Daylight Nightfire Village of Fools

After Gotham City’s winter passed, the temperature began to rise. This was one of Gotham’s rare seasons with relatively little rain. Though the skies remained gloomy, with no sunny days at all, and a thin mist always hung over the city, the weather was still much better than it had been in winter.

Mayor Roy’s first reform after taking office was, naturally, to tackle Gotham’s traffic.

Of course, this was not because the previous mayor had died in Car Accidents. Rather, with its cooperation with other coastal cities, Gotham City had entered a new phase of development. Warehouses and supporting facilities sprang up one after another, and countless cargo ships docked at the harbor, lining up to bring goods ashore.

But Gotham’s traffic conditions could only be described in one sentence—if it had even a single traffic rule, it would not have absolutely no traffic rules at all.

This created an extremely frustrating situation. The cargo ships had sufficient capacity, and the warehouses under construction, though still somewhat incomplete, could actually hold the goods. The problem lay on the stretch of road between the docks and the warehouses.

The warehouses belonged to different Mafia families. Everyone needed to move cargo, and they were basically doing so around the clock. Yet Gotham had no traffic rules, and no one could say who ought to go first. Naturally, Gotham’s way of resolving such matters was simple: whoever had more guns, and more bullets in those guns, went first.

But there was another problem. The drivers were Mafia members too, but they were not combat personnel. When two vehicles got stuck together and the Mafia members escorting the cargo started shooting, the drivers and other technicians in the vehicles got hurt as well.

Gotham was already desperately short of such skilled workers. Once people started fighting, they stopped caring about anything else. In the end, both sides went down together and wound up lying in the hospital.

It did not matter much that they went to the hospital. Their cargo trucks were still left sprawled across the roads, trapping everyone who came afterward so thoroughly that they could not move at all.

Under this vicious cycle, Gotham’s traffic was nearly completely paralyzed. While most goods could wait a few days without issue, letting things continue like this was simply burning money. Labor costs, warehouse costs, cargo ship maintenance fees, and penalties for delayed deliveries had the heads of the Twelve Families tearing their hair out.

There were actually quite a few highly educated university graduates among them. But everyone had lived in Gotham’s mud pit for so many years that nobody had realized where the city’s most critical problem lay. Whenever they thought about how to coordinate these relationships, all they thought about was how to deal with the other Mafia groups and make them yield the road.

But everyone wanted everyone else to yield, so no one yielded, and they all ended up stuck in the road together.

At the end of the day, Gotham was a disorderly, chaotic city. The evil order built by the Mafia was, in essence, still disorder.

Fortunately, the new Mayor Roy was a sensible man. He did not try to instruct the Mafia on what to do while their tempers were at their hottest. He simply let them fight until the whole place became a mess and the central streets were clogged solid, leaving no one able to move.

Only after Gotham’s most important central roundabout and the four second-ring intersections had been blasted into ruins did the Mafia finally lose their tempers. Money was right in front of them, but they could not get at it. No one could make the goods in those cargo ships sprout wings and fly to the warehouses on their own. There were no people, no vehicles, and now not even any roads.

In the end, they had no choice but to ask the Old Godfather to step in. When the heads of the largest families sat down at the negotiating table, they were quiet as mice. There was Falcone family cargo stuck on those roads too. The Old Godfather’s authority had not diminished with age, and the heads knew they were in the wrong. They could only lower their heads and take the scolding in silence.

The problem was obvious now. If they kept fighting, things would only get worse. Soon, forget the roads—even the whole city might be gone. How were they supposed to make money then? Were they going to sit around and starve to death?

Things had reached the point where a proper solution was genuinely needed to improve traffic.

So, on the second Sunday after Gotham’s temperatures began to rise, Mayor Roy Brown delivered a televised speech on Gotham TV station.

Roy on the screen was no longer wearing a trench coat and fedora as he had in Chicago. Instead, like Gotham’s Mafia, he wore a suit and tie with a flower pinned to his chest. Sitting in his mayoral office, he spoke calmly.

"Dear citizens of Gotham City, I am your new mayor, Roy Brown. I believe everyone should already know me."

"The main purpose of this speech is to encourage everyone to obey traffic rules, and to explain the new municipal policy I will soon implement in Gotham."

"As everyone knows, in this historic old city, we have worked hand in hand to reach this day. And now, Gotham City is about to welcome another revival. A fine opportunity for development has once again appeared before every one of us."

"Therefore, as mayor, I am once again proposing a new municipal policy to serve Gotham’s citizens."

"This policy is called the Gotham Civilized City Construction Plan. Its main contents are as follows: beginning tomorrow, Gotham’s six major transportation hubs, seventeen main roads, and twenty-two secondary roads will begin implementing the ‘Gotham Traffic Civilization Day Action.’"

"During this period, professional traffic guides will direct traffic. Drivers are strongly advised to obey traffic rules, or bear the consequences yourselves."

The televised speech ended there. Bruce turned off the television, suddenly gripped by a terrible premonition.

And the facts proved that Batman’s instincts had always been accurate. Or rather, Gotham’s first law was this: in Gotham, no matter how correct your intentions were, how clever your methods were, or how perfect your plan was, they could always turn it into a pile of shit.

The next day, at the central roundabout in downtown Gotham, a gaudily spray-painted sports car slowly reduced its speed. The person inside rolled down the window, stuck his head out, and whistled at a beautiful woman standing by the roadside. A tattoo-covered hippie youth shouted, "Hey! Hot stuff! Look over here! Check out Gotham’s racing kid…"

Before he could finish, the woman turned around, tossed her cigarette butt to the ground, grabbed the rifle placed behind the lamppost, and fired at the sports car’s tire.

Bang! The explosive sound startled the two men in the car. Just as they were about to get angry, the woman walked over with the gun. She looked young, no older than twenty, with a fine figure and dark skin brimming with a wild air.

She lit another cigarette and held it between her lips. Then she pulled a small notebook from her jeans pocket, rolled her eyes, sized up the two stunned men in the car, and said, "Racing kid, huh? Bipolar Disorder, Nervous Headache, plus early signs of schizophrenia. Recommended treatment period: three months."

As she spoke, she scribbled in the notebook. When she was done, she tore off a slip of paper and tossed it into the car. The tattooed youth picked it up and saw the heading: "Arkham Asylum Diagnosis Form."

He immediately put on a fawning smile. "Sorry, miss. I didn’t know you were an intern at Arkham Asylum. How about writing us another one?"

"Oh, and what they said is true, right? We can use this diagnosis form to get effe— I mean, effective medicine for headaches."

The woman looked him up and down again. "Yes. Go to the attending physician’s office within three days for an in-person consultation, then wait for ward assignment."

"Can I get one too? I think I might have a mental illness as well," the other youth shouted.

The woman ignored him. She took the radio from her waist and said, "Fourth Avenue! Fourth Avenue! A modified supercar, front left tire leaking, two passengers. They are… whose people are you?"

"Old Smoker of East End. Smoker’s our boss!"

"Old Smoker of East End people. Damn it, why is it always those poor bastards from the East End? Do those rich fat cats in the West End not drive out anymore?"

Not long after she finished speaking, two people arrived on police motorcycles. One wore a police uniform and gave a perfunctory salute before saying impatiently, "Speeding, illegal lane change, ran a red light. Fine: three hundred."

After glancing at the Rocket Launcher mounted on their motorcycle, the youth reluctantly paid the fine. Then the other person who had arrived with the motorcycle walked over and said, "Hello, Doyle Towing Company. Do you require towing service?"

"Doyle, why is it you? You damned bastard! Why are you wearing a suit? And since when did your family own a towing company?"

The youth named Doyle straightened his tie. It was obvious that he had bought the suit only yesterday, and that it did not fit him very well.

Leaning against the sports car, he lit a cigarette and said, "Don’t talk nonsense. This is a family business passed down through generations. My family’s been in this line of work for eight generations. Since we know each other, I’ll give you thirty percent off—one hundred and fifty to tow you to the nearest main road. You know, only I know which main road isn’t jammed right now. You’re heading to inspect the warehouse in the east, aren’t you?"

The youth in the car pursed his lips. "Fine. Looks like your boss really values you, giving you work like this. Tow my car over there. The two of us will walk to Arkham and get some medicine."

As they were talking, the woman turned her head and saw a black Mercedes-Benz preparing to make a U-turn. She raised the loudspeaker at her waist and shouted, "Stop!!!! You violated traffic rules!!!"

A few seconds later, another gunshot rang out. The police and the towing company people did not even need to move; they had already made another deal.

Further down the street, every intersection had two intern doctors specifically tasked with stopping cars and issuing diagnosis forms. They all carried radios. Once they spotted a traffic accident, police and Doyle Towing Company personnel would quickly arrive on motorcycles. Writing the ticket, collecting the fine, and signing the towing agreement happened in one smooth sequence. In less than ten minutes, the car could be removed from the scene.

Of course, that was only on ordinary main roads and intersections farther from the city center. At the six great battlefields near downtown, the fighting was far more intense.

Bruce said to one of the bodyguards behind him, "Go stop that red Lamborghini. Tell him he made the wrong turn just now and has to go back and take the route again. He can come to me later for a diagnosis form."

"And where did that foul-mouthed guy from earlier go? Drag him out and beat him up. Tell him Wayne beat him."

Just as he finished speaking, he heard a whoosh. Bruce took two steps back. Not far in front of him, a car exploded outright. The driver scrambled out and shouted at the person on the elevated platform in the middle of the intersection, who was holding a Rocket Launcher, "Are you blind?!! I was going straight!! He changed lanes! He cut me off! Why did you blow up my car?!!"

Before he could finish, the shockwave from the earlier explosion seemed to hit the lane-changing car as well. Its hood exploded too, and flames burst up with a roar.

The lane-changing driver also crawled out of his car in a panic. The two were about to start fighting, but when they saw that the person on the platform had reloaded the Rocket Launcher and was aiming it at them, they cursed and left. Soon, each of them encountered someone claiming to be from a towing company, and the wreckage of both cars was swiftly removed from the battlefield.

"Listen up!! You sons of bitches across the way! Are you deaf? The next green light is ours!! Do you hear me?! It’s our turn!!"

"Have you idiots never watched television?! Look at what I’m holding! What is this?! The Gotham Driver’s Manual! See it? You’ve already gone twice! Next time is ours!!"

A large, heavily tattooed man got down from the row of cargo trucks across the roundabout. He carried a rifle too. He flipped off the shouting man and said, "Is your brain full of dog shit?! The eastern road goes first! Then us! You still have to wait another round!"

Bruce listened to them hurling insults at each other and thought hard. He discovered that even his genius brain could find no evidence whatsoever for the traffic rules those two men were so righteously claiming.

He asked a bodyguard behind him, "The Gotham Driver’s Manual? There really is such a thing? Get me one."

The bodyguard said, "There is, but it was only reprinted yesterday. It’s a handwritten copied edition. It seems our mayor got a little too drunk while writing it…"

Still, as he spoke, he found a vehicle and brought back a copy. Bruce opened it and found that the bodyguard was right. If Roy had drunk even one mouthful less from that bottle of vodka, he could never have written such an outrageous driver’s manual.

It was filled with Roy’s incredibly messy handwriting. The mayor had come from humble beginnings and had never attended university. Many words were misspelled, never mind the upside-down grammar. Whenever he made a mistake, he simply scratched it out with his pen. Some lines were crammed together, while others were spaced absurdly far apart.

Bruce shut down his brain and forced himself to read the driver’s manual from the perspective of these idiots. He discovered that although the handwriting was messy, the contents chaotic, and the profanity more plentiful than the actual text, it made a great deal of sense.

The entire driver’s manual had one central idea: this godforsaken place had no traffic rules whatsoever. Every person you saw gripping a steering wheel here had no legal driver’s license. If you wanted to drive here, you only needed to know one thing—hold tight to the wheel, step on the gas, and pray to God.

After a while, Bruce’s phone rang. He answered it. "Hello? Oh, Professor… Yes, the internship is going fairly smoothly. I’m at the intersection east of the central roundabout right now. Traffic here is fairly good. The west side is more chaotic because there are too many sports cars there…"

"Yes, I also think this internship method is excellent. I heard they have memorized at least dozens of technical terms for mental illnesses. That’s already a miracle. I believe they can score at least five more points on their final exams…"

"Evans? No… no, he isn’t directing traffic. He has something more important to do."

As Bruce spoke, he looked up. Not far away, a man dressed in a black suit, looking like one of the heads of the Twelve Families, was bowing and scraping before Evans. In just a few moves, he had the road-blocking vehicle moved aside, and the slightly congested traffic quickly began flowing smoothly again.

Though Bruce said that, this so-called Gotham Traffic Civilization Day was basically still as chaotic as a pot of porridge.

At the central intersections of every major transportation hub, Roy had constructed a small watchtower. The traffic guides on top were generally armed with machine guns on their backs and Rocket Launchers in their hands. Wherever something went wrong, they blasted it.

Under that sort of deterrence, most vehicles were willing to obey traffic rules. But the problem was that Gotham had no unified traffic rules at all. The people here had never learned any rules about yielding or avoiding traffic, so Roy added someone to each watchtower who had driven normally in another city to provide guidance.

But in the United States, nearly every state’s traffic rules were different, and the contents of their driver’s manuals varied as well. This meant that every intersection used different traffic rules.

Although this was much better than the earlier situation where nobody could move at all, it still could not meet the needs of logistical operations.

In the faculty office at Gotham University, Anna, the advanced mathematics professor, held her forehead and said helplessly, "The error in the transport capacity calculations is just too large. Do you have any ideas on your end, Victor…?"

Victor looked even worse. The enormous dark circles beneath his eyes nearly covered half his face. If one did not listen to him speak and only looked at his current state, one might think Mr. Freeze had already awakened.

He said, "Don’t forget that we also have to consider preservation times. The cargo ships at the second dock carry goods that urgently need to be stored. They must have an express lane, or the goods might be damaged. There are fragile goods at the third dock too, so those vehicles cannot go too fast. When these vehicles enter the central roundabout, they affect the overall speed…"

At that moment, the door was shoved open with a bang, and Roy rushed in carrying a gun. "How is the logistics system coming along? More than a dozen big bosses are waiting for my answer over there. Their goods are all piled up at the docks. I can barely hold them off!"

"We’re calculating by hand. Have you ever seen hand calculations move quickly?"

"They can pay more! Any amount! One hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? As long as you can get results quickly, business won’t wait, friends!"

Victor set down the documents in his hands. "Last night, I called several old classmates. They’re professors of mathematics, physics, and biology. You have to offer them a price they find satisfactory before they’ll come here. You know, this city’s reputation isn’t exactly good…"

"Give me their numbers. I guarantee they’ll be satisfied!"

Elsewhere, just as Roy had said, most of the heads of the Twelve Families had gathered in a meeting room, anxiously awaiting a solution. The head of the Spencer family sat in the main seat, holding a phone as he said:

"The goods in Warehouse Three were damaged? Why? Weren’t they frozen properly?"

"The temperature monitoring device didn’t operate normally? Then why didn’t anyone inspect it?… You can’t read the gauge? Damn it! You illiterate morons! That was merchandise worth tens of thousands of dollars!!!"

"The low-temperature warehouse quality is bad too? Then what do we do? That expert we kidnapped… no, hired at a high salary before—tell him the salary we promised him before is doubled! Make him figure something out quickly! Forget it, put him on the phone!"

"Who? Professor Freeze? Who’s that? Gotham University? No… I can’t go there. That’s the Godfather’s territory. Contract work? Is he that good?"

"…What? A living person? His wife? No… that isn’t important!"

"You mean he froze a living person in a freezer and can still keep her alive and well?!"

"Ha… oh, no… no… I mean, that’s truly regrettable. What a sad love story. God bless that poor lady. I am willing to donate for this cause. I’ll invite him over tomorrow. You know, I am also a believer in love…"

Meanwhile, Schiller sat in an office at Arkham Asylum. A long queue stood before him. Without even raising his head, Schiller called, "Next!"

A burly Black man stepped forward. The diagnosis slip in his hand was not even as large as one of his fingers. He carefully pinched the form and handed it to Schiller. Schiller glanced over it and said, "Congenital infantile paralysis?? Which idiot who never listened in class wrote this?? Didn’t I tell you to look up terms in the textbook and memorize them?"

He looked at the Black man and said, "Room Three, second floor." Then he quickly scribbled twice on the diagnosis form, signed it, wrote another prescription, handed it to the man, and continued calling, "Next!"

At that moment, Brand, wearing a white coat, rushed in and said, "We can’t admit any more! We really can’t admit any more patients! We don’t have any wards left!"

"Make them squeeze in. There are still over a hundred people here."

"But even if they squeeze in, one ward can’t possibly hold thirty people!"

Schiller raised his head and thought for a moment. "Let them be released on medical parole. Gotham Prison should still have room, right?"

Brand was stunned. "Medical paro… what?"

"But most of them came here for medical parole in the first place!"

"Then set up a medical station in the prison. Let… let Bruce go over. An intern doctor is still a doctor, and he has experience. Have him apply this system there. If the hospital has no room, go to the prison. If the prison has no room, come to the hospital. That’s that."

After Schiller hurriedly arranged for all the remaining patients, he returned to his office at Gotham University. The place was practically in an uproar. Everyone with a university degree or higher had been dragged over to calculate.

In this era without supercomputers, calculating the most perfect logistics route through manpower required an utterly terrifying amount of computation. Victor and Anna, who were leading the effort, were nearly driven mad.

Schiller joined in too, relying on the Symbiote. For the sake of not getting stuck in traffic on his commute in the future, he was quite willing to work overtime for a while.

But before long, Roy came again. He still carried a gun and a phone, charging into the office in a rush. "Two of the city government’s three accountants ran away, and the other was buried under sand spilled from a dump truck. He’s still being rescued. Which of you is coming with me? The financial reports are piled up like mountains!"

One local Gotham professor said, "Not just anyone can do that job. In Gotham, mayors have short lives, but accountants don’t live long either. Everyone knows what they’re doing…"

The moment he heard that, Schiller was no longer sleepy. He rolled up his sleeves and said, "Let’s go. I’ll come with you!"

Roy hesitated slightly. "Forgive my offense, Professor, but aren’t you a Psychology Professor? Does psychology include finance?"

"Of course it does. You should know that psychology encompasses everything. And I happen to have very extensive personal experience in this area…"

Roy could only agree, half believing and half doubting.

The next morning, Roy stood before all the Mafia family heads and said, "I have good news and bad news."

"Give us the good news first. I’ve heard enough bad news," one of them said. "I still have three cargo trucks stuck on Fifth Avenue."

"The good news is that, barring accidents, this city’s GDP may surpass Metropolis this year and become number one in the United States."

An uproar immediately broke out below. The Mafia bosses whispered among themselves. "How did we become number one so quickly? My goods haven’t even been sold yet!"

"Weren’t we fifth or sixth before? How long has it been? Are you sure there isn’t a problem with the statistics?"

Roy waved his hand, signaling them to calm down, then said, "The bad news is that it isn’t because our city developed. It’s actually because there is a problem with the reports."

"So now, you get to decide whether we want to be number one."

The others were even more confused. How serious did the reporting issue have to be for them to surpass Metropolis and parachute straight into first place?

To be honest, Roy did not understand it either. He had merely watched Schiller sort through that pile of financial reports all night, then produce a set of statistics that was exceptionally reasonable and exceptionally outrageous at the same time.

Then Schiller told him that he was about to become the mayor who had led the fastest, greatest, and most rapidly accelerating economic growth in the history of urban development in the United States.

Roy said, "According to an accountant who wishes to remain anonymous, if we take first place, we will become more famous and gain more investment opportunities. If we don’t take first place…"

Roy stammered, then pulled out a sheet of paper and read from it. "Certain permissible errors in the understanding of macroeconomics will grant the actual data greater room for adjustment, including… measures for stabilizing inflated growth, redundancy space left by crisis impacts, and…"

The more he read, the less Roy could continue. He said, "Sorry, there are too many words in the rest that I don’t know. Anyway, if we don’t want the honor, everyone will have more…"

Roy made a gesture universally understood by the Mafia, and all the bosses understood. They unanimously chose the latter.

Of course, this was definitely not for the convenience of officially laundering money. Gotham citizens simply did not seek empty fame; they were humble and low-key.

Meanwhile, in Gordon’s office at the Gotham Police Department, Bruce truly could not hold it in anymore. He said, "You’re saying you want to borrow my Bat-Lamp? What are you going to use it for?"

Gordon was a little embarrassed too. He said, "There was no other choice. Yesterday, some bastard got a bad idea and actually modified the only old-fashioned traffic light at the central intersection. It caused a considerable mess."

Sure enough, just when traffic had improved a little, trouble arose again.

Most intersections in Gotham had no traffic lights because they had been useless before. Only the large roundabout in the very center of downtown still had an old traffic light pole.

Though it had been useless in the past, Gordon discovered that under armed deterrence, it was indeed far more convenient than shouting.

Thus, most of the traffic in the central district was directed by the traffic light, while the person circling the watchtower only handled armed deterrence.

But this was Gotham City, renowned for its wholesome folkways. This absurd city never lacked absurd geniuses.

No one knew which little physics and engineering genius had gone out under cover of darkness in the middle of the night and modified this antique traffic light, which was already who knew how many years old.

Under the directions of the faulty traffic light, the central roundabout’s situation yesterday had been: after the left side went, the right side went; after the front went, the right side went; after the back went, the right side still went…

By the end of the day, the entire right-side intersection had remained completely clear, while the other three intersections could only stare helplessly.

Gotham’s drivers were all in the late stages of road rage to begin with. If nobody could move, that would have been one thing. But while other people drove forward one car after another, they themselves were stuck here. Naturally, they were not pleased.

So the central roundabout, which had only just been repaired a little, nearly got blasted back into ruins.

Later, the traffic light was fixed again. But after being tossed around so many times, this old traffic light basically no longer lit up. An ordinary traffic light would likely meet the same fate—during evening rush hour, it would barely survive three hours.

For Gotham citizens, such a thoroughly inconspicuous thing was hard for their somewhat deranged brains to distinguish, so Gordon came up with an idea. He planned to get one with tremendous power.

So the question was: where was the highest-powered light in all of Gotham?

Bruce looked at Gordon with profound speechlessness. Gordon rubbed his hands and said, "Actually, this counts as fighting crime too. If everyone is hauling cargo at night, then most people won’t go out looking for trouble."

Gordon pulled Bruce over to the Gotham map hanging on the wall and said, "These are the statistics I’ve compiled recently. Look—the crime rates in several neighborhoods with relatively good traffic have dropped dramatically, because Mafia groups usually hire drivers locally, drivers who know the routes."

"These drivers are basically members of the local Mafia groups, which means they’re the main force behind local crime. Because transport capacity is insufficient, the Mafia is willing to pay heavily to hire them to deliver cargo overnight. It doesn’t matter if they don’t have licenses; most people don’t have licenses anyway."

"They spend all night driving trucks and delivering goods, so naturally they don’t have time to go out committing crimes. And the money from two runs can match what they’d earn from two months of robbery. Most Mafia members who can drive have found themselves decent work now. I heard one small Mafia group collectively changed careers and became truck drivers. They’re recruiting like mad right now."

This did not particularly surprise Bruce. Batman had been patrolling at night often recently too, but there really had not been much to patrol, because the streets were full of people working.

Truck drivers did not rest, but drivers still had to eat and drink. After finishing one overnight run, they could go grab a late-night meal. Then restaurants, taverns, and roadside stalls did not rest either. Once restaurants sold out of their daytime food, they had to sell food at night, which meant they needed more supplies and had to hire more drivers to deliver them, as well as more cooks and servers.

But proper restaurants had rent to pay, so their food was more expensive. Besides, what cooks made did not necessarily suit the Mafia’s tastes. They had grown up eating at roadside stalls.

So many people who could cook started setting up roadside stalls too. Gotham had no urban management officers, so naturally people could set up wherever they wanted.

As roadside stalls multiplied, the already narrow alleys became even narrower. Most people had no choice but to demolish the illegal structures in front of their buildings and widen the roads to facilitate the formation of night markets.

These night-shift drivers suddenly started making big money, so naturally they became eager to spend it. Casinos and dance halls simply stopped closing as well. Bartenders, dancers, and card dealers all had to work through the night. And these people needed to eat, drink, and relieve themselves, which required even more service-industry facilities.

In short, over the past few days, streets near every transportation hub had been brightly lit and more bustling than daytime. Once Gotham citizens gathered together, they always found ways to seek excitement and create competitive activities. In this era, there were no video games. The ways to seek excitement were nothing more than playing basketball, playing football, or gathering in groups to boast.

Who was Batman? He was Gotham’s Dark Knight—the important part was dark.

Walk into any alley near a main road, and at one end there would be a bunch of amateur soccer Master shouting and yelling, while at the other sat truck drivers on little stools around tables, stuffing their faces and boasting to the skies. The whole street was strung with electrical wires, with all kinds of light chains hung between streetlamps and their poles. High-powered spotlights dangled in midair, illuminating the ground. Batman had barely landed from a dim rooftop before the glare stunned him.

The streets around these transportation hubs were simply too bustling, leaving Batman with little room to operate, so he headed for more remote streets with fewer people.

But commercial concentration brought not only the prosperity of everyday life, but also population flow. Even Gotham’s most vulnerable groups, such as single mothers with children, could find work serving or washing dishes at restaurants that stayed open all night.

Able-bodied workers generally went for better-paying jobs, and restaurants were desperate for help, wishing more people would take such work. Gotham’s people were not isolated from one another; every group had connections. One person told ten, ten told a hundred, and many vulnerable people living farther out in more remote places would find a lively night market nearby and take odd jobs there. Even scavenging could earn them a dollar or two, enough for a meal.

But because they lived so far from where they worked, commuting ate into their working hours. So most of them moved somewhere closer.

Housing near such places cost more, but landlords were no fools. If renting one room to one person brought in a hundred dollars, then dividing it into three rooms and renting them to three people for fifty dollars each earned them an extra fifty. And those people would still be deeply grateful.

So landlords along countless night-market streets began carving their homes into ever smaller units. The vulnerable groups did not care how tiny or shabby their rooms were. They could not possibly be worse than where they had lived before.

Then the gangs that managed and ruled those streets realized that if they could create more rooms like these, they could attract more outsiders, improve the efficiency of the entire street, and collect more protection money.

So they began actively converting attics and vacant rooms in properties they controlled into smaller apartments. These apartments were prepared specifically for outsiders drawn in by the businesses.

Some poor bastards truly did not have a cent, so the gangs allowed them to move in first and pay off the debt month by month. Some gangs that urgently needed workers did not even charge interest. Rent was waived entirely for the first period after moving in. As long as you worked for them on that street, they would not only waive the interest but give you a subsidy. After all, they were not making their money off the pitiful scraps of your rent.

Then Batman noticed that Gotham had grown strangely quiet lately. Centered around transportation hubs, new commercial districts were gradually developing as night markets spread outward.

In these new commercial districts, few people caused trouble. In the past, if you killed two people in a pitch-black alley, the police might not discover it for half a day. And if you knew a few special tricks, it might even become an unsolved case.

But in a lively night market like this, such a thing was almost impossible. Even if someone fouled another player during a soccer game, the entire neighborhood would know by the next day. If you tried to rob someone on the spot, you had better pray the police arrived quickly. Otherwise, the local gangs would definitely stuff you into a sewer.

Because if you killed someone in the street, cleaning up the mess took time, did it not? The police would come investigate, and people would have to cooperate with the investigation. Nearby witnesses would be summoned one after another. How much time would that waste? How much revenue would be lost? How much protection money would go uncollected?

If it happened far away, the gangs might not bother with it. But at such close range, with more than a dozen gang enforcers patrolling a single street, the moment you pulled out your gun, you might have a dozen holes in you before the word "robbery" even left your mouth.

Business was business, but Gotham’s tradition of shooting first and asking questions later could not be abandoned.

And so, night after night, Batman stood alone atop rooftops, watching those nights that had once held only faint lights slowly brighten. Now he stood atop Wayne Tower, at Gotham’s very center and highest point, with countless lights beneath his feet.

He thought that perhaps he had witnessed a miracle from this close. This unredeemable, chaotic, terrible city had begun to sprout amid chaos, grow amid chaos, and finally bloom into a strange and bizarre flower.

It bloomed wantonly in the night, making no attempt to hide its chaos or malice. Batman thought that this black flower would still open toward the sun—only, it was a black sun.

And he—Batman—did not feel defeated. A new strength surged within him, along with a new idea, one broader than darkness and revenge. For the first time, it appeared in his heart.

He had a strange premonition that this world, this universe, was changing for something, just like Gotham.

And next time, he thought, in a miraculous change like this, he would no longer be an observer. He would surely be a participant.

He watched as, after night fell once more, lights came on one by one. Then, aside from the cold wind and darkness high above, blinking points of light began spreading swiftly through the streets until they illuminated the entire city.

Here, at this very moment, this lonely bat standing above the city felt that he had finally learned how to light a lamp.

Ten thousand words today!

Because the plot was relatively continuous and the scenes were tightly paced, it was finished in one chapter.

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