Bruce's Files

Lynn raised his right hand to block.

The blade slashed across his forearm, but his indestructible skin stopped the edge—he felt the force, yet the skin did not break.

The squad leader felt a vibration travel back through his hand, as if he had struck solid stone.

His first reaction was not panic, but an instantaneous assessment: "Target has super-defense."

He changed tactics, abandoning the slashing attack for a thrust—concentrating all his power into a single point.

The wakizashi lunged toward Lynn's eyes.

This move was truly ruthless.

The eyes were a weakness that the indestructible skin could not cover.

But Lynn's Super Senses calculated the entire trajectory while the tip of the blade was still fifty centimeters away, and Black Widow's combat instincts drove his body to lean back and dodge.

The tip of the blade grazed past the bridge of his nose.

Lynn struck with both hands simultaneously—his left hand clamped onto the back of the wakizashi, while his right palm slapped the wrist of the hand holding the blade. Power erupted.

The wrist bone deformed for a split second under the force. The squad leader could no longer hold on.

The wakizashi fell from his hand.

Lynn grabbed his collar and flung him across the room—he slammed into the wall of the clinic.

Spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the wall surface.

The squad leader slid down the wall and knelt on one knee.

His left hand braced against the floor, while his right arm hung limp at his side—the wrist was already shattered.

"Who is your employer?" Lynn stood before him.

There were three slashes on his white coat, but there wasn't even a red mark on his skin.

The squad leader looked up at him.

The eyes behind the mask held no fear, only something cold.

Then, his mouth moved.

Lynn heard it at the same instant—a tiny "click" between the molars. A glass capsule had been crushed.

Cyanide.

He reached out to stop him, but it was already too late.

The suicide device of a Death Squad Ninja from The Hand was embedded in the inner side of the rear molars; it took only 0.3 seconds from triggering to the release of the toxin.

The squad leader's body stiffened, then collapsed.

Breathing stopped.

The heartbeat vanished seven seconds later.

Lynn crouched down and checked.

Dead.

Cyanide poisoning, beyond saving.

He stood up and looked at the corpse on the floor, feeling little emotion.

It was nothing new for The Hand to use Death Squad Ninjas—these people were treated as expendable resources while they were still alive.

The remaining work was the cleanup.

He used the clinic's repair thread to bind all eleven of the living ninjas.

The tensile strength of the suture thread was far superior to ordinary rope, and the more they struggled, the tighter it cinched.

Then, he sent an anonymous text message to Frank's burner phone: "There are twelve packages at the clinic, one is broken, the rest are usable. Come clean it up quickly."

Finally, the cleaning.

He wiped away all the bloodstains with bleach.

He reset the medicine shelves and replaced the filler material in the floor tile seams that had been soaked with blood.

He threw the slashed white coat into a trash bag.

Forty minutes later, the Miracle Clinic looked as if nothing had ever happened.

Lynn went upstairs, changed into a new white coat, and lay back down on the folding bed.

What he did not know was that on the roof of an apartment building seven hundred meters outside the clinic, a bat-shaped micro-drone had recorded every frame of the night's events.

Batcave.

Bruce Wayne sat in front of the giant display screen, replaying the infrared footage for the third time.

The image quality was not sharp—the seven-hundred-meter distance combined with the refraction of the clinic's glass windows caused a certain degree of blur in the infrared imaging.

But it was enough to see some key details.

Alfred stood behind him, holding a cup of tea that had already gone cold.

"This is the third time, sir."

Bruce did not respond.

He froze the image on the segment where Lynn subdued the first group of ninjas—the hand-blade strike to the carotid sinus.

"Zoom in. Frame by frame."

The image zoomed in on a section of Lynn's right hand.

The angle of the hand-blade, the contact area, and the direction of force were all broken down into a sequence of static frames.

Bruce stared at it for ten seconds.

"The angle of this hand-blade," he finally spoke, "to strike the carotid sinus with precision requires concentrating force into a two-centimeter-wide area on the outer edge of the palm, while ensuring the entry angle is between forty-five and fifty degrees. A slight deviation means either failing to knock them out or killing them outright."

"How much training would that require?" Alfred asked.

"For a normal person? At least two years of specialized training. For a genius, at least half a year." Bruce skipped the footage to the segment where Lynn dealt with the second group of ninjas. "But that's not the point."

He pointed at the screen where Lynn used a flail to entangle a ninja's ankle in the stairwell.

"This method of weapon usage—the flail isn't his weapon of choice; he took it from his opponent. Yet, he achieved this level of distance control and force distribution on his first try. This indicates his combat foundation isn't from a single school."

Bruce fast-forwarded to the segment where Lynn faced the squad leader head-on.

"Look here." He pointed to the frame where Lynn leaned back to dodge the wakizashi thrust.

"The extent of this lean was just enough for the blade tip to graze his nose—the margin of error was less than a centimeter. This kind of precision can't be explained by reaction speed; it's anticipation. He calculated the trajectory of the blade tip before the opponent even struck."

"It's very similar to your style, sir," Alfred said.

Bruce did not respond to that.

He went back to watch the segment where Lynn set a trap using the medicine shelves.

Then the alcohol-slicked floor. Then the tactics of using the narrow space of the stairwell to limit the enemy's numerical advantage.

"Environmental utilization, pre-set traps, strategies for dismantling multi-on-one situations..." Bruce's voice was very low.

"These things aren't things a combat coach can teach. This is a mindset honed in actual combat—or rather, it's the result of a specific type of tactical training."

He paused.

"Several decision-making nodes in his tactical thinking are very similar to my habits."

Alfred's hand, holding the teacup, faltered.

"Are you saying—"

"I'm not sure. But it's too much of a coincidence." Bruce tapped a few keys on the keyboard. "Pull up all the records from when I received treatment at his clinic three weeks ago."

A file opened—it contained the complete account of Bruce being treated at the Miracle Clinic.

At the time, he was in a semi-conscious state, but the Bat-suit's built-in recorder had saved a massive amount of data.

Bruce flipped to a specific timestamp—certain operational decisions Lynn made during the surgery.

"Here." He pointed to a line of data. "The incision direction he chose when treating my knife wound was from bottom-left to top-right, which differs from the standard habit of a right-handed surgeon."

"Standard procedure should be from top to bottom. But the bottom-left to top-right cut happened to avoid a group of abnormally dense deep scar tissue between my seventh and ninth ribs."

"Those scars were left during my training with the League of Assassins when I was seventeen. No one except myself and Alfred knew there were scars in that location."

"But he avoided them."

Alfred set down his teacup.

Bruce opened a new encrypted document.

File name: Investigation on Lynn.