*Chapter 8: Thrilling and Stimulating Bus Ride*

Feeling unwell anywhere?

Holy cow, how can you even ask me that?!

You've only been living in Gotham for a year, and you already have zero concept of a normal person's life?!

Cody had ten thousand complaints bubbling up inside him, but he didn't know where to start. In the end, his gaze subconsciously landed on the gun in Drake's hand.

Drake saw his look and chuckled somewhat self-deprecatingly, "I was going to give you my gun, but I remembered Old Jack seemed to be having a clearance sale today, so I just went and asked him. You're in luck, he still had a hardly used Glock 17 left. With the 9mm bullets and magazine included, it's only three hundred bucks."

"Hold on, clearance sale? Glock 17? The bus driver's side hustle is being an arms dealer?"

"Don't worry, plenty of people in Gotham buy these. Though the quality depends on luck, and they're too light, and cops use them, a lot of people sell Glock's they got from the police station, which sometimes gets people into trouble—but this one's definitely fine, Old Jack wouldn't rip me off."

As they talked, several big guys with tattooed arms got on the bus.

Cody confusingly took the gun. Drake thoughtfully stuffed the remaining magazines into his jacket pocket.

He subconsciously glanced at the driver again. At this point, two or three people had already started lining up next to the driver. The old man was casually holding the steering wheel with one hand, occasionally turning his head to chat with people, and pulling out gun after gun with his right hand to give to the passengers who handed him cash.

Damn, he even did a slight one-handed drift through an intersection.

"Right, I still haven't asked!" Cody looked at the front windshield, which was just for show, as if waking from a dream. "Why doesn't the bus have a windshield?"

A few thugs in leather jackets who looked a bit like gang members swaggered in through the bus door.

"It used to have one, but after it got broken over a dozen times, the owner didn't want to fix it anymore."

"Over a dozen times?"

"Ah, well... because this bus starts in the East End, there are occasionally a few minor altercations."

"Hold on, hold on..."

Cody held his forehead, thinking for a long time. "Did you say we live in the East End?"

Several women dressed in revealing and provocative clothing giggled as they got on the bus.

Cody's comic book reading wasn't ideal. He wasn't like some super hardcore Batman or DC fans or lore enthusiasts who knew every detail about various major events, character identities and relationships, organizational structures and origins, institution names, and so on. But he did have some impression of the East End.

It's hard to become famous for good reasons, but it's very simple to become notorious. The East End of Gotham City is exactly that kind of place.

As the world's crime capital, the darkest place, a dangerous city built on crime and gangs, Gotham's name is practically a household word in America. And the East End is widely recognized as the most infamous district within Gotham City.

As Gotham's least developed area, the East End is saturated with poverty, crime, prostitution, drugs, and weapons trade. Beggar gangs, criminals, prostitutes, addicts, thugs, and arms dealers are everywhere here. Its most famous alley was originally called Park Row, where Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne were shot and killed. It was because of this shooting that the alley was renamed Crime Alley.

If you don't know who those two were, just remember that the Wayne family was one of the four founding families of Gotham.

"Yeah, otherwise, where did you think I'd live? The Diamond District?"

"..."

Several pale-faced, listless-looking addicts staggered from the front door to the seats in the back of the bus.

Cody watched them take their seats in the back and couldn't help but feel a wave of sadness. No wonder so many colorful characters were pouring onto the bus along the way. The composition of the passengers in the bus now was incredibly mixed, like putting sulfur, saltpeter, charcoal, and shrapnel into a metal shell and sealing it up.

You couldn't say it would definitely explode, but you knew that if it saw fire, it really might. Now Cody could only pray that Drake was reliable enough and wouldn't let him get into a metal explosive shell that was about to see fire.

"Screech—Bang!"

The high-speed bus driver suddenly slammed on the brakes. Just as everyone in the bus was about to tumble over, the braking bus crashed heavily into another bus that had pulled into the lane from the side, sending everyone rolling around like gourds.

"Damn it! You son of a bitch, can't you fucking drive?! Driving this fast in the East End, you trying to get your goddamn ass to fucking hell early?!"

"You asshole, if you fucking yell one more time, I'll shove a gun barrel up your ass! Get your goddamn ass the fuck out of here!"

The driver of the other bus was a middle-aged Black man. After Old Jack initiated the voice communication request with his curses, he immediately responded with no less enthusiasm than Old Jack and a flow as smooth as a famous West Coast rapper. The intensity of their exchange grew hotter and hotter, yet the street miraculously didn't get congested. Clearly, Gotham City residents had developed sufficiently strong driving skills and psychological resilience in their daily lives.

Of course, there was also the psychological preparation to abandon morality and prioritize survival.

To put it simply, Old Jack and the Black man started cussing each other out, but the other passing Gotham citizens were already used to it. They drove across the solid line against traffic and sped away.

Couldn't be helped, in modern society, everyone's busy. Cars, horses, and mail were all in a hurry. An ordinary citizen might only have enough time in a morning to sell a few dozen grams of product, take on six or seven clients, or deal with three or four corpses.

After all, gotta make a living.

"You turtle bastard!" As the verbal sparring became more intense, Old Jack got more and more agitated, and his speaking speed got faster and faster. A few drops of spit even splashed onto his bushy beard. "I'm gonna show you right now how things are done in Gotham!"

Then, he pulled out a dark, gaping shotgun from under his seat.

"Bang!"

"Holy crap, it really saw fire!"

Cody was filled with despair. He shiveringly hugged the handgun in his arms. Even though he had only had it for a little over ten minutes, it was clear that from the moment Old Jack fired, this gun had become one of his brothers in life and death.

However, the people around him looked calm and had already taken out their guns long ago. Even Drake patted his shoulder and said, "It's fine. We'll get off the bus in a bit and hide in a safe place. Old Jack will keep driving after he's done shooting. You'll make it to work on time."

What the hell does "keep driving after he's done shooting" mean?!

***