Chapter 1194 The Cry of the Lamb (VI)

"Three missing persons cases have occurred in Central City recently. The families of the missing persons gathered at the entrance of the Central City scenic area to protest against the police's inaction, saying that insufficient police force is not an excuse..."

"The 'bone-eating demon' in Seaside City is committing crimes again. A 26-year-old female teacher was found in a wooden house in the suburbs with her ribs taken away. The police are investigating with all their strength, but no effective clues have been found to identify the suspect..."

"Please do not panic, please do not panic. The police force in Imperial City has been fully deployed to search for the 'streetlight killer'. The FBI's criminal investigation team in Pennsylvania has been fully involved in the case..."

"California's 'people' The Skin Hunter has been brought to justice. The seven skinning cases he committed are the most cruel and crazy cases in the history of California crime. Next, our reporter will report the details of the incident for you..."

With a "click", a hand pressed the switch of the radio. Gordon withdrew his hand and pressed it on his eyebrow. He sighed helplessly and said, "What's going on? The whole world is starting to become Gotham?"

"Boss, the news in the past week is really weird. All states are reporting on serial killers. When I turned on the radio, I thought I had tuned to the wrong station and tuned to the local station in Gotham."

One A young police officer was sitting at his desk sorting out documents while shaking his head. A female police officer next to him put down her phone and said in surprise: "In the past week, it seems that there are many more serial killers in various places. Many areas are short of police force. Some places have called us and said that we have experience and want to learn from it."

"Where did this group of people come from?" The young male police officer asked puzzledly: "And why did they commit crimes at the same time?"

Gordon's brows also frowned, and he said in a deep voice: "This is definitely not a coincidence. From my many years of career, , although there are many serial murders every year, this is the first time I have encountered such a dense time of occurrence. "

The female police officer grinned and said: "Moreover, this group of serial killers is much crazier than before. In the past, they could do three or four cases, which could be regarded as a brilliant record, but this time, serial killers in several states killed seven or eight people at will, and the means were extremely cruel, as if they were afraid that others would not know how cruel they were. "

Gordon sighed. Although he did not continue to speak, he had made up his mind in his heart. He had to find Batman and ask what was going on.

It was late at night. Gordon finished all the work for the day, took the car keys, and planned to drive to Wayne Manor to find Bruce, but just as he was about to go out the door, he saw a shadow behind him.

"Batman, you always scare me every time you come here." Gordon shook his head and turned to look at Batman standing in the shadow of the room.

What surprised Gordon was that Batman was in a very bad state. He was covered in rain and looked pale as if he had lost too much blood. Even his eyes looked a little empty.

"Have you been paying attention to the recent news?" Batman's low voice sounded. Without waiting for Gordon to answer, he muttered to himself: "Serial murders have occurred frequently in many places. The number of murderers and the number of crimes have increased more than tenfold in just one week."

"Of course I heard about it." Gordon walked back to his seat and sat down. He took out a few documents, threw them on the table and said: "I wanted to find you and ask you if you knew what was going on. It seems that you don't know either."

"This is related to Schiller." Batman said.

Hearing Schiller's name, Gordon's face stiffened for a moment. He sighed with a complicated expression and said, "He's only been gone for a week, and I thought it had been a year."

After that, Gordon leaned forward, took a pen from the table, fiddled with it in his hand, and then said, "I know that Schiller is guilty. Even if murder is common in this city, it just shows that this city is abnormal and criminals must pay the price for their contempt for the law."

"But I don't think Schiller should be imprisoned in a prison for serious criminals with such a long sentence. Batman, you don't want to know how prisoners are treated in such a prison."

"I know you are all dissatisfied." Batman said, "You think Schiller didn't get a fair trial, and as his most valued student, I didn't fight for justice for him."

Gordon shook his head slightly and said, "No one has the responsibility to fight for something for another person, but I'm worried that hatred for criminals may affect your judgment of justice."

Gordon glanced at Batman again, and seeing that he was not in a good state, he didn't continue.

"Schiller is the leader of these serial killers. He is the founder of a mysterious club that provides a stage for these serial killers to show themselves... He is their shepherd."

Batman's voice fell, Gordon's hands suddenly clenched, he looked back at Batman and said: "You mean, it was Schiller who drove these serial killers to commit crimes crazily?"

"On the contrary." Batman stared into Gordon's eyes and said: "It is precisely because Schiller is gone that these serial killers will commit crimes crazily."

Gordon was stunned for a moment, and he didn't react for a while, but soon Batman said: "Yesterday, Jonathan Crane, who is also a serial killer, found me and asked me if I knew the whereabouts of Schiller."

"When I told him that Schiller had been in prison, he seemed very excited. Then he told me that once the serial killers thought that the owner of this club would not appear again, they would spontaneously start competing."

"When the flock loses its shepherd, all the sheep want to be the leader." Batman's face was very serious, and his tone was still very low. He said: "Just yesterday, I learned about something Schiller has been doing."

"What is it?" Gordon asked.

"Schiller is saving the world."

"What???!"

Gordon stared at Batman with wide eyes, as if he didn't know him. He thought he had heard wrongly. Just when he opened his mouth to ask again, Batman explained:

"Last night, after Jonathan left, I started to investigate information about this mysterious club..."

As Batman told the story, the lights in Wayne Manor slowly lit up. Looking through the bright window panes, Bruce was thinking at the table in the study.

In front of him were piles of newspapers, dating back to two years ago. He spread each newspaper on the table, read it, put it away, and memorized all the contents in his mind.

After about three hours of comparison and sorting, Bruce found that the clues in the so-called newspapers provided by Jonathan might be a trick on him. There were no usable clues in these newspapers.

At this point in the reasoning and investigation, even if Bruce didn't want to use it, he had to start using the exhaustive method.

Bruce searched for keywords such as Schiller, newspapers, serial killers, and all the words derived from these words in his mind, and this process took him about two hours.

Just when he searched for words related to newspapers, Bruce suddenly had an idea and thought of a keyword, which was "thesis".

Coincidentally, Angela printed out a copy of Bruce's thesis when she was reading it in Wayne Manor. Bruce found the printed copy of his own psychology graduation thesis and began to recall the time when he wrote this thesis.

Of course, during the time he was writing the thesis, the most common memory was the constant torture between him and Schiller, and the revision of some of the thesis's minor problems.

And the most headache for Bruce was the symbols.

English writing uses half-width symbols, but many separators must be followed by half-width spaces, and the improper use of commas, separators, and connectors will change the meaning, but long and difficult sentences without separators are prone to grammatical errors. The use of symbols is also an important part of English grammar classes.

Bruce's grammar is very good, but everyone who has written a paper knows that when writing in a daze, it is good to remember the sentence division. It is normal to miss a space here and a separator there.

Just on the issue of symbols, Schiller and Bruce had at least hundreds of rounds of fighting. Sometimes the symbols were changed, and after a large section of the content was changed, the new content and symbols had to be changed again. Sometimes the content was changed, but the symbols had to be changed again because of improper sentence expression.

In this process, Bruce fully understood Schiller's habit of using symbols. If you read some articles in newspapers or magazines with Schiller's habits, it is obvious that some symbols are used incorrectly.

Ordinary regional daily newspapers and some less formal magazines do not have such strict requirements for manuscripts. They are completely different from the requirements of academic papers. It is normal to have symbol errors. Not everyone has a Schiller following them and requiring them to use every symbol correctly.

But if you put this symbol error together with the connection between Schiller's club and the possible serial killer, then the symbol is likely to be an important clue.

After Bruce put all the newspapers and magazines together and compared them repeatedly, he found that the symbol errors in many articles really had a pattern.

These reports were not only about criminal cases, but also some messy content, such as advertisements that can be published for money, gossip, citizen complaints, nutrition science popularization, etc.

Bruce speculated that serial killers published similar articles with symbol errors in newspapers or magazines to inform serial killers who also knew about this matter through the pattern of symbol errors.

And Schiller may have changed the pattern of symbol errors to release different new codes to avoid the prying of some people with ulterior motives.

"By deciphering the pattern of symbol errors, I learned the content of their communication, and I found a fact that shocked me very much." In Gordon's office, Batman's tone trembled, and then said:

"Schiller is not encouraging these serial killers, but controlling them, and even preventing them from killing. He is saving ordinary people."

Gordon's eyes widened as he listened to him. He said to Batman in an extremely ridiculous tone: "Do you know what you are talking about??! How can a club between serial killers stop them from killing people??!"

"It sounds ridiculous, right?" Batman shook his head slightly.

"But the fact is that Schiller has established a series of criteria for judging serial killers. Only serial killers who meet these criteria can be called talented and tasteful serial killers."

"This standard includes, but is not limited to, that each serial killer case should have its own theme, that slaughter without ideas is excluded, that insufficient ideas cannot be made up by quantity, and that cruelty and bloodiness alone are soulless."

Batman's mouth corners turned down, his lips tightly pursed, and then he said: "He created an academic circle of serial killers and set extremely strict standards for this circle."

"He used his cruel, ruthless but extremely self-consistent horror theories to require serial killers to treat each case seriously and carefully, and required them to use a perfect serial killer case to prove their academic status."

" In order to complete the perfect serial murder case he mentioned, this group of murderers had to spend several years to think of a perfect theme, and then spend several more years to find a perfect victim. "

"Then spend several more years to formulate a perfect crime plan, and finally spend several more years to put this plan into practice, and then spend the rest of their lives to savor this perfect serial murder case."

"Becoming the perfect serial killer in Schiller's eyes has become their lifelong pursuit. He has established a new society and shaped new rules for these lunatics who are born perverted, have no sense of morality and shame, and make them feel ashamed of their indiscriminate killings."

Batman slowly closed his eyes, raised his head slightly, and his tone trembled slightly. His pale face was because the trap he had originally imagined was deep enough, but there was an abyss deeper than the deep one.

"He used the serial killers' desire for recognition and perception to forge chains that bound them and guided their actions."

"He let the madmen shout unscrupulously in silence that ordinary people could not see, and while controlling them, he made them love him, shout his name, and sing praises for him."

"And his actions actually saved countless victims who should have died because of the uncontrolled massacre..."

Batman lowered his head again, and in front of him was still the hazy and dreamy moonlight and Schiller's low voice. His voice and Schiller's voice gradually overlapped.

"He knew that after he left, this group of crazy people who had lost control would make me understand everything he had done."

"It also made me understand that he was not destroying, but saving, and he did better than me, saved more than me, and went further than me on this road."

"It made me know that he was not a criminal, but a real educator."

"He wanted to make me love him, respect him, walk on the road he wanted to guide me, and willingly become his gentle lamb."

()