The group now consisted of three rough-looking men.
After going without nicotine for such a long time, Bullock began experiencing withdrawal symptoms.
He hunched over, his head swaying left and right like a rattle drum, resembling a zombie that had given up on thinking.
“How long until we can get out?”
“If we’re lucky, tomorrow morning.
I’d guess it’s around three in the morning right now.
I wonder if Barbara is asleep.”
The thought that he might never see his daughter again filled Gordon’s face with worry.
Will wasn’t doing much better.
He was the one who had proposed this suicidal plan, so all the pressure rested on his shoulders.
Back when he watched Batman movies, he had always had a question.
If you wanted to wash away all the pus and blood from Gotham, a masked hero who operated by night was nowhere near enough.
Without economic recovery and with the enormous gap between rich and poor, the situation of wealthy nobles and tycoons sucking the blood of ordinary people at the bottom would never change.
Instead of risking everything to devote himself to fighting crime, wouldn’t it be better to allocate some money toward improving Gotham’s economy?
Every additional job would mean one fewer criminal.
But later, Will learned that Gotham’s chronic disease had taken root a century ago.
Its rotten roots were intertwined beyond recognition.
In front of those oligarchic families that had operated for centuries, Bruce Wayne was so impoverished that all he had left was money.
And money was precisely the most useless thing against his enemies.
Could it be that because of a thought I had back then, this world without Batman was born?
The thought made Will even more depressed.
But the more depressed he became, the more his negative emotions spread.
And the more those negative emotions spread, the more depressed he became.
It seemed to have formed an endless Möbius loop.
He was an ant crawling along its surface.
The three of them descended another two levels through the sewers.
Although they no longer had a map to guide them, Gordon still remembered the general structure of the sewer system.
There were four levels in total.
They were now on the final level.
If nothing unexpected happened, they would find the outlet here.
The water on the fourth level had risen to around their waists.
The current was also becoming increasingly rapid.
The good news was that they didn’t need to struggle forward.
The current itself would push them toward their destination.
The bad news was that Bullock seemed to be suffering symptoms of methane poisoning.
“Partner…
I think I’m getting cold.
My head feels all dizzy.
Am I going to die here?”
Bullock gave a weary smile.
He knew that even if they made it out through the outlet, there was no way this body would be able to climb out of the sea.
Gordon’s face was grim.
He said nothing.
He simply supported his partner’s back with both hands and helped him move forward.
The three rough men had reached the brink of desperation.
Will had never missed Bruce Wayne so much.
When the casual descriptions of the comics were transformed into reality, he finally realized just how much weight the Dark Knight had actually carried upon his shoulders. Visit novelping . com for the full chapter.
Divinity.
Perhaps this was something that could be found, in one form or another, in every superhero, but was the one thing Batman lacked.
When people talked about the word “divinity,” what came to mind?
Superman spreading his arms beneath the sun, his cape billowing in the wind?
Or the Flash running until every last piece of flesh on his body was shattered to reverse time?
Bruce Wayne certainly wasn’t the first person who came to mind.
Even the Dark Knight who took the blame for Harvey Dent beneath Nolan’s camera never quite fit the word “divine.”
Yet now, that indescribable divinity was something Will could actually feel.
“Understand me…
become me…
surpass me…
go save Gotham…
go save the poor people…”
In a daze, a fragment of memory that didn’t belong to Will flashed through his mind.
It seemed to belong to the original owner of this body.
He was submerged inside a massive container, while hoarse, broken whispers echoed beside his ears.
…
“The exit!
The exit is ahead!”
Gordon’s excited shout pulled Will back to reality.
The roar of rushing water like a waterfall filled his ears.
Through the long, narrow sewer passage resembling a subterranean tomb corridor, the weak beam of the flashlight illuminated a vast open space ahead.
Will shook his head and tried to cast aside the distracting thoughts in his mind as he moved forward.
The good news was that this really was the drainage outlet!
A gigantic vertical shaft nearly a hundred zhang high and roughly the size of a football field appeared before them.
Huge holes, densely packed like a honeycomb, covered the shaft walls, continuously pouring sewage into the depths below.
The bad news was that the floor at the bottom of the shaft was covered with a grid-like metal grate.
The mesh was extremely fine, with openings large enough to let through an object roughly the size of an apple.
If they wanted to slip through the outlet and reach the sea, they would have to pry open the grate.
Was there an even worse piece of news?
Yes!
For example, the three biological monsters were guarding the bottom of the shaft.
“Guarding” wasn’t exactly accurate.
They were simply picking food off the grate.
Rotten meat, vegetable leaves, even plastic products.
Their stomachs seemed to be forged from steel and iron, accepting anything that came their way.
Of course, fresh, tender human flesh would be even better.
Just like those unlucky souls at the casino.
Or Will and the others.
If they stayed quiet, the monsters probably wouldn’t have noticed them.
After all, the noise here was enormous.
Unfortunately, Gordon’s shouts of encouragement to his partner were simply too loud.
Perhaps the three biological monsters had also been “deeply encouraged” by them.
All three turned toward the group in unison.
The biological monsters were even taller than Gordon had imagined.
They were estimated to be twelve feet tall, roughly 3.6 meters.
Their entire bodies were gray-green, with extraordinarily bulging muscles that looked like the explosive physique of grotesque bodybuilders injected with petroleum. Read this novel at novelping.com for the best experience.
Their arms and backs were covered in coarse black hair like a wild boar’s.
Between their legs, however, they were completely hairless.
The comic had put the biological monsters in ragged little underpants to pass censorship.
Reality had no such courtesy.
Will only happened to glance down for an instant, yet his face immediately twisted into an expression of agony.
He felt like he was going to get eye cancer.
But now was hardly the time to wash his eyes.
The three biological monsters turned around together.
They lowered their backs and bent their knees, placing both hands on the ground like silverback gorillas.
“What are they doing?!”
Even Bullock was startled fully awake.
His eyes were wide and alert.
There was no sign of his earlier half-dead appearance whatsoever.
“I don’t know, but we’d better run!”
Gordon turned to leave, only for Will to grab him by the collar.
“Jump!”
With that, Will jumped first.
“What did you say?
Are you crazy…?”
Gordon couldn’t understand why Will was telling him to jump.
The walls of this drainage shaft were smooth.
Once they jumped down, there was no way to climb back up.
They would simply become bite-sized snacks for the biological monsters.
But there was no time for further thought.
The biological monsters had finished gathering their strength and leaped high into the air, pouncing toward the two men.
The two sides had been more than a dozen meters apart, yet in the blink of an eye, the monsters were already upon them.
At the last moment, Gordon chose to trust Will.
He grabbed his partner by the collar and leaped.
There were still five or six meters between them and the bottom of the drainage shaft.
Fortunately, the shaft walls had a slope of nearly sixty degrees.
The two men half-slid, half-tumbled down and landed safely.
Will’s judgment had been correct.
If they turned around and ran for their lives, they couldn’t outrun the biological monsters while moving against the current.
But jumping onto the filter grate at the bottom of the shaft wasn’t a long-term solution either.
Seeing that their first attack had missed, the biological monsters jumped down after them.
BOOM!
All three monsters landed at once.
The filter grate buckled under their weight, but it still didn’t break.
This had been Will’s original plan.
He intended to use the momentum of the monsters’ landing to smash through the grate.
Clearly, he hadn’t anticipated the grate being quite this sturdy.
“Didn’t they say corruption was rampant in Gotham?
How come nobody skimmed a little money from the sewer construction budget?!”
Cornered, Will was on the verge of tears.