Starting from scratch, Batman crushed my dream of getting rich

Chapter 4 I am super, ice
In the dim corridor, the dilapidated old corridor lights flickered, and the dim light could only barely illuminate the surrounding walls and the outline of the corridor. From time to time, rustling sounds could be heard in the darkness, and sometimes a few gray rats could be vaguely seen running by.

Ma Zhaodi followed the man along the corridor, carefully avoiding the garbage and sewage at his feet, but the pungent stench still penetrated his nose from the corridor, almost making him feel nauseous and want to vomit.

"I really can't stand it. Even if it's in the slums, I can understand it being a little dirty and messy, but why can it be so smelly?"

The man replied in a muffled voice, "I'm not sure. Maybe the body in one of the rooms has rotted again."

".Awesome."

Ma Zhaodi was curious about why his voice sounded a little different, so he stretched his neck to take a look and found that this guy had blocked his nose long ago.

So he reached out and pinched his nose, his voice becoming muffled: "Why would someone be so stupid as to hide a corpse in their own home and let it rot and stink?"

"It's not necessarily hidden at home. It might just have died in the room. The landlord said there have been cases of high addicts or gangsters who escaped back home ending up rotting in rooms before."

“Is there anyone who dares to rent a house like this?”

"You can also choose to go to a luxury hotel on the street and book a presidential suite, or lie down under a bridge or in an alley for the night."

“I suddenly felt that this place was pretty good.”

Of course, a poor person with no money cannot stay in a hotel. As for staying on a park bench or under a bridge - the best case scenario is that homeless people will strip him of his clothes, money, keys and everything else; the worst case scenario is that he will be stabbed in the neck in some dark corner where no one cares, and then stripped of everything.

No one even buried him.

The man walked forward, took out the key and wanted to open the door, but Ma Zhaodi suddenly reached out to stop him.

"Wait a minute, who's at home?"

"my wife."

"Then how do you introduce me to her?"

"I can say you're my new friend."

"Then what's my name?"

"."

The atmosphere in the corridor suddenly became awkward.

Ma Zhaodi couldn't hold back his expression for a moment. "Really? With your brain, there's no future for you as a criminal. Or rather, there's no future for you in Gotham."

The man's face flushed slightly, but he suppressed his anger and asked, "What's your name?"

"Ma Zhaodi."

"That's weird, it sounds like an Asian name."

"Hmm?" Ma Zhaodi was slightly stunned: "Where do you think I'm from?"

"If you hadn't mentioned it, I wouldn't have noticed." The man looked Ma Zhaodi up and down. "You're clearly Asian, so why do you look like a Gotham native?"

He has thin cheeks, fierce eyes, and a special cunning and cold air. This unique temperament may even make people ignore his Asian face.

Ma Zhaodi felt a sudden warmth in his heart upon hearing this, and even his corpse spots faded considerably. It turned out the system was actually doing the job even after taking the money, rather than just giving him a hasty identity and relevant documents and then dismissing him. "My name is Derek Ryan."

"Then I'll call you Drake. By the way, you're not an archaeologist, are you?"

"Archaeologist? No, I'm not. I'm a software engineer. Why do you ask?"

"35 years old?"

"33 years old."

Ma Zhaodi immediately understood what he meant. He made a gesture of invitation, signaling Derek to open the door. "But no matter what, you shouldn't have fallen to this point, right?"

Derek, who had just inserted the key into the lock, was silent for a moment. He looked up at Ma Zhaodi and said, "I'm going to tell you this. Don't mention anything about this when you enter my house."

"Row."

Drake pulled out the key and walked towards the corridor with Ma Zhaodi.

"Let's go to the rooftop and talk."

There was no light in the dark corridor. Only the moonlight coming through the window and the city lights could barely illuminate the stairs. Neither of them spoke, but just walked up the stairs one after the other. The sound of their footsteps hitting the stairs seemed extremely depressing.

After going up four floors, Drake pushed open an iron door. Outside the door, he could vaguely see the outline of the buildings in the bustling city in the distance. On the side stood an oversized billboard, which could barely serve as a light source for the rooftop.

The two walked up to the rooftop and looked down at the surrounding buildings and streets. It was still dark, with only the sound of drops of rain falling into puddles.

"So, how did you get here?"

“It’s for my wife.”

Drake casually pulled over a worn iron chair, wiped the water stains on it and sat down. The cold touch gave him goose bumps all over his body, but at the same time it also made his tired brain a little clearer.

"As I said, I was originally a programmer at Metropolis. I was supposed to be laid off at the age of 33. Before that, I hadn't actually thought about where I would go next, and I never thought about coming to a place like Gotham."

"My wife had been coughing and losing her hair for six months, starting before I was laid off. I urged her to go to the hospital, but she refused, saying she wanted to focus on her work. That day, she returned from the hospital with a diagnosis notice."

"Before the diagnosis came out, neither of us took it seriously, thinking it was just some minor problem. But the diagnosis said she had a rare disease. Such cases are quite rare, and the treatment and medications used are very expensive."

At this point, Drake's thin body seemed to become even more hunched, with his head almost buried in his chest. He pulled his hair hard with both hands, even pulling out a few strands, as if trying to use the pain to ease his guilt.

His voice became a little hoarse, his bloodshot eyes had thick dark circles under them, and he looked a little hysterical and crazy.

He continued, "I almost emptied my family's savings, but still couldn't save her. Her hair almost fell out, and two months ago she started coughing up blood constantly. She could hardly sleep at night, and her internal organs began to fail. We really had no other options. That's when an expert told us about a Gotham City doctor named Dr. Victor Freese, a super genius and cryogenics expert who had successfully extended his wife's life through a freezing technique."

When Ma Zhaodi heard this, his mentality almost exploded. He knew that this was a very sad moment, but at this moment he really instinctively felt a desire to run away.

Dr. Victor Freese, perhaps better known to the public by his nickname "Mr. Freeze" than his real name.

I'm so, so cold!

(End of this chapter)