Chapter 1192 The Cry of the Lamb (IV)

Gotham had another cold rainy night. In the season of transition from spring to summer, the rain brought the chill of late spring that had not yet faded. Before the freshness and warmth of early summer could be integrated into it, it was frozen into fine ice chips on the cold stone road. The coldness condensed in the dark night evaporated into mist in the skylight and disappeared.

Leather shoes stepped on the stone road, bringing up slight water splashes. A pair of slightly old hands grasped the door handle, pushed open the heavy door of Wayne Manor, and hung the towel wet by the mist on the hanger next to it.

Alfred held the kettle in one hand and spread the newspaper next to him on the round table with the other hand. He placed the boiling kettle on the newspaper, took out a cup from the cupboard, gently rinsed the cup with boiling water, and then poured it out of the door. The mist from the hot water was like the muzzle of a shotgun after firing.

After the cup became warm, Alfred took out another bottle of wine from the wine cabinet above. The wine flowed into the cup. The warm cup wall was like a person's lips, teeth, throat and tongue. The aroma of the wine spread out, which seemed rich and heavy.

He pinched the upper half of the cup with his gloved hands and placed it on the tray. He took a new towel from the side of the cabinet and put it on his arm. Alfred came to the sofa with the tray.

Bruce was holding a pile of documents on the sofa and looking at them carefully. Alfred gently placed the wine glass in front of him. Bruce said without raising his head: "Thank you, Alfred."

Alfred nodded and left. On the way upstairs, he passed by Jason. Jason looked back at the old butler's back, shook his head gently, and ran downstairs quickly.

"Bruce, it's so late, why aren't you sleeping yet?" Jason ran to sit opposite Bruce, looked at him and said, "You seem to be worried?"

Bruce put the file down a little, revealing his eyes, he looked at Jason and said, "You haven't slept either, have you? Are you worried too?"

Jason sighed softly, looked at Bruce seriously and said, "You looked bad when you came back, anyone can see that you may have encountered something, believe it or not, besides me, Dick and Tim also didn't sleep, but they were too embarrassed to come to you."

"What about you?" Bruce asked.

"I don't care about that." Jason shrugged and said, "The boundary between caring and spying is always unclear. Tim admires you and doesn't want to leave a bad impression on you. He is afraid that you will think he is spying on you, so even if he is not sleeping, he pretends to be asleep."

"Dick is always worried about gains and losses. Sometimes he thinks he should care about you, and sometimes he thinks that if he shows too much care about you, you will think he has no opinion. So although he is not sleeping, he pretends to be asleep."

"And I..." Jason shook his head and said, "I like to speak directly and don't like to guess. Even if everyone suspects that I have other intentions, as long as I have a clear conscience, I don't care what they think."

Bruce slowly put down the file. He reached out and touched Jason's head. The touch was not very good. Jason's hair was hard and felt like the bushes outside. It was a bit prickly, but it was just like his personality, with pure wildness.

"Go and call them down. I have something to talk to you about." Bruce looked at Jason and said.

Jason pursed his lips, jumped off the sofa, and ran upstairs quickly, almost bumping into Alfred who was walking downstairs. Like a reckless lion cub, he rushed to Dick's door and knocked on it, then rushed directly into Tim's room and pulled him out.

Judging from their expressions, they really didn't sleep. Even Tim put his ear to the bedroom door a second before the door opened, listening to the movement outside.

Dick was wearing a dark orange striped pajamas and holding a pillow in his hand. Tim was wearing a common nightgown for young masters of rich families, wearing an inappropriate nightcap, and holding a teddy bear in his hand.

The two walked down the stairs one after the other and came to the sofa. Jason pulled Tim and they sat opposite Bruce. Bruce turned his head and looked up at Dick, and patted the place next to him with his hand.

Dick sniffed, rubbed the area under his lips with his hand, and walked over to sit down in his slippers.

"I want to tell you about what I've encountered recently." Bruce leaned back completely on the chair. From his expression, it can be seen that he seemed a little decadent, tired, and a little overwhelmed.

But when he spoke, his attitude was not serious at all. Perhaps he just wanted to find a few listeners, rather than really wanting to get any advice.

"Just think of it as today's bedtime story." Bruce slowed down his tone and said in an extremely hypnotic tone: "The story has to start with a broccoli... Professor Schiller Rodriguez, who you may have heard of or is very familiar with, has a very serious broccoli allergy."

The man's low and gentle voice echoed in the empty manor hall, and the moonlight shining through the Gothic floor-to-ceiling windows also rose and fell for a long time.

The terrible chaos of Gotham, which has been plunged into turmoil by a crazy virus, the fantastic scenes of the spirit world, the legendary adventure of hell, the destroyed bookstore street, the Falconet family banquet, the terrible serial killer, the lamb that has shed all its blood, and the shepherd who has sunk into darkness but is omnipresent...

The three children sitting on the sofa were deeply attracted by these mysterious adventures. They listened more fascinated than the moonlight. In the cold rainy night of Gotham, nothing could make people sleep better than this slightly scary story.

After telling the whole story, Bruce was silent for a while and said:

"I know you want to ask, why didn't I go to Schiller, but came back here? But this is the cleverness of this trap."

Bruce put his hands in front of him, relaxed his shoulders, raised his head, leaned on the back of the sofa, stared at the ceiling and said:

"I think this is a morbid conspiracy from beginning to end. He not only guided me, but also Pride. Maybe a long time ago, he told the professor that he would organize a graduation exam. The question is whether I have learned anything from Pride."

"So, Pride kept teaching me and even revealed some of the questions to me. , I hope I can get a good grade. "

"As expected, I failed the first test without any preparation, but this is not the end, but just the beginning, everything is for the final trap. "

"No one will admit defeat." Bruce closed his eyes in some pain, he said: "I am like this, my teacher is like this, neither of us can accept that after four years of mutual torture, we have not been able to make any progress from each other. "

Bruce took a deep breath, paused, and then said: "I am eager to win, eager to pass this exam to prove to everyone that I have made great progress in psychology. I have made progress. "

"But this is the terrible bait that lures me into the trap. Pathology knows that I want to win, and I also know that I can figure out how to win."

"In the previous exams, the most serious mistake I made was to follow Schiller's thinking, be bewitched by him, and sacrifice to him. In the end, I not only did not realize the danger, but also moved myself, like a docile lamb."

"So, when I wanted to prove that I could pass the exam, I knew I had to resist, and I had to take the initiative to prove that I was not tamed by him, and that I was Batman, not someone's lamb."

"But how can I defeat Schiller?"

Bruce asked a question, his eyes looked a little Distracted, as if returning to the thoughts of that moment, he paused for a moment before continuing:

"At that time, I didn't notice at all that when I started thinking about this problem, I had already stepped into the trap. My desire was the sweet bait on the trap."

"But the answer I got at that time was that I needed to deceive Schiller and make him pay the price."

"The way to defeat a person is nothing more than this, defeat him with wisdom and knock him down with strength. I used my own strategy to bring Schiller to justice, and I could achieve both goals at the same time."

"I did it."

Bruce's voice sank, and it was obvious that the next words were part of his painful memories.

"But at that moment, I realized that this was a complete trap, from beginning to end, the morbid purpose was to make me fall into the current state."

"In the confrontation with Schiller, I won, but sacrificed everything I cared about and insisted on."

"Because of my competitive spirit, I framed my teacher with a non-existent crime, which violated my moral bottom line and the law."

"I chose victory, but turned myself into a ruthless criminal, no different from my enemies all the time."

Bruce's fingertips began to tremble constantly, and Dick looked at him with a very worried look. Dick glanced around in a panic, trying to concentrate his mind, and then said: "But you can still save it, you can go and save Professor Schiller!"

"I said, this is the most subtle part of this trap." Bruce turned his head and looked at Dick with some lifeless eyes and said:

"Dick, jailbreaking is also illegal and immoral."

Tim took a breath, He stared into Bruce's eyes and said, "You don't mean to say that Professor Schiller had predicted this day, did he?"

"Schiller predicted that you would use less glorious means to win, which made you feel regretful and painful for it."

"He also predicted that you would regret and suffer for it, and when you wanted to redeem yourself, you found that you could only use less glorious means, which made you even more painful."

"He guessed every bit of your desire and turned it into poison."

Tim covered his eyes with his hands, and when he put his hands down, he looked at Bruce with a hint of sympathy. He glanced at Jason and whispered, "I take back what I said before. Even if he is your enemy, he would not..."

"I have seen his past in Schiller's mind hall." Bruce stared at the front with a dull look in his eyes, and slowly said, "He was imprisoned in a mental hospital without sunlight for a long time. It was also a terrible memory for him."

"I know that when I know that Schiller will be imprisoned in the same prison without sunlight, I will definitely want to save him because of my feelings for him and my sense of justice."

"But if I really go there, to break into the prison, to destroy public order by illegal and immoral means, I will do as he wishes, use the means he taught me, commit the crime he wants me to commit, and become his docile lamb."

"So now, I am trapped here, trapped in the same prison cell without sunlight, unable to move forward or backward."

"I am also trapped in the iron chains that bind the lambs, unable to be silent or shout."

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