February 23, 1987, Chicago, night.

At the Chicago Grand Theater, Miss Tina, who had finished a splendid and lively ball, gently stroked her fur shawl, she took the driver's hand and got into a luxury car, and when she returned to her luxury apartment, a handsome man with blue eyes wrapped her arms around the young lady's waist, and Tina said, "Our ball has just begun, right?" Mr. Bruce? ”

The moonlight outside the window came in, the beautiful blue eyes were shrouded in the shadow of the arch of the eyebrows, the handsome side face fascinated Tina, and the man turned around, it was Bruce Wayne.

On an ordinary afternoon on February 20, 1987, Schiller woke up in his bed at Falcone Manor, and he did not forget that he had rested in his guest room at Godfather Manor before traveling to Marvel.

Mornings in Gotham are never sunny, but early mornings always give Schiller special inspiration, and while having breakfast with the Falcone father and son, the professor once again got some inspiration and quickly perfected it in his head.

"What do you think about the future of Gotham?" Schiller asked Falcone.

Falcone shook his head and said: "If you had asked me this question 40 years ago, I would have told you that the city was not saved, but now I want to say that this city does not need anyone to save it, he is like this and will continue to do so......"

"Do you think Gotham needs a new order?"

"I've had a lot of people ask me this question, but all I can say is that any effort to make this city better will eventually come to naught, and no matter how impassioned it may be, it will end up in nothingness."

"Why is that?"

"You got the point, but I don't know the answer."

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The godfather lit his cigar and the smoke slowly drifted away, and he said: "In the past 40 years, I have not seen a staunch revolutionary, not a savior who has a moral realm like a saint, there are so many people in this world, there is no shortage of one or two good people or heroes, who are determined to save the city." ”

"They came to Gotham with that in mind, and you have to admit that even though you knew they weren't going to make it, you were still deeply shocked by that determination."

"You may think it's ridiculous, but I've been changed by these people, and many people may think, if that's the case, how did I become the godfather of Gotham? How did you become the biggest gangster in this gangster city? ”

"But it's precisely because I've seen this, and I've personally experienced that era, that I know that good people can't save Gotham, and heroes are the same."

"So now, where have these people gone?"

"Most of them are dead, and some of them have escaped from here, and those who don't belong to Gotham will eventually leave Gotham, and if there is one left, then he must be the one who originally belonged to Gotham."

"Is there such a person? Where is he? ”

The godfather seemed to be caught in his memory, and after a while he drew a cross on his chest and said, "I swore to the Lord to keep this secret for him." ”

He didn't give Schiller a clear answer, but Schiller already knew who he was referring to.

The next day, Bruce was called into the office by Schiller, who almost never took the initiative to call him over, so Bruce was curious about what was going on with Schiller.

They sat down on either side of the desk, as they had seen for the first time, and Schiller asked him:

"Have you ever thought for a second that you wanted to save the city once and for all?"

"Of course I ......"

"I mean, after you've come to a pretty good idea of what the city is."

Bruce opened his mouth, Schiller took his glasses off, he looked directly at Bruce and said, "I think you should have seen the nature of this city that doesn't need to be saved, and can't be saved at all." ”

"So, are you trying to persuade me not to do it again? Don't be Batman again? ”

"Of course not, I don't care if you do Batman or not, I just want to know if you really want to save Gotham?"

"Is there any difference between the two?"

"Are you sure you did Batman to save Gotham?"

Bruce was silent.

"Let me change the question, if there is a possibility of bringing a new order to Gotham now, would you be willing to put some effort into it?"

"Although I have this speculation now, I am still not sure what the essence of this city is. Why on earth did it become like this? Is it really impossible to be saved? ”

"Falcone once told me that there were many people who tried to save the city, but none of them succeeded, most of them buried their bones here, but there were also people who stayed, integrated here, and became part of Gotham."

"Who is he?"

"The only priest in Gotham Cathedral, I think you can go and meet him, and then come back and give me an answer."

Bruce shook his head, he felt that Schiller was a little baffled.

But he is also interested in the story of Gotham's past, and the city has so many fans to explore.

At first, his purpose was simple, he wanted to get revenge on all the criminals, but when he learned a part of Gotham, he felt that he should save the city too, but when he learned more about Gotham, he felt that the city did not need to be saved.

And now, he has relearned Gotham, and he finds that the city seems to be unsalvageable.

As Schiller said, Gotham is like a never-ending book, with endless puzzles and new insights every time you read it.

When Bruce came to Gotham Cathedral, he was warmly received by the priest, the old priest looked to be in his seventies, and to be honest, there were very few ordinary people in Gotham who could live to such an age.

No one in Gotham teaches children to help the elderly cross the street, because there is no one to teach the children and there are no old people.

In front of the pulpit, the priest smiled and took Bruce's arm and said, "I have heard of Mr. Wayne's name for a long time, and of course, I have no better thing to receive you, after all, this church is too old, as old as me." ”

"Look, these tables and chairs are falling apart, and I wonder if there will be any kind and kind people who can change the pulpit for the Lord that doesn't need bricks to pad the table......"

Bruce was so familiar with this kind of thing that he drew a cross on his chest and said, "I will not be gracious to the Lord, but the Wayne construction team will carry out a complete renovation of the interior of the church, so that His kingdom will be as clean as new, and all things will be ...... the Lord."

The old priest seemed very pleased with this, and when Bruce talked to him about the past, he did not mean to hide it, but bluntly told him about his experience.

"I come from an ordinary family in England, I served in the church as a young man, and I came here so that more people could hear the gospel of the Lord."

"Originally, I just settled in a small town on the east coast, but I heard that Gotham was not bad, so I came here."

"You may think it's a little incredible, but in fact, Gotham at that time was really good, because of the existence of the docks, it was quite prosperous, there were a lot of people, and the living conditions were good, by the way, the gangs at that time were all in their infancy, and there were few people in total."

"At that time, there were still some ordinary people here with dreams, they wanted to establish order here, they wanted to grow up with the city, of course, I thought so at that time."

Then, the priest's voice began to become deeper and deeper, echoing in the empty church, and the colorful light from the stained glass at the top of the church window was like a tunnel through time and space, and the priest's voice seemed to follow these tunnels back to that era.

"At that time, there were a lot of people like this, they were very ambitious, they thought that this was a gold coast, a new gold mountain, although there was some confusion at that time, but everyone felt that it was just an ordinary analgesia in the development stage of the city."

"The young missionary, with a Bible in his arms, set foot on this land with the fleet, and this story that came from thousands of miles away is not as magnificent as others imagined, but there are still many people here who are interested in me."

"Of course, I'm here to spread the faith, to help everyone as much as possible, to mediate some gangsters' overly fierce conflicts and disputes, and almost everyone is willing to sell me face."

When Bruce heard this, he was a little impressed by the priest, an old man who was a contemporary of Falcone, and who also seemed to have a place in the music world.

In this gang-ruled city, you can eat indiscriminately, but you can't talk nonsense.

No one would dare to make up such a story, claiming that all the gangsters were going to sell him a face, and the only one Bruce knew, who really had this ability, was Falcone, and if anyone else dared to brag about it, his body would be thrown into the sea the next day.

But the old priest seemed to be saying something insignificant, and Bruce could hear the modesty in his tone, and he thought that perhaps this old man, a contemporary of Falcone, had had the same prestige as His Excellency the Godfather.

But now they were very different, Falcone became the godfather of Gotham, but the old priest kept a dilapidated church, and there may not be a single believer to pray for days.

Bruce has always been curious about that era that was as dull as a faded photograph, just as people always think about the glory of their fathers.

The story of the docks, which Falcone once told him, shows the rise of gangsters in those turbulent times.

But now, in this empty cathedral, what the old priest unveiled to him seemed to be a different kind of city in those days.

"When I came to Gotham, the war was far from over, and isolationism was rife here, but there were more civilians at the bottom who were afraid of war, and they didn't understand how it could suddenly be a pot of porridge on the far side of the world."

"I started preaching here, and I believed that faith calms people's hearts, and I did quite well at first, and you know, there were a lot of Englishmen who didn't leave here in those days, and they would invite me to their estates and listen to me preach, and that's how I spent almost every afternoon."

"In the beginning, some of the little gangsters were just roaming around the docks, and even fewer could even go to the inner street, at that time, I knew Falcone, but at that time there were no Falcone and the Twelve Families, maybe the whole Gotham combined couldn't find twelve decent gangsters."

"At that time, it was still basically a colonial economy, and because of an accident, I started dealing with the gangsters, and they took a fancy to the channels that I had from the rich people in England, and they wanted me to be a middleman and strengthen their power for them."

"I don't want to be part of these maelstroms, but I don't have a choice, and if I have to, I'll choose the most promising one, which is Falcone."

"Later, many people began to realize that Gotham was not as good as they thought, and those wealthy people from the United Kingdom began to gradually withdraw from this place and gather in other places that were more prosperous and had more potential."

"Their main legacy to the city is the manor district and the cathedral, which I lobbied and built with collective funding, and I became the only priest in the church."

"And what about after that? What happened after that? ”

"When the upper echelons that maintained a solid order suddenly left, the people who filled these superstructures became the ones with the most bullets in their guns, and Falcone and his twelve families were such people, they made trouble for a while, and then they took over."

"I used to be a good partner with Falcone, because I knew that he, unlike the rest of the gangsters, wanted to create a new order here, even if it was violent, but it was better than no order at all."

"I helped him as much as I could, and I thought that the gangsters were only a temporary replacement for the upper blocks that had been drained out, and that one day, Gotham would be back on track."

"But I didn't expect it to all get out of hand, and after Falcone and his gang family ruled the city, it began to become a real crime capital, and from the twelve gangs it spilled out, 120 gangs, 1,200 gangs, and finally, it became a city where everyone was gangsters and criminals."

"Evil is spreading here, but I can't do anything about it, and I know that Falcone may be the same, many people think that he is the culprit of Gotham's bad turn, but I know very well that this is not the truth."

Finally, the priest looked up at the church and said: "There are not many buildings left from that era, and I thank them for leaving me a place like this, so that I can have a place to stay." ”

"Then why don't you leave? Even if you can't go back to your hometown, at least you can go to the church in the Metropolitan, where there are quite a few clergy and have a good life. ”

"You don't understand," said the priest, "not only have I witnessed how sin has infected the city little by little, but I have long been immersed in it. ”

He drew a cross on his chest, whispered a few prayers, and said, "The biggest thing I've learned in the process is that this city will only accept those who belong here, and that the heroes who really want to save this place will eventually leave because they don't belong here." ”

"So what the hell is all this?"

"I don't know, but I've always been convinced that I made the right choice, and that Falcone, like me, is the defender of the city, not the destroyer."

"In your opinion, the Godfather may be a successful man, he ruled the Gotham underground for 40 years, but I know, Falcone and I both know that we are all but losers, and we can only weave an unstable order in the abyss of sin to preserve ourselves."

The priest shook his head and said, "But alas, I'm just an ordinary person, I just outlive the others, and I don't even know as much as Falcone, or perhaps, Falcone doesn't know the real answer." ”

As the sun gradually set, the shadows of the tables and chairs in the church were dragged longer and longer, and the light from those stained glass began to flow to Bruce's body.

Finally, the old priest said, "I can only hold on to a piece of His kingdom here, and when I die, this pure land will also dissipate, just as so many hopes once dissipated in Gotham." ”

"The only people left in the group back then were me and Falcone, we are all old, and perhaps when we all go to see our Lord, the only remaining order in the city will no longer exist."

"Do you think it is possible to establish a new order?"

"There have been countless people who have tried for this, but they have all failed, Falcone has succeeded a little, but it has only delayed for a while, and perhaps no one can delay it any longer."

With the old priest's sigh, Bruce fell into deep thought again.

Whenever he hears these historical stories about his hometown, Bruce can't be like a homebound wanderer, full of nostalgia for it.

Because the story of Gotham reveals absurdity and despair from beginning to end, everything that happens here has no cause and no result, and even those who experienced that era cannot tell.

In this mysterious journey into Gotham's history, parts of the time machine are always stuck in foggy fragments, and whenever Bruce tries to fix the old dilapidated projector and find out the truth about it, there are always various forces that stop him.

Bruce, who walked out of the church, began to think about the question Schiller had asked him, and the priest gave him the answer that the city probably would not have much chance of a new order, and that it would be completely dark after the old generation died.

He suddenly came up with a strange metaphor, but it felt very vivid.

All the evils that have been produced in the city of Gotham, and all the criminals who live here, are like grains of salt from a salt shaker.

It is a salt shaker that never empty, and the person holding this salt shaker pours out some crystal salt grains without hurry, like a patient angler making his bait.

Bruce, who had just come of age, learned a fact much earlier from his professor, from Falcone, from the old priest.

Gotham will become what it is today, it is not a simple natural evolution, and the goal he once held to take revenge on the criminals may never be completed, and he will never be able to completely save Gotham, because the salt shaker over Gotham will not be empty, and the salt grains full of sin are crystal clear and carry the wind, like the fine rain lines that will never stop in the city of Gotham.

But this did not make Batman feel defeated, but made him have an ambition earlier.

Batman didn't want to fly around the grains of salt that had been sprinkled like a handout, like a stupid fish circling around the bait, hoping that the current would wash out some residue to fill his stomach.

What he wanted to do was to go and squash the salt shaker, or rather, as he had done to Louis, to appear behind him like a bat, and let the shadow hang over the complacent man holding the salt shaker, and make him tremble with fear of the bat.

Then, get this salt shaker, and all the salt grains in it.

If there is a salt shaker in this world that is destined to hold all the criminals, it is better to belong to Batman.

Must also belong to Batman.