Chapter 147 The Man Who Invites the Bat

Although Batman's relationship with the police in this universe isn't strained, it's still unlikely that he'd be sitting in Arkham's control room, watching surveillance footage with Gordon for an hour or two.

Therefore, while downloading the footage, he chose to fast-forward and skim through the earlier images left by Brother Jue on the screen.

Unsurprisingly, when the scene of Feng Bujue making gestures at the surveillance camera flashed by, Batman asked Gordon to rewind the recording and slow it down... and eventually froze the frame on Brother Jue's smile.

"What does he mean by this?" Gordon read from the screen. "Does that gesture mean bird... or eagle? Is he hinting at something?"

"That's... a bat..." Batman replied in a deep voice, while unplugging his device from the computer interface (you can assume he has a Bat-USB drive). It seemed the download was complete. "He's making this gesture at the camera because he wants to invite me to play."

"Wait..." Gordon paused, then questioned, "How does he know you'd see this footage?"

"I would have seen it sooner or later," Batman replied. "Because you're here..."

Gordon pondered the meaning of this, and after a moment, he understood.

The "shadow puppet" gesture that "Jack" made is common in the "hand shadow" game and usually represents a bird or an eagle, which anyone could think of. Gordon's initial guess was also based on this factor. But going further, "hand shadow" itself is a game that uses light and shadow, a projection source, and a projected source to create illusory images.

Extending from this, one will understand... rather than Jack hinting at "bat," he's hinting at the "Bat-Signal."

Suppose Batman hadn't come to Arkham at this moment, nor was he watching this footage with Gordon, that wouldn't change anything. Because at least Gordon would definitely see this footage, and he would watch it repeatedly and analyze it... With Gordon's abilities, guessing the true meaning of the other party's gesture would only be a matter of time. And once he understood, he would go to the roof of the police station, turn on the Bat-Signal, and notify Batman.

In other words, when this "Jack" made the gesture at the camera, he had already planned... "This information is for Gordon." In principle, the police should be the first to see this recording.

Of course, he also considered the situation where "Batman saw it directly," as it was happening now. There was no difference in the result, and the process was simplified... Because Batman would definitely understand the meaning immediately.

"What does this guy want to do..." Gordon, realizing this belatedly, became serious. His experience and intuition were telling him... that he had encountered an unusual and quite troublesome criminal this time.

However, when Gordon asked this question and turned around, Batman, who had been standing behind him, had disappeared.

Only Gordon was left in the room, as if he were talking to himself.

"Hah..." Two seconds later, Gordon shrugged his neck and sighed helplessly, complaining, "Compared to your appearances... your exits are even more annoying..."

...

At the same time, in the outskirts of Gotham, in a certain sewer.

Feng Bujue was jogging through it with the [Oxygen Pipe] in his mouth.

When leaving the asylum, he and Kevin got into the same car and consciously drove away in front of the escapees who had just been released.

Brother Jue had naturally calculated... that all those escapees would be rounded up within half a day. And when those guys were caught, they would definitely be asked, "How did the people who let you go escape?" At that time, at least the vast majority of prisoners would answer in unison, "They drove away." If they were lucid enough and had good memories, they might even say the color of the car and the license plate number.

In this way, the police's investigation direction would be led to the idea of "the suspect escaping by car."

But in reality... ten minutes after the car left the asylum, Feng Bujue got out in the middle of a road without surveillance cameras. Before getting out, he also gave Kevin the order to "continue driving in the direction of Metropolis (there are road signs on the way)."

As for Brother Jue himself, he used the [Treading the Void] skill to float in the air, and ran in the opposite direction without leaving any footprints. In less than ten minutes, he found the location he had seen on the road sign not long ago – a swamp. As he expected... there was a sewer drain with a diameter of more than two meters.

"Before long... the police should find that car, right?" Brother Jue, who was running, wasn't idle. His current running speed was also carefully calculated—advancing at this speed wouldn't cause too much physical loss, and he'd have time to react to a sudden occurrence. In addition, he could spare a considerable amount of energy to think, "Kevin's existence time is 45 minutes. About half of the time limit had passed before I and he parted ways. I asked him to drive as safely as possible at speeds of over sixty kilometers per hour. Considering that there are almost no traffic lights on the suburban roads... when Kevin disappears from the car, the car will have driven at least twenty kilometers."

"Adding up the police's reaction speed, the time spent arresting the prisoners and getting information, and the time it takes for them to retrieve surveillance from the transportation department and send people to chase after it... even if their efficiency is worse than I expected, they should discover that empty car within ten minutes at the latest..."

"Because Kevin suddenly disappeared into white light, no one will step on the brakes, so the car will gradually slow down and coast for a distance without anyone controlling the steering wheel or letting go of the accelerator. Many things could happen during this process... For example, the car slowly drifts off course and crashes into a roadside pole or tree, or it just so happens to collide with an oncoming car, or even slides into a river..."

"From this, many new assumptions can be derived. For example, the car is discovered and driven away by a passing tramp, or someone calls the police after seeing this abandoned car by the side of the road... But in any case, the police will know sooner or later that I am no longer in that car."

"At this time, they will shift their thinking from 'escaping by car' and start thinking about other possibilities... As for how long it will take them to realize that I plan to enter the city through the sewers... that's harder to say. The bizarre suspicious point of 'there are no traces of the driver escaping around the empty car' is enough for them to think about for a while."

"Hmm... calculated like this, by the time they think of investigating the sewers, I'll have already entered the city..."

Thinking of this, Feng Bujue's mind turned: "However, there is an extreme situation—if 'Batman arrives at the scene as soon as possible and participates in the investigation'... will he have a chance to catch up with my footsteps?"

Brother Jue's worries are reasonable, after all, in this universe, Batman... or rather, Bruce Wayne's wife is serving as a consultant at Arkham.

Even excluding the assumption that "Batman is monitoring his wife's daily activities," with Batman's personality, he would at least be listening to Gotham police communications, right? So when he learns of the incident at the asylum through the police's communication network, he would definitely rush to the scene as soon as possible, both for public and private reasons, to first confirm whether his wife is safe.

In fact, Batman did exactly that... He arrived at Arkham earlier than the police. But when he turned on his eye's thermal detection system, swung out his grappling hook, and rushed into the main building of the asylum from mid-air in a very cool manner... he found that the place was already deserted.

Just then, sirens came and the police arrived at the scene one after another. Seeing this, Batman hid first, observing in the dark.

Before long, the staff in the underground shelter came out on their own, because the interior of the shelter was also connected to several surveillance cameras. When the people inside saw the police arrive, they opened the entrance and returned to the ground.

What happened next was as written in the previous text. Batman idled in the dark for a while, and waited until the police had finished their initial information collection before showing himself.

From the actual plot development, Batman was unable to intervene in the investigation at an earlier point in time as Brother Jue had estimated, nor did he follow the car's route to find Brother Jue's disembarkation point. To be honest... even if he really stood at that disembarkation point, he wouldn't be able to tell that a car had stopped here, and that Brother Jue had gotten out and ran in the opposite direction.

Because... Feng Bujue didn't leave any such traces.

"The World's Greatest Detective" also needs evidence to make further inferences. Only a fake detective with a cheat can do things like "directly state the whole truth without relying on logical order and then use evidence to disprove it."

"Hmm?" Just as Feng Bujue was thinking, suddenly, something entered his line of sight, causing him to stop.

"What the hell?" The next second, he stopped next to a wall, staring at a wall that was a different color from the surrounding walls.

In this dark sewer, even if an ordinary person had a spotlight, they would probably have a hard time noticing this anomaly. However, Feng Bujue relied on a flashlight (which he carried in his knapsack) to capture this detail...

Knock, knock—

Brother Jue gently tapped the wall with the end of his flashlight, and he immediately realized that this wall of a different color was made of a material he couldn't identify at all. In a sewer made entirely of cement and bricks, this wall seemed even more suspicious.

"Hmm... the edges are irregular, there are cracks where it connects to the surrounding walls, and..." Feng Bujue carefully observed this wall, and began to deduce in his mind, "This material has penetrated and filled these cracks..." In less than two seconds, he understood, "In other words... there wasn't originally this wall here, but someone sealed it off with a chemical compound that can expand and solidify rapidly..."

A smile appeared on Brother Jue's face: "So the question is... what is hidden behind this wall?"