Chapter 1737 S: The Great Event of Apocalypse (IV)

Gotham is free—in the physical sense, in practice, and no one can refute it.

But it is conceivable that a megacity on the east coast of the United States disappearing out of thin air will cause much chaos.

If it were another city, the chaos would definitely happen more inside the city. Although the people outside were busy and anxious, it was useless. But this is Gotham after all, and the people of Gotham are not anxious at all.

Although many ordinary citizens of Gotham who did not participate in the vote were somewhat surprised that they flew into the sky and stood shoulder to shoulder with the sun, after the initial shock, the first thing they did was to open Google Maps and laugh at their map information updating too slowly.

Compared with the tragedy that took place in such a dark city, there was nothing unacceptable about the entire city flying into the sky. Even if they were going to fall to their death in the next second, at least they could still be busy and happy for a second because of this absurd fact and imagining that others were busy because of it.

It's not that there would be less chaos when they lived on the ground. At least this time there would be a large group of people who would follow them and have a headache for the chaos. Just based on this point, the people of Gotham would laugh in their dreams tonight.

So the biggest victim of Gotham's rise to the sky is not the people of Gotham, nor even the federal government. God knows how long those politicians have been thinking about making this city that has raised the national crime rate disappear.

Gotham people can have the status of the coolest city in the world, the federal government no longer has to worry about the fact that the crime rate in the United States has room to rise, and Gotham's neighbors no longer have to worry about lunatics rushing out of the city or being polluted by Gotham's outrageous climate. It can be said that everyone is happy.

If so, Gotham's physical independence is also a good thing, but the biggest victim of this incident is actually the Court of Owls.

To talk about the Court of Owls in detail, we have to mention the famous Metal Event in DC Comics and its antecedents, that is, how the Bat Knights of the Dark Multiverse came to the main universe.

The culprit of this incident is the Court of Owls, or a group of Barbatos followers called Judas followers who manipulated the Court of Owls behind the scenes.

DC Comics spent a long time laying the groundwork for the Metal event, and the prospects were too complicated. Anyway, Batman in the main universe learned about the existence of Metal for various reasons, and then began to investigate, but in fact, all of this was a conspiracy of the Court of Owls, in order to lure Batman to the base of the Court of Owls, and then use his blood to open the door to the dark multiverse to complete Barbatos' plan to invade the multiverse.

In another comic, Batman was also lured to the Owl Base and trapped in a huge maze, unable to escape.

The point of this story is that the Court of Owls spent a long time building a huge maze underground in Gotham, and even allowed Batman to get lost in it to a certain extent, which shows the large amount of work and the magnificent construction results.

Of course, in order to make Batman capsize in the gutter, it must be hidden enough, and in fact, the way to maximize the concealment effect of an underground maze is to build it as deep as possible.

Since the maze was excavated not only by physical forces but also by mystical factors, the base of the Court of Owls was built very deep underground and was quite solid. After so many generations of resources, this maze can be said to be unbreakable and indestructible.

This led to the fact that the entire city of Gotham did not take it with it when it took off, because it was a bit too deep and too heavy, and the activation array created by the lunatics could not pull it at all.

But Gotham took away the ceiling of the maze.

In the physical sense, the take-off Gotham directly opened the skull of the huge maze that the owls had worked so hard on, and the part above the ceiling was all lifted up with Gotham, and the grooves and gullies below were all left behind.

This led to the Court of Owls now facing a very embarrassing situation: most of the members of the Court of Owls, that is, the old nobles of Gotham, were active in the city when Gotham took off.

And those Owl Councils, that is, the followers of Judas and some of the owl priests, were all left in the underground maze.

When the news of Gotham's disappearance spread all over the world, the federal government and the FBI secretly wanted to set off firecrackers to celebrate the other's departure, but they still had to do the face-saving work.

Faced with such a big event as the sudden disappearance of a city, of course the FBI, the National Guard, the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force all went into battle, and it didn't take long for them to surround the original land of Gotham.

If at this time, an open-air underground maze suddenly appeared in a place where there should have been nothing, and there were a group of sneaky, shifty, and up to no good people who were immersed in their shock and would not move, who else could the federal government blame?

Anyway, they just wanted to give the public an explanation to calm the public panic. Since those people below looked so much like a cult, then they must be a cult. They must have made the city disappear, and it would be right to arrest them to block the reporters' guns.

And because the owls underground were completely immersed in the shock of the huge city above their heads disappearing, they reacted too slowly to the federal government's capture. In addition, the federal government sent enough people this time, and the army was fully armed, so the dozen or so claws left underground could not make any waves at all.

After a struggle, dozens of them were caught alive, and the others were either dead or ran away.

After all, the term "open-air underground maze" sounds ridiculous. Now if you want to understand the situation in Gotham, you don't even need to fly. Standing on the ground with intact street signs at the entrance to Gotham City, you can directly understand the structure of the entire maze. You can see it clearly, it's a bit like a transparent ruler with a maze and small metal balls inside. Even a fool can use the exhaustive method to figure it out.

When Batman comes and takes a look, oh, it’s a completely transparent maze. Are you going to use this to test geniuses?

So the remaining few capable Judas believers knew that nothing could be done, so they had no choice but to run away and hide first to prevent being arrested by the federal government and falling into the hands of that stupid woman Amanda.

But the members of the Court of Owls who stayed in the city were not so lucky.

Of course they recognized that the dark force that sent Gotham up to the sky and now keeps the city functioning normally came from the metal they had buried for generations, but there was a problem. The wires and electricity went up to the sky, but the control room and batteries stayed on the ground. Okay, what should I do if the power goes out?

The madmen in Gotham raised a giant city to the sky on a whim, relying on their genius and wisdom and enough courage. They did not consider how long this energy would last or what would happen if there was no energy and they fell. They don't care if they fall or not. It's pretty cool to die like this, right?

But the members of the Court of Owls are different from them. As mentioned before, most of the members of the Court of Owls are either rich or noble in Gotham. Some are extremely successful businessmen, and some are celebrities who have been involved in Gotham for many years. Their property, power, family and... They are all in the city themselves.

If Gotham fell like this, everything they owned and their own lives would be wiped out, and they would be damned if they weren't afraid.

People who have nothing are not afraid of death and will try their best to find some fun for themselves in the gap between life and death. But the more they have, the more scruples they have. To say the least, the plan of the God of Darkness will not succeed now. , then wouldn’t the eternal life and power promised to them by the Judah believers be gone?

Except for the Judas believers, most owls have no piety towards the God of Darkness. The Court of Owls was only born because the Barbatos believers promised many benefits to this group of celebrities. What could be better than ruling a house for a long time? What about the city that makes your family always noble and more attractive?

But they also know very well that the money they make must be spent with their lives. If Gotham falls now, everything they have built in this city will be broken into pieces, all their existing descendants will die, and the family will disappear forever. , they don’t want Gotham to fall even more than those lunatics.

As a result, an absurd but extremely reasonable situation occurred - members of the Court of Owls approached these lunatics and demanded immediate maintenance of the facilities they maintained in the air, and at the same time found more power to ensure that Gotham would not fall. Go down.

Their worries are not unreasonable. Although the madmen in Gotham are all evil geniuses, after all, their time is too short, and their number cannot be compared with all the genius scientists on earth in the Marvel universe. The methods they adopted to lift Gotham into the sky The method isn't that subtle, it's just a piece of cake.

In short, the principle is similar to the small device made by the Red Hood. It uses part of the energy from the wizard Felix to create a core pulse machine, and then uses the pulse to continuously stimulate the dark power in Gotham metal.

This method is not impossible to use, but the efficiency of utilizing the dark energy in metal is too low. It is like a toy remote control car that uses up an entire industrial battery to run. More than 80% of the energy is used up. Wasted in the process of excitation.

The Court of Owls took a look and realized that it was only a matter of time before Gotham would fall headfirst if they continued to waste so much. Even if they escaped the gravity of the earth, once the protective shield disappeared, the cosmic environment would be enough to kill them.

They initially wanted to contact the surface to provide sufficient energy so that Gotham could fly smoothly and then land smoothly. However, it was obvious that the owl priests located in the main control room of the underground maze had long since died and escaped. No one can respond to their requests.

As a result, the members of the Court of Owls had to start working overtime to study how to maximize the use of this dark energy so that Gotham could land smoothly before the energy bottomed out.

In the end, the exhausted members of the Court of Owls who had exhausted all their energy due to their sleepless work did not wait for a savior in their office, but a green-haired, pale-faced smiling face with a big mouth.