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Chapter 165: The Long Easter (5)

"Firstly, I want to tell you that, as you have guessed, your stronghold has now become completely sealed, just 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 current oxygen in the can can only keep you alive for a maximum of three hours."

"You thought you hid this stronghold very secretively, but we discovered it long ago."

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

"A oxygen pipeline leads directly to this can, but the oxygen inlet is hidden in the wall. You must dig the wall and find the pipeline yourself. Otherwise, after three hours, all the oxygen will be exhausted."

"Owls also need to breathe, right?"

The woman wearing a bird mask began to tremble, but the voice on the radio did not stop, and everyone heard him say, "Don't delude yourself that your companions or those killers you trained will come to save you. Judging from the thickness and hardness of the ice layer surrounding you, no one, not even machines, can dig to you within three hours."

The voice on the recording began to become more and more emotional and echoed continuously in the conference room, more dark and terrifying than the nursery rhymes spread by the Court of Owls.

"Once upon a time, you stood on the high-rise buildings in Gotham City, looking down on the suffering people, digging for food that can fill their stomach."

"And now, you will experience the taste of using your own hands to obtain the chance of survival."

They heard that the voice on the recording began to become gentle, even a little soft, like a dream: "...my little birds, dig, and use your broken fingers to get a bit of the most ordinary and humble air, or use your death as a sacrifice for Gotham's resurrection."

After the voice fell, someone in the conference room finally couldn't help it. A man wearing a mask threw the recorder out, trembling all over, and it fell to the ground. The others looked at him silently.

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

"We are trapped here, and if we don't dig, we will suffocate to death!"

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

"But if we wait here, we will definitely die! This is a carefully designed trap, and they won't let us go!"

"Do you want me to scrape those bricks with my fingers?!" another man shouted loudly. Then he stood up, waving his somewhat obese arm and said, "I am one of the thirteen jury members! And the oldest qualified one! My family is too! All of you go and dig for me! I order you!"

Others stood up one after another...

Obviously, someone among them thought of a way to survive easier than digging through the walls.

In the office of Gotham Police Station, everyone was silent. Gordon shivered and looked at Schiller, saying, "I think the problem with the Court of Owls may not be too serious. What's serious is..."

"You didn't plan this in advance, did you?" Victor turned to Schiller.

Schiller rolled his eyes and said, "I lied to them. Who knows where their hidden bases are? How could I go through all that trouble to lay an oxygen pipeline for them?"

"Alright, let's not talk about that. The next step is to negotiate. Detective Gordon, I remember you said before that some gang leaders are particularly difficult and like to bargain with the police?"

"Don't bring them up." Gordon rubbed his temples and said, "Just mentioning them gives me a headache."

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

"Gasp..." Gordon took a cold breath and said, "The Court of Owls will be stripped naked!"

Then Gordon clicked his tongue and said, "I always feel like you planned this in advance."

"Do you want to hear a fairy tale?" Schiller smiled and winked.

"It's about a group of small birds with golden feathers. The poor birds fell into the hunter's hands because of their carelessness. They begged the hunter for forgiveness and were willing to pluck their precious feathers to exchange for the hunter to spare them..."

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

He answered his own question, "Anyway, I plan to eat roasted chicken."

The next morning, Gotham was hit by a large-scale terrorist attack, and the news made headlines in major newspapers.

Mayor Roy wept at the press conference and denounced the casualties caused by the terrorists. He also accused the federal government of not fulfilling its security obligations, calling Gotham a "abandoned city."

Collapsed buildings, broken walls and rubble on the streets, flooded stores and frozen cars. As the post-disaster pictures circulated, the Court of Owls became a despised cruel terrorist group.

Various confusing news reports emerged one after another, and the casualty figures began to grow increasingly exaggerated. From the initial few tens of thousands of people to hundreds of thousands of people, by the end of it, more than half of Gotham's citizens were either dead or injured.

However, what was strange was that, instead of relief efforts, various fundraising activities started much faster. Major newspapers published channels for donations, and Gotham held dozens of charity dinners in the week before Easter.

On a cold morning one weekend, the reports on the City Hall office desk fluttered in the breeze from outside the window.

Thin pages kept turning over, the numbers continuously increasing. Finally, a seal "click" was stamped on top, and Roy raised his hand and handed the report to his subordinate, saying, "Happy Easter."

As his words fell, the tree branches outside the window began to grow, and clusters of tender green sprouts stretched out from the branches. Gotham's largest reconstruction in history had begun.

Previously, Gotham's transformation was basically to fix whatever was wrong. If there was an empty space, a warehouse was built there. If there was an empty space, a station was opened there. This made the professors at Gotham University who studied city planning very frustrated. This piecemeal reconstruction method was actually the least effective method, but at the time, there was no other way.

But this time was different. Due to a flood followed by a freeze, the volume expansion caused by the water turning into ice caused most of the surface to crack. If repairs were not made, it would be completely impassable.

Even if you didn't want your own territory to be renovated, there was no other way. The road damage had reached the point where you couldn't even walk on it. If you didn't participate in the reconstruction, you could only stay at home and wait to starve to death.

With things having come to this point, when things were bad, they had to be fixed to continue living.

Overnight, Gotham's unemployment rate almost became zero because manpower was needed everywhere. Reconstruction of the sewer, repairs to roads and collapsed buildings, construction of new logistics facilities according to new plans...

This may sound unreasonable because there was no output in the short term, but the organizers needed to pay a large amount of labor costs. This required an astronomical amount of upfront investment.

But thanks to the already-depleted Court of Owls, the unlucky ones who were imprisoned and had all their feathers plucked to survive provided ample funding for Gotham's reconstruction plan. Even if there was no profit in the short term, they could still persist.

With the money and people in place, the reconstruction plan proceeded very smoothly, and the benefits of the underground ice layer were not limited to one.

Gotham belongs to the East Coast City, which has a monsoon humid climate with distinct seasons. In other words, it is cold in winter and hot in summer.

In the past, in April, the temperature had already risen noticeably, and it had begun to enter the hot summer. However, the huge underground ice sheet changed the climate of some areas, causing the average temperature in Gotham to drop by more than 10 degrees, returning to the temperature of early winter.

The citizens of Gotham were not accustomed to this climate, and the incidence of colds was high in recent days.

But some people were looking for a place to escape the heat and couldn't find one.

The East Coast is not all like Gotham with its distinct four seasons. There are also places that are hot, and by April, it was already scorching summer. These people wanted to escape the heat, so they had to head further north, and now Gotham became the closest low-temperature city to them.

Of course, they didn't dare to come to Gotham as tourists, but Gotham's climate change also affected the surrounding areas, such as Brooklyn. For a while, Brooklyn's tourism industry unexpectedly flourished.

Brooklyn was almost knocked unconscious by the pie falling from the sky.

It is actually a small city here, because it is too close to Gotham and there are not many outsiders, so the development level is relatively low. It has many natural rural landscapes and is not like Gotham, which is cloudy and rainy every day.

Since the climate change in Gotham, Brooklyn has been sunny during the day and cool in the morning and evening, making people feel very comfortable, and attracting many tourists from the surrounding cities.

Because Brooklyn is too close to Gotham, many Gotham news is spread here for the first time.

But what these tourists saw was not a terrifying city full of murder cases or bloody incidents happening every day. All the news coming out of Gotham could be summarized in two big words - labor shortage.

As mentioned before, although there are many local residents in Gotham, they have too much idle time and their work efficiency is too low. Even with full employment, rebuilding such a large city is still not enough.

Although Gotham is a metropolis, there are not many migrant workers. In this era of comprehensive infrastructure upgrading, labor shortage has become the biggest obstacle to efficiency. Various gangs are desperately looking for people, and even offering high prices to hire out-of-towners.

As the saying goes, where there are forests, there are all kinds of birds, and where there are many people, there are always a few who are not afraid of death. And there really are a few people who dare to come to Gotham to work despite the danger.

Actually, they are not entirely curious, but because the gangs here offer such high prices, it's not like they're using their own money. The more the gangs increase the salary, the more tempting it becomes, and it's even paid on a daily basis. It's hard not to be tempted.

After the outsiders arrived in Gotham, they found that this City was not quite as they had imagined. They used to think it would be a City dominated by daily gunfights and zero-dollar purchases, but after arriving here, they discovered that Gotham had order.

Compared to other regions, Gotham is indeed quite peculiar. The maintainers of order here are gangs. They have a tough attitude, violent means, many ideas, and are crazy, but the violent order is still order.

When the entire City entered a frenzy of making a big cake together, many of the shortcomings brought about by the violent order were covered up, and the remaining advantages were astonishing, such as efficiency and stability.

Describing such a City with the adjective "stable" sounds absurd, but the fact is that the outsiders discovered that the order built by the gangs was actually very stable, at least when funds were plentiful and everyone had work to do.

There is no shortage of desperadoes who risk their lives for money in this world, and the news of money to be made in Gotham quickly spread. Many such people began to be intrigued and wanted to try their luck in Gotham.

As more and more outsiders flooded in, the situation inside Gotham began to be noticed and discussed by people. The mysterious veil of this City of Sin was gradually lifted, and the City began to appear in major media and newspapers.

Many people think of it as a barbaric land of blood and carnage, some see it as a City of Crime where evil flourishes, but more people, through these reports about Gotham, see it as a chaotic but prosperous metropolis.

Here, the gang leaders drive luxury cars, smoke cigars, and throw stacks of cash from the rooftop. Rock singers sing heavy metal in the rain of money, behind them are all kinds of chaotic and colorful graffiti, neon lights reflect the endless stream of cars on the road, and the crowd screams wildly on the side of the road...

Just like Schiller, people begin to realize that this is not only a City of crime, but also a city of geniuses. This is a City of Sin, but also a City of Art.

There has never been a City in the world with such absurd and bizarre beauty as Gotham. This is the soil of performance art and the paradise of the misunderstood lunatics.

Even many people find resonance from this temperament. They begin to try to deconstruct the causes and current situation of this unique City, and then become infected by the overflowing madness here, becoming spiritual residents of the City of Sin.

Artists worship madness, bohemians shout for freedom, fools spend their days in absurdity, and wise men amass wealth. Gotham's chaos has given birth to countless different souls, and no one from any other place is so different.

As this temperament began to be recognized gradually, Gotham's image changed from the evil City of human degeneration to a source of sin with a touch of divinity and mystery.

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

This change in external image also brought about other changes, such as the phone at the Gotham University Admissions Office ringing constantly. Some young people who pursue rebellion and curiosity have started to include Gotham University in their list of schools to apply for.

However, the teachers at Gotham University don't have much time to answer questions. The icy conditions in Gotham have also affected the teaching facilities at Gotham University, mainly with the problem of cracked roads, which is very troublesome.

Due to the large-scale cracking of the campus square and playground, students were unable to use them. The teaching building became a dangerous building overnight due to foundation damage, and no one dared to go there. Teaching activities were temporarily stalled, and there were no other staff available to help. Teachers and students could only rely on themselves.

Almost all of the planned activities before Easter were cancelled. The restaurant building collapsed at one corner, and there was no mention of organizing any banquets. It seemed that everyone had forgotten about Easter, and everyone was focusing on rebuilding the campus.

Schiller led a few students quickly through the corridor and came to the door of the lecture hall. After pushing the door open, the students saw him and shouted, "Professor! Over here! We can't hold him down any longer!"

Schiller walked over, and a few students were holding down a struggling male student who was constantly waving his arms and shouting with foam coming out of his mouth, resembling a mental illness outbreak.

Schiller said, "Subdue him first, then lift him onto the car and take him to the hospital."

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

"It's possible that it's a lingering effect from being caught in the rain. I must conduct a detailed examination. Once there are any more cases, send them directly to the hospital."

After hanging up the phone, Schiller went to the male student's hospital room. Through the observation window, he saw the male student hiding to one side of the bed with a terrified look on his face, constantly shouting meaningless syllables. Schiller shook his head and whispered, "These symptoms are a bit unusual..."

He called Victor and said, "Have these students been in contact with anything recently?"

"Didn't you say it was because of the rain..."

"These symptoms are different from those caused by rain, although they both have symptoms of convulsions and excitement, there are some differences in the details."

"What have they come into contact with..." Victor sounded very puzzled. He said, "I'll help you ask. These two students are not in the same class... Oh! Wait a minute! What did you say? Damn it... Another person has become ill! Where is he? Take me there quickly..."

Then, as Victor ran, he said to the phone, "Another student has become ill. Once I find out what they have in common, I'll let you know..."