San Tian Liang Jiao

Chapter 1414 Say My Name (10)

Chapter 1 Bars in the East District

A bar, a bar in the East District.

In the dim light and swirling smoke, a group of men and women, drunk and dreaming, sought pleasure.

The sound system here might have had some problems; the clamor of voices almost drowned out the music. In a way, that was a good thing, because the bar owner's terrible taste in music was hard to compliment.

And the smell here was even worse than on the street...

The vomit stains and other filth on the floor had never been cleaned. Bottle after bottle of fake liquor went down the throats of the male patrons, and then that disgusting smell of alcohol emanated from every pore of those guys.

As for the female patrons... or rather, some of the women who "worked" here, their cheap perfume mixed with body odor was another disgusting experience altogether.

In such an environment, a man in a long purple suit, completely out of place, sat quietly at the bar.

He exuded an ancient elegance, refusing to blend into the low atmosphere around him. His gaze was calm and sharp, as if it could tear through all the tangible or intangible turbidity that stood in his way.

He ordered a tonic water and watched as the bartender poured this very ordinary drink from a can into a glass and pushed it in front of him.

This pouring process tripled the price of the drink.

Of course, no one would object to this; just like those who went to the lobby of a five-star hotel for breakfast, they paid five times the price for orange juice that could be bought in any supermarket, but they didn't feel that it was not worth it.

That's how society has always worked. Money is just a weight used to measure people's desires and abilities. As long as the person concerned feels that the "cost" and the "gain" are equal, there is no such thing as "waste."

"Your suit is very interesting. Did your wife make it for you?" Feng Bujue asked, with a calm look in his eyes, as he took the drink from the bartender, in a seemingly "casual" manner.

This was actually a question he knew the answer to. Jue-ge could tell from the stitches and sewing techniques of the suit that it was not made by a professional tailor. However, the person who made the clothes still did their best with a passion and care that money could not buy.

"Y-yes... sir," the bartender stammered. His expression and tone were also different from ordinary people, and he seemed to have some kind of intellectual disability.

"She likes green?" Jue-ge continued.

"N-no... it's... because... the b-boss requires me to wear... this when I'm working..." the bartender replied.

Listening to him speak was torture; anyone would think so.

"Oh?" Feng Bujue nodded, paused, and then said, "So... is the 'Riddle Bartender' on that old poster outside the bar you?"

"N-not... at l-least not anym-more..." the bartender replied. "A few years ago, the boss... let me... try to perform a few shows... but... but it didn't work out well."

"Ho..." Jue-ge pretended not to care, maintaining that "casual conversation" feeling, "... Now I understand what those question marks mean."

The "question marks" he was referring to were the black question mark shapes sewn on the other man's green suit.

"By the way," Feng Bujue said a few seconds later, "can you give me a riddle now?"

A hint of displeasure appeared on the bartender's face. From just now until now, he felt that the man in front of him was deliberately making fun of him. "I... I don't think so, sir," he said, emphasizing his tone, showing his displeasure.

"Woah, don't get angry, buddy." Seeing that the situation had changed, Feng Bujue adjusted his attitude accordingly. In an instant, he changed his expression, and his eyebrows slightly relaxed. "I didn't mean to make fun of you. Look... this is my first time at this bar... so I wanted to chat with the bartender to get acquainted. If I offended you, then I apologize."

As he spoke, he took a small denomination bill from his jacket pocket and slowly pushed it towards the other man under his finger.

"Um..."

Under the combined effect of these words and actions, the bartender's attitude did indeed change... He quickly looked to the left and right, pretended to wipe the bar with a rag, and then pocketed the money.

"... Okay, what do you want to talk about?"

Feng Bujue didn't spend too much to open the other man up.

As he had guessed, the bartender in front of him was the "Riddler"—the Riddler who possessed genius-level intelligence and was possibly one of the smartest people in the DC Universe.

However, in this script, he was just Edward Nygma, an ordinary bartender. For a few short weekends, he had performed a few shows at this East District bar under the stage name "Riddle Bartender," but because he stammered, he almost always left the stage in shame and booing at the end of each performance.

After Jue-ge handed over a second, slightly larger bill, Edward revealed more... According to him, he used to be a smart man, even smart to the point of being envied. He had a decent job, a high income... But all of this disappeared with the arrival of a terrible disease.

A few years ago, Edward suddenly contracted a rare bacterial meningitis. Whether it was lucky or unlucky, the disease did not take his life, but... it affected part of the function of his left brain. Although the aftereffects were not enough to turn him into an "idiot," they caused irreversible damage to his logical thinking, especially to the functions related to language.

Strangely... although his logical analysis ability became worse than that of ordinary people, his reaction and thinking ability were still top-notch only when he encountered problems related to riddles.

…………

When he walked out of the bar, the night was a little darker.

As soon as he came to the street, Jue-ge felt something—a gaze.

As someone with deep attainments in the field of counter-surveillance, Feng Bujue could almost instinctively know when he was being watched.

Moreover... the person who was watching him was, after all, just a small-time thug, and his actions were very amateurish. Jue-ge only made a few turns before he clearly tested the other man's purpose.

At this time, Feng Bujue's task progress had become 610. After finding out the whereabouts of four more super villains, he would be able to complete the hidden mission.

He was looking forward to running into a few violent gangs in the East District and finding a few characters who should have become super villains from the gangs... This was naturally also the reason why he had angered that bald man earlier.

Therefore, Jue-ge had no intention of getting rid of the stalker. He pretended not to know anything and silently walked towards the dark alleys.

More than ten minutes later, he could determine by hearing that he was basically surrounded. At this time, he quickened his pace, put on a "just discovered I'm being followed" look, and rushed into a dead end.

Then, a familiar face appeared. The bald man who had been kicked down by Jue-ge not long ago, brought about a dozen guys who didn't look like good people, and blocked Feng Bujue in an alley.

"Look who it is..." The bald man walked forward with a smug look on his face. He looked at Jue-ge as if he were looking at a small animal that had been driven into a dead end.

"Your memory is very bad..." Feng Bujue's expression was very calm, and the lethality of his words was at a height that the other man couldn't reach. "... Aren't I the one who gave your eggs a kick an hour ago and made you kneel on the ground? You forgot so quickly. Do you have some kind of mental problem?"

As soon as these words came out, several thugs beside the bald man were amused, but they were too embarrassed to laugh out loud, so they could only forcibly suppress their laughter and turn their faces away, or make that kind of strange "ku chi" sound, and then use coughing to cover it up.

As for the bald man, he was so angry that he was shaking all over, and all the blood in his body rushed to his head, making him blush above the neck.

"I'm going to kill you!" the bald man said, pulling out a switchblade from the back pocket of his pants. "Kill you! Do you hear me? I'm going to chop you into eight pieces!"

"Before you do anything, I have some questions that I hope you can answer..." Feng Bujue didn't feel intimidated at all, and he continued with an indifferent attitude, "... What kind of onion are you? And... what kind of gang or organization do you belong to? Or are you just randomly gathered together?"

Jue-ge deeply understood the communication model of "speaking human language to humans and ghost language to ghosts." He was very clear that... in the realm of crime, except for a few heretics, the more people at the bottom, the more they wanted their names to be widely known, and the more people at the top, the more they wanted to keep a low profile.

Therefore, he chose this kind of wording when facing these thugs.

"What? Are you also in the game?" the bald man took the bait. "You want to scare me with the name of your boss or gang? Hehe... don't dream!" he said loudly. "You want my name? Okay... I'll carve my name on your corpse—Mister Zsasz! I think the police coroner will like it... Oh, of course, they'll have to sew your corpse back together after it's been divided into dozens of pieces before they can see my name clearly!"

"Huh?" Upon hearing this, Feng Bujue's expression did change slightly. He thought to himself, "This guy is Zsasz?" He quickly looked the other man up and down. "Um... he does look and feel a bit like him, but the Zsasz I know should be covered in knife marks (Zsasz is set up as a cold-blooded serial killer, and his characteristic is that he cuts himself once for every person he kills, and then he often bares his upper body to show off those dense knife marks), not tattoos..."

"Sounds like... you have quite a bit of experience with killing and dismembering people?" Feng Bujue didn't think too much, and he quickly continued to probe.

"That's none of your business, kid..." But Zsasz didn't seem to want to say anything more. He waved his hand at his surrounding accomplices, signaling them to attack together, and he also walked over with his knife.

It could be seen that after being "screwed over" by Jue-ge once, Zsasz had become much more cautious.

Unfortunately, it was still useless.

One minute... that was the amount of time Feng Bujue used to take down all the thugs, including Zsasz.

Jue-ge didn't even use skills or equipment... After a few simple moves, "Zero Time Difference Calculation" had collected enough data. Next, Feng Bujue only relied on the most basic physical skills to beat these people down.

In the end, in a melee fight, facing an opponent whose physical fitness was several times higher than that of ordinary people and who could predict all of the enemy's movements, it would be useless for Zsasz to call another hundred people.

"Okay, the exercise time is over. Now we're entering the question time." After confirming that the dozen or so people in front of him couldn't stand up in a short period of time, Feng Bujue walked up to Zsasz and said to the thug lying on his back, "Mr. Zsasz, please answer my question just now... Have you ever killed anyone before?"

"Pfft—" Zsasz didn't answer. Instead, he spat a mouthful of saliva mixed with blood at Jue-ge, who was condescendingly looking down at him.

Feng Bujue easily dodged the wad of bloody saliva and walked past Zsasz with light steps. "Ah... it seems that Mr. Zsasz is not willing to cooperate." He looked around at the others groaning on the ground and continued, "Does anyone else have an answer for me?"

No one responded to him...

"Um... is that so..." Jue-ge said, reaching into his pocket and taking out the [Bale's Everyday Knife]. "Then I can only take some measures..." He turned around, walked to Zsasz's side, and suddenly bent down and grabbed Zsasz's right foot.

"Uh... what do you want to do? Bastard!" Zsasz gasped and cursed loudly, but he was unable to get up or break free from the other man's hold.

"I once asked a friend who is a doctor how to cause permanent damage to a person's Achilles tendon..." Feng Bujue continued in a very relaxed tone. "... But I never had the opportunity to experiment on a living person. Today seems like a good opportunity."

As he spoke, he had already taken off Zsasz's shoe.

"Of course, as a rigorous person, I can't build my intimidation on this experiment, which may not be successful." After a two-second pause, Jue-ge continued, "I also know a reliable method that will definitely cause a person's walking ability to be permanently impaired... that is, to cut off all of his toes and part of his heel..." He shrugged, making eye contact with Zsasz with a fanatical look, "To be on the safe side, I'll do both."

"Okay! I'll tell you... I'll tell you everything you want to know!" Seeing this, Zsasz seemed to give in and planned to answer Jue-ge's question.

"No, you no longer have a chance." Unexpectedly, Feng Bujue ignored him and quickly made a swift slash with his knife...

The sharp blade of the legendary weapon quickly slashed across Zsasz's foot. His Achilles tendon was instantly severed, and his five toes and a large piece of flesh from his heel were also removed from his foot in the blink of an eye...

Because the knife was fast, the pain was somewhat delayed... Just as Zsasz looked terrified and was about to scream, Feng Bujue took a step forward and kicked the bald man's head, knocking him unconscious.

"Hehe... hahahaha..." Then, Jue-ge let out a strange laugh and scanned the thugs on the ground again.

At this moment... without exception, those people's faces showed the expression he had been hoping for.

…………

Late, 8:50 p.m.

Feng Bujue left the East District with a hidden mission progress of 710.

He was lucky. At this time, he was able to easily hail a taxi in a place like the East District.

Now, he was going to a place that was the complete opposite of the East District—the Twin Towers in the center of Gotham City (note: this landmark has been mentioned many times in comics such as *Batman: The Dark Knight Returns*, but it appears less frequently in comics and spin-offs after 9/11).

In the previous interrogation of the thugs, Jue-ge had learned the reason why Zsasz didn't have knife marks on his body... The truth was very simple: he did have knife marks on his body, but only one.

It turned out that in this universe, this super villain, who should have become a "serial killer," had only killed one person, and then he was caught by Batman... Moreover, at Batman's request, this guy was locked up in the highest-security prison and placed in solitary confinement.

Thus, Zsasz, who was "good at both writing and martial arts" and "could easily escape from prison" in the comics, had been in prison for more than ten years, and had only recently been paroled for "good behavior."

Of course, his "good" performance... was undoubtedly feigned after confirming that he could not escape from prison. Judging from the fact that he immediately mixed into the East District and formed a team after being released from prison, he was still that Zsasz.

This was also why Feng Bujue didn't give him a chance to speak when Zsasz "admitted defeat" in that alley.

Jue-ge knew... this character's IQ was not low. He simply underestimated his ability as a "traveler from another world," which was why he was controlled by others. If Zsasz had really been allowed to speak at that time, that guy would most likely have lied, which would have interfered with Jue-ge's completion of the mission.

"Speaking of... Zsasz and Killer Croc have one significant thing in common—they both belong to the type of character who 'cannot be prevented from turning evil'." Sitting in the back seat of the taxi, Feng Bujue was still thinking about the various clues in the script. He muttered to himself in a seemingly casual manner, "Killer Croc is that way due to physiological reasons, there's no way around it. As for Zsasz, he's the kind of character who's been set up as 'born evil'... Even though he grew up in a comfortable and normal family environment, he still became a cold-blooded killer when he grew up, and there was no sudden trigger."

"Logically speaking, since he's such a villain... he should be 'permanently disposed of' like Killer Croc."

"But why... is Killer Croc dead, while Zsasz is still alive?

"Is it because he's just a 'second-tier villain', his character is relatively bland after removing the scars, and he doesn't even have a catchy villain nickname... so keeping him around won't cause much trouble?

"Anyway, once he takes any action, you can always go and take care of him and send him back to prison...

"Is that... what you're thinking?"

His voice gradually became louder in the last few sentences.

The soft muttering gradually turned into a conversational tone.

And in the environment of a taxi, there was obviously only one person who could be the object of Feng Bujue's conversation, and that was the driver in the driver's seat...