Underground at the Iceberg Lounge.
The light from the wall of monitors reflected off Oswald's sour face. He clutched a black umbrella, tapping its tip rhythmically against the expensive floor tiles.
On screen, countless riders wearing crude masks were frantically pouring in from the outskirts of the docks. These guys carried automatic weapons in their hands, and some had even mounted light machine guns in the sidecars of their motorcycles.
The featherless crow hopped around near the monitoring console.
Oswald stared at the swarm of False Face Society members, who looked like locusts, and let out a piercing, cold laugh.
"Have our men pull back. Make room for these lunatics."
The subordinate standing next to him froze for a moment.
"Boss, Warehouse No. 3, which we just took over..."
Oswald snapped his head around, his twisted expression looking exceptionally eerie under the light of the screens.
"Are you a pig-brain? Batman is over there. Let Black Mask's idiots risk their lives against that lunatic in the black cloak. We just need to watch from the sidelines as they rip each other's guts out."
He looked back at the screen, his tone carrying the excitement of someone watching a theater performance.
"Once they've bitten each other enough, we'll go in and clean up the mess. That's called efficiency."
"Yes..."
In the central area of the docks, inside the stairwell of Warehouse No. 3.
A bald, burly man had just struck a grenade against a corner of the wall. Before he could throw it, a dense volley of bullets rained down from above.
The bullets struck the iron guardrail, sending sparks flying everywhere and making his ears ring from the vibration.
Grit-teeth, he flipped his hand and flung the grenade up through the gap in the stairs.
Boom!
The shockwave, mixed with debris from sandbags, sprayed all over his face.
"Kill those Falcone bastards!"
He roared as he stood up, completely unaware that behind him, at the entrance to the docks, the engine noises of hundreds of motorcycles were converging into a low, rumbling thunder.
Even less did he know that his retreat had been completely blocked off by the main force of the False Face Society. Right now, this warehouse was a giant tin can, and he was just a piece of luncheon meat inside.
At a second-floor window.
A sniper from the Falcone family squinted, locking onto the movement at the stairwell. Just as his finger settled onto the trigger, a sudden wave of cold air washed over the back of his neck.
There was no sound, no footsteps, not even a breeze.
A hand wearing a black Kevlar glove reached out from the darkness, precisely clamping down on the sniper rifle's barrel and jerking it upward.
Bang!
The bullet struck the chandelier on the ceiling, sending glass fragments showering down everywhere.
The sniper turned his head in terror, only to see a pair of white lenses flash past in the darkness.
Immediately after, the back of his head collided with a hard chest piece.
Batman's knee pressed exactly three centimeters above the man's lumbar spine. His force was controlled with extreme precision--enough to make the opponent instantly lose mobility, but absolutely short of causing paralysis.
He stuffed the unconscious sniper into the shadow of a storage rack and flipped away toward another firing position.
Outside the warehouse, a heavy weapon emplacement had just been set up.
Two members of the False Face Society were excitedly feeding an ammo belt into a machine gun, aiming directly at that broken second-floor window.
Behind them, a dark silhouette dropped silently from the top of the storage racks.
Batman landed without any buffering motion, directly grabbing both men by their rear collars and slamming them together toward the center.
A dull thud of colliding flesh and bone echoed.
The two men rolled their eyes and slumped softly to the ground.
Batman didn't stop. He was like a phantom weaving through the firelight. Everywhere he passed, the gunfire in that position would eerily vanish.
He wasn't just subduing criminals; he was dismantling a bomb that could blow the entire docks into the sky at any moment.
At this moment, on the edge of the docks, at the very top of the tallest container crane.
Chen Mo squatted on the crane's crossbeam, the wind blowing his red-and-blue suit tightly against his body.
He looked down, overlooking the battlefield below.
This scene was truly spectacular.
On the left, Maroni's men were charging like crazy; on the right, Falcone's men were resisting to the death.
On the periphery, hundreds of masked small-time thugs were riding around in frantic circles, occasionally tossing a couple of Molotov cocktails into the crowd.
Chen Mo couldn't help but sigh.
"Gotham's nights are truly full of vitality. Everyone is trying so hard just to avoid going to sleep."
Chen Mo rubbed his aching lower back. Having just handled forty minor cases in a row, he was seeing double now when looking at people.
If he had known earlier there was a big event tonight, he wouldn't have wasted so much breath during his night patrol. Now his throat was even a bit sore.
Chen Mo's gaze swept through the chaotic crossfire, finally locking onto the depths of the warehouse.
Over there, a black cape would occasionally flash in the residual glow of explosions.
"Old Bats is busy over there."
Chen Mo muttered a sentence, his mind rapidly calculating.
His character persona was a glorious, righteous little sun.
In the current situation, if he just rushed down and unleashed his full power, it would definitely trigger the "killing living beings" alarm.
After all, among this crowd in Gotham, count them one by one, their physical constitution was no different from papier-mâché.
And when he was fatigued, his control over his strength... well, he had never been great at controlling it.
Therefore, Chen Mo had to intervene in a more "artistic" way.
His gaze landed on that row of crookedly stacked shipping containers beneath the crane.
Those containers had been temporarily piled up by the False Face Society to block the road. The bases weren't secured at all, and they were swaying slightly under the sea breeze.
Chen Mo sighed and leaped down from the crane.
He flipped in mid-air, his web precisely sticking to the crane's steel cable, sending him swinging across a massive arc like a pendulum.
"Hey! Everyone down there!"
Amplified by his megaphone, Chen Mo's voice instantly drowned out the noisy gunfire.
The various factions locked in fierce combat subconsciously looked up.
They saw a red-and-blue figure descending from the sky, holding a shiny string in his hand.
Chen Mo landed on the topmost container, lightly tapping his toes to feel the center of gravity of the metal boxes beneath him.
"Your containers aren't placed stably. This severely violates safety production standards."
The moment the words left his mouth, he suddenly exerted force.
Four tons of immense strength instantly erupted through his toes.
Creak----
The tooth-gritting screech of scraping metal instantly resounded across the docks.
That row of containers stacked three stories high, under Chen Mo's kick, collapsed toward the False Face Society's motorcycle fleet like falling dominoes.
"Holy shit!"
"Run!"
The riders who had been aggressive just a moment ago instantly panicked, twisting their throttles to the limit to scatter and flee.
Rumble!
The massive containers crashed onto the concrete ground, kicking up dust a good ten meters high.
The originally spacious entrance was completely blocked tight.
The follow-up reinforcements of the False Face Society were shut outside, causing the firepower inside the warehouse to drop significantly in an instant.
Chen Mo squatted on top of the collapsed containers, clapping the dust off his hands, and flashed a bright smile at the dazed gang members below.
"No need to thank me. I am your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."
"Who the fuck is thanking you?"
Chen Mo raised his hand and executed a quick combo, sealing the mouth of the guy who talked back and hanging him upside down above the container.
"Alright, I hear the gratitude in your heart. You're too enthusiastic."
Did you really dare to answer when asked?
Second floor of the warehouse.
Batman was hanging the last Falcone gunman from the ceiling.
He looked out the window, just in time to see the spectacular sight of that row of containers collapsing.
The eyes behind the white lenses flickered slightly.
He saw it very clearly.
The moment that Spider-Man kicked out, he used a web line to finely adjust the angle of the container collapse.
That angle was just right to block the road, yet it avoided every single unlucky bastard standing in the middle of the street.
This ultimate control over strength and angle was absolutely something that had been well-practiced and well-calculated.
Not only strong, but smart too?
More importantly, this kid was indeed working hard to "not hurt people."
Batman withdrew his gaze, leaped down from the second floor, and landed right in the center of the first-floor hall.
Surrounding him were the remnants of Maroni and Falcone's forces.
Dozens of gun barrels instantly aimed at this dark silhouette.
"It's him!"
"Fire!"
Before the gunfire could sound, a red-and-blue figure had already crashed through the side glass window, rolling to a stop beside Batman.
Chen Mo squatted on the ground, his movements as light and agile as a real spider.
"Hey, buddy, it's pretty lively over here at your place."
As he spoke, he casually shot out two web lines, pulling the gunmen on the left and right sides who were preparing to fire straight into mid-air.
"Need a hand? Though I don't recommend such intense outdoor exercise late at night."
Batman didn't look at him, only replying in a low voice.
"Don't kill anyone."
Chen Mo curled his lip.
"Do I look like that kind of violent element? I'm someone who has won the Five-Good Youth Medal."
He suddenly bounced upward, drawing a complex trajectory in the air.
"As for you, does that cape catch the wind? It looks pretty heavy."
The battle in the warehouse, at this very moment, officially entered the commentary rhythm of Spider-Man.
Before Spider-Man arrived, everyone had been fighting for half the night, and their combined dialogue boxes hadn't exceeded the ten minutes after his arrival.