Nanda Parbat

Cindy and Su Ming were only talking. In reality, blind guessing without any clues would not lead to any conclusions; it would only waste time.

He waved the three of them inside, had Barbara continue working, then said to Cindy, "We've been delayed here by all sorts of things, but this obviously wasn't prepared for the League of Assassins. These monsters can't stop us, so naturally they can't stop Ra's al Ghul either."

"That's right. So I think he really just wants to lure Ra's al Ghul into Gotham and make his move along the way. He'll probably use large-scale weapons, while this place is underground and is actually safe." Cindy had reached the same conclusion. She had roughly guessed Falcone's intentions.

"So by tying up Gordon, he was actually protecting him."

"Who the hell knows what he's thinking? I don't care either. You want to ask Gordon something, so we'll go ask him. He took Gordon away, so he's the enemy." Cindy spoke indifferently. All she knew was that she currently needed clues about Batman from Gordon. She had no interest in anything else.

Barbara was cracking the door's security nearby, her fingertips dancing rapidly over the keyboard. "I don't know what counts as protection, but his men really did kill a lot of people at the police station. That doesn't look like he's trying to do good. He has his own purpose."

Su Ming and Cindy exchanged a glance. They had not expected Barbara to see that connection. It was only a guess, but it was much better than before.

"Good. No matter what he's planning, we won't let him get his way. Gordon has to stay on our side." Su Ming adjusted his harness and took the shotgun in hand. There was no telling what awaited them down the road.

After giving it some thought, though, he decided to try using the luck cheat. So he called Vicki over.

"Vicki, do you have enough material for your story?"

"Mm, almost. It would be best if we could find The Roman. I want to do an exclusive interview with him."

Vicki smiled and nodded. The various monsters here had seemed novel at first, but now they were becoming a little dull. The audience would get tired of them too. As long as they found the big villain and gave the story an ending, they could wrap up and go home.

"Good. Barbara, you can open the door now." Su Ming patted the armrest of Barbara's Wheelchair, signaling that it was time.

The door opened, and next door was indeed the stairwell and elevator leading down.

It was that damned uncanny!

If luck were not so intangible and uncertain, Su Ming would have wanted to directly search for a way to the Main World and leave the matter of Earth -11 to her.

But considering how crazy this woman was, she would probably interview Barbatos, then demand to film him destroying the world, right?

Earth was not important. Her news was what mattered! As for where she would air the story after filming it, a lunatic would not care about something like that.

He absolutely could not let her know about this major event.

Thousands of kilometers away from Gotham, amid ice and snow.

There stood a strange complex of buildings constructed on the cliffs of steep, snow-covered mountains. Its architecture was a hodgepodge of styles from around the world: it had the battlements of Middle Eastern castles, along with beautiful corridors like those of Asian gardens linking every building together.

Japanese-style courtyards and Gothic spired houses could be seen everywhere among the buildings. Arranged in an orderly fashion, they clustered around a magnificent castle perched atop the cliff as though embedded within the mountain itself.

This was the headquarters of the League of Assassins: Nanda Parbat.

Other than the assassins themselves, very few people knew of this place. Nanda Parbat was covered in snow year-round, and its residents lived simple, peaceful lives—training their skills, pursuing higher realms, and killing more people.

They departed from here for all corners of the world, either to kill their assigned targets or die outside.

Assassins worked for money, but that money was collected for one great purpose.

To destroy this world! To completely overthrow the rule of those Amazon women!

Ra's al Ghul had lived for over eight hundred years. Back then, the Amazons had not yet unified the world. Born in the Middle East, he had never believed women were qualified to rule the world. They were merely slaves and attachments, and should bow their heads before men.

It was true that there were many powerful women in this world. Some of them could defeat him with one hand. But Ra's al Ghul had never taken them seriously.

No matter how strong they were, they were still women. Therefore, they were weak.

Weak in what way?

No one knew, but they were weak. Do not ask him why. They were simply weak!

No one knew what had happened to him, but everyone knew he was an extremely stubborn misogynist. That had also made him a notorious terrorist lunatic.

About eight years ago, Ra's al Ghul had been plotting in the shadows to destroy the world when he suddenly heard that a masked figure had appeared in Gotham—powerful and extraordinarily intelligent.

He became interested in this person and intended to recruit them into the League of Assassins.

But not only was that person a woman, she had no awareness at all of being weak. She had actually refused to submit to him? She had even said Gotham was her city and told him to get lost.

No one had ever dared speak to the Demon's Head that way. So he decided to destroy that weakling's city and cleanse the greatest filth in this world.

But—

The League of Assassins had mobilized in full force, only to be driven back time and again by that bizarre woman in the Batsuit through every conceivable method. They had launched several attacks over the years, all returning empty-handed, leaving him humiliated and furious.

Even he himself was no match for that freak. She seemed to have planned everything in advance and understood every detail of that city. He would always fail over trivial matters for no apparent reason.

Not only that, she was the only woman in this world he believed could be called a person.

If Talia were not his daughter, he would certainly have killed her.

At this moment, the Demon's Head sat cross-legged in the League of Assassins' hall. The hall had walls on only three sides. The side facing the mountains opened onto a broad platform. Beyond the terrace, cold winds howled and snowflakes danced. He held his hands close to the fire for warmth while gazing at the distant mountains sculpted from ice and snow.

Incense that calmed the mind burned in the hall. Thin green smoke curled around the antique eaves and pillars. He looked tranquil as still water, quietly waiting.

Talia sat kneeling beside him, making tea with a bamboo whisk. She spread the emerald-green tea powder into a tea bowl with a slender wooden scoop, poured in hot water, then gently whisked it smooth.

She knew Ra's al Ghul liked tea. The Amazons had unified the world only six or seven hundred years ago. Before that, the world had been divided into countless nations of varying sizes, each with its own culture, some of which endured even to this day.

When he was young, he had traveled to Asia to learn fighting techniques. Of course, he had drunk tea there as well. But this place was too remote. Even when assassins brought back good tea leaves, they were never as good as freshly picked ones, so it made little difference what he drank.

It was there that he had absorbed many ideas while studying martial arts. There, he understood sacrificing life for righteousness, grasped the meaning of honor, and witnessed the fate of warriors.

Unfortunately, his mind held more Middle Eastern beliefs. He had been born with the conviction that women were inferior to men. He refused to acknowledge any powerful woman and turned a blind eye to reality.

That had made him narrow-minded and extreme.

Talia was different from him. She had also traveled the world and walked the paths her father once had, but what she came to understand was that the strong were supreme!

Refusing to accept reality had become her father's inner demon. Unless he overcame that hurdle, his combat ability would be unlikely to improve another inch for the rest of his life.

Although the Demon's Head was already a renowned powerhouse in this world, and "the greatest Swordsman" was his title, Talia could clearly feel that he was gradually losing his usual composure.

He was too obsessed with proving that woman was weak, and had devoted far too much attention to Gotham.

There were not many small jobs there, because anyone in that city could suddenly become a killer, and small targets were mostly handled internally. But there were always major jobs that could not be handled internally, yet the League of Assassins never got a share of those either.

Because of the trouble they had caused in Gotham before, any League of Assassins assassin who appeared there would almost certainly be found by Batwoman that very night, beaten unconscious with broken bones all over their body. How were they supposed to compete with anyone else for work?

It was all Ra's al Ghul's fault. Gotham was clearly a wealthy city, yet now the League of Assassins could only watch helplessly as people like Deathstroke, Copperhead, and Deadshot made money there.

The League of Assassins had only a tiny contact point in Gotham. The two or three assassins inside could only disguise themselves as strippers to gather intelligence. Life was difficult.

Batwoman understood Ra's al Ghul's beliefs deeply, as though she had crawled inside his head. She deliberately gave the League of Assassins a feminine name and spread it around the world through her own methods, provoking Ra's al Ghul and causing him to perform disastrously in battle. He had been defeated in yet another confrontation in Gotham.

The name she chose was the League of Assassins, and that title replaced the organization's true name—the League of Assassins—which had been passed down for centuries, spreading across the world.

The League of Assassins was practically the five words Ra's al Ghul hated most. The moment he heard them, he would fly into a rage and kill someone.

More than once, Talia had wondered whether her father had been possessed by something from hell. As far as she knew, only demons from hell had neither father nor mother. How could someone with a mother possibly think all women were weak?

Eight hundred years ago, in that era when medicine was nearly nonexistent, anyone who dared give birth was a true warrior.

But she could only think those thoughts in her heart. She did not dare say them in front of Ra's al Ghul. She feared him; since childhood, she had lived in fear of paternal authority.