Batman raised his hand, lightly swiping across his tactical visor. "That's the Penguin's elite flank. The False Face Society was just bait he threw out to draw everyone here."
"So after all this time, everyone's just playing Russian nesting doll games here? Why didn't anyone notify me in advance? Before I left the house today, I thought it was just a normal night patrol and didn't make any preparations at all." Chen Mo covertly complained to Batman. As fellow vigilantes, shouldn't they share major intelligence about villains?
Forget it, knowing Batman, it was impossible for him to share intelligence.
In the underground monitoring room of the Iceberg Lounge.
The Penguin elegantly swirled his glass of red wine. On the monitor wall, the green dots representing his subordinates were densely distributed across every shadow of the stronghold. "That idiot Roman thought he could use a few lunatics on motorcycles to test my hidden cards."
He let out a sharp laugh, sounding like a duck being strangled by the neck.
"When Black Mask's main force enters the field, my boys will let him know who sets the rules in Gotham."
Believing himself to be on a whole different level, the Penguin took a sip of red wine, his eyes reflecting an arrogant confidence that everything was firmly within his grasp.
The next second, a section of the screen exploded into static. Then a second, and a third. The curvature of the Penguin's lips froze.
The skylight above the stronghold shattered with a resounding crash. Shards of glass rained down like a downpour. Batman descended like a black panther dropping from the sky. The moment his cape spread open, the shattered glass reflected the firelight, exploding into a brilliant curtain of light behind him. He landed directly on top of two elite guards who were preparing to open fire, crushing them underneath him.
As he landed, his knee was already driven into the chest of a third man, who didn't even have time to scream.
Chen Mo hung upside down from a roof beam, his hands moving so fast they turned into afterimages. Three strands of spider silk precisely snagged several infrared sensor bombs in the corner of the wall. With a backhand flick, he slapped them directly onto the faces of a few burly men who were about to pull their triggers.
"Don't move around recklessly. If these things blow up, they won't even be able to put you back together like a jigsaw puzzle."
An elite Penguin gunman roared and turned around, his submachine gun only halfway raised.
Batman's fist had already arrived. A straightforward punch without any flashy theatrics, and with a sharp crack, the bulletproof helmet caved in. The burly man flew out horizontally like a puppet with its strings cut, overturning two iron tables stacked high with firearms.
Ammunition boxes overturned all over the floor with a loud clatter. Inside the Iceberg Lounge monitoring room, the wine glass in the Penguin's hand dropped to the floor with a smash. The expensive red wine spilled onto the carpet, resembling a glaring pool of blood.
"Batman? Why is he there!"
He snapped to his feet, his stout body trembling slightly with rage. The ambush circle he had meticulously laid out, his deepest hidden ace unit, was currently being torn to shreds one by one like sheep waiting for the slaughter.
Fire soared into the sky inside the stronghold. Chen Mo utilized his spider-sense to twist his body through the dense rain of bullets, his movements weirdly resembling a boneless noodle man.
In reality, his movements were just too fast for the naked eye of an ordinary person to capture, resulting in afterimages.
"The one on the left, did you learn your marksmanship from your grandmother? You're off by three centimeters!"
He shot out a strand of spider silk to hook onto the ceiling, swinging his entire body in an arc to deliver a fierce kick to a sniper's chest. The man was pinned to the wall before he could even utter a scream.
Chen Mo conveniently added a clump of spider silk, wrapping him up like a silkworm cocoon. "Done."
He landed on the ground and saw Batman harvesting enemies not far away. Every strike was accompanied by the dull thud of fracturing bones.
After lamenting his own mercy in his heart, Chen Mo indicated that Batman shouldn't steal all the kills.
"Leave two for me, I haven't had enough fun yet!"
Just as the words left his mouth, his spider-sense suddenly went wild. It didn't come from the enemies in front of him, but from a malice deeper within. "Batman, something's a bit wrong! Can you reply at a time like this?"
"Fine, you don't have super hearing, so you didn't hear it."
The top floor of the stronghold.
The flank commander was roaring frantically into his communicator. "Backup! We need backup! Where the hell did the sniper on the tower crane go?!" Only harsh static came from the other end of the communicator.
The next second, the wall behind him exploded without warning. Amidst flying bricks and stone, Batman crashed straight through the wall and stepped into the command room, his cape flaring out behind him like a piece of darkness torn from the abyss. The eyes beneath the cowl gleamed with a cold chill.
The commander drew his sidearm in terror.
A hand covered in Kevlar armor instantly clamped onto his wrist, applying a slight squeeze. A miserable scream echoed throughout the entire floor as the handgun fell to the floor and slid far away.
Batman snatched the communicator from his hand and casually threw it on the ground.
The communicator remained active after hitting the floor. The channel could hear all the commotion on this side. Batman's breathing was steady and cold. He was letting the Penguin listen to his elite forces being cleared out one by one.
The high point of the tower crane.
The Penguin's last sniper was sweating profusely as he adjusted his scope.
The crosshairs finally locked onto the dark figure near the window of the stronghold. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, a Batarang spun through the air, slicing the scope in half and taking a section of his finger with it.
Before he could scream in pain, a strand of spider silk wrapped around his neck, dragging his entire body down from the tower crane dozens of meters high.
"Is the trapeze act fun?" Chen Mo squatted on the edge of the crane, looking at the unlucky bastard swinging in midair. "No need to thank me, I'm your friendly neighbor, and I'm amazingly friendly."
Inside the monitoring room, all the screens fell silent. The green dots representing the elites had all turned grey within just a few minutes.
The Penguin slumped into his chair, his face as pale as a dead man's.
The hidden card he prided himself on was shattered so completely that not even dregs remained.
In the shadows of a rooftop opposite the stronghold.
A man wearing a pitch-black skull mask quietly watched all of this unfold.
Roman Sionis, Black Mask, elegantly trimmed the cigar in his hand. The flame flickered in the darkness, reflecting the cruel smile in the depths of his eyes.
"This is the Penguin's hidden strength? Truly disappointing." He exhaled a smoke ring, the smoke forming a mocking arc in the air.
He didn't care about the destroyed firearms at all; what he wanted was to use Batman's hands to completely cripple the Penguin's talons.
The objective was achieved.
Profit or revenge?
Black Mask indicated that it would be best to have both. If he couldn't have both, he would grab the immediate profit first before figuring out how to get revenge later.
Black Mask turned around, kicking up a gust of cold wind as he disappeared into the night.
In the distance, the sound of Gordon's police sirens grew from faint to loud. Chen Mo squatted on the lightning rod at the top of the stronghold, watching the busy red and blue lights below.
"When the police arrive in a bit, I don't have the money to pay the fine for illegal trespassing."
Chen Mo turned his head to look at Batman. "What are you looking at?"
He followed Batman's line of sight, only to see a pitch-black rooftop. "Forget it, can't catch up anyway. Seriously, can you give me some labor fees the next time we do this kind of cleanup job? Doesn't Gotham have a Friendly Neighbor Award or something?"
Chen Mo paused, gesturing with his chin toward the street below. "Speaking of which, I don't think I've met Gotham's famous righteous police chief yet. Gordon, right? Introduce me to him some other day. Let's forget about it today, I'm so sleepy my eyes can barely stay open."
He shot out a strand of spider silk to grip the water tower frame opposite, launching his entire body into the air. The red and blue figure traced an arc in the grey night sky, quickly disappearing among the overlapping corrugated iron roofs of the shantytown.
Batman withdrew his gaze and turned to look at Gordon, who was stepping out of a police car.
Gordon looked up at the alleyway sealed off by spider silk at the entrance of the stronghold, then looked toward the roof where the red and blue figure had already disappeared.
"Is that your new partner? Finally made a friend?"
Batman didn't answer.
Gordon sighed and stuffed his pipe into his mouth.
"Fine. I won't ask."
In the distance, that strand of spider silk above the shantytown was still reflecting a faint light. Batman glanced in that direction, then walked toward the Batmobile.
The engine started, and the low rumble gradually faded away in the silent alleyway.
The entire dock area finally quieted down, leaving only the wailing of the sea breeze blowing through the gaps in the shipping containers, and the alternating red and blue light of the police cruisers.