Chapter 165: The Long Easter (Part Five)_2

Collapsed buildings, ruined walls along the streets, flooded stores, and icebound cars. As images of the aftermath circulated, the Court of Owls became a universally despised band of cruel terrorists.

Amid the flood of confusing news reports, the numbers for casualties started to inflate more and more exaggeratedly. From tens of thousands initially to hundreds of thousands later, in the end, it seemed that more than half of Gotham's citizens had either died or been injured.

Interestingly, rather than relief efforts, donation campaigns began much quicker. Numerous newspapers published donation channels and Gotham hosted dozens of charity dinners within a week leading up to Easter.

On a cold weekend morning, the breeze from the window stirs the reports on the desk of the city council office.

Thin pages flipped by one after another, the numbers kept climbing. Then, a stamp was pressed onto the final report with a click. Roy lifted his hand, handed the report to one of his subordinates, and said, "Happy Easter."

As his words fell, tree branches began to grow outside the window. Fresh green buds sprouted from the branches, marking the beginning of the largest reconstruction in Gotham's history.

Previously, Gotham's methods of structural adjustment were a patchwork affair. If there was an open space, a warehouse was built, if there was another, a station was opened. This made the professors who study city planning at Gotham University scratch their heads. Although this piecemeal method was the worst, there was no other option at the time.

But this time was different. Due to the combination of a flood and a freeze, the expansion of water turning into ice had cracked the vast majority of the surface. If no repairs were undertaken, transportation would become impossible.

Even those unwilling to have their territories transformed had no choice. The roads were so badly damaged that they were impassable. If you didn't participate in the transformation, you'd have no choice but to stay home and starve.

With things having come this far and damage already done, if people wanted to keep living, repairs had to be made.

Overnight, the unemployment rate in Gotham almost hit 0. There was a need for labor everywhere, rebuilding sewers, repairing roads and collapsed houses, setting up new logistical infrastructure according to the new plan...

It might sound irrational because there was no immediate return on investment, but the organizers would need to pay massive upfront labor costs, a sum astronomical in size.

But thanks to the Court of Owls, who had been stripped of their wealth, the mob colluded and locked up the unfortunate ones who, hoping to survive, begrudgingly funded the rebuilding of Gotham with their fortune. Even if there was no immediate return on the investment, they had enough to keep going.

With the money and labor in place, the reconstruction plan proceeded smoothly. Moreover, the benefits from the layer of ice underground were not just limited to one.

Gotham is a city on the East Coast, with a humid, subtropical monsoon climate. Each season is discernible from the last—it's cold in the winter and hot in the summer.

In the past, by April, the temperature would have already risen significantly, heralding the start of a scorching summer. However, the massive layer of ice underground suddenly altered the local climate, bringing down Gotham's average temperature more than 10 degrees, back to early winter levels.

The citizens of Gotham City found it difficult to adjust to this climate, leading to a high incidence of the common cold these past few days.

However, some people were actually looking for a place to escape the heat.

Not all places on the East Coast have distinct seasons like Gotham. In some places, it's already blazing hot by April. For these people wanting to escape the heat, they have to go further north. Now, Gotham is the nearest city with low temperatures.

Of course, they wouldn't dare to come to Gotham City for tourism. But the climate change in Gotham also impacted the surrounding areas, like Brood Haven. Suddenly, Brood Haven's tourism started to thrive.

Brood Haven was getting dizzy from the windfall coming from above.

In reality, it's just a small city. It was never heavily developed due to its proximity to Gotham, but it retained plenty of natural rural beauty. And it doesn't rain as often as Gotham does.

Since Gotham's climate change, Brood Haven has enjoyed sunny daytime and cool evenings, pleasantly comfortable, attracting tourists from surrounding cities.

Because Brood Haven is so near to Gotham, news from Gotham reaches it first.

However, to these tourists, Gotham didn't look like a terrifying city rampant with murder or daily incidents of violence. All the news coming from Gotham summed up to two words—labor shortage.

As mentioned before, although Gotham had a large local population, the residents had been idle for far too long and were incredibly inefficient. Even with full unemployment, there still weren't enough workers to rebuild such a large city.

While Gotham is a metropolis, there weren't many migrant laborers. During this era of infrastructure upgrades, labor shortages became the biggest bottleneck in efficiency. Seeing this, the big mafia frantically started hunting for workers, even offering high wages to attract laborers from other places.

The old saying goes, a forest will have all kinds of birds, a crowd will include all sorts of people. There are always a few who aren't afraid of death. Indeed, there were a few individuals daring enough to risk their lives to work in Gotham.

Actually, they weren't just chasing thrills, but the mob's wages were too high to resist. After all, it was just money plucked from the feathers of the owls. The mob didn't mind spending it, and they kept raising the daily wages, making it hard for people not to be tempted.