Gotham Talent Market

Getting into Arkham Asylum was no simple task. It was run under military-style management, with heavy security, round-the-clock patrols, and legal firearms issued to the guards.

Because it covered such a vast area and contained countless rooms deliberately designed to interconnect in every direction, it was like a maze. An ordinary person coming here would likely get lost themselves, let alone rescue anyone.

After scaling the high wall, Jude activated the Invisibility Belt. His figure instantly blurred and vanished, blending perfectly into the night.

He looked around. Cameras covered every corner, providing 360-degree surveillance without blind spots. To enter from outside without being detected, one would have to descend from the sky or dig a tunnel.

But no matter how many cameras there were, they were useless against the Invisibility Belt. Jude brazenly approached the main building and used the Gravity-Adhesion Shoes to walk straight up to an unlit room on the second floor.

He cut through the tempered glass and quietly slipped inside, only to discover that it was an office.

Just as he was about to open the door and leave, he suddenly heard footsteps in the hallway outside.

"Is that a patrolling guard?"

Rather than recklessly opening the door, he waited until the footsteps had faded away before emerging. Then he began wandering around aimlessly.

More than ten minutes later, he finally realized just how enormous Arkham Asylum was, and he could not help regretting that he had not asked Penguin for a blueprint.

Just then, another guard approached from afar. Jude simply followed behind him, tailing him all the way to the command center.

Seven or eight guards sat inside. The large screen displayed surveillance footage from every area. If anyone dared to break in, there was no way they would escape the guards' notice.

To Jude's delight, the feeds did not only cover the outer perimeter. They also showed the areas where prisoners were being held.

On the screens, he could clearly see villains such as Joker, Harley Quinn, Scarecrow, Electro, Two-Face, Clayface, and Ventriloquist. Each of them was locked away in a cell.

For that reason alone, Arkham Asylum truly deserved its reputation as Gotham's talent market. Unfortunately, Ivy was nowhere to be found.

Thinking of the human experiments reportedly being conducted in the depths of Arkham, Jude suspected that footage of those activities would not appear on the monitors.

After waiting for a while, he found that the guards did not discuss the matter either. Jude decided it was necessary to take the initiative.

He pulled out his newly made Freeze Gun and fired several Freezing Rays. Before the guards had any idea what was happening, they had already turned into ice sculptures. Only the shift leader remained.

He drew his pistol and shouted, "Who's there? Come out!"

The instant his words fell, he felt someone grab his hand. Then his head was struck heavily, and he collapsed to the floor in a daze.

"Tell me! Where is Ivy being held?"

A human voice had appeared in an obviously empty place. That was rather terrifying.

Fortunately, Arkham Asylum was a gathering place for lunatics to begin with. The guard captain had some nerve. Knowing that the other party had to be a superpowered villain, he clutched his head and said, "Come out. Then we can talk."

"For the second time, tell me where Ivy is being held. Believe me, you don't want me to ask a third time."

Seeing that the other side was not taking the bait, the guard captain could only say helplessly, "I don't know. I've never even heard that name."

"You're lying. Looks like you want to suffer a little."

The guard captain's expression changed. "Wait, I really don't know! I'm just a guard. I can still tell which matters more, my job or my life."

Jude withdrew the finger that was about to pull the trigger and changed his question. "Has any stranger been sent to Arkham recently?"

The guard captain shook his head again. "The most recent batch was sent in over a month ago. There really hasn't been anyone else."

Jude thought that more than a month ago definitely could not be right. Ivy had only been sent here about a week ago.

"I heard human experiments are being conducted in the depths of Arkham. Is that true?"

The guard captain still knew nothing. Jude asked angrily, "What exactly are the depths of Arkham?"

The guard captain's voice was already trembling with tears. "Sir, I really don't know. Everything in Arkham is shown on this screen. I've never heard of any other area."

As soon as he finished speaking, a Freezing Ray struck him. His whole body instantly became an ice sculpture.

"Looks like these people don't know the truth about Arkham Asylum. Then where exactly are these so-called depths of Arkham?"

Jude first searched through the command center, but found nothing. After thinking for a moment, his gaze finally settled on the large screen—or more precisely, on the area holding Joker and the other villains.

If human experiments were being conducted in the depths of Arkham, there was no reason not to use excellent test subjects like Joker, Killer Croc, and Two-Face.

In other words, if anyone in all of Arkham Asylum might know where the laboratory was, it was most likely this group of villainous lunatics.

After quietly closing the command center door, Jude quickly arrived at the prison section of Arkham Asylum.

A thick metal combination door blocked his path. The entire door was made of stainless steel and was fifty centimeters thick. Even high-explosive bombs would not easily destroy it. To open it without making a sound, he had to enter the password.

Such defenses were naturally meant to prevent the villains inside from escaping, or their subordinates from coming to rescue them. After all, Arkham had not never been breached before, and this was only the first line of defense.

Though he had not interrogated the guard captain for the password, what could a mere door possibly do to stop Jude?

Walking up to the keypad lock, he took out a small bag of flour and sprinkled it over the keys. Then he gave it a gentle puff, and the flour immediately stuck to the keypad.

Since frequently pressed keys would have sweat stains on them, and those stains would make the flour adhere, any key with more flour on it was part of the password combination.

As for the order of the keys, it might have been difficult for an ordinary person to determine, but to Jude, it was a trivial matter.

He put on a portable super microscope. Any tiny difference would be magnified infinitely before his eyes.

When people entered passwords, even unconsciously, they usually pressed the first number with the most force, then gradually used less force with each following number. The last number received the least pressure.

This caused differences in the wear, sweat stains, and fingerprints on every key. No matter how minute those differences were, they became extremely obvious under the super microscope, revealing the order of the password.

With nothing more than flour and a microscope, Jude cracked the incredibly troublesome first door in less than a minute.

The massive door swiftly opened. Though it did not make much noise, it immediately drew a reaction from the villains inside. Someone arriving in the middle of the night was highly unusual, and many malicious gazes instinctively turned toward the entrance, only to find no one there.

Jude smiled faintly and walked inside.