Things are indeed getting more complicated.

Moses decided to cut off the Gordian knot, half-covering his lips to suppress the urge to cough, and said to Nightwing who was about to say something but hesitated, "Shut up."

Alfred: "Master?"

"We'll... ahem, talk about this later."

Dick finally backed down under his gaze. He made a gesture to stop the argument, pointed to his throat to signal Batman to stop talking, then stood up and said, "They can't see me anyway, I'll go around this family's house."

**

If there was a list of losers in Gotham, Red Hood would think he would be on it.

Since he was separated from his companions at the beginning, and saw neither Catwoman nor Batman, he was more cautious than Nightwing. He spent more than half an hour fighting wits and courage with the air. When he climbed out of the pipe, he accidentally bumped into an Arkham criminal lying dead in the garden. He stepped on him with his toes, but the other person was still in a daze and had no reaction. Only then did he realize that no one could see him.

But whose fault is this?!

He thought angrily. Anyone who opened his eyes and found himself in Arkham would not choose to walk out in a swagger, right? Unless they were those super villains who felt returning to Arkham was like returning home.

After a brief moment of shame, he realized that this was actually a great opportunity to collect intelligence. It was a pity that he couldn't get in touch with the entity now, otherwise he could find the ugly guy here first, and then when the madman wasn't paying attention, he could put the green head into the toilet of Arkham and give it a good rinse. The boy walked along the cold corridor of the main cell, curiously looking at the narrow cells around him, and judging which famous Gotham criminals they belonged to by the personal belongings scattered inside.

This is a strange world. There are some people in the mental hospital whom he has never heard of. He doesn't know whether they have not appeared yet or have died in internal conflicts in the long night of chaos before Batman appeared. The remaining ones are often related to the bloody impressions engraved in the memory of the Gothic people.

The one with dates and numbers on the wall is the Calendar Man. Jason was still a kid when he appeared. While working in a casino at the bottom of Crime Alley, he saw the news about him being taken away from Blackgate Prison on an old TV. He heard that he had robbed and seriously injured a policeman and killed two innocent passers-by on Easter. Everyone was keeping an eye on the date and was afraid to go out. The shouting and gunfire of the parade continued from dusk until dawn.

Later, when he grew up, he relied on his innate talent to stand firm in the quagmire, gathered with children with similar experiences for warmth, and got along well with the numerous gangs. At this time, the channels of information became wider, and he had the opportunity to read books and newspapers.

Inspector Gordon, who was not yet the chief, lost both of them to the Little Clown in a heavy summer rainstorm; Scarecrow threw the fear gas into the sewer; Frozen Man froze a three-meter-high fountain of a scientific research company into an ice sculpture, and ordinary people playing nearby were not spared, with the lightest being fingers or limbs frozen off; Penguin Man stood in front of the throne of the Iceberg Restaurant, holding an umbrella and a cane in one hand and a lit cigar in the other, overlooking the money flowing into his pocket like water...

Red Hood is used to this, like every Gothic person, if she can't live, she'll have to die.

But perhaps because he had only been entangled with the world for a short time, the young man still had a strong desire for a glimmer of light that he didn't know whether it existed or not. When he learned that the gang had kidnapped his companions and his hope was so slim that the remaining people even advised him to give up, he relied on his lonely courage to pull the dying people who were unwilling to die out of the abyss, and broke into the transaction site alone with a gun - and ran into Batman head-on.

He was not dead, and all the people who were supposed to survive were alive. From then on, Jason felt that both he and Gotan were heading towards a turning point in their fate without anyone noticing.

In the next cubicle, several prisoners who remained in the cell were talking.

"It's Christmas again." The man with a scar on his forehead poked at the iron railing in boredom. "Why is Arkham so deserted today? Where are they?"

The bald guy on the other side spoke up: "I heard that Xiao Chou escaped from prison."

"Good fellow," said Scarhead, "I'm not surprised at all. How about a bet on when Batman will send him back?"

Capturing the key words, Red Hood stood by the metal fence with his arms folded and listened to their conversation.

"Batman doesn't have a holiday either? I thought he had to be depressed for a while. A few months ago, the Robin Bird he always carried with him died."

Jason: “Who?”

No one paid any attention to him.

Scarhead asked with interest: "I haven't paid much attention to it recently. I heard that the child was not yet an adult? How did he die?"

Bald: "Little Chou, the old bat went too late and didn't catch up, so he only brought back a corpse." He obviously didn't see it with his own eyes, but he said it with certainty, "I dare say Batman wanted to kill him, but Little Chou still survived. He is really lucky."

"Batman will go crazy sooner or later if this continues."

"Impossible." Jason said, "The only underage person around Batman is Nightwing, and Nightwing is not dead. And the Joker can't beat him. You are the only ones who are crazy."

Maybe I am also like a madman talking to myself now, he thought inexplicably.

"...It's hard to say." Scarhead touched his wound, "This wound on me was caused by a batarang. Guess when it happened? That time when Bane almost killed Batman. His spine was broken, but he was neither crazy nor dead, and he was able to kill me at the same time. Clow is a pervert, but Batman may not even be a human being - Scarecrow said that he had to inject Batman with three tubes of fear venom to achieve long-term effect. Is this something a human can do?"

Red Hood was stunned for a long time, not knowing whether these criminals were scolding him or praising him for their comments on Batman, but that was not the point. The words used by the prisoners in their conversation were full of blood, and they had a secret and despicable malice towards the Gotan vigilante, which made Jason want to sneak into the cell and shake the other person's collar to ask what was going on.

As far as he could remember, Batman had never dealt with Scarecrow.

But another man - Bruce Wayne, a playboy from Gotham, a socialite, a philanthropist who was considered too weak by outsiders, was not defeated by the fear gas that everyone was afraid of, and was able to carry him to the ground safely in the explosion.

After that, Batman confronts Bane, with Stark commenting that he is so skilled that it doesn't seem like it's his first time facing the monster, and the Dark Knight promises not to let Bane escape again.

Wait, Bruce Wayne—Batman.

One appeared behind the other, and the young man was so skilled that he could pin Jason to the ground and beat him. Nightwing said that his tone was not right when he sent Wayne away.

No one knows Batman's true identity. Chou may have some guesses, but he is not interested in the person behind the mask. So everyone just regards the shadow that crosses the sky every night as a symbol that is difficult to materialize, as the embodiment of fear like a folk legend.

What if, really, Bruce Wayne is Batman?

The Red Hood's pupils trembled, and he was so shocked by this bold idea that he couldn't help but bang his head against the peeling brick wall of Arkham. The two criminals next to him were still chatting, from the grievances between Chou and Batman to the subtle differences between each generation of Robin, just like two housewives with empty lives and no sustenance, who could only rely on false gossip to get by. The young man listened to it, but he couldn't concentrate at all, because his dusty memory opened up, and the details were vivid, and he remembered exactly what he had said to Wayne before!

He said he knew Batman!

I said it more than once!

“…”

He squatted down against the wall, his eyes blank.

Let me die.

Ten minutes later, the young man staggered out of Arkham, forcing himself to focus on intelligence other than Batman's identity: Bruce Wayne had a lot of abnormalities that night, why didn't he think about this? ! And Nightwing obviously knew everything! But he was just covering up and watching the jokes, and he thought they were on the same front - stop, stop. Calm down, Red Hood! Think about Robin, think about Bane, think about Batman.

The criminals mentioned more than one Robin. Although they were not sure, the child who was killed might not be Nightwing.

Even though he was cursing at the other person in his heart just now, Jason still breathed a sigh of relief when this thought came to his mind.

He didn't want to accept the news of the death of someone he knew and had a good impression of.

And Batman might be used to this.

This was his strength, as the prisoners said—his ability to struggle forward while being chased by a group of crazy desperate people, and to bear the fact that his companions gradually drifted away or ended up in the grave.

"If it were me, I would have given up long ago," they said with a smile.

"So you're squatting in Arkham, and he's Batman."

The essence of this city is madness, and you have to choose whether to reject it or embrace it.

Jason suddenly felt unwilling to accept this. He thought, just because Batman worked overtime on Christmas Eve, you can cowardly hide in the warm fence and criticize people who pushed rocks in the snow?

Just because you guys are villains with no scruples and Batman doesn't kill people?

This anger came inexplicably, but he had no way to vent it. He could only imagine locking these people together with Xiao Chou and let them kill each other, and ran towards the place where Batman might go to investigate, facing the cold wind like a knife between the high-rise buildings in the city.