The proliferation of street orphans in Gotham does not mean that all the children in the city are orphans, but having parents is not necessarily a good thing either. Families living at the bottom of society can provide their children with very little and some parents, driven mad by life, demand too much. Therefore, it's hard to say whether these children with parents are fortunate or unfortunate.
But the luckiest children in Gotham are those who were not born. Misfortune does not start with this generation. At the bottom, too many mothers, due to various reasons, have had to give up their own children.
This decision can't even be considered a moral one. If they chose to give birth, it would mean that they might not have full working capacity for several months. This, for the proletariat with no room for error, is terrifying. This is nothing more than human beings' most basic survival instinct.
But it does not mean they won't feel heartbroken. Even if the child was not wanted, people's longing for a happy family life will never change. As long as they have had a shred of anticipation for such life, the pain of losing a child is inevitable.
Bruce, who has lived in the slums for a while, knows where to find the most tears shed by mothers, just like the "hospital" he saw in the East District. There are specialized places in the slums to solve this problem.
The girls who visit here are relatively young, some of them are so young that it makes Bruce want to kill someone.
But only young girls would come here, they usually are inexperienced and those women who have been working for a long time have their own methods to avoid such things happening. After all, having an abortion also requires convalescence. If they can't work, it means they have no income, so they try everything possible to avoid such incidents.
The vast majority of uneducated people need to suffer before they gain experience, most who come here are like that. It is precisely the ignorance of the world in their youth that allows them to you cry a few times. Even though Bruce came here for these tears, he still feels his mood plummet.
Until he saw a boy in the waiting room—it's highly unusual for a male to set foot in such a place. This is not like any gynaecology clinic in the upper city area where gentlemen often accompany their wives to show their care. This is just an underground clinic kept in the dark.
The other girls were also surprised by the appearance of the boy, but no one dared to ask. After observing for a while, Bruce found that the boy did not accompany a girlfriend, but he was there with a younger female friend's friend.
They came earlier, picked up the medicine, and left. Bruce vaguely heard the boy call one of the accompanied girls "Lan". They looked thin, as if they had been starving for a long time, but the boy somehow seemed strange to Bruce.
He didn't act like a Gothamite at all. If there had to be an obvious difference, it would be that he was even trying to be responsible for things that had nothing to do with him—Bruce no longer even considered these things.
After contemplating for a moment, Bruce set about his own business. He was collecting the girls' tears, especially those who came for a review after taking pills. Despite the fact that some of them were becoming increasingly indifferent like adults, they were obviously still grieving for the loss of their children.
The atmosphere here made Bruce feel that he couldn't stay for long. Luckily, there weren't many underground clinics. Accidents always happen. The customers who came here needed to queue up, and Bruce got the tears he wanted in an afternoon.
He found a cat on the streets of Gotham and opened the bottle of tears for it to smell.
This was not a founded ritual. It was just that Bruce knew that there is a special creature in the dreamworld, the cat, all of which are part of the Thousand Cat's Dream.
Bruce had heard the story of the Thousand Cat's Dream from Bat Cat, and knew the powerful force she carried. Her status was probably second only to the Sleep Demon himself, at least far above Jack's.
If so, the cats in the Gotham that Jack created in the Dreamland couldn't bypass the Thousand Cat's Dream either. The story of the Thousand Cat's Dream informed Bruce of her resonance with the grief of losing a child.
Bruce, who has extensively studied mysticism, knew that many magic rituals developed this way. The ancient magicians appealed to demons and angels with their thoughts, and only then could they make deals with them.
Bruce imitated this behavior, and in the end, the Thousand Cat's Dream responded to him.
At first, the Thousand Cat's Dream was very angry. She thought Bruce deceived her because he was not the one who lost the child; he just collected other people's grief.
But when she felt Bruce's aura, the Thousand Cat's Dream chose to help him, which was even beyond Bruce's expectations. The Thousand Cat's Dream told him that everything he did in the real-world Gotham provided countless mothers and children a home.
Bruce didn't know whether she was referring to cats or humans, or perhaps both. In Gotham's renovation project, the houses used for living could keep pets, and the vast majority of people who needed to live in such houses couldn't afford purebred cats. Most were "if you can't outrun me, you're my pet". Perhaps many pregnant stray cats were taken home?
The Thousand Cat's Dream is not human, nor greatly interested in helping humans. So she just vaguely sent a message to the target Bruce described. Bat Cat only understood that Bruce wanted to find her. Although Bat Cat is a cat, she's also Batman; she probably overestimated the seriousness of the matter by ten thousand times.
So, when it comes to Clark and Diana, they unanimously thought Bruce might be fighting a decisive battle with the Sleep Demon.
Despite their anxiety, both of them knew nothing about the Dreamland so they took the safest approach—calling for reinforcement.
At this time, Clark had not been long since graduated from university. If not for the reporting on Gotham City, he would still be an intern reporter. Diana, although she had lived a long time, she spent most of her time in Metropolis as an art consultant.
The number of superheroes they knew could be counted on one hand, let alone those with combat capability. Therefore, Green Lantern Hal, Green Arrow Oliver, and Aquaman Arthur were all summoned by them.
First, they found a safe place to dream. Bat Cat gathered them in their dreams and transported them to one place. From there, they first went to Cat City Gotham in the Kingdom of Dreams before finding the way to Bruce's dream.
The Kingdom of Dreams is not a real continent, it is a unique space composed of countless dream bubbles, meaning they couldn't possibly walk directly to Bruce's dream. They had to think of other methods.
They encountered God in the Kingdom of Dreams.
Why God would appear here requires an explanation that begins with the origin of the Sandman comic series. Although it is a DC comic series, its worldview is relatively independent, concentrating not on superhero battles, but a series of fantastic and strange stories. It has an absurdist, dark flavor with a touch of a Gothic style, and somewhat reminiscent of the spirit of Bacchus.
The author of this series has once stated that some aspects of Sandman's power settings are incompatible with the DC Universe, which results in the unique power of the Sandman from the Endless Family.
There is a common misconception about Sandman's power. Some say that since the Sandman has reshaped God, he can be regarded as God's equal, or at least one of the very few who can influence God.
However, this comes from Lucifer's mention that the external force that shaped God is similar to the Sandman, but here 'similar' means that while Sandman is a collection of dreams, the external force is a collection of divine creatures' beliefs.
No mainstream comic mentions details of the Sandman's influence on God. The intersection between the main worldview and the Sandman comic worldview is only Lucifer.
But because the two world views have differences, if there are places even God's power cannot reach, the Kingdom of Dreams counts as one.
In summary, God was here to find his son.
But he hasn't found him yet. Technically, he could just ask the Sandman, but the problem is the current owners of the Kingdom of Dreams are Constantine and Shiller. It's not that God is afraid of Shiller, he just needs a good reception to find his son.
Although he couldn't ask the Sandman, God could still ask Cat of a Thousand Dreams. Thus, Bat Cat and his team, who wanted to find the answer in the core of Cat of a Thousand Dreams, encountered God.
God directly sent them into Bruce's dream. There was nothing else to it, what Bruce did in Heaven was excellent, and the best part was revealing God's previous diary entries about Lucifer. Lucifer might be annoyed, but God was very delighted and had no problems helping them.
Because it was God himself who sent them in, Shiller and Jack, who now control the Kingdom of Dreams, did not notice a few more people in Gotham.
Upon arriving at the city, Bat Cat and his group were stunned. Isn't this Gotham? How is this pixel-perfect copy possible? Isn't one Gotham enough for those chaotic masters and students?
But they were not subjected to the rules of the game, so they didn't turn into children. Their combined appearance could conservatively be described as a city landmark, making it simple for Bruce to find them.
Bruce spent a lot of effort to convince them he was indeed Bruce, and some more time explaining the current situation to them, but he did not mention the cause of this dream world.
Bruce mainly worried that upon hearing that this was another one of Shiller's messes, they would turn around and leave. Their desertion was something he could see them doing, and he didn't want to lose the reinforcements he had worked so hard to gather.
Standing at the end of a secluded alleyway on Gotham Street, Clark looked at Bruce and said: "Why did you only call us over now? It's dangerous for a child to live alone in any city, and dying in a dream world means truly dying!"
"That wouldn't happen in this world. But you should also have noticed that your superpowers aren't working. That's the special rule of this world, there are no superpower users."
"That's not a problem, at least we are adults." Diana touched Bruce's head and said: "Even if we don't have special powers, educational qualifications, or family background, at least the knowledge we've learned is still in our brains, it wouldn't be hard to get a job."
"Shouldn't we take him away from here?" Hal objected, saying: "What's the point in staying in this city? Isn't this just Gotham? You might as well let him stand on the rooftop of Gotham in the real world. At least he could generate some tourist income."
"There is indeed no point in staying in Gotham of the dream world." Bruce nodded and added: "After all, the situation in the real world is much better than here, but there's more than just Gotham here."
"What do you mean?" Diana sensed a hidden meaning in Bruce's words.
"This is a dream world, any actions taken here won't influence the real world. If you die here, you'll revive. So, don't you have any places you wanted to go to?"
They all froze.
At this time, Bruce pulled out several airplane tickets from his old jacket. The destination on them was a word they found familiar yet strange— "Mexico."