As mentioned before, the first law of Gotham is that no matter how right or standard the start of a situation is, Gothamites will always find a way to botch it, and the second law of Gotham is that Gothamites don't believe in any gods or demons.
It's hard to say that all the residents of a city on the East Coast of the United States are staunch materialistic warriors, but the fact is, whenever Gothamites encounter anything they can't comprehend or doesn't exist in everyday knowledge, they will absolutely not think about supernatural events or divine punishments and disasters. What they do will definitely not involve screaming or fleeing in panic.
When faced with this kind of situation, every native Gothamite will only have one reaction, and that is to find a gun, pull the trigger, empty the magazine, and then approach to verify whether what they can't understand is completely dead.
This is actually a manifestation of survival of the fittest, because people who are startled and only know to run away won't survive in Gotham City.
Therefore, when the first witness of the previous haunting incident, the fisherman, shouted those words, all the mobsters in the third floor corridor of the mental hospital opened fire simultaneously. As the gun muzzles lit up, white beams of light shot out from the windows at both ends of the corridor, illuminating the pitch-dark sky like large spotlights.
How to describe the intensity of the firepower at this moment? In simple terms, Batman and Joker ducked and fled, Penguin Man and Scarecrow rolled and crawled, and Hell Detective Constantine almost caught a direct bus to Hell.
The mobsters in Gotham, although not good-looking on the outside, their insides... are no better.
That night, they were first inexplicably woken up by a ghost, then got into a fierce fire fight, and only after a long battle did they realize that they were being played. They had to painstakingly sweep the building in pursuit of the ghost. The mobsters had long grown impatient.
Pulling the trigger and pouring out bullets is the simplest way to vent their anger. They don't care if they can kill the opposite side, but when the bullets spurt out with rage, the violence factor ingrained in the bones of Gothamites is ignited. The anger burns more and more, tending towards madness, as everyone relentlessly attacks anything green in their sight.
This gave the newly arrived Green Lanterns no time to react. They didn't even have time to turn on their shields and only relied on the flickering green glow on their bodies to block these bullets.
The green energy attached to their bodies indeed blocked the bullets for them, but it didn't shield them from the blast waves. As the first rocket came with a breaking sound, apart from Hal, who had anticipated it, everyone else was blasted away.
After they got up, the first thing they did was not to counterattack, but to run away.
Indeed, the Green Lantern energy is powerful, but the ones who use this energy are still intelligent beings. As long as they have intelligence, they will feel fear.
The Green Lanterns clearly understand that human bullets and explosions have not exceeded the defense range of the Green Lantern energy. In theory, even if they stand where the firepower is the most dense, they will not be in danger of life. But theory is just theory,
For example, humans know that it is unlikely that a goose could kill them, but when a group of big furious geese rush over at you flapping their wings, panic sets in and one still needs to run.
The Green Lanterns had just landed and encountered the angry mobsters right away. They were chased around like ducks, frantically running around the corridor in disarray, looking like green lit headless flies.
"Don't run! Don't run! Come back and counterattack!"
Deputy Carol shouted loudly, but the Green Lanterns who had never seen this scene before were indeed flustered. They each fended for themselves, dashing to any opening, desperately trying to find something to hide behind, resulting in a complete mess in their formation.
In the end, it was Hal who used the Green Lantern energy to pull them all back through the wall, barely holding the line.
"Damn it! Haven't you just been trained?!" Carol angrily shouted: "Didn't the instructor tell you?! The first thing to do when you encounter an attack is to organize a defense line, a united shield!!!!"
But Hal beside him asked: "They 'just had their training'? Don't tell me they are all newbies??"
Carol cursed and said: "I think you should be able to see that the Corps Leader did not take your words seriously at all. The entire second squad is full of newbies who have just taken office. They probably have less experience than you do!"
Hal said in despair: "Don't run! Everyone, don't run! Hold the line! United Shield! Can't you check the tactical manual in the ring?"
But there were still quite a few Green Lanterns who wanted to escape through the window. Their faces were very young, obviously they had just become Lanterns, and these Lanterns looked similar to humans, apparently coming from a similar civilization to that of humans, so they understood more about the danger of heavy firepower.
It wasn't until after half the day that Carol and Hal could organize everyone to calm down. The Green Lanterns, worthy of being the ones who wield the Lantern ring that represents willpower, overcame their fear of bullets and explosives in just a few tens of seconds, barely forming a united shield at the end of the corridor.
After withstanding the first wave of firepower, the next thing to do was to defend and counterattack. Soon, the waves of green energy were shot toward the end of the corridor, directly blowing several mobsters away.