For criminals with mental illnesses like Ian, turning them into normal people was completely impossible. All that mattered was meeting the Hero Template vessel requirement—being alive was enough.
As for the other issues, the Hero Template would take care of them!
Dr. Hugo wore a kindly smile as he walked toward Ian step by step.
Only then did Ian realize in terror that he had not been rescued at all. He had merely escaped the tiger's den and entered the wolf's lair...
What Kind of Monsters Are These?!
"Want a drink?"
When the strange bald man wearing tattered strips of cloth and carrying a tank on his back poured a cup of unknown green liquid from it and held it out before him—
Ian refused.
The frantic speed at which he shook his head was enough to prove his resistance.
The strange bald man did indeed obediently put the cup away. But the next moment, Ian discovered in horror that the man had somehow produced a scalpel and was grinning viciously at him.
"This might hurt a little!"
Ian struggled even more desperately, but it was completely useless.
Even Li Wei found Dr. Hugo's cruel practice of operating without anesthesia a little hard to watch.
So he simply stopped watching.
Just then, Stan had finished dealing with Fish and returned, carrying Fish's corpse in one hand.
"Director, it's done. I left the body intact." Stan wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. The foolish grin on his face did not look threatening in the slightest. "She was like a black-skinned watermelon. There was a bit too much blood, so it took longer."
Li Wei looked at Fish, dangling from Stan's hand like a torn sack, and curled his lip.
It really was an intact corpse.
Other than the horrifying wound torn across Fish's throat, there were no other injuries on her body.
Every drop of blood had drained from her body, but her dark skin would not turn deathly pale just because the blood was gone.
But that did not matter. As long as people could identify the corpse as Fish, that was enough. Her only purpose was to kill the chicken to scare the monkeys.
In truth, Fish's almost superhuman telepathy made her very suitable as a Hero Template vessel. But who told her to come courting death by provoking him?
Better kill her!
Gotham needed an example!
"Good. Hold on to her for now. She'll still be useful later."
Dr. Hugo had finished with Ian as well.
In fact, Ian had not suffered any fundamental harm. Dr. Hugo had only taken out the scalpel to scare him.
In Dr. Hugo's eyes, a whole Ian had far more research value than one dismembered into bloody scraps!
The director had told him that Ian could join their glorious evolution just like them. Watching the process of essential evolution and transformation fascinated him even more!
After being frightened, Ian had also accepted reality. Even after Dr. Hugo untied him and let him down, he obediently stood to one side without daring to run.
Ian was utterly speechless. If you wanted me not to run around, you should have said so earlier! It's not like I wouldn't cooperate!
Even back in Blackgate Prison, he had heard rumors about Khada Jhin and the Gotham Beast. Running away in front of those two monsters? He had to be tired of living!
Did you really have to wave a scalpel all over me? You scared me so badly I pissed myself!
Walking around in wet pants was really uncomfortable, okay?!
"Dr. Hugo, turn this place into wasteland," Li Wei ordered.
A satisfied smile appeared on Dr. Hugo's face as he bowed to Li Wei.
"As you command, Director."
Then Singed sprinted toward the abandoned factory. As he ran, the liquid in the large green tank on his back began to churn and boil until it vaporized into gas...
Green gas poured from the tank and drifted over the ground Dr. Hugo had crossed.
Before Ian's shocked eyes, the green gas displayed astonishing toxicity.
When the poisonous gas touched the weeds on the ground, those plants, which possessed astonishing vitality, rapidly withered at a speed visible to the naked eye. In the end, they turned into piles of black ash that fell onto the soil!
Wherever it passed, not a blade of grass remained!
And that was not the end of it. After the withered plants turned into ash and fell onto the soil, the toxicity did not diminish. Instead, it seeped into the ground through the ash.
The black soil gradually turned grayish-green, while waves of rot began to emerge from within it.
Ian knew that this land was finished. It had completely lost all life!
For at least several hundred years, no plants could possibly grow here! Even saline-alkali soil had more vitality than this place.
Even the earthworms beneath the soil would be killed by the terrifying toxicity!
Watching the strange bald man race madly through the factory, spreading poisonous gas everywhere, Ian felt wave after wave of despair.
Who exactly were these three people? He had thought only Khada Jhin and that crazed Gotham Beast were terrifying.
But he had not expected the other one to be a monster too!
What normal person walked around carrying such a huge tank of poison, then asked people if they wanted a drink???
Compared to them, a serious criminal like him was practically a little lamb! A model citizen!
Once the dust settled and the entire abandoned factory area had been stripped of all life—
Ian personally watched that Lethal Beast ask the bald man for a cup of poison, then casually drink it. He fell silent.
He gave up thinking altogether.
There was only one thought left in his head—
I'm not sick! I want to go back to Blackgate Prison! I'm emotionally very stable right now!
Perhaps that prison guard had been right. His emotional instability was only relative. In front of crazier lunatics, his emotions would become very stable!
In Ian's eyes, these three monsters were the crazier lunatics!
Unfortunately, it was too late.
Was Arkham Asylum a place he could enter and leave whenever he wanted?
After thoroughly wrapping things up at the abandoned factory, Li Wei took Dr. Hugo, Stan, and their new patient straight back to Arkham Asylum.
On the way, he had Stan hang Fish's corpse from a streetlamp on the main road.
Li Wei believed that by tomorrow, someone would naturally spread word of what had happened here!
Along the way, Ian did not attempt to escape or resist. He merely followed the three men obediently.
That wise choice spared him a great deal of pain.
Only when they reached the gates of Arkham Asylum did Ian understand his destination and the identities of the three men.
The three of them—Khada Jhin was the director of the asylum, that poisonous bald man was its attending physician, and that Lethal Beast...
Was actually the asylum's janitor?
Those three terrifying monsters were all from Arkham Asylum???
Ian's mind could barely process it.
Wasn't Arkham Asylum a hospital for treating mental illness? He had never heard that it was some kind of terrifying organization...
Were hospitals this ruthless now?
A patient had been kidnapped, so the hospital director personally led the janitor and attending physician out to snatch him back, while also killing the second-in-command of a gang?
Now that he knew these secrets, was he going to die too...
For a moment, countless emotions churned within Ian. His feet simply followed the three men mechanically.
Only after entering Arkham Asylum and being strapped into a wheelchair by Dr. Hugo did Ian finally come back to his senses.
He lowered his head in horror and found himself bound to the wheelchair in an extremely humiliating position, with a mouse scroll wheel stuffed in his mouth.
Ian began struggling frantically! All kinds of miserable fates flashed through his mind.
"Mmph, mmph..." Unfortunately, Ian could not even speak. The mouse scroll wheel blocked his mouth.
Li Wei ignored Ian. As far as he was concerned, as long as the target had lost the ability to resist, he could load the Hero Template onto them. Whether they were willing did not matter.
What surprised Li Wei was that the way Dr. Hugo had tied Ian up looked especially familiar.
The expression on his face as he looked at Dr. Hugo became somewhat subtle.
Did he have some unspeakable perverted fetish, or was it because he had once been rained on that he now wanted to tear everyone else's umbrellas apart?
"Begin, Director!" Under Li Wei's subtle gaze, Dr. Hugo took out a camera and aimed it at him and Ian. He rubbed his hands together expectantly. "Let him join the glorious evolution too!"
Demolition Genius Jigs
"Let him join the glorious evolution too!"
Dr. Hugo's tone was obsessive and fanatical, sending chills down Ian's spine.
He did not know what awaited him next, but instinctively felt that it would definitely not be anything good.
Li Wei had a different view. Evolution and transformation were opportunities countless people could only dream of.
After today, Ian would face the greatest turning point of his life. He would come into contact with a higher level of the world. Soon, he would understand them and join them.
Even Dr. Hugo back then probably had not been as compatible with Demolition Genius Jigs as Ian was!
He was practically a vessel born specifically for Jigs's template!
That was also one of the reasons Li Wei had brought people to snatch Ian back.
Without further delay, Li Wei did not stop Dr. Hugo from recording the entire process with the camera. He also wanted to see what Dr. Hugo could learn from it.
He opened the shop system in his mind and found Demolition Genius Jigs among the many Hero Templates.
Demolition Genius—Jigs: 1350 Soul Essence.
Purchase confirmed.
Balance: 1480 Soul Essence.
After briefly examining it, Li Wei gained a rough understanding of Jigs's abilities. Arkham Asylum probably would not lack explosives for quite some time.
Grant.
A dark-red orb of light appeared out of thin air in Li Wei's hand. Unlike the orbs that had represented Singed and Warwick, it carried an entirely different aura.
Explosions. Nothing but explosions. Endless explosions...
The aura was pure and dangerous.
Just looking at the orb made it feel like a mass of explosives capable of causing a violent blast, one that could blow everything before it into the sky!
Ian in particular felt it even more intensely. He was much more familiar with explosives!
When he saw Li Wei approaching him with a "perverted" smile, Ian's face filled with despair and terror.
He knew this routine!
Wasn't this a human bomb?
But the next moment, Ian's eyes widened, and all the terror on his face turned into stunned disbelief.
Before his eyes, Li Wei pressed the orb in his hand against Ian's body. Yet it did not explode. Instead, it flowed into his body like water.
Before Ian could figure out what was happening, agonizing pain erupted from the depths of his body!
Before you continue