Chapter 1664 - Catching Fish, and Bringing Disaster to the Fish Pond

If Joseph had planned to start with theology, religion or philosophy, Luke would have to be prepared at all times to carry out mental or even physical therapy.

It was impossible without risks.

Steve was the only true product of the super soldier serum, while Dr. Banner had accidentally turned himself into the Hulk.

Compared with magic, these risks were nothing.

If Joseph ever signed a contract with a demon and turned into a Ghost Rider or an evil spirit like Elektra, his soul would be lost after he died, and there was no way to save him.

In comparison, as long as he didn’t experiment on himself during scientific research and put all sorts of preventive measures in place, it was relatively safer.

Also, if he wanted to use science to study magic, he would have to be at the top in the world in some subject areas.

This way, no matter how smart Joseph was, it would still take him a decade or two to build a solid foundation.

He would already be an adult then, and wouldn’t be as impulsive.

In any case, it remained to be seen whether or not Joseph’s interests would change in the future.

There was no need for Luke to interfere over a distant possibility.

If that caused his little brother to rebel and firmed his resolve to become a “scientific wizard,” that would really take the cake.

…

In the next few days, Joseph got a little busy.

Luke allowed him to “self-study” for two hours every day and no more. His physique had improved slightly, and he couldn’t turn into a shut-in now.

Joseph had a problem with that. “Then why can you hide in your workshop for hours every day?”

Luke gave him an astonished look. “Didn’t you just celebrate my birthday with me? I’m an adult. Of course I can arrange my own time.”

Joseph: …Fine, I can only blame myself for being too young.

Joseph’s summer vacation was peaceful and full.

Apart from arranging training for his brother, Luke had a lot of things to do.

His clones were dispatched again and again, and each time, he summoned three to five teammates to use the remote-controlled models to provide backup.

With the American government in a mess, it was much easier to do a cleanup and catch more “fish.”

They didn’t make big waves, however, and caught five main targets at most at any one time. With the clones and robots, it was very easy.

It had already been two months since the D.C. incident in May, but rather than subsiding, the chaos in the government was increasing instead.

Of course, this was thanks to Luke.

He had a lot of information on Hydra, which included the names of many bigwig officials who were suspected of colluding with Hydra.

But Luke only had statements extracted from certain people under hypnosis, and he didn’t have much concrete evidence.

He sent information to the FBI, Homeland Security, the White House, and the Department of Defense every now and then.

Doing this was unlikely to bring down these Hydra conspirators, but it served two purposes.

One was to beat the grass to scare the snake, and cause the more timid of the lot to run.

This gave Luke more fish to catch.

Secondly, even if nobody ran, the various departments would become suspicious and investigate them.

Luke would have more time to fish in troubled waters.

After this “great era” of people going missing, deliberately or otherwise, ended, it would be too risky to make the bigshots in his little black notebook “mysteriously disappear.”

Overall, Luke’s purge operation was very packed, but it wasn’t too taxing. It was a little like an assembly line operation.

In the last two months, he earned close to 900,000 experience and credit points, which was equivalent to two of Pierce.

He had yet to touch the Hydra branch in Japan, and was already very close to level 25.

During this time, an unexpected message was sent via a secret channel – it only contained a time and address.

In the middle of the night, Luke snuck into the company that was at the address and waited quietly in front of a computer. The computer screen lit up.

Then, a text document appeared on the screen, and the other party typed: “Batman?”

Luke typed: “Dark Knight.”

There was no activity for a few minutes later, before the other party typed again: “I have a big secret. I can make a deal with you.”

Luke: “Speak.”

The man said, “You’re interested in the person controlling the Enchantress, so this is a small deposit first. We’ll talk about the rest after you take action.”

A URL address then appeared on the text document, and there was nothing else after that.

Luke directly accessed the URL on the computer and opened a webpage.

It contained a satellite image with an address marked in red. Next to it was a short and simple explanation.

After staring at the image for two minutes, he closed the text document and webpage and left.

A few minutes after he left, the text document on the computer was suddenly deleted and the browser was wiped clean before the computer shut down.

It was as if nothing had happened.

Two days later, there was another message.

The other party had switched to another location, but it was still a dormant office computer, and they still chatted via a text document.

This time, Luke obtained three targets.

Luke noted the information down again and left.

A week later, Luke was contacted for the third time.

This time, the other party was still cautious, but he spoke a lot more.

He praised the Dark Knight for destroying four secret bases in a row.

In the end, the other party gave him a new address and said that it was the last one.

As long as the Dark Knight destroyed this base, he would tell him everything he knew.

Luke smiled when he saw that. Fine. It shouldn’t be too hard for him to find out what he wanted to know after this.

The man was very cautious, but he didn’t know that the target he had provided this time was in several areas which Luke himself had locked onto.

The four bases that he had taken down had also been on his list before.

Now that the person said that this was the “last one,” Luke was certain that this was the main base of the Joint Advanced Research Unit that he had been looking for.

The Enchantress had come out of this base to cause trouble, and the person in charge was Amanda Waller.

The person who had tipped Luke off was the online “shadow man” who had been silent for months.

This time, the moment the shadow man appeared, he requested that the Dark Knight destroy the Joint Advanced Research Unit’s bases.

After testing the waters just twice with four bases, he couldn’t help but throw out the address of the main base.

This guy was clearly in a hurry.

Had the shadow man discovered an opportunity to escape because of the chaos in the government?

Luke’s guess was basically correct, but the shadow man’s situation was actually even more precarious.

Something had happened to Amanda’s backer. Given the possibility of an investigation, she had to purge the base of some “unreliable” people first.

The shadow man had helped her gather a lot of intelligence, but she had to get rid of him no matter how unwilling she might be.

If the bigshots knew that Amanda had so much dirt on them, she would definitely be killed.