Starting from scratch, Batman crushed my dream of getting rich

Chapter 561 Still sleeping? The home is gone.
The idea that Edgar favored sons over daughters only briefly crossed Ma Zhaodi's mind before being discarded.

Even a fool would know that this doesn't make sense. That old guy is Walter's leader; in other words, he's rich and has a network of connections, and he's exceptionally rich and connected.

Such a person has very few things to fear in the United States. Coupled with the influence and violent capabilities of the Vought Corporation itself, even if he really has an illegitimate child, there is no need to hide it. He can do whatever he wants with it, whether he denies it outright or admits it directly.

But if you want to achieve what you're seeing now—a small town built directly in the forest, complete with all the daily amenities, and even hundreds of ordinary people who have come here specifically to live in this heavily guarded, closed area for a long time.

Such a zone can only be established for some important and special purpose, requiring not only funds beyond the imagination of ordinary people, but also social energy beyond the imagination of ordinary people.

In other words, it is absolutely impossible that Edgar built the area for his own private purposes. He himself does not have the qualifications to do so. It is more likely that it was a special area built using the power and funds of the Vought Corporation to meet Vought's needs.

"What exactly is in this place?"

Ma Zhaodi scratched his head. He went to other residential areas in stealth mode and still found nothing. There were no secret closed areas, underground laboratories, or special superpowered individuals. It seemed that everyone living here was an ordinary person. There was not even a trace of the earth-shattering secret or super conspiracy he had imagined.

What does that mean?

Ma Zhaodi scratched his head. Even now, he wasn't sure what this place was used for. Apart from knowing that there were a lot of cameras, he hadn't seen anything special.

The relaxed supermarket clerks, the ordinary residents strolling in the forest, and the working-class people pretending to work but actually going home early—the only certainty is that these people are not completely unaware of their current situation; they have most likely been paid by Walter to settle here.

The fact that they would occasionally glance at the camera unconsciously and deliberately avoid it when handling any personal or private matters indicates that they were aware of the situation here—but the fact that they did not have a main unit for watching the surveillance in their homes suggests that they were not the real monitors of this area.

It's obvious to anyone with a brain that if there's no money involved, no ordinary person would be willing to let someone install a camera in their home.

"Let me think about the house we passed when we first came in. It was all alone in the woods, with no other houses around. That house seemed rather special?"

He wandered around the area for a while longer. By then, it was getting dark, and all the residents had gone home. Ma Zhaodi didn't notice anything unusual about them. They weren't wearing earpieces or anything like that, nor were they making any phone calls or giving reports. It seemed their only task was to live here.

"But is that reasonable?"

With questions in mind, Ma Zhaodi quickly returned to the house of the little boy he had first encountered.

In the dim light of night, his stealth became even more effortless. If his stealth during the day was merely a matter of mind, at night it was almost as if he were invisible, allowing him to run freely without fear of being detected.

Light streamed through the windows of the two-story house into the woods, making it very bright. Walking along the path to the courtyard, seeing the lights on, I felt a strange sense of peace.

Ma Zhaodi didn't go inside the house, but looked through the window. A blonde woman was talking to a little boy.

"Mom, all the kids on TV have dads—why don't I have one?"

“Ryan.”

It was a rather simple and naive question, one that almost every child from a single-parent family would ask their parents, but Ryan's question still caused the blonde woman to fall silent for a moment.

There was no scathing rebuke of her heartless ex-husband, no earnest explanation, no gentle coaxing of the child. Ma Zhaodi noticed the woman's gaze gradually unfocusing; she seemed lost in thought, daydreaming. "Mommy? Mommy!"

Ryan called out twice more, and when his mother didn't respond, he instinctively raised his voice and reached out to pull the woman away.

"Beijia!"

The sound startled both of them. The woman snapped back to reality, glanced around the house and out the window, and then realized that they were in a safe place. She finally breathed a sigh of relief.

“Ryan.” She stroked her son’s soft, short blond hair. “Your father isn’t here. He’s a bit far from us. When you’re older, I’ll take you to find him, okay?”

"Oh"

Ryan didn't seem particularly satisfied with the answer, but he was indeed a good boy. Although his little face showed disappointment, he didn't ask any more questions and just nodded silently.

But Ma Zhaodi, standing outside the window, was not fooled by such words. He took out his phone and took pictures of the woman and child.

"Ok?"

In the instant the screen flashed, Ryan seemed to sense something and subconsciously looked out the window again—but having learned from his previous experience, Ma Zhaodi moved extremely quickly this time, and immediately slipped back after taking the picture, so the boy didn't see him.

"This kid definitely has some problems."

Ma Zhaodi muttered to himself. Counting the time he passed by his house before, this kid had noticed him twice already. Although he hadn't been caught either time, it was clear that a normal person would never notice him.

People like Homelander and Superman, with their heightened senses and X-ray vision, could be somewhat reasonably aware of their own abilities. As for this child...
"Is this reasonable?"

After taking the photos, Ma Zhaodi immediately disappeared back into the dark forest, turning to the area where Rufeng had a firm grip on things.

Ma Zhaodi had originally intended to go into the room and take a strand of the boy's hair, but after thinking about it, he decided against it—if this Becca was indeed the wife the butcher had mentioned, whom he thought was dead, then it would be somewhat impolite to casually test his son.

"Let's go back and find the butcher first."

The ghostly figure leaped lightly, but seemed unable to jump over the thick, high wall surrounding the forest—but a gust of wind blew by and carried him over.

The cloak that Ma Zhaodi was wearing immediately unfurled, transforming into the wings of a kite, and quietly landed with the wind.

Anyway, many people use this kind of idea, it's not exclusive to Batman or Phantom Thief Kid. Ma Zhaodi used his advanced mechanics combined with his knowledge of kites to create this cloak gliding parachute - it was even recognized as a system item and could be added to the store.

He drove back to the base as soon as possible, and Ma Zhaodi immediately woke up the fast-sleeping butcher and shoved his phone in his face.

"Still sleeping? You've become a father!"

(End of this chapter)