San Tian Liang Jiao
Chapter 274 Cape Scramble (10)
These days, being a villain is a thankless job—a real tragedy. And the villains in *Batman*? They're just in a league of their own when it comes to suffering.
First off, disfigurement is practically a prerequisite. Plenty are born with deformities, not to mention those who take chemical baths.
Secondly, childhood trauma is a must. Being ridiculed by peers, being reclusive, facing discrimination, getting thrown in jail at seven... all par for the course. Batman, who lost his parents in a street robbery and then decided to take revenge on society, is practically a softie. No wonder Bane wanted to beat him up.
Also, career or love life—one of them is guaranteed to go down the drain. True love is almost always doomed to a violent end; ending up in a vegetative state is practically a blessing. A respectable career is absolutely out of the question. Whether it's a prosecutor, a restaurant owner, a business elite... if they don't turn against society, life just isn't worth living.
Compared to these guys, having a family member die or get sick? That's nothing! That's only enough to get you into the Top 40 on *American Idol*. After all, who has a family that goes decades without illness, disaster, or death? Those are monsters!
And the most baffling thing is that these villains, whose lives are like coffee tables, often have high levels of education or academic achievement. Professorships are a dime a dozen, and there are plenty of "something-ologists" with the potential to win Nobel Prizes. If you're just a lab assistant, you'd be embarrassed to greet your fellow inmates in Arkham Asylum.
Mr. Freeze is one such major villain born from these characteristics.
His real name is Victor Fries, a cryogenics expert. His beloved wife suffers from a severe degenerative disease, incurable by the medical technology of the time. Therefore, he froze his wife into a state of suspended animation while dedicating himself to researching a cure.
Later, the company funding his research pulled the plug on his lab, causing an accident that turned him into a cold-blooded being, requiring him to maintain a constant body temperature of zero degrees. Thus, he donned a specially designed protective suit and began engaging in extreme behavior, becoming a super-criminal.
On this day, this fellow was in a factory called Northern Sanctuary, debugging some equipment that only he could understand when, unexpectedly, two uninvited guests arrived outside the factory.
Mr. Freeze has been a villain for quite some time, and he had installed surveillance cameras in hidden locations around the factory. If the police discovered his whereabouts and prepared to enter to arrest him, he could make preparations in advance.
But this time, he saw a very puzzling scene. First, a guy dressed somewhat like the Joker appeared out of nowhere and immediately began scouting the area. Then, a random passerby arrived. They exchanged a few words, and the passerby stabbed himself. Next, a superhero-level fight broke out—the passerby controlled a blood monster to fight, while the knockoff Joker relied on his superior skills and glowing playing cards.
Seeing this, Mr. Freeze went to retrieve his most powerful freezing pulse gun because he felt that if the fight continued like this, he might get caught in the crossfire...
"Help! Professor Fries!" Feng Bujue shouted for help as he searched for Mr. Freeze's whereabouts inside the factory.
It wasn't difficult to find him. The largest factory on the first floor was empty, and the conditions on the upper floors could be confirmed at a glance. Only the corridor door on the top floor was locked.
Feng Bujue had considered escaping elsewhere, but he thought again that although escaping back to the city might temporarily stop Zhao Yingwang from pursuing him, it would be tantamount to giving up Mr. Freeze as a resource. Judging from the current situation, even a guy ranked nineteenth was so powerful. If he couldn't get help from certain people or objects in the script, he would definitely lose.
Another thing... Feng Bujue was always concerned about how Zhao Yingwang found him. In such a large Gotham City, the other party could lock onto his coordinates and track him from a distance. It must be relying on some skill or equipment, or... a summon. If he ignored this matter and escaped back to the city, the situation would simply return to one where the enemy was in the dark and he was in the light.
Under some unknown surveillance, Feng Bujue was unable to implement any strategy at all. No matter what he wanted to do, it was likely to be easily disrupted or have its results plundered by others.
Therefore, Feng Bujue had made up his mind to deal with Zhao Yingwang here.
So, he used the backup plan of the third set of strategies...
"Professor Fries!" Feng Bujue used a pipe wrench to break the lock on the door and rushed into Mr. Freeze's laboratory. "Help!"
Rumble rumble—
As he spoke, the sound of a monster moving came from behind him. At this time, the Blood Golem had chased to the third floor of the factory and was approaching. The golem's speed when chasing was actually not slow, but because of its large size, it would be delayed when passing through doors and climbing stairs, allowing Feng Bujue to create a distance.
"Don't move, kid," Mr. Freeze said, pointing his gun at Feng Bujue. "Who are you?"
"Huff—" Feng Bujue took a deep breath, and then spoke at high speed like a machine gun, "I'm Mad Detective, a traveler from the future. I have a drug that can cure your wife, and this drug can also cure you. But right now, there's a monster nearly twenty feet tall and weighing about a ton coming after me. The man controlling the monster suffers from severe delusions. He believes that he exists on a higher dimension than this universe, regards human life as worthless, and will do anything to kill me. Once I die, no one can get the drug, so please save me! Professor!"
Roar—
The Blood Golem appeared behind Feng Bujue at this moment and let out a roar. Zhao Yingwang followed closely behind.
Mr. Freeze's only psychological weakness in his life was his wife. Although he didn't completely believe Feng Bujue's words, when faced with a strange monster rushing into his laboratory, Mr. Freeze was obviously more willing to believe and help a human who was trying to negotiate with him.
"Get down," Mr. Freeze said coldly.
The maximum power freezing pulse gun was not a joke. A thick white light burst out, and the already low temperature around them plummeted again.
Zhao Yingwang was clearly caught off guard by this situation, but all he could do was hide behind the Blood Golem. Unfortunately, it was to no avail.
This freezing pulse gun could freeze a large swimming pool in ten seconds, and the combined volume of Zhao Yingwang and the Blood Golem was less than half a room. After being hit head-on by the freezing pulse for a few seconds, they were sealed inside a thick layer of ice, like flies in amber, unable to move.
"Whew..." Feng Bujue, who was lying on the floor, raised his head and looked back. More than joy, his heart was filled with relief: Luckily, I ran into them before I came to ambush Mr. Freeze. Now it seems that I underestimated the strength of the villains in this script...
"Kid," Mr. Freeze turned the gun around and aimed it at Feng Bujue, accompanied by the sound of the pulse gun recharging. He sneered, "I heard you have a drug that can cure my wife?"
"Yes, and I'm happy to give it to you," Feng Bujue said with a smile. "Shooting me into an ice sculpture... will only complicate matters."
"Hmph..." Mr. Freeze lowered his gun. "If you really have that kind of medicine, prove it to me."
"No problem," Feng Bujue quickly got up and straightened his clothes. For the sake of safety, he greeted him before reaching into his bag to take something out. "I'm about to take something out of a dimensional pocket. I don't want to pull out a gun and shoot you, so..."
"Bullets can't penetrate my armor," Mr. Freeze interrupted. "Hurry up with what you're doing."
"Okay... okay," Feng Bujue nodded and reached into his bag. In Mr. Freeze's view, this guy was just reaching into his inner coat pocket.
The thing Feng Bujue wanted to take out was naturally ***-500, but he would never be stupid enough to take out the whole bottle. He secretly unscrewed the lid in his arms, took out a piece, held it in his palm, and then stretched out his palm in front of Mr. Freeze and said, "This is it."
"In my opinion, this is no different from aspirin," Mr. Freeze replied.
"Understood... understood..." Feng Bujue said, "But... if you want to see the effect, you have to find a test subject first."
"You're perfect," Mr. Freeze said, looking at Feng Bujue.
"I guessed as much..." Feng Bujue muttered in a low voice. He held out a hand. "Okay, Professor, use ice to inflict some permanent damage on this hand of mine."
Mr. Freeze looked at him, seemingly surprised. "Oh? Are you sure?"
"Yes, of course," Feng Bujue replied, glancing back at Zhao Yingwang and the Blood Golem at the door. "By the way, how long does it usually take for people frozen by the pulse gun to die?"
"Much faster than you think," Mr. Freeze said, taking out a freezing pulse pistol from his waist. This one was obviously less powerful, far from the cannon-like behemoth in his hand. "This is not the same as getting into your own refrigerator. This is cell death caused by severe extracellular freezing. Of course... examples like them, being sealed in huge blocks of ice, usually die from suffocation."
"In other words... three to five minutes and then... ah!" Feng Bujue's hand was hit by a pulse, covered with a layer of frost.
"Your injury is different from theirs; I used a special frequency," Mr. Freeze's tone was still calm. "Your cytoplasm will quickly suffer irreversible serious damage. In one minute, even if this forearm is cut off, you won't feel anything."
"Then let's wait a minute," Feng Bujue said calmly, as if he wasn't the one who had been shot.
"Heh... you remind me of another madman," Mr. Freeze laughed.
"Ah... I know him," Feng Bujue put on a grinning face and said in a morbid tone, "The one who dresses up as a bat is the real psycho~"