Chapter 166 The Long Easter (V)

"First of all, I want to tell you that, as you guessed, your base has now become completely sealed, like a can."

"And the oxygen in the can is limited. How many people do you have now? Hmm? I guess there are at least 20?"

"According to this number, the oxygen in the can can only keep you alive for three hours at most."

"You think you have hidden this base very secretly, but we have discovered it a long time ago."

"Just as you guessed, this is a premeditated trap, and now, I want to play a game with you."

"An oxygen pipeline is leading to this can, but the oxygen delivery pipe is hidden in the wall. You must dig the wall yourself, Find this pipeline, otherwise the oxygen will be exhausted in three hours. "

"Owls also need to breathe, right?"

The fingers of the woman wearing the bird-shaped mask began to tremble, but the voice on the radio had not stopped. Everyone heard him say: "Don't imagine that your companions or the killers you have trained will come to save you. Judging from the thickness and hardness of the ice around you, no one, not even a machine, can dig you in three hours."

The voice in the recorder began to become ups and downs, constantly echoing in the conference room, darker and more terrifying than the nursery rhymes spread by the Owl Court.

"In the past, you stood on the high-rise buildings of Gotham City, looking down at all living things, watching the suffering people, digging food in the land to fill their stomachs."

"Later, you hid underground, looked up at the scarred feet of countless mortals, and hurriedly rushed for survival."

"And now, you will experience the taste of using your own hands to get a chance to survive."

They heard that the voice in the recorder began to become gentle, even a little gentle, like a dream: "... My little birds, dig, in order to get a trace of the most ordinary and cheap air, dig your fingers off."

"Or, use your death... to sacrifice for the resurrection of Gotham."

After the voice fell, someone in the conference room finally couldn't help it. A masked man threw the recorder out and fell to the ground with trembling body. The rest of the people looked at his crazy behavior and were silent.

"...Do we really have to dig?" The woman's voice became a little trembling. She said, "There are no tools here. How can we dig through these walls..."

"We are already trapped. If we don't dig, we will suffocate to death!"

"But what if he is lying to us?" said an old voice.

"But if we wait here, we will definitely die! This is a well-designed trap. They will not let us go!"

"Do you want me to use my fingers to dig those bricks?!" another man said loudly. Then, he stood up, waved his fat arms and said, "I am one of the thirteen jurors! And the oldest one! My family is also, you all go dig! I order you!"

Others stood up and refuted what he said. Some said, "My family is the richest now. You should dig!"

Others said, "The strong ones should dig!"

"Why should I go?"

"It's all your fault! You should go!"

"You too..."

In the interval of the dispute, suddenly, silence enveloped a few seconds.

Apparently, one of them has thought of a way to prolong their lives more easily than digging through the wall.

In the office of the Gotham Police Department, everyone was silent. Gordon shuddered. He looked at Schiller and said, "I think the problem of the Court of Owls may not be too serious. The serious thing is..."

"You didn't really plan it in advance, did you?" Victor also turned to look at Schiller.

Schiller rolled his eyes and said, "You lied to them. Who knows where their hidden bases are hidden? How could I go to such great lengths to lay an oxygen pipeline for them?"

"Okay, let's not talk about this. The remaining link is bargaining. Detective Gordon, I remember you said before that there are a few gangster bosses who are particularly difficult to deal with and like to negotiate with the police?"

"Don't mention it now." Gordon rubbed his temple and said, "I get a headache when I mention them."

"Okay, let's take them. Let them take turns to quarrel with the Court of Owls and tell them that the final compensation will be increased by 5 points."

"Hiss..." Gordon took a breath and said, "The Court of Owls will lose their underwear!"

Then Gordon clicked his tongue and said, "I always feel that you have planned it in advance."

"Do you want to hear a fairy tale from me?" Schiller smiled and blinked.

"They were a group of little birds with golden feathers. The poor little birds fell into the hands of the hunter because of carelessness. They asked for the hunter's forgiveness and were willing to pluck their precious feathers in exchange for the hunter letting them go..."

Schiller suddenly changed the subject and said, "What are you going to eat for Easter?"

He asked himself and answered, "Anyway, I'm going to eat roast chicken."

One night passed, and the next morning, the news that Gotham had suffered a large-scale terrorist attack made the front page of major newspapers.

Mayor Roy burst into tears at the press conference, denouncing the casualties caused by terrorists, and also accused the federal government of failing to fulfill its security obligations, calling Gotham a "forsaken city".

Collapsed buildings, broken walls on the streets, flooded shops and frozen cars, as the post-disaster pictures leaked out, the Court of Owls also became a cruel terrorist that everyone despised.

Various confusing news reports emerged one after another, and the casualty figures began to become more and more exaggerated, from tens of thousands at the beginning to hundreds of thousands, and in the end, more than half of Gotham's citizens were either dead or injured.

But strangely, various fundraising activities started faster than disaster relief operations. Major newspapers published fundraising channels, and Gotham held dozens of charity dinners within a week before Easter.

On a cold weekend morning, the report on the table of the city government office flipped with the breeze outside the window.

The thin paper was turned over page by page, and the numbers kept growing. Finally, a seal "clicked" on it. Roy raised his hand, handed the report to his subordinate, and said, "Happy Easter."

As he finished speaking, the branches outside the window began to grow, and tender green buds stretched out from the branches. The largest reconstruction in Gotham's history began.

Before, Gotham's reconstruction was basically to patch up where there was a problem. If there was an empty space here, a warehouse would be built, and if there was an empty space there, a station would be opened. This gave the professors who studied urban planning at Gotham University a headache. This patchwork reconstruction method was actually the worst method, but at that time, there was no other way.

But this time was different. Due to a wave of floods and a wave of freezing, the volume expansion caused by the process of water turning into ice, the ice cracked most of the surface. If it was not repaired, it would be completely inaccessible.

Even if you don't want your own land to be transformed, there is no way. The damage to the road has reached the point where you can't even walk on it. If you don't participate in the transformation, you can only stay at home and wait to starve to death. Gu 粴

Things have come to this point, and the damage has been done. If you want to continue living here, you still have to repair it.

Overnight, Gotham's unemployment rate almost became 0, because people were needed everywhere, rebuilding sewers, repairing roads and collapsed houses, and building new logistics facilities according to the new plan...

This sounds unreasonable, because there is no output in a short period of time, but the organizers need to pay a lot of labor costs, which requires an astronomical initial investment.

But thanks to the bald Owl Court, the dog-owner united the unlucky people who were imprisoned and plucked all their feathers in tears to survive, providing Gotham with ample funds for the reconstruction plan, even if it cannot make a profit in the short term, it can still persist.

With the money and people in place, the reconstruction plan will proceed very smoothly, and the underground ice layer brings more than one benefit.

Gotham is an East Coast city with a humid monsoon climate and four distinct seasons, that is, cold in winter and hot in summer.

In the past, in April, the temperature had risen significantly and entered the hot summer, but the huge underground ice layer changed the climate in some areas, causing the average temperature of Gotham to drop by more than 10 degrees, returning to the temperature of early winter.

The citizens of Gotham City are not used to this climate, and colds have been prevalent in recent days.

But some people are looking for a place to escape the heat.

The East Coast is not all like Gotham, with four distinct seasons. Some places are very hot. By April, it is already hot in summer. If these people want to escape the heat, they have to go further north, and now Gotham has become the nearest low-temperature city to them.

Of course, they dare not come to Gotham for tourism, but Gotham's climate change has also affected surrounding areas, such as Blüdhaven. For a while, Blüdhaven's tourism industry has actually prospered.

Blüdhaven was almost knocked unconscious by the pie in the sky.

This is actually just a small city. Because it is too close to Gotham, there are not many outsiders, so the degree of development is relatively low. It has many natural rural scenery, and it is not like Gotham, where it is cloudy and rainy every day.

Since the climate of Gotham changed, Blüdhaven is sunny during the day, and there is a cool breeze in the morning and evening, which makes people feel comfortable and attracts many tourists from surrounding cities.

Because Blüdhaven is too close to Gotham, many news about Gotham are spread here as soon as possible.

But what these tourists see is not a terrifying city full of homicides or bloodshed every day. All the news from Gotham can be summed up in two big words-lack of people.

As mentioned before, although there are many local residents in Gotham, they spend too much time idle and their work efficiency is too low. Even if they are fully employed, it is still not enough to rebuild such a large city.

Although Gotham is a megacity, there are not many migrant workers. In this era of comprehensive infrastructure upgrades, insufficient labor has become the biggest obstacle to efficiency. The major gangs are looking for people like crazy, and even offer high prices to hire outsiders.

As the saying goes, there are all kinds of birds in a big forest, and there are always a few people who are not afraid of death when there are many people. There are really a few people who dare to risk their lives to work in Gotham.

In fact, they are not completely curious, but because the price offered by the gangs here is too high. Anyway, they are all feathers plucked from owls, so they don’t feel bad about using them. The gangs offer higher and higher wages, and they are paid on a daily basis, which makes people tempted.

After the outsiders came to Gotham, they found that this city was not quite what they imagined. In the past, they thought that this should be a city with gunfights every day and zero-dollar shopping as the theme, but after coming here, they found that Gotham is orderly.

Compared with other regions, Gotham is indeed very strange. The order maintainers here are gangs. They have a tough attitude, violent means, many ideas, and are crazy, but violent order is still order.

When the whole city enters a fanatical atmosphere of making a big cake together, many shortcomings brought by violent order are covered up, and the advantages left are amazing, such as efficiency and stability.

It sounds absurd to describe such a city as "stable", but that's the truth. Outsiders have discovered that the order built by the gangs is actually very stable, at least when there is sufficient funding and everyone has work to do.

There is no shortage of desperate people fighting for money in this world. The news that there is money to be made in Gotham spread quickly, and many such people began to move and wanted to try their luck in Gotham.

With the influx of more and more outsiders, the situation inside Gotham began to be paid attention to and discussed by people. The mystery of such a sinful city was gradually unveiled, and the city began to appear in major media and newspapers.

Many people think that this is a wild place like a place where people drink blood, and some people think that this is a crime capital where sin breeds, but more people see from these reports about Gotham that it is a chaotic but wealthy metropolis.

The gang leaders here drive luxury cars, smoke cigars, and throw a stack of banknotes from the rooftops. Rock singers sing heavy metal in the rain of money. Behind them are all kinds of chaotic and gorgeous graffiti. Neon lights illuminate the endless stream of cars on the road, and people shout crazily on the roadside...

Just like Schiller, people began to realize that this is not only a city of crime, but also a city of genius. This is a city of sin and a city of art.

No city in the world has such absurd and bizarre beauty as Gotham. This is the soil for performance art and a paradise for lunatics who are not understood.

There are even many people who find resonance in this temperament. They begin to try to deconstruct the causes and current situation of such a unique city, and then are infected by the overflowing madness here and become spiritual residents of the city of sin.

Artists worship madness, cognizant guests shout freedom, stupid people live absurdly, and smart people make a lot of money. The chaos of Gotham breeds countless completely different souls. People in no other place have ever been so different.

When this temperament began to be gradually recognized by people, Gotham's image changed from the evil city of human depravity to the source of evil with a hint of divinity and mystery.

It is hard to say that this is a good change, but at least there has been a change.

This change in external image also brought other changes, such as the phone calls from Gotham University's admissions counseling office began to ring constantly, and some young people who pursue rebellion and curiosity began to include Gotham University in their list of schools to apply for.

However, the teachers of Gotham University had no time to answer questions. The frozen Gotham certainly affected the teaching facilities of Gotham University, mainly the cracking of the road surface, which was very troublesome.

Because there were large areas of cracks in the square and playground on campus, students could not move around. The teaching building became a dangerous building overnight due to the damage to the foundation, and no one dared to go there. Teaching activities were temporarily stagnant, and there was no manpower in other places to help. Teachers and students could only do it themselves.

Almost all the original activities before Easter were cancelled, and a corner of the restaurant building collapsed, not to mention organizing any dinners. Everyone seemed to have forgotten Easter, and everyone was concentrating on rebuilding the campus.

Schiller led several students through the corridor and came to the door of the classroom. After pushing the door open, the students saw him and shouted: "Professor! Here! We can't hold him down anymore!"

Schiller walked over and several students held down a boy who was struggling frantically. He kept waving his arms and shouting, foaming at the mouth and twitching, like a mental illness.

Schiller said, "Subdue him first, then lift him into the car and send him to the hospital."

After Schiller followed the car to Arkham Mental Hospital, before he could go for treatment, he received another call. Victor said, "Another person in Building 2 of the dormitory area has fallen ill. It seems to be a sophomore girl. What is going on?"

"It may be a sequelae of being caught in the rain. I must conduct a detailed examination. If there is another case, you will send him directly to the hospital."

After Schiller hung up the phone, he came to the boy's ward. Through the observation window, he saw that the boy hid to one side of the bed with a face full of fear, and kept shouting out meaningless syllables. Schiller shook his head and whispered, "This symptom is not right..."

He called Victor and said, "Have these students been exposed to anything recently?"

"Didn't you say it was raining..."

"This symptom is different from raining. Although both have convulsions and excitement, the details are somewhat different."

"What have they been exposed to..." Victor on the other end was very confused. He said, "Let me ask for you. These two students are not from the same class... Oh! Wait! What did you say? Damn... Another person has fallen ill! Where is he? Take me there quickly..."

Then Victor ran and said to the other end of the phone, "Another student has fallen ill. I'll tell you when I find the common ground..."