On the outskirts of Gotham, on the side of a hill that is not shown on any map, under a steep cliff, a carefully disguised iron gate is hidden under the rocks.
After many scans and verifications, Batman walked along the metal bridge inside the gate. The pentagonal arch door supported the entrance of the Batcave, and the long metal bridge passed through several arch doors.
Extends into the mountain.
There are cold light tubes on the inside of the arched door, which illuminate strips of blue light one after another on the bridge. When Batman passes through the lights under these arches, the cold light flows down his cloak.
After walking across the metal bridge, there is a lifting platform. When the lifting platform reaches the bottom, you can find that it is not yet completed.
Opposite the lift platform is a huge cylindrical space, divided into several upper and lower floors. At this time, only the bottom floor and half of the second floor have been completed. On the outside of each floor, there is a wall extending from the wall.
There is a corridor that leads out, and there are several doors in the corridor.
It is not difficult to see that this tower-like structure seems to have been designed by Batman based on a building that only existed in dreams. When standing at the bottom of the tower and looking up, the layers of floors are like
It will give people an endless sense of oppression.
At this time, this place was still a real underground base, with no strange collections. However, when Batman walked out of the lift, came to the corridor on the second floor, and opened one of the doors, countless
A surveillance screen appears in the room.
Every screen there represents every corner of Gotham, but of all the surveillance screens in this room, only two-thirds are on, and the rest are all black.
This fully proves Gotham people's endless desire to explore and destructive power for novel things. These black screens represent that the camera fixed somewhere is broken.
Batman has been a little busy recently, so he hasn't had time to fix the camera, but even two-thirds of the screen is still monitoring most of Gotham's buildings.
Batman narrowed his eyes and started.
Just about ten minutes ago, he received the news from Jason that Dick had been kidnapped. Batman had to admit that when he heard the news, he felt his heart tremble.
Batman can also feel that finding a nanny for Elsa is not the whole reason why he adopted Dick, nor is it to find an assistant for himself. If anything, he and Dick's auras are very similar.
Although Batman doesn't like to study those weird metaphysical theories, when Batman got along with Dick, he found that the coldness and alienation he felt when he got along with normal people as Batman did not apply to his relationship with Dick.
Even though they didn't show up, they seemed to have an innate understanding.
Before, he insisted on sending Dick to a boarding school, but something happened at the boarding school, which had already made Batman hesitate. But now, when he heard the news of Dick being kidnapped, it had been a long time since he had thought about it.
This angry flame was rekindled.
Batman squinted his eyes and looked at the screen carefully, not missing any detail. Soon, he stopped turning his head and focused on a screen to his right...
In order to facilitate search, the surveillance screens here are also distributed according to geographical location. The closer to the center, the closer to the center of Gotham, and the further to the corner, the more remote the location.
At this time, the picture on the screen he was looking at came from a building on the edge of Gotham's East End, between the Third and Fourth Piers.
Several screens around this screen are dark, which proves that the cameras here have been severely damaged, but not because the people living here have any precautions, but because this is Gotham's most famous drug addict.
At the gathering place, after the group got high, they would kick anything they saw, so the camera broke down very quickly.
Seeing this position, Batman's fingers suddenly twitched, and his face began to become a little cold. Before the bat took off, his deep voice echoed in the empty room, which seemed a bit scary.
"Constantine..."
The location shown on the surveillance screen was a club in the East End. Due to damage to Gotham's surface buildings, that club had been closed for a long time.
A corner of the house above the club collapsed, and no one dared to enter. However, the only remaining camera in the corner of the house captured a man in a long trench coat carrying a child into the basement.
When Batman arrived, Dick was lying on the ground in the basement. Batman walked over and checked. There were no wounds on Dick's body, which did not match Jason's description of blood at the kidnapping scene.
He shook Dick's body, causing Dick to wake up.
Dick blinked in confusion. He saw that the person who appeared was Batman, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Batman asked him: "Who kidnapped you?"
"...That Constantine." Dick covered his forehead and said with a frown: "Originally, I was in Jason's underground base. Suddenly, he appeared from the corner. It looked like magic."
"He wanted to attack me, but I dodged it. You know, I'm not easy to deal with. I picked up a crowbar and fought with him. I broke his forehead and scratched his arm..."
"But in the end, he used something like a magic circle to knock me unconscious..."
Just as Batman was sizing up the basement space, there was a sound on the basement door. Constantine, who had just returned, walked down the stairs and met Batman's eyes. He turned around and ran away.
Batman moved faster than him, and several Batarangs flew past Constantine's ears and nailed them to the door. Batman's deep voice came: "If you move again, you will be dead."
Constantine's figure froze on the stairs. Then, he slowly raised his arms to indicate that he was not threatening him and said, "I want to turn around."
Batman didn't reply, and Constantine implicitly agreed. So he turned his body very slowly and looked at Batman. Before Batman could ask him, he said, "Listen to my explanation! I swear I don't mean any harm."
…”
Before he could finish speaking, a fist as big as a sandbag appeared in his field of vision.
Ten minutes later, Batman threw Constantine, who was like mud, to the ground. Constantine screamed in pain, and another batarang hit his cheek and hit him on the ground. He suddenly didn't dare to make a sound. Batman asked
:"Why kidnap Dick?"…
"I'm investigating the case. Didn't you ask me to investigate the case?"
Batman stared at Constantine, and Constantine explained: "Didn't I say before that Laurena Sanchez specializes in using the souls of children to practice, so do you know how she extracts the souls of children?"
Batman looked at him silently, and Constantine didn't expect him to reply. Instead, he said to himself: "I don't know if you have heard of such a legend. On Halloween night, there will be a witch dressed as a witch.
A beautiful woman is holding a basket full of sweets in her hand. If a child wants to get the candy in her hand, she must call her 'Mom'."
"When the child takes the candy and eats it, he has completed the deal with the ghost mother."
"Once a child calls a witch 'Mom', the witch can tamper with the ownership of the child's soul, truly become his mother, and then sell the child's soul to the devil in exchange for what she needs..."
Batman suddenly understood what he meant. He turned to look at Dick and said, "Have you met this witch?"
Dick was stunned for a moment. He thought about it and said, "No, no, and..."
"Although I haven't been in Gotham for a long time, whether it's Easter or any other night, if someone walks down the street in strange clothes and has someone call her mom, she will definitely get shot."
"Furthermore, children in Gotham cannot just call anyone mom. When I worked as a cigarette boy, only the chief of a neighborhood could be called 'mom and dad.' If anyone dared to call someone else's mom, they would be beaten to death."
of."
"...Have you eaten anything randomly recently?" Batman asked again.
Dick shook his head, and suddenly he remembered, and said: "I did get a few candies recently, but they were given to me by the little boss there when I was a tobacco boy, and I didn't eat them either..."
Batman turned to look at Constantine again. Constantine seemed to suddenly be unable to continue the story. He gave up struggling and lay flat on the ground. After showing Batman a scheming smile that succeeded, his whole body slowly
The ground turned into a pile of ashes.
At this moment, the alarm on Batman's wrist suddenly rang, and the long and sharp sound told Batman that someone had invaded Wayne Manor.
Batman looked at the pile of ashes on the ground and said: "Use the same trick twice, you are at least a bold liar, Constantine..."
"Wait!" Dick struggled to get up from the ground and said, "Didn't you say before that this thing was called like this to mean that someone had invaded the manor? We have to go back quickly. There are still... and..."
Dick repeated it several times, his tone gradually slowed down, and then became a little more aggressive. He and Batman looked at each other and said: "...there is still Elsa in the manor."
When Batman and Dick returned to Wayne Manor, Constantine was lying in the middle of the living room just like that day, and next to him was Elsa, who was baring her fangs and showing a scary smile.
Batman walked up to Constantine unhurriedly and said to him: "The scene is a bit familiar, right?"
Constantine's chest on the ground heaved violently, and then he lay on the ground like a deflated balloon. His tone was filled with deep helplessness...
"...Is there not a single normal person in Gotham???"
Batman walked up to him, grabbed his collar with his hands, and dragged him to the basement. After cuffing Constantine, Constantine's first words were still: "Is there a cigarette?"
But Batman is not Schiller. His interrogation process is mainly based on physical therapy. He directly crushed Constantine's arm joints with his bare hands. While Constantine screamed, he kept breathing heavily and looked up.
Batman said: "That's awesome, kid..."
"I wouldn't mind playing with you before, but now, I have serious things to do..."
As he spoke, a light ball flew out of Constantine's chest and disappeared into the basement almost instantly. Batman looked at the direction where the light ball disappeared, which was where he imprisoned Sinestro.
Just as Batman walked out of the cell door, Sinestro, who was in the next cell, activated his teleportation and disappeared in an instant.
Batman walked back to Constantine's cell with a gloomy face. He stepped on Constantine's knee joint again, but this time. Constantine didn't scream. He lay there as if he was on drugs.
, said in a somewhat unreal tone.
"Thanks to Professor Schiller, he allowed me to learn a new psychological knowledge, which can be put to use now..."
Before Batman understood what he meant, Constantine on the ground suddenly turned into a pile of ashes, and among the pile of ashes in the East End basement club, a figure slowly stood up, and Constantine pulled
His tie said to himself:
"...Is this Gotham? It's kind of interesting."
Suddenly a voice sounded:
"Yeah?"
Constantine suddenly stiffened because he felt a cylindrical object pressing against his back. He heard the person behind him say:
