I, V, Gotham Legend

Like her mother, she also smiles and bears the pain.

Victor blamed himself for having lost hope in life again, and he tossed and turned in his tattered bed all night.

The next day, Victor went to school and set up his stall as usual. After adjusting his mindset, he came to the lake in the park again.

The excitement of last night calmed down after a day of settling down, and he regained the state he wanted most.

But just as he came to the railing again and stared blankly, he noticed that the girl was walking towards him not far away.

Like Victor, she came to continue her interrupted suicide.

This chance encounter left both of them stunned. Then, they guessed the other's reason for coming here at the same time and couldn't help but burst into laughter at the same time.

After laughing, they started chatting again, and it was from this time that Victor learned the girl's name.

Her name is Nora, and like Victor, her father died young and her mother died more recently from a rare disease.

The two chatted for a long time, and finally, just like last time, they left because they were no longer in a good mood for suicide.

Although the two did not say much, from then on, as if they had an agreement, Victor would come to the lake at the same time every day, and the girl would always come at about the same time.

They would always chat for a long time, then laugh and "rebuke" each other for disrupting their suicide plans, and then Victor would send the girl to a scheduled bus.

The topic of their conversations changed every time after that, and it was very jumpy.

A shabby bicycle with wheels missing, a rusted lighthouse in Gotham Harbor, chewed gum, and the broken light of a monitor.

Flowers blooming on the trees, wild ducks creating ripples on the lake, and flocks of geese gliding across the sky.

The clothes they wore gradually became thicker, the clouds on their faces gradually faded, and even the bus drivers recognized them.

Until that day, there was another heavy snowfall, and the big lake in the park was frozen as usual.

“Look at it, we can go ice skating now…” Nora looked at the solid lake surface, her little face flushed.

"No, there is still a chance of an accident." Victor said in a very serious tone, "You must stay as far away as possible."

After saying that, Victor was stunned, and so was Nora.

Then they laughed together again.

From that day on, although there was no actual confession of love, they lived together as if it was a matter of course.

Nora is an excellent tailor and owns a shop inherited from her ancestors, but because of this, gangsters often come to cause trouble. Although Victor has been making a living by setting up stalls, his main occupation is still a student.

Victor dropped out of school and lived in the shop with Nora, looking after the shop together during the day and studying together at night.

In the third year of their cohabitation, Victor passed the entrance exam of Gotham University with excellent grades and became a student majoring in cryogenics - because of his mother, he had always been obsessed with cryogenics.

Nora was unlucky not to be chosen, but luckily they didn’t live far away;

That summer, they got married, and on a night when they were alone, they exchanged rings by the lake where they had first met.

The world became a better place again. Victor always had excellent grades in college, and several companies even tried to hire him before he graduated.

During that time, Victor imagined his wealthy life with Nora every day.

Because Nora likes sunshine, they agreed that after saving enough money in Gotham's big companies, they would leave this damn place and go to a sunny place, holding each other's warm hands and enjoying life every day.

The future was full of light, and during that period, Victor was full of energy every day.

until that day.

In the eighth year of their cohabitation, Victor, who was already a doctor, was still writing his thesis. Nora picked up the kettle and wanted to make a cup of coffee for her husband.

But she dropped the kettle on the ground.

Victor stood up in fright, he thought his wife was dissatisfied with him.

Until he saw Nora standing there, staring blankly at her trembling hands.

Victor remembered the twitching muscle; he had seen it in his mother.

He rushed his reluctant wife to the hospital and forced her to undergo a medical examination.

The result was the same as what he had guessed, which he was unwilling to believe, and it was a rarer form of dancing disease.

Unlike her mother who developed the disease due to the stimulation of ice water, Nora's chorea is hereditary and her mother died from this disease.

That day, the reason why Nora walked to the lake, besides her mother's death, was most importantly that she realized that she would also die from this disease.

For Victor, the sky seemed to have fallen down, and chorea came back to haunt him like a nightmare.

On the day he received the medical report, Victor sat in front of Nora's bed, palely forced out his most hated smile, and kept comforting his wife that everything would be fine.

Just like my mother on the hospital bed back then.

Fortunately, Victor was not completely useless this time. He used all his money and connections to send Nora to major hospitals, both public and private, and even to other cities.

But the results were far from ideal. Nora's disease was so rare that she could only rely on medication to slow down the symptoms, but it was almost impossible to cure it.

After thirteen years of living together, Nora was confined to a wheelchair.

That day, it was another damn winter. After Victor finished taking care of Nora in the hospital, he walked to the park alone and looked at the frozen lake again.

This lake witnessed almost all the important moments in Victor's life, but he came here for no particular reason, just because he was simply weak and tired and wanted to take a rest.

Victor leaned on the railing, just like he did when he was chatting with the girl before, he stared at the empty frozen lake in a daze.

He suddenly noticed that someone was walking on the ice carrying a basket. The man suddenly squatted down and chiseled the ice under his feet.

Looks like someone trying to catch fish.

Victor hates these people. He thinks his mother's death is also related to these illegal fishermen.

But this time, Victor was stunned.

He saw the fish under the ice in the lake. They seemed to be liberated. They jumped out of the ice holes, fell onto the ice surface, and jumped around vigorously.

Cold can freeze life, but at the same time, it can also freeze death.

Victor seemed to see hope again.

No. 50. Greed

Victor wants to freeze Nora to prolong her life until he can find a way to save her.

After getting his wife's consent, Victor returned to the leaky attic to prepare for the experiment.

As a cryogenics doctor, he is very good at freezing things, starting with mice, then stray cats and dogs on the roadside, and eventually, he even started kidnapping people.

He found a way to keep a person alive after being frozen.

That day, he took Nora back to his home in the store. They sat together and chatted as if nothing had happened. They imagined the future after the disease was cured.

They want to lie on the lawn in the sun, holding hands and enjoying the warmth.

After Nora finally fell asleep, Victor hardened his heart and froze her into ice with trepidation and determination.

Nora was sleeping with her hands on her belly and a reassuring smile, like a sleeping beauty.

Researching treatment options requires funding, and Victor needs capital help.

At that time, Master Wayne was still traveling around the world, and he took the initiative to find the most famous philanthropist Boyle.

Phils Boyle was very interested in Victor's freezing technology. He agreed to accept Victor as an employee and also gave away the ice storage as a place to accommodate Nora.

Victor thought Boyle was a really good man, but in fact, Boyle was more interested in how Victor froze people than in curing Nora.

After signing the contract, he forced Victor to prioritize the development of weapons.

Boyle is a very ambitious man. He wants to build his ancestral Gotham company into a group as famous as Wayne, but he is too stupid. If he had not been born into a good family, he would not have his current position.

The reason why I have been building a philanthropist image for myself is simply because I have no other choice.

Nora, who was frozen in the Gotham ice storage, became a prop for Boyle to threaten Victor. Victor made some guns for him that could freeze people, but Boyle was not very satisfied. What he wanted was a new weapon that could kill people and would sell well.

Fortunately, Boyle's attention was soon attracted by other things. He mined a green liquid metal from a place Victor didn't know.

Since Victor was the best cryogenics expert in the company, he was dragged in to study ways to preserve this stuff.

This thing is extremely active and looks like it can be used as an energy source, but in fact it's just an appearance. The energy conversion efficiency is extremely low and it deteriorates very quickly.

Fortunately, although the research on liquid metal was a mess, public funding had increased a lot, so Victor could use it to get some money for disease research.

But soon, Gotham Corporation was attacked by Scarecrow and its only liquid metal was stolen.

Victor's embezzlement of public funds was soon exposed. Just this afternoon, when he was doing research with his colleagues, Boyle suddenly rushed into the laboratory angrily with a pistol.

Victor had forgotten what he said. He had long been accustomed to ignoring the words of his leader.

In a rage, Boyle knocked Victor down and hit him on the head with the butt of his pistol.

As a result, the pistol accidentally went off due to the smash, and the bullet hit the storage device behind Victor, disrupting the energy maintenance system.

Seeing that the situation was not good, Boyle immediately ran away in a hurry. The storage device flashed red and eventually exploded due to a malfunction.

Victor, who was still lying on the ground, had nowhere to hide. He and his colleagues were drowned by the ultra-cold liquid nitrogen that spurted out.

At first it was just very cold, so cold that it engulfed the soul. Victor fell to the ground, his blood vessels seemed to be frozen. He didn't even have the desire to struggle, only his bones trembling instinctively.

But as if reaching a peak, after trembling on the ground for a while, Victor suddenly didn't feel cold anymore.

He got up from the ground. The surroundings were still the freezing laboratory as usual, but due to the liquid nitrogen leak, there were ice cubes everywhere.

He found the temperature very comfortable.

Until Victor looked at his colleague who was also submerged in liquid nitrogen like him.

The handsome blond boy from the past was gone, and Victor only saw a bald, blue-skinned old man looking at him with horror.

Before Victor could talk to him, his colleague turned and ran away. He pushed open the door of the laboratory and fled to the office.

But just as he pushed open the door and ran a few steps, he fell to the ground in sweat, his blue skin even turning white.

It's like having heat stroke.

Victor leaned on the observation window with both hands and watched his colleague die in disbelief. Through the reflection in the glass window, he could see what he looked like now.

Like his colleagues, he is an old man with blue skin and a bald head.

He finally understood what kind of changes had happened to him.

He became a monster that could only survive in ultra-low temperature environments.

Victor knelt on the ground in despair. He couldn't even leave this small laboratory, and the hope of curing Nora was further away.

Until he saw several freezing guns made by Boyle not far away.

Nora still needs me...

Victor struggled to cheer himself up. He used the only materials in the laboratory to make himself a freezer-like armor, an infrared goggles, and a freezing gun that could really kill people.

He left the lab, left the office, and left Gotham.

Later, he saw on the big screen in the street mall that Boyle would still attend Wayne's fundraiser tonight as planned.

Victor was extremely angry.

He didn't expect that this hypocritical bastard would have the nerve to participate in such an event after almost killing himself and his colleagues.

He would attack the fundraiser, humiliate Boyle in front of Gotham's elite, and then force him to release his wife.

Victor is a rational person and knows that it is difficult to achieve his goals alone.

He found the Penguin and used the weapons he had made for Boyle as bargaining chips to gain the support of Gotham's largest gang.

Compared to Boyle, the Penguin is smarter.

But also more greedy.

...

Sparks of cutting metal flashed in his eyes, and after stuffing a piece of explosives into the cut keyhole, Victor didn't even plan to leave.

There was a loud bang of an explosion and Victor immediately pushed open the door.

After freezing the Penguin and a group of thugs, Victor tried to open the ice storage himself.

The door opened, and a gust of cold air sprayed onto Victor's armor, but he did not react to the temperature, not only because the environment inside the armor was colder.

Moreover, he saw Boyle, the damn old man, being pinned to the ground, with a woman, who was still wearing very thin clothes even in the ice storage, holding a knife to the back of his neck.

The safe behind them, which should have been tightly sealed, was wide open, and Victor had everything in it.