The sights he had witnessed that night had been so shocking that, when Li Jie drove Clark and Kara back to the hotel after three in the morning, the reporter still stared blankly ahead, his face full of disbelief.
"This... this is just... sigh..."
After parting ways with Batman, Li Jie set the communicator on the dashboard and once again declared loudly that, if they wanted to continue their Gotham patrol experience, they had to follow orders. In the end, Clark solemnly swore on his mother's name that he would never break his promise again.
"But... if someone gets hurt, I... I can still save them, right?"
"...Whew. All right," Li Jie said helplessly. "But don't let too many people see you."
General Hospital had never been so busy. Calls to the police and emergency services kept coming in. The Gotham Police Department's patrol cars simply waited outside the main entrance. Whenever someone was successfully treated, the officers went up to check their identity, then casually pulled out their handcuffs and cuffed them to the bed.
"A city this... brutal. I can't even imagine how people manage to live here," Clark said worriedly. "Is there anything else we can do for them?"
"There's really no need, Clark."
Li Jie got out too and walked them up the hotel steps. "Compared to you, ordinary people are like fragile weeds. A single spark can spread into a catastrophe that wipes them out. But they're also as resilient as weeds. As long as they have a chance to catch their breath, they'll always poke their heads out again after a disaster."
He gave the reporter's shoulder a firm pat. "Clark, before you came to Earth, humanity made it this far without relying on God or Superman. They'll have their own ways of surviving