Chapter 1451 Research on Manipulation (XVII)

On the third day, Bane came again. When he heard Bruce say good morning in that low tone, he was no longer surprised. He just squatted in front of Bruce's cell door and said.

"I don't know if you are pretending to be driven crazy by the torture inflicted on you by Amanda. Maybe this is your way of teasing or revenge on her, but I am not here to listen to this."

"What do you want to hear?"

"I just want to know about you, about Batman, about..." Bane's tone gradually sank, and after a long time he uttered a word: "About Gotham."

"I don't know what you mean specifically."

"A long time ago, I asked a colleague if there was any good vacation spot to recommend. He told me that Gotham would be a good choice. I think this point of view is very interesting. Perhaps the best place for us criminals to relax is a city of sin."

"So about five years ago, I went on an East Coast trip with a colleague who was quite good. The first stop was the bustling metropolis, and then Gotham. It felt pretty good, It's like going home."

"What's your home like?"

Bane fell silent again. After a while, his voice with a low tremor came from outside the door: "You are smarter than I thought, Batman."

"Thank you for your compliment."

"You have a deeper darkness in your heart than me, but you are more straightforward than me, and use this straightforwardness as a weapon. You have indeed surpassed my assessment of your level. Now I am more interested in you."

"My honor."

"Then tell me, Batman, what happened to the city I saw a month ago?"

"I don't understand what you mean."

"I mean, why in just five years, the legendary dark city disappeared, and Gotham not only had sunshine, but also hope?"

Bane knocked on the door with his hand, making a "winter" sound, and his tone was full of a slightly morbid desire for knowledge.

"Tell me, Batman, what have you done to this city to make it what it is today? Tell me, how did you save Gotham? This is exactly the question I followed you here to ask you."

"Why do you ask that?"

"Because Gotham cannot be saved." Bane's tone finally showed a slight fluctuation, his breathing became heavier, and his speech speed became faster: "Because five years ago, when I saw this city, I judged that even if I replaced you, I could not cure this city, and I believe you can't do it either, so I left."

"That colleague once asked me why I didn't kill you, because when I saw you from a distance, I thought you were too young and immature, and I didn't think you were worthy of being my opponent."

"If I must take you, life, and it is best to make your despair worthy of this city. At that time, I called it a miracle, but you were not worthy of it. At that time, you were still far from it. "

"Thank you for your compliment."

"Batman..." Bane murmured: "A few months ago, I revisited this place out of curiosity-I couldn't believe what I saw. You, a boy who indulged in his childish fantasies and games, used just a few years to chisel a crack in the dark barrier that never sees the sun in Gotham. "

"Now the miracle belongs to you, and I want to know, what is the true face of the miracle?"

"Why do you ask?"

Bane was silent for a while, shorter than his previous silence, and he asked: "Truth for truth, right?"

"What is your home like?"

"A prison, it sounds very Ridiculous, but my mother was captured in the war, and the people who captured my mother decided that if she was pregnant with a boy, then he would pay for his father's crime, and then I was born. "

"It sounds bad."

"Yes, but there are worse things. I was born and raised in prison. There is no such thing as healthy growth. My physique is far inferior to those strong prisoners who were newly imprisoned. I grew up in constant beatings and abuse. "

"And one day, a prisoner wanted to use me to escape from prison, so he pushed me down the tunnel and made me unconscious. Maybe the brain injury changed my mind. I couldn't bear it anymore, so I killed him. "

"I don't know what you mean specifically. "

"In a very cruel way, I removed his mandible and injected it into his stomach. "The warden thought I was very cruel, so he threw me to the bottom of the cell, a dark and narrow place where the tide could rise at any time, and I lived on eating mice." "But this has trained my will and physique. When I really grew up, I seized the power of the prison and ran rampant here. They took advantage of my strong willpower and selected me as a member of the biochemical experiment." "The experience in the laboratory was very boring. As you said, the experimental project was not taken seriously and the doctor was not professional enough. They injected me with a toxin to make me stronger, so I killed them and everyone escaped from the prison. From then on, I became a free mercenary. "

Bane's tone became lower and lower, and after a moment of silence, he asked, "In exchange, aren't you going to reveal some truth about Gotham?"

"I don't know what you mean specifically."

"What do you think Gotham is?"

"Gotham is a city located on the east coast of the United States, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. It has a temperate continental humid climate and has four districts with a total population of nearly 10 million..."

"It seems that I won't get an answer today." Bane stood up, put one hand on the door and said, "I took Amanda's order and lured you here, not just to complete the mission, but also to create a A sufficiently secret way of communication. "

"This method is not glorious, so I owe you, but I must figure this out. You will always answer me. Goodbye, Batman."

"Goodbye, Bane."

An hour later, Bruce woke up again. He blinked confusedly, trying to dispel the illusion in front of his eyes, feeling the silence in his ears, and he said to himself: "... He left? There should be no problem with the automatic reply, right?"

Soon, he became quiet again, obviously immersing himself in the shit mountain code, like every Gotham person has done before, trying to pan for gold in the shit with great perseverance.

On the second, third, and fourth days, Bane appeared outside Bruce's cell every day and talked to him about many things, but rarely got a response.

Bane certainly noticed that Bruce's brief and repetitive answers were wrong, but he thought that since he helped Amanda trick Bruce here, Bruce would think that he and Amanda were in the same group, so it was normal for him to act crazy because of sensory deprivation in front of him.

Bane knew that he had to break through this layer of defense to get the real answer.

But what surprised him first, then shocked him, and finally made him speechless was that for a whole week, this Batman didn't say a word to the only person he could communicate with during the harsh sensory deprivation punishment.

Bane almost admired it.

As we all know, the most severe part of sensory deprivation is that in a completely dark space, people cannot feel the flow of time. This state of complete loneliness seems to last until they die. This is a deep despair that almost no one can resist.

In most cases, sensory deprivation cannot be done very strictly, but Amanda built this prison and naturally spent a lot of thought on the final punishment. The cells used for this punishment are surrounded by maze-like soundproofing devices and are tightly shielded from light. Even the ventilation devices are absolutely silent.

The criminals will be very strictly restrained in the chair, and there is no room for movement except for irregular personal needs. If it were not for the possibility of limb diseases caused by long-term immobility, Amanda even considered directly intubating to solve the problem of eating and excretion.

This is simply a perfect environment for cultivating the Stockholm complex, and Bain is naturally aware of this.

In this case, with a person who can communicate and a way to feel the passage of time, the imprisoned person will definitely go crazy to find a sense of security from it to alleviate the destruction of the will by the terrible loneliness and despair.

Bane wanted to kill Batman, but after he saw the situation in Gotham again, he thought Batman was a miracle, so he, like all the villains in Gotham, did not want to destroy Batman's body, but wanted to completely destroy his spirit, or even further, manipulate his spirit.

Bane's feelings about Batman saving Gotham were not admiration, but just a morbid curiosity. This was malice without reason, and Bane did not need any reason to cross the moral bottom line. His birth and growth were twisted, and morbidity was normal for him.

But now, he really admired Batman. Batman almost completely surpassed the limit of human spirit. The sensory deprivation of two weeks and fourteen days in total, which may be longer and more painful than decades of imprisonment in thinking and feeling, did not make this tough guy say a word.

Because Bane's childhood and adolescence were spent in a completely closed and small space, he could understand how this kind of pain distorted people's spirit and drove people crazy.

He also knew better that if he had a companion at that time, who didn't have to do anything else but just came to talk to him every day, he would be grateful and would do whatever the other party asked him to do.

Loneliness is the greatest enemy of mankind, and mankind in loneliness is the greatest enemy of order.

But for so many days, Bane got nothing except a few repeated answers - he gave in.

Finally, Bane stood in the dark corridor, feeling the boundless silence that he had been extremely afraid of and the loneliness that would still surge in his heart when he recalled the past for many years, and said to Bruce.

"I once thought of breaking your spine and watching you crawling helplessly on the ground, unable to do anything, and being abandoned in the rainy night, because this would allow you to experience the pain I had suffered, not physical pain, but the loneliness and despair brought by powerlessness."

"No matter how you look at it, I have to defend myself. I don't like dynamic bloodshed and conflict."

"I prefer to deprive people of their power, watch them die in silence, and let them understand that in the last moment of their lives, what they fear most is not death, but the loneliness of being abandoned."

"From the moment I was born, I was abandoned by this world."

"But this is not a kind of revenge. I failed to defeat loneliness in loneliness. I chose to escape from loneliness, return to the crowd, and resist with violence, which proves that I lost to it."

"I searched the world and killed countless people in this way, just to prove that I was right-no one can defeat loneliness itself in loneliness."

"Until I met you, Batman."

Bane raised his hand on the door, retracted his arm and hung it by his side, his posture was solemn as if he was saluting something, and he seemed to be sighing softly when he spoke.

"You defeated loneliness, and you defeated me."

Then he put both his hands on the door and said through gritted teeth: "And I just want to know what supported you to defeat it. You must tell me, Batman... Answer me!"

The only answer he got was deeper silence.

At the same time, Bruce's angry and puzzled voice echoed in his spiritual world——

"Why can Schiller do it but I can't???"