, and the puddles on the streets reflected colorful neon lights.
Originally, today was a day of carnival for Gotham's underworld.
The alarm of Arkham Asylum was still sounding, and the news of Joker's prison break had long since spread.
Those villains hiding in dark corners.
Penguin, Two-Face, Black Mask.
Had long since had their subordinates polish their gun barrels, preparing to go all out with Joker.
Taking advantage of Batman's paralysis to turn Gothamcompletely upside down.
Inside the underground casino of the Iceberg Lounge.
Hundreds of gangster thugs holding automatic rifles were crammed in front of the television.
On the screen, Vought Company's global live broadcast was playing.
The image was somewhat blurry, but the shot of that slap shattering Joker.
Was clear enough to make one's scalp tingle.
That pool of purplish-red meat paste was firmly embedded in Manhattan's asphalt road surface.
The entire casino fell into dead silence.
No one spoke, no one moved.
Even the cigar that fell to the ground, burning a black hole into the carpet, went unnoticed by anyone trying to step on it.
Penguin sat in his boss chair.
The diamond-encrusted umbrella in his hand dropped to the floor with a clatter.
The fat on his face twitched, and his monocle slid off his eye socket, smashing against his chest.
"Boss..." a thug swallowed saliva, his voice trembling. "Are we... still going to rob the bank?"
Penguin violently turned his head.
And slapped that thug across the face.
"Rob your mother!"
He roared in a lowered voice, spit spraying all over the thug's face.
"If you want to die, don't drag me down with you!"
He pointed at the man in the black suit on the television screen who was throwing a truck loaded with a miniature nuclear bomb into space.
"That's a psycho! That's a living Hades without any bottom line!"
Penguin trembled all over.
"When the old Bat was around, he'd at most break our legs and send us to Arkham where at least we got fed."
"If we cause trouble now and lure that ancestor to Gotham."
He pointed at the underground sewer manhole cover.
"He will burn the entire Gotham City into a glass marble along with the ground! Not even a single mouse will survive!"
"Get back! Make everyone crawl back into their clubs and stay put!"
"Whoever dares to fire a single shot on the street, I'll skin them alive myself!"
The abandoned courthouse building.
Two-Face Harvey's coin dropped into a puddle.
He didn't go to pick it up.
That half of his burned, ruined face was as pale as paper.
He turned around and waved his hand at his subordinates.
"Call off the team. Lock the doors tight."
Harvey's voice was hoarse.
Without Batman's bottom-line protection, this bunch of madmen.
In front of that absolute-violence plutocrat, they weren't even worth a fart.
Those villains who had originally prepared to make a big move taking advantage of Joker's jailbreak.
Watching the live TV broadcast, all fell into a dead silence.
This night.
Gotham City welcomed since its founding.
The most peaceful, yet most terrifying night.
Chapter 100: Gotham Villains Tremble in Fear, This Tyrant Has Absolutely No Bottom Line
Inside the private room of the Iceberg Lounge.
The cigar in Penguin's hand dropped onto the carpet.
Fire sparks burned through the expensive handmade Persian wool, scorching a charred hole.
Yet he remained completely oblivious.
His fat body slumped into the leather sofa, his small eyes staring intently at the television screen on the wall.
There was no sound on the screen, only a slowly repeating replay.
That slender, well-jointed hand of Shen Che.
Seemingly waved lightly.
Joker's face, smeared with White powder, rippled violently like Water waves, then turned into a bloody mass of mush.
Firmly embedded into the asphalt pavement of Manhattan.
No nonsense. No trial.
Even less of Batman's dawdling moral bottom line of sparing lives.
Direct. Violent. Crushing.
Penguin's Adam's apple rolled up and down with difficulty as he swallowed a mouthful of dry, smoky saliva.
He had been a dominant force in Gotham's underworld for decades; what ruthless characters hadn't he seen?
Even monsters like Bane had room for negotiation.
But this man in the custom-tailored suit on the screen—
He didn't deign to negotiate at all.
"What the hell is this thing..." Penguin's voice trembled.
The monocle slipped from the bridge of his nose and smashed onto his thigh.
He didn't dare to pick it up.
He suddenly realized that for decades, this group of madmen could run amok in Gotham—
It wasn't because they were so strong.
It was because Batman's non-killing red line gave them the confidence to run wild in this quagmire.
Now, that bottom line had been crushed under Shen Che's foot.
The abandoned courthouse building.
Two-Face Harvey Dent stood in front of the tattered window.
It was raining outside, and the rainwater wet his half-charred, rotten face.
He held that iconic coin in his hand.
His thumb pressed against the edge of the coin, ready to flip it.
He was gambling. Gambling on whether to take people to wipe out the Gotham Police Department while Batmanwas paralyzed.
The coin hadn't left his hand yet.
On the big screen outside the courthouse, the news of Joker turning into meat paste was broadcast.
Harvey's hand froze in mid-air.
That half of his intact face instantly turned as pale as paper, without a trace of blood.
"Clang."
The coin slipped from between his stiff fingers.
It hit the windowsill and bounced once.
Directly sliding along the base of the wall into the street sewer.
Harvey didn't go to fish it out.
He turned around, looking at the group of gangster thugs behind him who were cleaning their guns and sharpening their blades.
"Boss, this coin..." a subordinate approached.
"Don't throw it anymore."
Harvey's voice was hoarse, as if a handful of sand was stuffed in his throat.
"Tell the brothers to put down their guns."
He pointed at the big screen outside.
"That's an unreasonable butcher. Who dares to show their head at a time like this."
"Tomorrow, the rats in the sewer will have an extra meal."
In the old district of Gotham, inside a dim Underground Room.
The walls were covered densely with newspapers and green question marks.
Riddler sat in front of the computer.
He was originally writing a complex piece of hacker code, preparing to hack into the bank system of Gotham Citytonight.
Leaving behind a shocking series of riddles.
Making Batman run around the whole city like a headless fly.
Until he saw the breaking news video pop up in the lower right corner of the computer.
In the video, Shen Che didn't even glance at Joker, slapping down with one hand, and the nuclear missile vehicle was thrown into space.
Riddler's hand stopped on the keyboard.
His fingertips felt cold.
He slowly pulled open the drawer.
Inside lay a thick stack of green cards, filled with exquisite riddles he had spent months conceiving.
He took out a card.
Looking at the complex logical deduction on it.
Suddenly, he tore the card in half.
Then into four pieces. Eight pieces.
Until it was torn into a pile of green paper scraps, thrown into the trash can by his feet.
He was a high-IQ criminal. He liked intellectual games.
But he wasn't stupid.
He knew very well that if he gave riddles to that man on the screen—
That man would definitely not go look for any clues, nor would he solve any riddles.
He would directly fly over along the network cable.
And blast both the person and this Underground Roominto flat ground with a single slap.
In the face of absolute violence, all intellectual games were a joke.
Riddler stood up and turned off the computer screen.
That night,
the underworld of Gotham City was thoroughly scared out of its wits.
Gang bosses held emergency meetings overnight.
No turf wars. No gang fights.
The only topic of the meeting was how to dispose of the guns and ammunition in their hands.
By the dock,
crates of unopened weapons were treated like garbage by gang members—
pushed overnight into the murky Water of Gotham City.
"Hurry up! Don't leave fingerprints!"
"Push all those containers with the Vought logo down!"
A minor boss commanded in a lowered voice, sweating profusely.
They were scared.
Afraid that the man in the White shirt would trace these weapons back to them.
Afraid that they would wake up tomorrow morning and turn into a puddle of meat paste stuck on the street.
Not just the gangs.
The lobby of the Gotham Police Department.
Was unusually lively tonight.
Not because a large-scale riot had broken out.
But because the people coming to surrender formed a long queue.
"Officer, I stole two hundred bucks from a convenience store last month. Arrest me."
A ruffian with a fierce face held his head with both hands and actively handed over his wrists.
"Arrange a single cell for me. Preferably on the third underground level."
The receiving Police officer froze, and the pen in his hand dropped onto the desk.
"You're not drunk, are you?"
"Not drunk! Hurry up and put handcuffs on me!"
The ruffian got anxious and slipped his wrists into the handcuffs himself.
"It's too unsafe outside. I'd rather eat prison food in Arkhamfor the rest of my life than encounter that ancestor on the street!"
This comical scene was staged in various branches across Gotham City.
Those thieves and robbers who usually ran rampant on the streets—
Now felt that only those iron doors of the prison
Could bring them a pitiful sense of security.
Gotham City, this World-famous city of sin,
Welcomed the weirdest day since its establishment.
There were no gunshots on the street, no Police sirens.
Even in the most remote alleys, not even a coin-stealing thief could be found.
It was so quiet that it made people panic.
The crime rate, within twenty-four hours,
Plummeted in a straight line.
Cleared to zero.
New York, the 112th floor of Vought Tower.
The CEO's office.
Shen Che sat behind the obsidian desk.
Holding a newly brewed cup of Darjeeling black tea in his hand, White steam rising from the rim of the bone China cup.
He looked at the all-U.S. security report sent by Ashley on the tablet computer.
Especially that glaring red "0" in the Gotham City column.
Shen Che took a sip of the hot tea. The tea was slightly scalding, with a hint of astringency.
He put down the teacup with satisfaction.
The bottom of the cup clinked against the desktop, making a dull "clack" sound.
"This is the power of rules."
Shen Che leaned back against the leather chair back.
Violence was forever the fastest and most effective means to establish order.
If you talked law with them, they would look for loopholes with you.
If you talked morals with them, they thought you were easy to bully.
But if you slapped the craziest pervert into meat paste with one palm—
All the smart people, all the madmen,
Would overnight become the most law-abiding model citizens in the World.
Shen Che picked up the tablet, preparing to cross out the security budgets of these few cities and transfer the money to overseas accounts.
Just at this moment, the extension phone at the corner of the desk rang.
"Ring ring ring."
Shen Che pressed the speakerphone button.
"President Shen."
The voice of the Human Resources Director came out of the speaker, carrying obvious tension and bewilderment.
"What is it?" Shen Che's tone was flat.
"In the lobby... an applicant has arrived."
The HR Director swallowed a mouthful of saliva.
"She requested to see you directly, saying she wants to join The Seven."
Shen Che tapped his fingers on the desktop.
"Have security throw her out. I don't see garbage of unknown origins."
"President Shen... Security... Security couldn't stop her."
The HR Director's voice began to tremble.
"She injured eight exoskeleton guards without even breaking a sweat."
"And, she's dressed..."
The HR Director paused for a moment, seemingly searching for an appropriate word to describe it.
"She's wearing a red and blue two-tone tight jacket, and carrying a bloody baseball bat in her hand."
"Her mental state... looks very unstable."
Shen Che's fingers tapping on the desktop stopped.
Red and blue two-tone jacket. Bloody baseball bat. Unstable mental state.
A name flashed through his mind.
That was another iconic madman of Gotham City.
And Joker's former most loyal vassal.
He looked at the indicator light of the extension phone.
In his pitch-black eyes, a rare trace of interest emerged.
"Let her come up."
Shen Che turned off the speakerphone.
This World occasionally having some fearless fun
Wasn't too boring either.