Although many detective novels portrayed the police as utterly incompetent, Li Wei believed the police had one enormous advantage over detectives.
Their official status.
In detective novels, even famous detectives like Sherlock Holmes were ultimately ordinary people with no official position. That meant they offered little deterrence to criminals-unless the police asked them to investigate. Otherwise, even if these detectives discovered clues and reported them, there was nothing they could do if the police refused to act.
In fact, plenty of plots played out exactly that way.
If Li Wei were merely a detective, even one as famous as Sherlock Holmes, criminals would still ignore him whenever they pleased. If they took a dislike to him, they might even send someone to follow him, throw a sack over his head, beat him up, and dump him in the river.
An individual's power was therefore quite limited. That was also why Li Wei looked down on those so-called superheroes.
People like Zorro and Batman ultimately never addressed the root of the problem. They merely treated each symptom as it appeared.
In the history of Li Wei's own country, many people had also recognized injustice. But they hadn't put on masks and become gentleman thieves because of it. They either entered government service to do their part in upholding justice, or simply raised the banner of rebellion and overthrew the bastards.
By comparison, superheroes were more like the wandering heroes in martial arts novels, drawing their swords to help whenever they encountered injustice, but struggling to challenge systemic oppression. To put it bluntly, they changed nothing beyond making themselves feel good.
Li Wei, however, was different. He was an Imperial Count and the commander of the Thistle Knight Order, with honors to his name and several medals to his credit.
More importantly,