"Jason Wood, aka the Plant Master, was a full-blown eco-terrorist. Compared to what he did, Ivy's little gardening hobby of turning living people into trees was practically like Harley Quinn's diaper—deadly, but harmless."
"..."
Chen Tao didn't notice Gordon's expression. His instincts as a hardcore superhero comic fan had been activated, and he began spilling everything he knew about the two plant-based villains.
"The basic power known as the Green is mainly divided into the Council of Trees, which represents trees, and the May Queen, which represents vines."
"But vines are instinctively dependent and obedient, so most of the time, the May Queen follows the Council of Trees and is often overlooked. But that absolutely doesn't mean she lacks power."
"You should know that the champion chosen by the Council of Trees is Swamp Thing. Someone like the Plant Master is nothing more than a low-level proxy thrown in to make up the numbers."
"But Poison Ivy is different. She is the champion of the May Queen. In other words, in terms of the essence of their power, she stands on equal footing with Swamp Thing and above low-level agents like the Plant Master—"
Gordon was dazed by the sudden barrage of bizarre information. He opened and closed his mouth, stammered a couple of "uhs" like an idiot, and said:
"Batman, your intelligence is really... I could barely understand you—"
"What? You can't even understand such simple information? I explained it so clearly. Only an idiot couldn't understand it."
Chen Tao complained, then took the stack of documents from Gordon's hands.
"Ha! I knew it!"
"To repay Mother Earth, the Plant Master would never do something pointless. If he couldn't handle it himself, he'd bring Poison Ivy along. And with Bane blowing up the asylum, they wouldn't even need to break anyone out of prison."
Gordon cut in:
"There's something else I need to tell you. I don't think this detailed dossier could have been written by the useless people who gave it to me. But after matching its contents against everything we knew, I discovered that every single detail was true. In fact, many parts were investigated with astonishing thoroughness, uncovering blind spots that even professionals had missed."
When the subject turned to his area of expertise, Commissioner Gordon pushed up his glasses.
"But this intelligence came at far too convenient a time. Not only did it provide new evidence and leads, but the report also used several methods to prove that only Batman could solve this serious problem. I was even forced to admit that much of what it said was correct—"
"I have to question the motives behind it." x2
Batman's simultaneous agreement with him gave Gordon a strange feeling of perfect understanding, as if he had returned to the golden age when he, Batman, and Harvey Dent had formed an iron triangle and sworn to change all of Gotham.
Although all those achievements and beautiful dreams had shattered into dust after Harvey Dent fell and became Two-Face... Damn it, why am I thinking about that?
Gordon quickly cast aside the sentimental reflections of middle age and continued:
"And this material is too detailed. For example, it describes the subjects' postures, the order of their attacks, and even their escape methods. It's so detailed that it reads like it was written by an accomplice."
"They might be accomplices," Chen Tao replied. "This attack was meticulously planned and thoroughly prepared. I refuse to believe those two wooden heads suddenly became this professional. If you ask me, this looks less like an investigative report and more like an attack plan."
"Besides, the Plant Master is such a massive living tree. How did none of you discover him before?"
"You had a scientist in possession of such a terrifying biological weapon, and it took you several days after he was kidnapped to figure out who he really was?"
"Is the Gotham City Police Department's intelligence network really that bad?"
"Someone deliberately kept you in the dark, just so they could blow everything up at the right time—" Chen Tao said.
Batman suddenly paused.
Then, immediately afterward—
"I understand," Gordon heard Batman say.
Oh? Is he about to start deducing? A sharp glint appeared in Gordon's eyes.
No matter how many times it happened, solving cases alongside the world's greatest detective, Batman, was an unparalleled pleasure.
Even as commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department, Gordon was still a humble student before a great detective like Batman.
Come on, Batman! Though he was middle-aged now, Gordon still felt his blood begin to boil. His detective's soul burned fiercely, yearning for a clash of intellect, a feast of deduction!
He heard Batman lower his head and begin to "deduce":
"I understand! Bane isn't confident he can beat me, so they plan to activate another scheme to defeat me. But they need time, so they have to find something to keep me busy and stop me from hounding their group."
"This report must have been written by Bane's subordinate, the Cave Dweller. Maybe he even helped plan this entire affair. And the Plant Master and Poison Ivy's objective is obvious too. Using biological weapons? That's so low-class. They captured the botanists alive because they must want to green the entire planet!"
"I understand! The Plant Master must want to replicate the process that created Swamp Thing in every person on Earth, turning everyone on the planet into walking trees. But his plan must have gone wrong. Although he can temporarily transform other people, they soon turn into pus and blood—"
"That's why they need scientists!"
"Obviously, they must be plotting their evil scheme in Slaughter Swamp, on the outskirts of Gotham!"
"So that's how it is! I'm gradually beginning to understand everything! No one understands villains better than I do!"
"?"
Gordon was beginning to wonder if he was being pranked. He opened his mouth, then took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
Are we looking at the same documents?
How did you reach that conclusion?
What's your evidence? What's your reasoning?
"Obviously"?
The reason, of course, was that Chen Tao had read the original comics.
Looking across the Plant Master's decades-long comic history, every appearance began with "My Mother Earth!" followed by him getting frisky with the planet. Then he caused more or less the same kind of trouble every time, before getting beaten up by Poison Ivy and then by Swamp Thing...
Any story even remotely connected to the Green inevitably dragged out the Plant Master, Jack Wood, for another public beating. Fortunately, he was a walking tree, so even dying was difficult for him.
Once you had seen this pattern enough times, you could practically recite it from memory.
But Chen Tao soon realized that he had no way to explain how he knew so much.
So he could only make something up casually: "Human intuition is a quality that cannot be acquired through learning. It is also my most effective weapon."
Don't ask. The answer was intuition.
Gordon couldn't help but feel deeply impressed. So he isn't pretending anymore? I knew it! Batman's past miraculous deductions never seemed like things a normal person could come up with. I always thought it was magic, but you kept lying to me and calling it deduction!
Chen Tao mulled it over for a while and realized that this could be very useful.
Even if Bane hadn't tried to delay him, he would never have fought Bane right away. From Bane's perspective, Batman seemed both badass and powerful. Now he had even revealed a transformation ability that hadn't appeared in their initial intelligence, making it clear that he was an enemy no one could defeat by force.
But only Chen Tao knew that he was currently nothing more than a weakling. The giant green dinosaur might have some fighting ability, but Bane was a genuine martial arts grandmaster. After using Titan Venom, his maximum strength would exceed ninety tons. If he were willing to abandon his mind and intelligence, that figure would become one hundred and twenty tons.
So Bane didn't want to fight Batman right now. Why would Chen Tao want to? Chen Tao had never even considered personally throwing down with Bane. If money could solve the problem, why get involved himself?
Bane planned to use the Plant Master and Poison Ivy to tie up his feet, which was exactly what Chen Tao wanted. A rare superpowered individual among Gotham's villains, Poison Ivy was naturally already on Chen Tao's list of allies.
As a hardcore comic fan, Chen Tao dared to say that even the roundworms in Ivy's stomach didn't understand Poison Ivy as well as he did. Bane's move was practically handing him an ally.
But now came the problem.
Slaughter Swamp was enormous. Where exactly were Poison Ivy and the Plant Master?
This time, Chen Tao was genuinely stumped. He was only a comic reader, not Wei Banxian, who set up a fortune-telling stall at a Gotham intersection.
His ability to predict the villains' general plans was already based on his massive volume of comic reading. It was impossible for him to predict the finer details.
But Chen Tao knew someone who could. He murmured:
"I have a plan. I'm sure I have a damn good plan!"
"We need Harley Quinn, the former Harley Quinn, Gotham's villainous human GPS, the anti-Joker super-weapon, and Poison Ivy's best friend and greatest nemesis. Only she can find her!"
As it happened, he also knew how to find Harley Quinn.
Before you continue