Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
The tongue of fire from a heavy machine gun erupted inside the dark dock warehouse. Bullets pelted the rusted shipping containers, making a sound like a hundred psychotic patients slamming iron doors with sledgehammers at the same time.
Chen Mo curled up tightly in the shadow behind a container, pressing his hands over his ears with all his might, his face beneath the mask twisted into a ball.
With bullets of this caliber, if they even grazed him, his newly stitched cheap pajamas would be instantly shredded into rags, taking several pounds of his parts along with them.
"Brother! Your firepower is way too intense! I'm just wearing pajamas! Pajamas!"
Chen Mo bellowed at the top of his lungs, his voice sounding exceptionally pathetic amidst the dense gunfire.
"You're using a weapon meant for armored vehicles against me, do you think that's fair? That is completely unsportsmanlike! Has the barrier to entry for our Gotham gangs dropped this low nowadays? You don't even observe basic dueling etiquette anymore?"
What answered him was another maniacal sweeping burst.
A fragment of sheet metal sent flying by a ricochet sliced through the air. With a clink, it smacked against Chen Mo's mask and bounced away.
Chen Mo tucked his neck in, feeling the slight vibration traveling through his scalp.
"Alright, the negotiations have failed. I knew you guys who look like potatoes crushed by a door never watch the sports channel."
He silently calculated the frequency of the bullets in his mind.
That idiot Scarface had clearly lost his mind with bloodlust, the ammunition belt dragging across the concrete floor with a piercing metallic screech.
Chen Mo moved.
He didn't roll out into an attack as stylishly as a superhero in a movie. Instead, he adopted an extremely awkward, almost comical way of running.
Hunched over and sticking his butt out, his feet bounced around like they were dancing on a hot frying pan as he scrambled frantically through the gaps between the containers.
Several times he nearly tripped over abandoned steel pipes on the ground, his body wobbling like a drunk penguin.
Chen Mo swore to God that if he had health insurance, he would love nothing more than to make a super cool entrance.
But he didn't have health insurance, and he had no money. So, style could wait; he would do whatever it took to ensure he sustained the least amount of injury.
"Slow down! Slow down! My shoelaces came untied! Wait for me to tie them!"
Bullets chased his heels, exploding into a string of dazzling sparks on the ground.
While shrieking like a ghost, Chen Mo shouted without looking back:
"Fooled you! These crappy shoes don't even have laces!"
Scarface laughed maniacally. The heavy machine gun in his hands was like the Grim Reaper's scythe, crazily harvesting everything in sight.
Chen Mo slipped into a blind spot, but his eyes were fixed on the area above his head.
It was an old cargo crane.
Like an old man with one foot in the grave, its rust-spotted boom groaned and creaked in the sea breeze, a thick steel cable suspending a massive main hook that swayed gently in midair.
The main hook itself weighed about two tons.
The rust on the steel cable appeared to exceed thirty-two percent.
Most importantly, the lubricant on that load-bearing axle had dried up long ago. If the force applied shifted even slightly, the entire pulley block would become an unexploded bomb ready to detonate at any moment.
He only needed an angle.
Chen Mo suddenly dashed out of cover, heading straight for the spot directly beneath the hook.
He ran extremely fast, but when passing an oil drum, his footing suddenly "slipped" in a bizarre manner.
Chen Mo's body lunged forward violently, making him look exactly like a miserable wretch who had exhausted his physical strength and lost his balance.
Sure enough, Scarface halted his steps, a cruel smile appearing on his scarred face.
He raised his gun, the muzzle aiming steadily at the back of the head of this psycho who called himself Spider-Man.
Chen Mo didn't look back.
Real men never look back at explosions!
Now!
Chen Mo shot a strand of web with a backhand motion.
That glob of white, viscous liquid whose texture closely resembled expired hanging noodles (Damn it, this is just spider silk, can we stop judging me as low-end erotica?!)
It accurately adhered to the latch of the hook above.
Chen Mo yanked down with sudden force. Borrowing this pulling strength, his entire body launched off the ground, swinging into midair like a giant yo-yo.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
Scarface's bullets subconsciously followed Chen Mo's figure, sweeping upward.
Sparks flew everywhere.
Several large-caliber bullets slammed heavily against the already overburdened steel cable.
Under the violent impact of the heavy machine gun, the heavily rusted steel cable let out a final, desperate snapping sound.
The sound was as crisp as a breaking guitar string.
The massive two-ton lump of iron instantly lost its constraint, plunging down from high above with a piercing whistle.
"Watch out--"
Chen Mo let out a tragic shriek in midair, sounding genuinely worried for the other guy.
At the same time, his toe precisely kicked an adjacent crossbeam while he was suspended.
The angle of this kick was extremely tricky.
Under the slight resultant force of this kick, the trajectory of the falling hook, which should have dropped vertically, underwent an incredibly subtle shift.
Scarface froze.
He instinctively looked up, the massive black shadow rapidly expanding in his pupils, blocking out all the light leaking from the warehouse ceiling.
Boom!
The earth-shattering roar erupted.
The hook crashed heavily onto the concrete floor less than half a meter in front of Scarface.
The hard ground shattered like tofu, and countless concrete fragments flew out like bullets.
The immense shockwave instantly blew Scarface away. His body flipped through the air without an ounce of dignity, his back slamming hard against the warehouse's iron door.
Clang.
The iron door instantly buckled into a large crater.
Scarface slid to the ground like a ragged sack of potatoes. The heavy machine gun flew far away, and he remained completely motionless.
Chen Mo landed on the ground with a thud.
He didn't strike any cool landing pose. Instead, he squatted right there, panting heavily.
His shoulders heaved violently, his hands propped against his knees, his entire body shaking like a phone set to vibrate mode.
"Scared the life out of me... Scared the life out of me..."
While muttering to himself, he scrambled over to Scarface's side and tremblingly extended a finger to check under the thug's scarred nose.
Still breathing.
Chen Mo breathed a long sigh of relief and slumped onto the dust-covered ground.
"Still alive... Thank God, thank physics, and thank the Gotham Equipment Maintenance Department's negligence."
Patting his chest, he spoke earnestly to the unconscious Scarface:
"Brother, remember to file a complaint when you go back. The safety hazards of this crane are way too big. Seriously, if I hadn't yelled just now, you'd be a meat patty plastered to the concrete by now. No need to thank me, I'm your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."
At this moment, in the darkest corner of the warehouse's top level.
A dark shadow stood like a stone statue.
Through his tactical visor, Bruce Wayne replayed everything that had just occurred, frame by frame.
He saw it.
He saw that teenager's seemingly frantic, yet freakishly precise kick in midair.
It was a precise operation resulting from an ultimate mastery over mechanics, angles, and gravitational acceleration.
But he also saw something else.
He saw the teenager check whether his enemy was dead or alive the very first moment he landed.
He saw the heartfelt, almost exhausted relief when the boy confirmed the man was alive.
He saw him sitting on the ground trembling, muttering to himself with zero care for his image.
Batman remained silent.
Inside his white tactical lenses, streams of data flashed by rapidly.
Was this teenager acting, or was he truly... as pure as a blank sheet of paper?
In Gotham, pure as a blank sheet of paper?
Is that even possible?
Naturally suspicious, Batman temporarily filed this question into the "Pending Observation" folder. But before he could make a decision, the piercing sound of police sirens echoed from the perimeter of the docks.
Aside from the sirens, there was also the roaring sound of a large fleet of heavy motorcycles.
The Maroni family's reinforcements had arrived.
The reaction speed of these mobsters was always a whole street faster than the Gotham Police Department.
Chen Mo was just about to stand up when he suddenly felt a chill down his spine.
A heavy, oppressive weight, as if the entire night sky was collapsing.
Peter tingle, can you please ring?
Even my own built-in sixth sense can tell there's a big bat behind me. Peter tingle, are you really not planning to give it a thought?
While seemingly complaining, Chen Mo was actually making a silent wish in his heart for the next spider ability he could obtain from the system.
Spider-Sense, please.
As a show of sincerity for his wish, he was willing to refrain from cursing the system in his heart for half a month.
A dark shadow dropped from the sky.
The cape unfurled in the air like a piece of the night sky that had been clipped out.
The sound of the landing was extremely light, failing to even disturb the dust on the ground.
Chen Mo let out a startled yelp and bounded upward, bounding all the way to the opposite wall, his limbs clinging to it as his back pressed against the surface.
Batman's control over his presence was too perfect--so perfect that Chen Mo's senses only gave feedback a second before the man landed.
"You're--you're that--that big bat!"
Chen Mo's voice pitched up half an octave out of excitement and fright.
He pointed at the pitch-black figure radiating a chilly aura in front of him, his hand shaking.
"Wow! You're way taller than you look in the newspapers! Seriously! I mean, I see your news all the time... Oh, I'm not your fan or anything, I didn't go out of my way to look. I just glance at them whenever I pass by a newsstand. Those papers only ever report on you and barely give me any space, it's so annoying."
Chen Mo fumbled frantically around his tattered pajamas.
"Alright, I'll come clean. I'm actually your fan! Can you give me an autograph? Just sign it on my clothes, okay? I plan to keep this outfit as a family heirloom!"
Batman didn't look at him, nor did he even turn his head.
His cold, stern eyes stared at several entrances of the warehouse, his voice deep like gravel grinding from the depths of hell.
"They're here."
The moment the words left his mouth.
The warehouse doors were violently smashed open.
Dozens of Maroni family thugs carrying automatic rifles poured in. The beams of their flashlights danced wildly, instantly locking onto the two individuals in the center.
Batman moved.
He vanished.
Chen Mo curled his lips. What a silent big bat with zero sense of humor.
One after another, none of you speak. Sooner or later, you're all going to get depression.
From Chen Mo's perspective, that black figure was like a drop of ink falling into black water, dissolving instantly.
Before the first thug could even pull the trigger, he felt a crisp bone-cracking sound from his ribs.
Then came the second, and the third.
Batman wove through the crowd, his movements clean and efficient like a meticulously choreographed aesthetic of violence.
Every punch and every kick was accompanied by fracturing bones and muffled groans.
Chen Mo launched himself off the ground, shouting while shooting webs:
"Wait for me! I'm on your team! We're teammates, right? Even though you're not wearing red and blue, I can reluctantly accept this dark-style aesthetic!"
Chen Mo nimbly leaped onto a container.
"Keep it up! Good hit! That left hook was beautiful! Buddy, what do you call that move? The Bat Heart-Extractor?"
While acting as a cheerleader, Chen Mo didn't stay idle either.
His wrists flicked at rapid speeds.
With a flick of his left hand, a strand of web adhered to a thug's ankle. With a violent yank, the guy was left hanging upside down from a ceiling chandelier like a piece of introverted cured meat.
With a snap of his right hand, another guy who was preparing to ambush Batman from behind had his entire face plastered with a layer of white "hanging noodles." Followed by a powerful pull from Chen Mo, the man was pinned flat against the wall like a poster.
"Hey! Don't move! You've been shut down by Gotham Urban Management!"
Soon, the warehouse walls and pillars were covered with thugs bound by webs in all sorts of humiliating poses.
Batman's combat continued.
He was like an unstoppable meat grinder; not a single enemy who approached him could remain standing for more than three seconds.
Just then.
A thug hiding in a dark corner revealed a sinister expression.
He pulled a round object from his coat and violently yanked out the safety pin.
A grenade.
Batman was currently being held down tightly by three fiercely desperate thugs--the elites of the Maroni family who used their bodies as shields to try and create an opportunity for their companion.
"Grenade! Grenade grenade grenade!"
The frightened spider-baby let out a high-pitched, cracking shriek.
Chen Mo didn't hesitate.
He knew this was the best opportunity.
Not an opportunity to kill enemies, but an opportunity to cling to a golden thigh.
He lunged forward fiercely.
His target wasn't the grenade, but the thug who was preparing to throw it.
In midair, Chen Mo's eyes were completely calm. Where was there even a hint of panic left?
Yet his mouth screamed louder than anyone else.
The web shot from his right hand was no longer a single, thin strand. Instead, it erupted like crazy, wrapping around the thug's hand holding the grenade layer after layer like endless plastic wrap.
Chen Mo's entire body slammed into the thug's chest.
The two crashed heavily to the ground. Chen Mo used the momentum to roll over, using his own shoulder to firmly pin down the grenade that had been wrapped into a massive white cocoon by the webbing.
In that split second, he even had the presence of mind to slightly adjust his angle, ensuring the shockwave of the explosion would blast outward rather than shatter his internal organs.
Boom!
A muffled explosion rang out inside the web cocoon.
The white cocoon instantly expanded to its absolute limit like a balloon about to burst, followed by an ear-piercing sound of escaping air.
Although the shockwave was mostly negated by the webbing, it still sent Chen Mo flying.
He rolled five or six times on the ground before crashing heavily into a pile of discarded parts.
"Cough, cough..."
Chen Mo lay prone on the ground, not moving for a long time.
He could feel that the suit around his shoulder area was completely ruined.
Several small metal fragments had embedded themselves into his skin.
It hurt.
It really hurt.
But he didn't stand up immediately.
He turned his head slightly, looking at the blood slowly oozing from his shoulder, while his mind calculated rapidly.
The wound wasn't deep--a superficial injury that hadn't damaged any bones or tendons.
But he had to make this blood flow with more value.
He had to find a way to move Batman.
If he couldn't move Batman, moving Bruce Wayne would work just as well.
Doesn't he love picking up Robins everywhere?
Look at him! He wanted to be adopted by Wayne Enterprises, seriously.
The moment he got adopted, Chen Mo planned to pretend he had lost his spider powers, content to be a wealthy heir living a life of lavish extravagance and leisure.
For the sake of his imagined beautiful life, Chen Mo made his breathing rapid and chaotic, making the arm propped on the ground tremble with just the right high-frequency vibration.
"Good thing..."
Chen Mo stumbled as he crawled up. First, he walked over to the thug who had been knocked out by the blast, mechanically checking his breath.
After confirming the man wasn't dead, he slumped onto the dust-covered floor as if he had lost all his strength.
He clutched his bleeding shoulder, the red liquid constantly leaking through the gaps between his fingers.
His voice trembled with great sincerity, even carrying a hint of lingering fear that sounded like crying:
"You're not dead... Oh gosh, scared the life out of me... How can you just throw something like a grenade around wildly... This completely violates workplace safety standards..."
As he spoke, he used the corner of his eye to observe Batman.
This level of playing the pity card might be a bit redundant in Marvel, but in Gotham, in front of the deeply suspicious Batman, this was the best stepping stone.
Who wouldn't want to have Bruce Wayne as a dad?
Is there really anyone who wouldn't? Huh?
Though there was no hope for 'my dad is Iron Man,' 'my dad is Batman' sounded incredibly powerful too!
As he thought about it, Chen Mo trembled even more sincerely, even cooperating by shuddering from a chill.
Batman finished off the last enemy.
He turned slowly, his black cape cutting a cold arc behind him.
He walked over to Chen Mo, looking down from above at the teenager sitting in a pool of blood.
The warehouse was very quiet, save for Chen Mo's deliberately suppressed, rapid breathing.
Batman's gaze fell upon the blackened web cocoon that had been blasted.
The angle.
The timing.
The wrapping technique.
His tactical visor was frantically replaying that exact moment in the background.
This was absolutely not luck.
Within the fraction of a second when the boy lunged out, he had completed an extremely complex mechanical calculation and executed the optimal solution using his own body.
Yet now he sat on the ground, clutching his bleeding shoulder and muttering something about "safety standards" like a child who had been frightened out of his wits.
Batman remained silent for a long time.
The police sirens outside the warehouse were drawing closer.
"You need to tend to your wound."
Batman finally spoke. His voice was still deep, but that bone-chilling coldness seemed to have dissipated just a fraction.
Chen Mo looked up, the slightly comical black lenses stitched onto his mask staring at him somewhat blankly.
"Oh, this? It's fine... seriously, it's fine."
Chen Mo struggled to stand up, moving his shoulder. The motion tugged at the wound, causing him to let out a sharp hiss as he sucked in a breath of cold air, more blood oozing out.
He wiped his face, pretending not to care at all.
"Before... I've had falls way worse than this. Seriously, one time I fell from the thirteenth floor and landed right on a trash can, and that trash can was even made of iron..."
He paused for a moment, as if feeling this topic was too embarrassing, and quickly waved his hand.
"Thanks for the concern. Wow... Batman is worrying about me."
Chen Mo's voice suddenly carried a nearly dreamlike excitement.
"This is the best day of my life! Even though I got blasted once and bled, Batman talked to me! Hey, did you see my web just now? I call it 'Explosion-Proof Plastic Wrap,' what do you think of the name?"
Batman looked at him without speaking.
In the darkness, those white lenses flickered with a shifting light.
The guy in front of him was acting.
Very deliberately, and under the assumption that he couldn't tell.