Underground Vault, Detonating Penguin's Financial Bomb!

The heavy metal vault door slid shut silently behind them, completely cutting off the noise and decadence of the banquet hall upstairs.

A narrow metal passage appeared before the two of them, extending downward into unknown darkness.

Emergency lights on both sides of the passage cast a sickly green glow, illuminating the cold walls and the crisscrossing pipelines upon them.

A cold wind mixed with the smell of ozone, engine oil, and the unique, decaying scent of money rushed at them from deep within the passage.

"Whoa, this place smells expensive," Harley pinched her nose exaggeratedly, her bright blue eyes flashing with a wolf-like gleam. "I'm guessing the end of the road isn't a bathroom, right?"

Link ignored her banter. He walked in front, his footsteps producing a monotonous and oppressive echo in the narrow passage.

His senses had been heightened to the extreme; any tiny electrical current change in the surrounding air could not escape his perception.

The passage was not long. After about fifty meters, they reached the end.

A huge circular alloy door, like the entrance to an ancient temple, spanned across them.

There were no handles or keyholes on the door, only a smooth metal panel and a tiny loudspeaker.

"Military-grade voice-activated electronic lock." Link tapped the door with his finger, the sound producing a dull, heart-palpitating thud. "The moment you try to force it, the alarm for the entire restaurant will go off, and at the same time, this place will be flooded with enough neurotoxin to anesthetize a blue whale."

"Voice-activated?" Harley's eyes lit up. "You mean I have to talk like that fat short guy? Quack quack quack?"

She vividly imitated Penguin's signature, duck-like hoarse laughter.

"Pretty much." Link took a tablet computer out of his pocket, on which a waterfall-like stream of data was rapidly scrolling. "But it also requires a specific passphrase and needs to match his unique acoustic frequency. More importantly, while verifying the voice, I have to crack this military-grade sixteen-digit dynamic password."

Harley was completely confused by what she heard. She watched Link's fingers fly across the screen so fast they were practically a blur, and asked bluntly, "Speak human, sweetie, what should I do?"

"Listen to my command. I say a word, and you repeat it in Penguin's voice," Link said without looking back. "Slower, clearer, imagine you're a proud, fat duck about to lay a golden egg."

Harley was amused by the metaphor and chuckled, but immediately reined in her expression and cleared her throat.

"Ready, director."

Link's gaze was focused to the extreme, and the data stream on the tablet screen suddenly accelerated.

"First group: 'Iceberg'."

"Iceberg!" Harley lowered her voice, her imitation seven or eight parts accurate.

On the tablet, the icon for the first password lock turned from red to green.

"Second group: 'Throne'."

"Throne!"

The second lock unlocked.

"Third group: 'Mine'."

"Mine!"

The more Harley spoke, the more excited she became. She felt like she was playing the most thrilling puzzle game in the world.

When the final passphrase "Eternity" was uttered, Link's fingers also struck the final line of code on the tablet.

"Hiss—"

A slight hydraulic release sound echoed.

The alloy door, weighing several tons, slid smoothly and quietly to the side as if all its bones had been drawn out, revealing a brightly lit, huge space.

Harley's breath stalled for that single instant.

She had imagined it piled high with gold bars or studded with diamonds.

Yet the scene before her eyes was far more shocking than that.

There were no mountains of cash here. Instead, hundreds of neatly arranged black servers hummed quietly, countless indicator lights on their bodies blinking like stars in the night sky.

This was not a vault at all.

This was a massive, illegal private bank and data center belonging to Penguin!

Half of the black money in Gotham's underworld flowed right here in the form of data.

Only in the very back of the room were rows of cash bundles wrapped in plastic film symbolically stacked, acting like some kind of primitive footnote to this digital empire.

"Oh, my god..." Harley couldn't help uttering a dreamlike sigh. "Did we... break into Gotham's central bank?"

"More important than that."

Link walked straight toward the main server in the center of the room. There was no greed on his face, only the coldness of a hunter locking onto prey.

He took a peculiarly shaped USB drive from his tactical vest pocket.

"Cash can be recovered, but once credit collapses, nothing is left."

He plugged the USB drive into the main server's port.

The screen was instantly covered in garbled text, and then a blood-red skull logo and a line of countdown appeared in the center of the screen.

10:00

09:59

09:58

"What is this?" Harley leaned over curiously.

"A financial bomb." A trace of playful cruelty tinted Link's voice. "I named it 'Cleaner'. When the countdown ends, it will execute three things simultaneously."

"First, it will create tens of thousands of fake, untraceable transfer records, stirring the funds of all accounts here into a mess. Penguin will find that ninety percent of his money has evaporated into thin air."

"Second, it will anonymously send all transfer records to those 'clients' who deposited their money here. They will see that Penguin 'swallowed' their money."

"Third, it will package and encrypt the raw data of the entire server, sending it to the servers of the GCPD and the Internal Revenue Service. They will receive an anonymous tip about the biggest money laundering network in Gotham's history from a 'concerned citizen'."

Link paused, casually tapping the keyboard a few times to precisely "scoop" a small stream from the impending data torrent, transferring it into a brand-new, untraceable Swiss bank anonymous account.

The screen showed that a funds transfer of one hundred million dollars was successful.

"Of course, we can't make this trip for nothing." Link pulled out the USB drive and looked at Harley's flushed face, twisted with extreme shock and excitement. "We only have ten minutes to leave before Penguin realizes his empire is burning."

"Ten minutes..." Harley muttered, and then an extremely brilliant and crazy smile bloomed on her face.

She jumped up, clinging to Link like a koala, and planted a fierce kiss on his cheek.

"Sweetie! You're a genius! A thoroughbred devil! I fucking love this plan!"

This was ten thousand times more thrilling than beating an enemy's head in with a baseball bat!

This was completely destroying everything a person had from the soul up!

Link pushed her away and glanced at the ticking countdown on the screen.

"The game isn't over yet."

He turned around, cold, frosty light flashing in his dark eyes.

"The bomb has been planted. Now, we should go upstairs and enjoy the wonderful expressions on the host of the banquet's face when he finds out he's bankrupt."