Cold. Shaking.
The rattling of metal rang in his ears. In a daze, Ma Zhaodi felt the floor tremble beneath him, jolting pain into the back of his skull.
"Sir."
Half-awake, a voice kept echoing beside him.
Who's that?
"Sir!"
Who are they calling? Me?
"Wake up, sir!"
A chill crept into his nose, damp and heavy. The air carried a metallic tang—blood? Something else lingered too, a strange and unsettling sense of danger.
It felt like that stench shot straight from his nose into his soul.
Like being yanked from the bottom of the sea, Ma Zhaodi's mind surfaced in an instant.
He shot his eyes open.
A strange ceiling.
No—wait, that wasn't a ceiling.
The floor beneath him rocked rhythmically. The metallic clang of wheels echoed through the space. Outside the nearby window, thick, heavy clouds sped by. Seats lined both sides of the corridor he was lying in.
He was on a train.
Why the hell am I on a train?
Still groggy, Ma Zhaodi pushed himself up from the floor. Around him were rows of empty seats—and standing next to him was a uniformed attendant.
"Sir, are you all right?"
The attendant was speaking fluent English.
Why is some foreign train conductor asking me stuff in English? When did I get on a foreign train?
No, no, that's not right—I wasn't even on a train before!
Ma Zhaodi shook his head hard, trying to convince himself this was all just a hallucination.
Unfortunately, everything around him felt painfully real.
The chilly air, the cold steel of the carriage, the scratches and dents on the train walls, the roar of the wheels against the tracks—it all screamed authenticity.
But wasn't I just pulling an all-nighter writing?
He tried to recall his last memory. Right—he was writing, too tired, and passed out on his keyboard.
I probably just crashed and started dreaming… or maybe I got punked by some crazy TV show crew?
That seemed plausible… sort of.
As he pondered, Ma Zhaodi stood up and sat down in one of the nearby seats. The conductor was still hovering anxiously beside him, clearly unsettled by the silent Asian passenger.
Usually, passengers weren't a problem. But the train only had one more stop to make.
And that stop was Gotham.
People might head to Gotham with reasons, but no reasonable person wants to go there.
The conductor swallowed nervously and asked again—but the passenger just stared back with a weird, vacant look in his eyes.
Something about that gaze was deeply unnerving. The moment their eyes met, the conductor caved. He mumbled an apology, turned on his heel, and hurried off like the Devil himself was chasing him.
Ma Zhaodi watched him leave, then turned toward the train window. The fogged-up glass offered a glimpse of the outside world: a gray, storm-choked sky. A city lay beneath it—dark, towering clock towers, jagged Gothic skyscrapers, and a tangle of dirty, run-down slums in the distance. English signs flickered amid the neon.
A clock tower? Slums? English billboards?
With that architecture, this city was clearly not anywhere near Dongda University.
Where the hell am I? Is this even China anymore?
He murmured the question without thinking.
Whoooo—
Just then, the train's whistle blared. It began to slow, pulling into a station.
As the train coasted to a stop, he stared out at the unfamiliar platform—and the sea of blond-haired, blue-eyed people waiting on it.
Clang!
The train doors opened.
Passengers with luggage poured out from every car, flooding the platform. With no choice, Ma Zhaodi got swept up in the crowd.
He felt like a leaf adrift in the current, floating helplessly toward some unknown shore.
Why am I not waking up yet? What kind of dream is this?
He stumbled off the train, disoriented. A few steps later, he stopped cold.
Overhead, the sign on the platform read:
Gotham City
"...?"
That broke him.
Sure, his English wasn't perfect, but he'd seen enough superhero movies to know that word.
"Goddamn it," he muttered, covering his face with both hands. "Which sick bastard threw me into this nightmare?!"
He had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling that he might not survive even one night in this hellhole without getting skinned and gutted in some back alley. This was, after all, the most crime-ridden city in all of America.
Normal people? Rare.
Innocent people? Practically mythical.
In any other city, a thief is just a petty criminal. But in Gotham? If a guy only steals—no muggings, no murders, no arson—he's practically eligible for a Good Citizen Award.
Roughly 70% of the population were gangsters. The rest? Global terror groups, elite assassin syndicates, a handful of kids, rich degenerates, corrupt CEOs, and lone-wolf supercriminals. Oh, and let's not forget Gotham's reigning king of psychos.
Then you had the real losers: people like him—clueless nobodies who stumbled into Gotham by accident.
As for the cops? Not a single officer in the GCPD hadn't worked with either a mob boss or a lunatic. This city was soaked in darkness.
If there was one last sliver of light left in Gotham, it might've just been Ma Zhaodi—the freshly dropped-in fool who still thought he might find a way out.
Ding.
[Startup System: "Self-Made Tycoon" has successfully loaded. Please work hard to earn money and build your fortune. As they say, money talks. As long as you're not flat broke, there's still hope.]
[Current Assets: $7 USD]
[Initial Mission: Use your own two hands to find a legal job in Gotham City and earn your first paycheck after crossing over.]
[Starter Pack Options:]
- Basic English Proficiency
Cost: $1
Note: Wait, how do you spell "abandon" again?
- Local Identity Document
Cost: $1 each
Note: You ain't a real Gothamite until you've been shot or stabbed—preferably both.
- Rapid Health Recovery
Cost: $1
Note: Works great! Comes with a 99.999% discount on your next purchase—maybe.
- Checkpoint
Cost: $1
Note: Hollywood pays a million for this. You? Just pay up front.
[IMPORTANT] All income must be earned through legal employment. Honest work only. Hustle hard and rise up.
Staring at the system interface and its list of "features," Ma Zhaodi's emotions whiplashed like a roller coaster.
So many questions. So many curses.
But in the end, all he could do was sigh deeply.
"Who in their right mind tries to find a legal job in Gotham?"