Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

In a high-end restaurant in the Upper city area, after Shiller introduced himself, the waiter led him to a table where a white woman who looked slightly nervous was sitting.

She held a red wine glass, pressing the rim tightly against her lips as if drinking, but the wine never entered her mouth; it seemed she was only rubbing the glass with her teeth.

"How are you feeling, Lady Charabang?" Shiller sat down, looking at her with a concerned face.

"I don't know, everything feels like a dream." The woman shook her head, glanced away, and kept scrolling on her phone.

But soon, she looked anxiously at Shiller and asked, "Did you find Director Gordon? What did he say? Did he accept the price we offered?"

"Relax, madam," Shiller said with a smile to the woman, soothing her until she finally relaxed, though her facial muscles still twitched slightly, allowing for a calm conversation.

Shiller looked at the massive but design-lacking gemstone ring on her hand, recalling Lady Charabang's life story.

She is actually the half-sister of the current leader of the Charabang Family. Her mother died after giving birth to her, and she lived with her father, who did not favor her.

Her mother and father were married as part of a family alliance and had no real emotional foundation, leading to a dull life. Furthermore, being spoiled as a child, involving in drugs, alcohol abuse, and fighting, she became invisible after her mother died and Old Charabang remarried.

After the death of Old Charabang, her brother, who is the current family heir, gave her a small amount of money and kicked her out, pushing her to the point where she had once roamed the streets.

Thanks to some friends of her mother, she managed not to die on Gotham's snowy nights like other homeless addicts.

She had been married twice, but the marriages did not change her situation; instead, she grew poorer. When Shiller found her, she was in a shelter's corner, savoring the meager hit of morphine from the night before.

Mr. Charabang wasn't very cautious. He thought his sister, whom he had chased out of his home, could no longer cause any troubles. The Upper Class wouldn't abandon their dignity to meet such a disgusting homeless person.

But Shiller would; he wouldn't miss such a good opportunity.

Naturally, resentment filled Charabang's sister; first, you wouldn't expect a drug addict's brain to work in an ordinary way since from adolescence she had been dabbling in various chemical substances, so strong that Zombies would pass out for two hours if they ate her brain.

She blamed everything on her brother, filled with deep hatred for his ruthlessness and indifference, wishing she could kill him immediately.

The key point is, once Mr. Charabang and his family died, she would be the primary natural heir and wouldn't have to sleep on the streets anymore but could return to Upper Class society.

So, when Shiller approached her, she didn't need persuading and agreed to all of Shiller's plans, she had been waiting for this day.

Shiller sought her not because he genuinely expected her to kill Mr. Charabang's family but because, as the saying goes, he needed someone to take the blame to remain on the high moral ground. It only matters if others decide to do it.

Then Shiller turned to the Joker, who is particularly skilled at creating explosions. The newly emerged one was not an exception and, perhaps because of falling into a chemical vat once, had an extraordinary recovery ability and was even more insane.

But for Shiller, this was not a problem. As long as he controlled the means to generate Jokers, they had to work with him. If one Joker refused, he would create another.

Maria was more practical than the bacteria within the Pale Knight. Shiller didn't struggle to hire her; of course, money still had to be paid. It seemed like she wanted to use the money to build a base, which Shiller didn't care about.

Subsequently, through some information provided by Lady Charabang, Shiller found a trusted manager of Mr. Charabang, met with him under the guise of a mayor's staff member, and suggested he establish the Natural Forest Protection Fund.

This suggestion was sound—as the Pale Knight and Batman had judged, it was currently the best solution to address the environmental protest issues at Charabang Chemical Factory. Thus, the manager persuaded Mr. Charabang to proceed with it.

But, Shiller mixed in some private agendas while giving the suggestion. He told the manager that it was unwise to confront those crazy protesters, asserting these poor souls wouldn't conduct soil pollution tests, and there must be someone behind them.

With solid evidence already in hand, denying soil pollution directly might not work. Instead, he suggested a detour: take his family to visit the chemical plant to demonstrate "even my family visits the chemical plant; how could there be pollution here?".

Indeed, such stunts are quite common. Once a company faced public relations crises, their first statement for debunking rumors was "My family also uses/eats this product," creating an illusion for consumers that it's safe to use or consume.

But in fact, whether there was poison or whether he really used it on his family has no direct correlation; he had already been deranged enough to poison food, so why wouldn't he gamble with his family's lives for wealth?

Mr. Charabang was the same; if the chemical factory was polluting, so what? It was the foundation of his wealth and absolutely could not fail. For that, even sacrificing his family was worth it. A wife poisoned to death could be remarried, children poisoned to death could be reborn, but if money was gone, it would really be gone.

Indeed, this was incredibly cold and ruthless, but if he wasn't so ruthless, how could he have allowed the chemical factory to pollute for so many years?

Driven by a desire to show off and salvage his reputation, Mr. Charabang quickly brought people to the chemical factory and then unfortunately encountered the freshly debuted Joker, setting off the first battle for the new Joker and completely subliming his entire family.

With the entire family dead, his sister naturally became the first in line to inherit—if the deceased left no will.

In most states of America, inheritance is primarily determined by wills; if the will clearly states not to have certain heirs inherit, then those people cannot inherit.

And Shiller just hired Two-Face to forge a will.

Lady Charabang had not been mingling with the Upper Class for a long time, and with Two-Face's good forgery skills, after Shiller sent her a photo of the completed forged will, she immediately panicked.

Despite not having exerted much effort in the whole affair, what lay before her now was the entire interest of the Charabang Group, which was enough to drive anyone insane.

Though her brain was fried by drugs, she understood that such a big cake is desired by everyone—not just the mayor, but also those who claim to have a century-long friendship with the Charabang Family, would want to swarm over it, even if they couldn't eat it all, biting off a chunk was still money.

Even though she never owned it, now that it was nearly hers, Lady Charabang naturally would regard it as her possession and would definitely not let go, even if it meant death.

After taking over, how to manage, how to stabilize the situation, or how to win people's hearts were not in her considerations at all. She only wanted to grab the money for eating, drinking, prostituting, gambling, enjoying, and squandering.

But she also knew, compared to the mayor, compared to Batman, compared to the old friends of the Charabang Family, she was nothing at all.

How could a homeless wanderer compete with these people?

Since Shiller was the only person she knew who seemed reliable, she had to seek help from him again.

And Shiller's advice was still simple and effective; Lady Charabang had an advantage over these people in legality.

Although there was a will, it wasn't 100% effective because the logic of the will was too strange; Mr. Charabang had no reason to leave his estate to the pale knight whom he had never met. The jury might very well determine that the will was forged. As long as Lady Charabang insisted on this, she would definitely be able to inherit most of the estate.

But this meant she would be directly confronting the mayor head-on. How the pale knight would act was not the issue; none of the previous mayors were easy to handle, and without backing, she probably wouldn't even make it to the day of the court hearing.

The people of the Charabang Family and the leaders of its affiliated industries were also panicking. "With a new king the old ministers perish." Those in power whose surname was Charabang were fine, but if someone else took over, they would be the first to be purged.

Even small fish in the sea know to swim together to appear like a huge beast; they naturally understood that they must gather together to have a greater strength. If they dispersed now, they would just be devoured completely by others.

At Shiller's suggestion, Lady Charabang approached these people and gave them an apparently great idea—invest in GTO.

Mr. Charabang died too suddenly; some of the resources he controlled weren't passed on in time, like Rose, whose existence was known only to Mr. Charabang himself, thus could not be utilized by anyone else.

As the saying goes, "While the neighbor stores grain, I store guns; the neighbor is my grain storage." Now the Charabang Family was like a huge grain storage and the guard had vanished; if they didn't buy guns quickly, they would just be waiting to be divvied up completely.

But buying guns wasn't that simple; rather than buying, it was more about handcrafting them. Most big families would spend decades placing their chess pieces in various places, allowing them to infiltrate all parts of society to help them accomplish tasks.

With the death of Mr. Charabang, the guns he made were completely unusable. There wasn't much time now to make new guns for them; they had to buy what was available.

And wouldn't you know it, the special anti-terrorism squad in Gotham, celebrated for its outstanding accomplishments and held in the tight grip of the tough and uncompromising Director Gordon, just happened to be up for auction.

To survive in this turbulence, the people of the Charabang Family couldn't care about much else; they must buy! They had to buy even if it meant selling everything they owned!