I, V, Gotham Legend

Valerie did not choose to take action immediately. She noticed that these people were going to take the old man to the van.

She pulled a bazooka from her pocket, calculated the angle, stepped back, and fired into the sky.

The rocket arced and collided with the base of a billboard on the roof. Flames rose from the explosion, and the billboard collapsed from the sky, crushing the van.

"Where are you taking him?" Valerie asked with a smile as she stuffed the bazooka back into her pocket.

"No... don't come over!" The cultists realized that things were out of control, and they immediately strangled Bruce's neck, turning the sacrifice into a hostage.

Bruce looked at the van that was smashed into scrap metal in front of him, and as expected, he sighed in his heart.

At this point, we have no choice but to activate the backup plan.

Bruce shook his arms as if struggling, and a few pearl-like bullets fell into his palms.

The bullet hit the ground, and thick smoke rose up, causing Valerie to take a few steps back.

"No way..." The familiar style made Valerie's mouth twitch.

The sounds of fists, feet and flesh colliding could be heard in the smoke. Without even turning on the scanner, Valerie could already guess what was happening inside.

Several people ran out of the smoke, and the cultists were already panicking and had no idea where to go.

Valerie thought about it and decided to give face to the man in the smoke. She took out the Savage King's sledgehammer from her pocket, stepped on the wet ground, moved nimbly among the crowd, and knocked out a cultist with one hammer.

When the smoke cleared, only two people were left standing on the field.

Batman's body was wrapped in a cape, he had one foot on an unconscious cultist, and he stared at Valerie in silence.

"Did I interrupt your plans?" Valerie asked awkwardly.

"...No." Looking at Valerie's clear eyes, Batman denied it.

Because he would feel like a loser, he would not admit that his plan was interrupted by V.

Valerie looked at Batman suspiciously. She always felt that Batman was a little weird. "Why didn't you make a scene this time?"

Batman looked at Valerie with a questioning look.

Valerie reached out her hand and pointed with her thumb at the cultist lying on the ground with a pierced face, then pointed at the smashed van: "Someone's dead."

She knew Batman's eccentric personality, which was like that of a saint. He would try his best to save even the most evil person.

"I couldn't save him." Batman looked at the body at his feet, no emotion in his tone.

Valerie was killed by a surprise attack on the human trafficker, and even Batman couldn't protect this man in advance.

"You didn't act like you were going to arrest me this time." Valerie knew that Batman was quite dissatisfied with the fact that she was always rustling, which was why Valerie showed mercy after recognizing him.

"…I can't change you, but knowing that you're still willing to be a good person is enough." Batman said, walking towards the van. "Besides, you're wrong about one thing."

Valerie pricked up her ears, wanting to hear why this guy was making an exception.

"Your physics needs improvement." Batman stood in front of the van that was crushed by the billboard, yanked open the twisted door, and then pulled out a man with a bloody face. "You can't kill people like this."

"Huh?" Valerie felt that she was being looked down upon. "Of course I know this won't kill anyone, I'm just giving you face!"

Having said that, knowing that the person was not dead still made Valerie feel a lot more relaxed. Otherwise, she would have been overwhelmed by the thought of Batman being upset.

Batman picked up the man with blood on his face, pushed him to the ground, and then punched him in the back.

As if feeling pain, the man groaned dully, then slowly woke up, and what he saw was Batman's hideous mask.

"Where is your leader behind the scenes?!" Batman growled, breaking the man's fingers.

"Ahhh!" the man let out a standard American cry of pain.

Valerie was not interested in the torture session. She looked away and looked thoughtfully at the unconscious homeless man on the ground.

It doesn't make sense that an organization whose main activity is human sacrifice could develop in civilized Gotham.

She walked over to an unconscious homeless man, turned over his body, and looked at it carefully with the scanner.

She noticed that the man had stitched wounds on his waist that looked like he had been bitten by a shark.

"He can still survive..." The wound caught Valerie's attention, to the point that she forgot the original purpose of investigating this person.

Was the bite caused by swimming in the ocean or somewhere else?

Just as Valerie was still thinking, the noisy screaming finally stopped and Batman's torture ended.

"Let's go, V." Batman knocked out the poor driver, stood up, and looked at Valerie. "The cult's base is in a bathhouse in Chinatown."

"Chinatown? Ah, I remember that." This is a recently built project, and Valerie had heard about it not long ago. "You can just go there by yourself, right? Superhero."

"If it weren't for you, I would have been in front of Butler Black Flame now." Batman couldn't help but complain in his tone.

Now we have to use the traditional way of sneaking in, which brings a lot of trouble.

"Okay..." Valerie looked away, but immediately retracted her gaze. "So I ruined your plan, didn't I? Let me guess... You were taken to the cult leader as a sacrifice."

Batman suddenly glared at Valerie with a serious look and distanced himself from her.

"What?" Valerie was startled by Batman's neurotic movements.

Batman looked left and right to make sure that the mercenary in front of him was still the one he knew. He couldn't help but asked in surprise: "Have you become smarter?"

No. 26. Chinatown

"Are you being a little rude?" Valerie asked anxiously.

Valerie always thought she was getting smart, so she thought Batman was offending her dignity.

"..." Batman knew he had said something wrong. His arrogant character made him not want to apologize, but looking at Valerie's angry expression, he compromised and said, "You are also making progress."

"Are you coaxing a child?!" Valerie was very dissatisfied and she bared her teeth in frustration.

"..." Batman took a deep breath and finally straightened his attitude, "You are much smarter than I thought."

The last person to receive such an evaluation from Batman was the Riddler. Thinking of being compared with that arrogant and troublesome guy, Miss V was even more unhappy: "You see, I have always been very smart, but when I encounter most of the troubles, my smart brain tells me to just rush forward."

Looking at Valerie's grinning face, Batman felt relieved, because this naive look was the V he was familiar with.

"Sorry, I spoke out of turn." Batman decided to skip the topic and was rarely submissive.

It wasn't quite an apology, but Valerie knew that his tsundere personality could only do so much.

However, this did remind Valerie that since there had been no changes, she hadn't checked her basic panel for a long time, and she almost forgot that there was still room for improvement in her basic abilities.

When you get back, look at your driver's license. Maybe your intelligence has really improved.

After the little episode, the two finally took joint action after a long time. Valerie wanted to summon a car, but Batman pressed a remote control first.

Along with the sound of a turbocharged engine, a black armored vehicle came at high speed from a distance, intelligently crossed some obstacles, knocked over the flattened van, and stopped in front of the two.

"Ouch, this thing is different from the one I saw last time," Valerie commented.

The last time she saw the Batmobile was at Wayne Tower, and this guy tried to run her over with it.

Compared to its previous sports car image, this Batmobile looks more like a tank.

"Get in the car, we'll discuss the details in the car." Batman said as he pressed the switch on his forearm.

The trunk of the Batmobile slowly opened, and two side-by-side seats extended out from it.

Valerie remembered this guy's Batplane, which had basically the same structure.

"Have you ever considered getting a co-pilot seat for your vehicle?" Valerie complained as she sat down in her seat.

"I'm alone." Batman jumped into the cab.

"Just for now? Even I have a partner." Valerie said.

Batman didn't reply.

Valerie became alert. Batman didn't deny it immediately. Could it be that he was really considering it? !

"Squeak..." A pneumatic sound was heard, Valerie's seat was lifted up, and she watched herself being pulled back into the trunk.

"Chinatown is located on Brick Island." Batman spoke again, but he was talking about another topic. "It is the latest large-scale urban construction project in the new city. There are all kinds of people in it, and it is not surprising that there are cults mixed in."

"Do you know who started this cult?" Valerie continued the conversation.

"A madman who calls himself Butler of Black Flame." Batman shared his information.

“Do you think they’re connected to the Court of Owls?” Valerie asked, staring at the carport.

"...I remember you said that the Court of Owls has been destroyed."

"Yes, what I mean is... there might be remnants of the cult who want to make a comeback by relying on the cult?" Valerie explained, thinking of the Claws she had encountered before.

"In that case, it doesn't matter whether it's a court or not. We just need to catch Butler Black Flame and all problems will be solved." Batman said.

"Really..." Valerie looked at the small map in her field of vision. The locator buried in the claw had stopped at one place. If it had not been removed, it could only be that it had escaped back to the base.

The location of the locator was moving further and further away from the direction their car was traveling, and it seemed that the Claw might really have nothing to do with the cult.

……

As a super large immigrant city, the number of Chinese in Gotham has been increasing in an orderly manner.

As the number of Asian voters continues to grow, the construction of Chinatown has been included in the government's plan early on. It was after Christmas this year that the construction of Chinatown on Brick Island officially began.

Almost three months have passed since the project was officially launched, and this street, which was built to imitate ancient Chinese architecture, has taken shape.

It is now late at night and the labor group that contracted the Chinatown business has long gone off work. Several tower cranes stand in the street like guardian gods of the night.

In the center of Chinatown there is a building that is obviously much larger than other places. Since it was newly built, there is no decoration other than the red walls and green tiles.

This is a courtyard-like bathhouse. After passing through the gate, you will enter a courtyard, which is surrounded by different areas.

The yard is full of flowers and trees, and the water is very beautiful. There are many kinds of flowers, such as bamboo shoots, bamboo shoots, and bamboo shoots.

Although it still looks like a half-finished model house, the courtyard of the bathhouse is already full of people in different clothes, who are whispering to each other and looking forward to it.

They gathered around an iron cage, watching an old man in tattered priest's clothes squatting in front of a wheelchair, hitting the stone in his hand out of boredom.

"Crack." The sound of stone breaking was heard, and the old man's body was shaken. He stood up and raised the stone in his hand.

It was an S-shaped dagger in the form of a Malay sword made of obsidian.

"For God!" The old man holding the stone dagger, the Black Flame Deacon, the leader of the cult that has been making a lot of noise recently, shouted like a slogan.

His brief words resonated with all the believers present. They waved their arms in cheers and repeated the words of Black Flame Deacon.

The Black Flame Deacon put down the obsidian dagger and looked at the time from a distance.

There is still some time before the required time for the sacrifice to be delivered, so the performance is not in a hurry to start.

"Lift up the statue." Deacon Black Flame ordered the people who were still outside the iron cage.

Upon receiving the order, the people outside immediately did as they were told. They lifted a huge statue and hung it on a flagpole above the baths.

Butler Black Flame looked at the statue in admiration and awe.

A long time ago, he was just an ordinary miner.

He once believed, like other colleagues, that God was an illusory thing and a false belief that should be avoided.

Until a mining accident occurred, he and his colleagues were buried in the mine. The air was thin and resources were scarce, and his colleagues died one by one.

Deacon Black Flame was not spared either. He fell in the slag, looking helplessly at the pale body of his colleague, waiting for his own death.

Until at his deathbed, God himself descended before the Black Flame Deacon.

NO27. Black Flame Butler

The ceremony has not yet begun. Butler Black Flame is cleaning the wheeled bed in front of him for the last time. After a while, this will be the place for offering sacrifices.

The believers were getting bored waiting, and some of the brave ones asked the leader directly: "Deacon! Can God really give us eternal life?"

"No one can live forever. Life is in the hands of God." Deacon Black Flame quickly answered the believer's question, "But life span can be extended. I have lived for more than three hundred years."

The leader's speech made the followers exclaim in surprise. No one investigated the truth of his words. Everyone who could gather here had already been fooled.

"The gods have had enough of the incompetent humans' blasphemy against faith and destruction of the earth." Deacon Black Flame began a long speech full of charlatanism, "The world will be destroyed in a catastrophe. Only by offering enough piety and tribute can we survive."

"And those who survive will naturally have their lifespan extended."

The Black Flame Butler held the obsidian dagger upside down and scraped the gurney in front of him back and forth while giving a speech.

The leader's words caused a surge of emotion among the believers, and their voices of communicating with each other became more heated.