Chapter 89: We Agreed Not To Blow Up Earth [please Follow-up Read]
All over the streets, all over Gotham, paper scraps are drifting everywhere like rain, and according to reliable sources, another batch of paper scraps is being sent to other cities. The story about going to Hell is already about to spread throughout America.
How could Bruce not be mentally broken?
When he usually goes out at night for vigilante activities, Bruce mostly only encounters villains who hate him, and victims who don’t hate him quite as much.
However.
After that damned manuscript was stolen for some reason, everything changed. Not only are the victims asking him, but even the villains, after being beaten half to death by him and sent to prison or the asylum, are asking him too.
Everyone.
Yes.
All the bad guys and supervillains he encountered tonight, their final wishes were unexpectedly consistent: all begging Batman to let them see those chiseled twenty-four-pack abs.
Not only that.
“Losing to the man with twenty-four-pack abs! I! Don’t feel wronged! After so many years, fighting so many times, being caught by you so many times, I think it all makes sense now.”
“Batman! I know your secret! You’re a love-driven, reincarnated, trans-temporal bat monster. I heard that before you became human, you always picked fights with Godzilla for no reason?”
“Batman, do you really have a two-thousand-meter-long bed at home? Did you really build a farm on Mars, eating only alien chicken and alien beef and lamb?”
“I texted Joker, and Joker said it’s all true, all of it, all recorded in the historical records.”
……
What do they mean by “a night as long as a year”?
Tonight’s Batman experienced it deeply. Although Bruce had considered the possibility of something like this happening, he still overestimated his ability to cope with such an event.
No way around it.
Who could have expected something like this to happen before? This was undoubtedly another form of a first-strike kill, making even a man who remains calm in any situation unable to resist taking two extra anti-anxiety pills.
“While I still don’t feel like beating up a kid, give me that damned manuscript that deserves to go to Hell!” Seeing that Ian was still lost in thought, Batman immediately raised his voice a few notches again.
He was really anxious now.
Ian didn’t dare to delay any longer.
“The manuscripts for both books are here. Actually, I haven’t written much more these past two days; I’ve been busy drawing comics.” Seeing this, Ian didn’t dare to probe so blatantly anymore.
Of course.
He still couldn’t resist his curiosity.
“Have my works started selling yet?”
The youth mainly hoped to hear praise for his talent from the editorial department.
However.
Bruce just gave him a sidelong glance, then gave a deadpan, honest answer: “Yes, they’re on sale, in the form of the widest possible spread.”
This was topping the resources!
At least that’s how Ian understood it.
“Great, great! I knew it would be a bestseller!” Ian hurriedly handed all the manuscripts to Bruce, but Bruce hesitated for a moment and then returned half of them to him.
“Tomorrow, mail them—no, have your father fly to Gotham personally to escort this portion to me.” Bruce didn’t dare to open the manuscripts to look; he just stared at Ian solemnly.
“I get it, I get it.”
Ian had once heard that Coca-Cola’s formula was always heavily guarded during transfers, and the value of a manuscript needing Earth’s strongest fighter to escort it went without saying.
Clearly, his manuscripts were worth far more than Coca-Cola’s formula.
“What do you get?”
Bruce was somewhat surprised.
“Am I going to make a fortune?”
Ian probed cautiously.
“…”
Bruce fell silent.
Ian took this respectable boss’s silence as tacit agreement.
“This is awesome! Once I become a billionaire too, I’ll set up a football team for Jonathan directly, and buy Jordan the best otaku joy cup.”
“And for Mom, I’ll buy her ten vineyards so she has wine to drink for life. Dad doesn’t lack anything, so I’ll buy out his newspaper agency and send him on assignments to alien planets every day.”
“The universe is so vast; there must be strange tales to report. He can definitely become a top reporter even better than Mom.” Ian’s heart was full of his family. He also knew that Master Wayne was emotionally distant, so he stopped there without saying more—this was a display of high emotional intelligence and high IQ.
Anyway, the other couldn’t empathize with him.
“You just don’t want your dad watching you every day, do you?” Bruce ruthlessly exposed Ian’s little scheme. He didn’t want to tell Ian that he planned to use this manuscript to bait Joker.
Mainly because he didn’t have 100% certainty yet and feared losing face. As for the manuscript fees in Ian’s fantasies, money was just money—Bruce actually thought liking money was a good thing.
Of course.
Having the right attitude toward money was also important.
“Yesterday daytime, six or seven rich people in Gotham died in one go. All the property in their safes was looted clean, totaling around fifteen million.”
“I think someone urgently needs money?” Bruce’s gaze fixed on the youth in front of him. Of course he knew it wasn’t the youth who did it, but he also knew where the money ended up.
Ian felt quite guilty about this.
But he didn’t avert his eyes.
“Such a thing happened? Must be someone hating the rich. What exactly did America’s rich people do wrong?” Ian pretended to be heartbroken and put on a performance.
Madison’s Performance Law was put into practice again.
It definitely wouldn’t work.
But he had to try.
“They did a lot wrong; the ones who died were all wicked rich bastards.” Bruce might have been cursing himself offhandedly too, but it was unlikely he was really cursing himself.
In any case.
He dodged Ian, who wanted to pound his chest in frustration.
Bruce was still the king of prediction.
“Oh? The ones who died were all wicked rich bastards? And not the ordinary kind in Gotham? That’s pretty ironic even by Gotham City standards.” Ian failed to pound Batman’s pecs and didn’t want to pound his own, after all, his fists were now comparable to a hammer.
He was genuinely stunned.
Although everyone in Gotham knew the rich weren’t good people—ten die, and eleven wouldn’t be wronged—he truly hadn’t expected the infamous ugly boss to be so discerning.
This was clearly carefully selected.
All merit money that could be used with a clear conscience? Ugly boss really… Ian was deeply moved; he felt he should forgive him for deducting the remaining five million tip.
“Who do you think would do something like this?”
Bruce asked Ian a dilemma-inducing question.
Regarding this.
Ian didn’t hesitate.
“Isn’t it obvious? It must be Two-Face! Penguin! Riddler! Scarecrow! Poison Ivy! Mr. Freeze! Clayface! Mad Hatter! Killer Croc… one of them!” He rattled off the names of all the supervillains active in Gotham over the years in one breath, carefully not betraying his most generous fan.
Wasn’t this also a perfect answer?
A win-win situation.
Ian always managed to turn it into a three-way win.
“Very good, very honest.” Bruce gave Ian a deep look, seemingly quite satisfied with his answer, then turned toward Ian’s desk.
“Don’t let me find out you’re making up absurd stories about superheroes again.” Clearly, Young Master Wayne wasn’t planning to pursue the matter; he just wanted to guard against Ian’s pen attacks.
“I’ve completed the ultimate evolution and become an even more qualified writer—not the me from yesterday. It’s like I’ve gotten an epic-grade boost without any sign of going bald.” Ian confidently showed off the manuscripts and spoke with conviction, casually running his hand through his hair to confirm.
“What’s this?”
Bruce’s gaze, which had been about to look at the manuscripts, was drawn to another thing on the desk. He picked up the metal ring emitting a faint glow, and his eyes narrowed sharply.
“Nuclear reactor?”
Ian answered honestly.
He knew he couldn’t fool a tech big shot with this.
“Yeah, it looks like it to me too.”
Bruce was unusually calm as he held up the reactor to inspect it against the light, while his other hand smoothly pulled out his mobile phone and quickly dialed a string of numbers.
“Clark.”
He dodged Ian, who suddenly lunged forward.
“We agreed not to let your son blow up Earth. This should include Metropolis too…” He paused, the rapidly calculating master seeming to have made a judgment.
“And all of America, right?”
His emotions were much more stable than before.
His voice was still that low and hoarse.
[ps: Yesterday there was actually a tip; I really didn’t expect a tip. I’m typing like crazy.]
