Chapter 1802: Summer in Fool Village (XVI)

A typical English manor is usually divided into a front hall and a back hall. Walking into the symmetrical main entrance of the building, you can see the front hall used for meeting and reception. The symmetrical staircases are either on both sides of the front hall or extend to both sides in the center behind the front hall. Rodriguez Manor is the latter.

The door on the left under the stairs leads to the dining room, where the garden floor-to-ceiling windows are located. The structure on the right is symmetrical to the left, but there is a corridor after opening the door. On the right side of the corridor is the partition area of ​​the back garden, where there are housekeeper rooms, tea rooms, laundry rooms and kitchens, etc.

The room on the left side of the corridor is a reception room with a small fireplace, sofa, piano and mirror cabinet. If you walk straight ahead, you can come to the office with floor-to-ceiling windows, which is the entire structure of the manor hall.

The structural design of the manor building pays great attention to separating the reception area from the private area. In Rodriguez Manor, the active area is the first floor, and the quiet area is the second and third floors.

Although there are offices and study rooms on the second floor of the manor, they are private areas and usually do not receive any guests. Schiller usually reads there in his spare time, while the office in the back hall on the first floor is more suitable for academic discussions with colleagues and friends.

The movement route of guests when they arrive at Rodriguez Manor is as follows: after being led into the manor gate by the butler, they cross the square in the front yard, walk into the main building, and wait in the front hall.

If the owner of the manor is on the second floor at this time, the butler will choose to make a phone call. After getting the permission of the owner of the manor, the butler will take the guests to the reception room in the back hall.

When the owner of the manor comes down from the second floor, he will go to the reception room to greet the guests, and lead the guests to the office in the back hall with the butler, or go to the restaurant from the corridor in the middle of the partition area.

Of course, not every guest will go through the front door. Batman's movement route is to land on the roof of the manor first, walk towards the back hall, jump down and fall directly into the back garden, and then walk forward from the back door of the back garden.

However, since Merkel's housekeeper's room was in the middle of the back hall, even if he was lucky enough not to be caught by the branches, he would be discovered by Merkel on the way to the front hall.

Talia also chose this route, so when she jumped down from the roof of the back yard, she was facing the French window of the office on the right. Schiller was standing in front of the bookshelf behind the French window to check his wine cabinet which was missing a bottle of wine.

There is also a huge wine cabinet in the front hall of the manor. When Constantine first broke into the Rodriguez Manor, he was knocked unconscious by crazy wine there. But since more and more children came in and out of the manor, Schiller moved all the dangerous goods to the wine cabinet in the back hall and asked Merkel to keep a close watch and not let children enter this room easily.

No matter how wide the range of children is, it does not include Batman. In order to deal with Talia, Bruce took a bottle of crazy wine directly from the office in the back hall, and Schiller was standing in front of the wine rack thinking about which bottle of wine to take out from the underground wine cellar to fill the gap.

When Talia saw the figure standing in front of the wine cabinet, her killer instinct made her hair stand on end almost instantly, and the hair follicles on her back became a blower of cold air.

It reminded her of the gorgeous and dangerous Quetzalcoatl painted by the Mayans that she had seen in her father's collection.

When the man turned his head, his scattered gray eyes focused slightly. At that moment, Talia felt like a prey injected with venom.

Something was very, very, very wrong!

Talia clenched her fists tightly, and the intuitive alarm made it almost impossible for her to think rationally. The most terrible thing happened. She met a man whose weakness she could not see at a glance.

It was not without reason that this powerful female killer ignored all the opposite sex. She had a very strong killing instinct against the opposite sex. Even if he was as powerful and perfect as Batman, Talia could still find his weakness when she first faced him.

This made Talia the most beautiful and deadly scorpion in the world. She believed that no man could escape her poisonous tail needle.

Until today, until this moment, Talia found herself in the territory of another dangerous creature. There was no weakness in sight, only perfect human skin woven with gorgeous silk threads, and the colors were dazzling.

Don't listen, don't look, don't be attracted! Just as Talia warned herself in her heart, she saw that the figure had walked to the window without knowing when.

When they looked at each other closely with only a layer of glass, Talia couldn't help herself from looking at the gray eyes hidden behind the frosty glass, as if it was some kind of poisonous antidote spread by Schiller.

Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong! Talia roared in her heart like crazy.

The door opened with a creak, and Schiller only leaned out half of his body. Talia heard him say, "Come in."

The killer's infiltration was a stupid decision. Talia took a deep breath in her heart and thought that this made her not know where the garden door was even if she wanted to turn around and run away. Returning the original way was more like a joke. She felt weak in her legs.

As if Schiller had guessed what she was thinking, he turned his head slightly to look at the big tree in the middle of the garden, smiled to himself and said, "You are lucky. You don't want to know how many people have been hung on that tree."

He was telling the truth! Talia roared in her heart again, because she couldn't hear a hint of lies, and at the same time she thought sarcastically in her heart, is it only on the tree? She bet that there were at least twenty people's bones buried under the land of this garden.

This is the consequence of being blinded by anger. Talia cursed Bruce ten thousand times in her heart, but she also knew that things had come to this point and she could only take one step at a time.

If she rushed in without permission first, and then turned away regardless of the invitation of the owner of the manor, then even if Schiller was an ordinary Gotham man, the possibility that she would be hung on the tree in a few minutes was not zero, and the current Schiller was not only not an ordinary Gotham man, but might not even be Schiller.

As Talia walked towards the door, she thought in the turbulence of anger and panic, he was not Schiller, the psychology professor who appeared in the FBI for malfeasance investigation was not like this, he was not so... perfect.

Talia could only use this word to describe Schiller now, but it was not a compliment, but more like a symbol of terror. The man in front of her looked like a human, but he was not - he was too perfect.

His appearance, clothing, expression, words and deeds all emphasized that he was a perfect person. The key point was that he was a human, but people would not emphasize that they were human. Only monsters would carefully weave a human skin for themselves.

Talia's shoe tip still touched the threshold of the manor, and the slight "click" sound seemed to scare her a lot. Talia shrank imperceptibly.

Schiller stood next to the door that opened outwards, leaving just enough space for Talia to pass through, but now Talia faced a problem - if she walked in with her head held high, her shoulder would inevitably brush against Schiller's chest, and if she didn't want to have physical contact with this man, she had to retract her arms, buckle her shoulders inward, and get in through the crack of the door in a contracted posture.

Talia had never felt distressed about having physical contact with any member of the opposite sex. No, it was not distress, but more like fear, similar to touching a corrosive liquid with your hands. Every cell in Talia's body was clamoring for rejection.

She took back her arms and hugged them in front of her, slightly contracted her chest and passed through the crack of the door. This posture was not inelegant, but Talia vaguely felt that Schiller seemed to force her to do so. He only gave her this choice.

What's the point? Talia hasn't figured it out yet.

Talia, immersed in thinking, didn't realize that she had been standing there stupidly for a long time.

Her right foot had landed, the tip of her shoe was against the threshold, and the heel of her left foot had just been lifted. The whole person was in a state of exchanging the center of gravity, so it was not surprising that Schiller reached out to support her left arm, and slightly exerted force to lead her to take the last step, and the two stood in the office together.

When Talia came to her senses, the door was already closed. She felt that the remaining oxygen in her body disappeared with the closed door. Her body entered the prison and her soul remained outside the door.

The temperature in the room was lower than Talia imagined. She keenly felt that the air flow was exchanging somewhere. The air conditioner was turned on in this room. The moisture that had just been stained in the humid garden turned into comfortable dryness in a short while.

Talia took a breath and saw Schiller walking towards the sofa by the French window with his back to her, then came to the single sofa on one side, pulled the sofa open and looked at Talia.

This was an obvious social hint. Talia knew that there was no possibility that she could not understand it. She did not have any hope that Schiller would imagine her as a silly girl who did not know any etiquette. Her intuition told her that the only consequence of pretending to be stupid was to become a living sacrifice on the table of Quetzalcoatl.

Talia walked over to the gap between the sofa and the coffee table, reached forward to gather the long skirt on the lower body, and sat on the sofa.

And she herself did not realize that when she came in through the not-so-wide door with her arms folded and her chest huddled, this posture had been fixed on her body. Even now that she was sitting on a soft and comfortable sofa, her shoulders had not been opened, and her entire chest had shrunk inward.

This posture cannot be called elegant. At banquets of various celebrities, everyone would stretch their chests and stretch their necks, like swans swimming on the lake. In addition to this, it can better show their faces and neck ornaments, and also convey to others the social signal of "I am confident and full of confidence".

In contrast, when people are tired, they tend to relax their shoulder and neck muscles and let the whole person collapse. This is a relaxed posture of the body based on self-protection. When people are not confident or want to escape, their body language will instinctively imitate this posture, lowering their heads and huddling their chests, and holding their hands in front of them.

Psychological activities will shape body posture, and in turn, changing body posture may also affect psychology and emotions. When people stretch their limbs, their emotions will also relax, but if they keep curled up for a long time, they will be irritable, nervous, anxious and other emotions.

This is a way of applying psychology, that is, shaping posture through the environment, and then using posture to influence psychology.

The usual way of using it is to create a relaxing and comfortable environment so that people can let down their guard and accept psychological treatment.

But on the other hand, it can also create an uncomfortable and narrow space, forcing people to curl up their limbs, creating anxiety for them without them realizing it, and making them feel irritable, nervous, and avoidant by restricting their limbs.

More importantly, when the other party does not realize where their anxiety comes from, they will gradually lose confidence in their ability to manage emotions, and then become confused in consciousness and perception, becoming more easily guided and controlled.