Chapter 2: Absolute Loyalty
When the elevator doors opened, Dr. Hugo was already blocking the corridor outside, with a group of vicious-looking brutes behind him.
Anyone who could work security here was bound to be a certain kind of person.
Li Wei's strange outfit made Dr. Hugo frown.
"Li Wei, haven't I told you? This isn't somewhere you're allowed to come! Get back upstairs immediately!" Dr. Hugo barked. "And what the hell are you wearing?"
Behind his mask, Li Wei curled his lips.
"Dr. Hugo, have you forgotten? I'm the director here."
"Hm?"
Dr. Hugo froze for a moment, unable to process it. For an instant, he even thought he had misheard.
"What did you say?"
"I said I'm the director! You're only the Chief Physician! Why do you care why I came down here?"
The words stunned even the brutes behind Dr. Hugo.
Had Li Wei gone insane? Was he looking to die?
The last person who had angered Dr. Hugo had become a monster neither human nor ghost, unable to rest even in death.
Dr. Hugo was so furious that he laughed instead, narrowing his eyes.
"Director? You are the director, yes. But if the current director dies, it would be perfectly reasonable to replace him with a new one..."
He had already developed murderous intent. He had chosen Li Wei as director in the first place only because Li Wei was useless, parentless, and easy to control.
But if Li Wei had developed thoughts above his station, then replacing a director would be no trouble at all for Dr. Hugo.
Dr. Hugo sneered and waved a hand behind him.
"Leave him to you. Remember to keep him alive for experiments."
At his command, the burly men behind him pounced on Li Wei like starving tigers released from their cages.
At that moment, the countdown in Li Wei's heart reached zero.
"At this moment, the curtain rises. Great beauty approaches. The revelry of opening night—the stage is set..."
A low, hoarse voice emerged from Li Wei's throat.
Combined with Li Wei's opera-performer-like attire, it carried a chilling kind of beauty.
"Mass Infatuation..."
At the same time, a violent explosion erupted in the corridor.
Purple lotus flowers appeared out of nowhere beneath the brutes' feet.
Boom!
Dreamlike purple light filled the entire corridor, making people want to lose themselves in it.
But in the next instant, wails and screams dragged everyone back to reality.
The explosion was terrifyingly powerful. That single blast killed one-third of the brutes on the spot!
Almost every survivor was injured.
No one knew what had happened, why an explosion had suddenly occurred here, or what the hell this thing was!
But there was one thing the brutes could be certain of: this was absolutely no ordinary bomb!
After spending so long in Gotham City, when had they ever seen a bomb that could blow people into flowers?
It was not a metaphor. It was literal!
Those who had died in the blast were twisting and transforming into Flesh Lotuses!
They covered half the corridor!
Everyone present was chilled to the bone at the sight.
Of course, anyone who could survive in Gotham City had more courage than that.
Though they could not understand what was happening, the surviving brutes' first reaction after the blast was to seek cover and return fire.
They had thought Li Wei was just a weakling, which was why they had not brought out their guns.
But now, that clearly was not the case.
As for Dr. Hugo's order to keep him alive? They would leave that to fate!
But where was there any cover near the elevator? There was only a straight corridor.
Li Wei had no intention of letting them go!
At some point, a short gun had appeared in Li Wei's hand, spinning constantly between his fingers.
"Dance for me, sing for me!"
Li Wei's tone gradually became feverish.
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Pop!"
Every spin of the short gun took another sinful life.
Even when some of the brutes tried to launch a desperate final counterattack, it was useless. The instant they pulled out their guns was the instant they died.
"A killing spree, starring me!"
As gunshots rang out, flowers of flesh bloomed throughout the corridor.
If one ignored the blood covering the walls and the cries of despair, this place would have been a sea of flowers, breathtakingly beautiful!
Dr. Hugo watched it all unfold, his eyes full of terror and his mind completely blank.
What had happened?
Both the explosion and Li Wei's gunfire had perfectly avoided him.
That left him both relieved and despairing.
It was clearly a massacre, yet it possessed a strange beauty.
Dr. Hugo had never imagined that grotesque, magnificent, chaotic, elegant, horrifying, dazzling... such words could be used to describe a massacre!
He was, in the end, merely a researcher. Even though he was completely unharmed, even though weapons lay at his feet, the sight of Li Wei, who looked like a madman, had already robbed him of the courage to fight.
So he could only watch as everyone in Indian Hill Hospital except himself bloomed into flowers of flesh amid the unending gunshots.
When the gunfire stopped, Li Wei stood still amidst the sea of flesh flowers.
He looked around. There were no exceptions.
Other than Dr. Hugo.
Suppressing the urge to turn Dr. Hugo into a work of art as well, Li Wei gave an elegant curtain call before walking up to him.
When Dr. Hugo saw the change in Li Wei's eyes, he finally breathed a silent sigh of relief.
He knew the real Li Wei had returned!
He was not merely a doctor of biology. He was also an extremely professional psychological expert.
What had terrified him most just now was Li Wei's gaze. He could tell from it that Li Wei truly regarded killing as art!
His eyes had been clear, like an artist creating a masterpiece, thoroughly enjoying the entire process!
That kind of incomprehensible madness was the most terrifying thing of all!
Though he did not know what had happened to Li Wei, he knew he no longer had to die!
Wasn't it good to be alive?
"Dr. Hugo, do you know who the director is now?" Li Wei asked with a smile, his voice returning to normal.
Dr. Hugo gave an awkward laugh.
"Of course. Director Li Wei, is there anything you need me to do?"
Dr. Hugo understood very well that since Li Wei had killed everyone in Indian Hill Hospital yet left him alive, it was certainly not out of mercy. Li Wei must have a use for him.
If so, perhaps he could find an opportunity to take everything back, or even... kill Li Wei in return!
"Of course. You're very clever, Dr. Hugo," Li Wei said without concealing it. "But not now. I'm worried you'll betray me right now, and that would be troublesome."
Dr. Hugo's eyes lit up. "Director Li Wei, I will be absolutely loyal to you! I will never betray you!"
Dr. Hugo truly knew how to read the situation.
Unfortunately, Li Wei was no child. Naturally, he would not believe such empty nonsense.
"Loyalty that isn't absolute is absolute disloyalty." Li Wei shook his head. "The time isn't right yet. I'll come find you when the time is appropriate."
"For now, sorry for the trouble, but you'll need to stay in one of the asylum's wards for a few days..."
Chapter 3: Restarting Arkham Asylum!
Only after tying Dr. Hugo to a wheelchair in a Kikko-shibari position and stuffing a mouse scroll wheel into his mouth for soundproofing did Li Wei push him into the elevator.
Li Wei swore that he had chosen that binding position not because he had any perverse preferences.
It was simply the only way to ensure Dr. Hugo would not be hurt while also preventing him from breaking free or making noisy pleas for mercy.
After escorting Dr. Hugo all the way to a ward upstairs, locking him inside, and securing the door,
Li Wei put away the key, ignored Dr. Hugo's pleas, and walked out of his sight without looking back.
With Dr. Hugo locked in the ward, Li Wei did not need to worry about his safety.
Thanks to Dr. Hugo's caution regarding his "test subjects," every ward in Arkham Asylum had been built to the standards of a maximum-security prison.
Not only were the doors made entirely of hardened steel, but the locks were also top-level security locks.
Without a key, even the greatest master thief could not open them with bare hands.
Of course, using brute force to tear down the door was another matter.
But Dr. Hugo clearly could not do that.
Now that he had regained control of the hospital,
the first thing Li Wei needed to do was take stock of his assets.
Even in the simple and honest folkways of Gotham, food, clothing, shelter, and transportation still required money.
Li Wei walked through the asylum corridors. The faint wails drifting from the wards on either side were like Demonic Whispers.
When you tried to listen closely, you would discover that those whispers would drag you into the abyss!
The entire asylum had five floors, three aboveground and two underground.
Though it was not very tall, it occupied an area as large as five football fields.
This gave it an exceptionally enormous capacity.
Even with the asylum's top floor occupied by the director's office and administrative area, and both underground floors entirely taken up by Indian Hill Hospital,
the remaining two floors still contained nearly a hundred wards.
There was also a medical room for emergency treatment, a dining hall, a library, an activity room, and even a visitation room for patients' families.
Of course, no one ever came to visit.
At least on the surface, it already looked very much like a proper hospital—if one ignored the electric chair in the medical room and the hardened steel prison doors that appeared nearly every ten meters along the hospital corridors.
After thoroughly familiarizing himself with the entire building, Li Wei reviewed the asylum's accounts.
In the end, he discovered that although Arkham Asylum was infamous, its actual situation was even more dire than he had imagined.
In the underground Indian Hill Hospital, aside from fixed research equipment, there was only a collection of failed experimental subject corpses. The experiment records showed that Dr. Hugo had successfully fused human bodies with animal organs, but the modified subjects had very short lifespans!
Perhaps the most valuable thing in all of Indian Hill Hospital was a giant bomb. Dr. Hugo had prepared it in advance to destroy the evidence.
But Li Wei had acted too quickly, leaving Dr. Hugo no time to activate the bomb and perish with everyone else.
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