MC Creative Mode: Wholesale Perpetual Motion Machine

Chapter 261 Gotham City

Acid rain drizzled down, turning the sky over Gotham City into a somber, leaden gray.

This is the city of sin, a malignant tumor corroded by industry in New Jersey on the East Coast of the United States.

The city was brightly lit all night long amidst its skyscrapers, and laughter and cheers echoed from the magnificent ball.

Successful people in suits and nobles of high birth clink glasses and speak elegantly, inadvertently deciding the fate of thousands.

However, separated by only one wall, the boundary between heaven and hell was torn to shreds.

The streets were even darker due to the acid rain, with dilapidated houses crammed together, and hardly any lights were on.

The few remaining streetlights flickered weakly, as if they might go out at any moment.

In the filthy alley, bullets embedded in the walls, scattered shell casings, and mottled, dried bloodstains in the corners silently testify to the danger here.

Beneath the darkness and ruins lies a distorted prosperity—on one side of the wall, bullets may still be flying and brains splattering, while behind that seemingly dilapidated wall next door, there is a glittering nightlife, high-energy dance music, scantily clad dancers, casinos and prostitutes… drug trafficking, human trafficking, the black market for organs, kidnapping and murder…

All the splendor and wealth imaginable, and the most utter darkness, entangled like maggots, form the morbid texture of this city.

The intense industrial pollution makes this place resemble London during the Industrial Revolution, with corrosive acid rain that people avoid at all costs.

Therefore, although it was still early, the gloomy streets were already deserted. Occasionally, a few figures, wrapped in thick coats and wearing top hats, hurried home, their faces etched with fatigue and vigilance.

When the two passersby met, they both instinctively reached into their coats to grasp the weapons hidden inside, seeking a false sense of security. Then, warily, they retreated, quickly turning into an alley to avoid being exposed to each other's firepower.

This is Gotham City, where guns are as ubiquitous as a bakery.

Regardless of whether a gun license exists, the residents of this "vibrant" city always manage to acquire "good stuff" for self-defense.

Similarly, armed robbery is as commonplace as eating and drinking.

You can't guarantee that anyone you meet on the street won't strike you deadly when you're distracted and then steal all your possessions.

A dockworker turned into the alley, glanced warily at the deserted street, and just as he breathed a sigh of relief, a piercing pain shot through his waist—he had been stabbed.

The excruciating pain of his kidneys being completely ripped apart instantly rendered him unable to resist.

He could only watch helplessly as the emaciated addict, his pupils shrunk to pinpoints, struggled to roll over him, snatched the medicine he was clutching tightly from his arms—the medicine he had bought for his wife with cancer—and threw it to the ground; then he stomped on the cake he had prepared for his daughter's birthday.

"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it... Money! Money! Money! Where is this pile of shit money?!" The addict's eyes were bloodshot, his body was emaciated and frantic. With trembling hands, he frantically searched through the victim's clothes, and finally found only $20 in the poor man's clothes.

"Hehehe... I finally got some money! Why is it only $20?"

The ecstasy on his face instantly turned to rage. The drug addict reached into the victim's bleeding wound and rummaged around wildly, his face contorted with rage as he roared in his ear, "Useless trash! Didn't you dock workers just get paid? Why is this all you got?"

The middle-aged man, his face contorted in pain, no longer had the strength to wail. He could only reach out in agony, trying to grab the addict's feet, hoping to reclaim the hope that belonged to his family.

In Gotham City, dockworkers' wages are often delayed or withheld, and they have to hand over almost half of it to the gangs that control the area every month.

After layers of exploitation, the little money left makes life extremely difficult.

A low-income family often has to work together to live in a cheap apartment near a slum in order to barely make ends meet.

The wife, who suffers from lung cancer, coughs up blood every day but still works as a textile factory worker, desperately trying to hide her illness to avoid being fired. Even their daughter can only do menial work in a dance hall.

He and his wife had already made a promise, and they had also made a promise with their daughter, that after receiving their wages this time, they would buy medicine and a cake, and the whole family would return to their rural hometown, leaving this suffocating city forever...

but……

The addict felt ants crawling all over his body, drool dripping from the corner of his mouth. He clutched the $20 tightly, his eyes bloodshot, and stumbled toward his familiar den, his eyes fixed on the "goods" that could free him from the pain.

“Ceci… Julie…” The poor victim lay on the ground, feeling the numbness brought on by blood loss. With his last strength, he reached up to cover his face and murmured the names of his wife and daughter as the acid rain poured down, crying silently.

Tap tap tap... Just as he was crying, footsteps approached from afar.

"Oh, what good luck! This guy's still pretty healthy, he's got a breath left. William, come give me a hand, let's drag him back together..."

"okay."

In excruciating pain, the victim reopened his eyes to find himself tightly bound. He could only stare wide-eyed as the butchers, under the glaring lights, skillfully scalpeld him open, removing and preserving his still-warm, vibrant internal organs.

In his struggle, just before his corneas were about to be removed, he saw human skin and bones lying around, drying in the sun, like a slaughterhouse... On one of the bloody human skins, a familiar hair clip made him freeze instantly. "Julie?" It was the hair clip he had given to his daughter.

"Ahhh!" He struggled and roared desperately, but to no avail. He could only watch helplessly as his heart, pounding violently in anger, was cruelly removed from his chest by the scalpel.

"God...why do we have to go through this kind of life..."

……

Bang!Bang!Bang!
Before the blood shed by the victim could be washed away by the acid rain, two groups of gangsters in suits, armed with guns, engaged in a fierce gunfight near the alley.

One by one, corpses fell, and the gangsters, shouting curses, finished their fight and dragged the bodies away. The bloodstains and fragments of limbs scattered everywhere were swept away by several cleaners who came out from around the corner, as if cleaning up garbage, with mops, brooms, and shovels, leaving only the bloodstains slowly washed away by the acid rain.

boom!
A deafening roar of lightning ripped through the night sky, and silently, a dark, bat-like figure appeared on the rooftop of a dilapidated residential building. He looked down at the remaining bloodstains, and then, with another flash of lightning, vanished among the tall buildings.

Long after the gunfight ended, the piercing wail of police sirens echoed from afar. A police car slowly reversed into a parking space, and a portly officer, leisurely munching on a donut and holding an umbrella, walked into the alley.

"Hey, this is just a fight between the Wild Dog Gang and the Wild Wolf Gang, nothing serious." He glanced around casually, mumbled a few words into the walkie-talkie, and prepared to leave.

Of course, as usual, as he passed the alleyway, he casually took a few banknotes from a man in a black suit and stuffed them into his jacket pocket.

"I hope you'll take care of me next time."

"Definitely, definitely, we're all brothers."

Back in the police car, the chubby officer smiled and pulled out two bills, handing them to his nervous rookie partner: "Hey kid, there's no need to be so nervous."

“Our degrees weren’t earned for nothing. Without them, we wouldn’t be as relaxed as we are now. Joining a gang as a henchman like these stray dogs wouldn’t be a good job.”

"Relax." As he spoke, the chubby police officer looked at the nervous newcomer and simply took out the remaining two bills from his pocket and stuffed them into the newcomer's hands. "We'll be partners for a long time, there will be plenty of time for you to make your fortune."

Seeing the struggle on the newcomer's face, he sneered inwardly and said in a low voice, "Kid, you don't want your mother to be unable to afford the medicine, do you? That kind of special medicine is not something ordinary people like us can afford."

"I..." The newcomer struggled painfully for a moment, the image of his mother lying on the hospital bed in agony flashing before his eyes. Finally, he sighed dejectedly, stiffly put on a fawning expression, and lit a cigarette for his senior.

"Please teach me!"

"Hey!" The chubby officer chuckled, took the cigarette, took a deep drag, and blew the smoke into the rookie's face. "Rookie, you'd better learn from me. I'm not the kind of person who lets my partner suffer..."

……

Right now, deep in some alley...

Numerous black cubes, each one meter on each side, appeared out of thin air without warning, piecing together a rough frame. Inside, a portal made of pure white light was outlined, as if it were an entrance to an unknown dimension.

A distinctly shaped "square" foot stepped out of the portal of light first.

Fang Zheng had already analyzed the core mechanism of the Nether portal, which was sufficient to interact directly with those abstract mathematical entities and unknown sets without constructing a physical portal frame. But to be honest, this traditional black cube portal looked too cool, so he didn't bother to modify it.

In essence, the transmission mechanism is a precise matching process. Mathematical entities and unsolvable sets themselves do not inherently possess a distinction of size.

If intervention were forced without proper matching, Fang Zheng's interactive body might instantly become larger than the entire universe, or it might become as small as the Planck scale. At this moment, however, he happened to be matched with the two-meter height that is common in this world.

Of course, he can adjust the matching scale at any time if he wants, allowing his body to expand or shrink to any size at will. This is not a conversion of energy or an increase or decrease in mass, but merely a simple increase or decrease at the numerical level.

After stepping through the portal, a grotesque, cube-shaped humanoid figure stood on the unfamiliar streets of Gotham. His body began to undergo an endless process of "breaking" and "building," with countless details rapidly filling in like puzzle pieces, eventually coalescing into the appearance of a seemingly ordinary human boy.

Boom!
As soon as his body was fully formed, Fang Zheng casually threw a punch, smashing it into the empty void. Centered on his fist, a faint ripple spread rapidly outwards in a fragmented and discontinuous manner, like a torn curtain.

Wherever the ripples reached, the alleys and buildings distorted into indescribable colors, as if reality itself was stretched and folded. Under the shroud of the ripples, the residents in the apartment buildings seemed to be instantly torn into countless blurry shadows, but after the ripples dissipated, everything returned to normal, as if nothing had happened, and no one noticed their own abnormality.

"Huh? What did I just punch?" Fang Zheng frowned, staring in confusion at the bloodstains on his fist that were rapidly turning from solid to nothingness.

He subconsciously twisted his body, a strange, indescribable feeling washing over him. Some unknown entity seemed to be attempting to alter his very nature.

However, this alteration did not touch his true core; it was more like trying to catch the moon's reflection in the water, only targeting the body he was currently displaying.

Fang Zheng immediately sensed the interference and attempted to trace it back, but the thing reacted extremely quickly and disappeared without a trace the moment it interfered, leaving almost no information for analysis.

Even the "bloodstain" on his hand wasn't a physical substance. It contained no cells, no molecules; it was simply the effect of a rapidly fading and disappearing process on light.

(End of this chapter)