Chapter 1157: Professor (37)

Bruce fell into deep thought.

This was not the first time he had received a viewpoint from Shiler that he had never heard before—one with a quite peculiar angle, yet one that seemed very reasonable—but this time, the angle was exceptionally peculiar.

In the worldview of a normal human, laziness is always wrong, but Shiler was now telling him that if a person had no laziness, they might become even more terrifying.

Actually, Bruce knew in his heart that he had all the symptoms Shiler mentioned. Although there had been some improvement, they still manifested.

The most typical one was that, from childhood to adulthood, Bruce had felt several times that when he achieved a certain accomplishment, a voice inside him told him that this was nothing worth being happy about—it was just an insignificant achievement.

But at the same time, another voice told him that he was a peerless genius different from everyone else, that the achievements he had attained surpassed everyone, and that he was a great person unprecedented in history.

When he was still very young, Bruce felt confused about this; he even suspected that he might be a bit split.

Why was there always one force suppressing his excitement, while at the same time, another force was making him excessively affirm himself?

Until he grew into an adult, Bruce never found a clear answer.

And today, he almost never felt happy about any achievement he attained. At the same time, he had already believed from the bottom of his heart that he was a peerless genius.

Although the facts were indeed so, thinking about the process that led to these two results—where did these two mysterious forces come from?

Bruce placed both hands on the table, leaned forward, and looked at Shiler, saying, "Are you saying this is because I don't have laziness?"

"The inertia of the human brain is stronger than you imagine," Shiler stared into Bruce's eyes without blinking. "I think you must have read a theory, which is that humans can be domesticated."

"The brain is the same. When you constantly exercise a part of your thinking, it becomes stronger, reacts faster, and executes with more force."

Bruce nodded. This was not some profound or obscure knowledge; even people who hadn't studied psychology had heard of it.

For example, the development and exercise of the left and right brains. The vast majority of human body organs, within a reasonable range of exercise, become stronger the more they are used, even vitreous deformation caused by excessive eye use—that is, nearsightedness—is actually the result of exercise becoming stronger.

"If you only constantly execute things into place and gain successful experience, then your brain will only process similar emotions. This leads to two results: one is what I said before—long-term low mood and depression, irritability and violence, as well as excessive arrogance and narcissism."

"The other situation is that when faced with sudden failure, your brain, because it cannot handle negative emotions, causes these emotions to be unable to be balanced, leading to excessive pessimism, thereby producing mental illness."

"This is why, in the eyes of many people, some depression patients were originally sailing smoothly, but encountered a small matter and suddenly became depressed."

"Or rather, the probability of successful people suddenly suffering a blow and contracting mental illness is higher than that of ordinary people. It is precisely because their brains are not good at handling the negative emotions when failing, leading to emotions that are too deep and heavy, unable to be balanced, and becoming an illness over time."

Bruce lowered his head to think for a few minutes, then looked up at Shiler again and said, "Then how did you acquire the trait of sloth?"

"I spent about a few years piecing it together from all kinds of negative personality traits before I managed to pinch out something called sloth, but in reality, it's a four-unlike stitch-monster."

Shiler touched his own forehead and recalled while saying, "At that time, my attitude toward psychological treatment was no better than yours. In most cases, it was mainly about fooling around."

"At that time, my attitude toward the homework left by that psychologist was about the same as your attitude toward my thesis. On the night before the homework was due, I started a life-and-death speed run, just so there would be something to hand in the next day."

Bruce looked at Shiler's face. He now knew why Shiler could always tell whose thesis in the class was rushed out the night before.

Because he had been rained on himself, so he tore up everyone else's umbrellas, right?

"But later, I realized that this doctor was right. Certain components in my brain, because they were not often exercised, had completely rusted. I had to find a way to make them move."

"So, I began to very carefully construct the personality trait of sloth, but actually, this was very difficult." Shiler shook his head and said, "This was completely counter-intuitive. I originally couldn't feel any inexplicable resistance, and to force myself to imagine there was such resistance, and to have to let things fail because of it—this was simply too difficult."

"Until before I came to Cat Getan, this personality was still a four-unlike."

"However, because this city is indeed full of crises, and I did indeed mess up some things, the frequency of experiencing failure was much higher than before, so it was actually beneficial for me to construct this personality trait."

After finishing, Shiler began to count on his fingers: "Catwoman stealing the diamond bottle containing the symbiote, Green Lantern causing a scene at the psychiatric hospital and causing me to lose an office, Hal destroying the central turntable and causing me to get stuck in traffic, the Court of Owls breaking my car on the way to a holiday, getting seasick and ending up on a desert island while on a holiday, your helicopter engine blowing up my tower, Bat-Cat and Pikachu blowing up my house..."

Bruce covered his forehead. He felt that the trace of sympathy that had just appeared in his heart must have been a hallucination. He hadn't noticed that Shiler's life over the past four years had been no less exciting than his own.

"In short, under my deliberate indulgence, although the people who caused these things all had some small accidents, the failures also became real failures. I didn't deliberately try to save them."

"In this stage, the trait of sloth had gradually become an independent trait from a stitch-monster, possessing the ability to act independently, and the next turning point happened recently."

"The arrogance that was originally split into two halves is gradually merging into one, and the most powerful greed has also gained more powerful strength. But in fact, this process was the biggest failure for both of them; they suffered a great blow."

Hearing Shiler say this, Bruce gradually frowned. He thought carefully: the original Shiler was also a born serial killer, and therefore, had the traits that other born serial killers had.

What could break their defenses the most was not debating with them and convincing them, but completely ignoring and not caring about them.

The things that Arrogance did and the arrangements he made were actually completely ignored by his friends. For him, it was indeed a great blow.

"The negative emotions generated by their failure can inversely shape the personality trait of sloth, but at the same time, they also gained more powerful strength, which can increase the intensity of the personality trait fragments. Just like that, the real sloth was born."

"And the reason why I said I am mediocre and a normal person is precisely because, from then on, I possessed all the traits that normal people should possess." Shiler also leaned his body forward, staring into Bruce's eyes and saying:

"For me now, thinking and emotions are like a mystery. I can no longer control that precision machine, shielding what I want to shield and leaving what I want to leave."

"When I do something, I will also feel inexplicable resistance, making me want to give up. After giving up, because I didn't achieve results, I will conversely think, how good it would have been if I hadn't given up at that time."

"At the same time, I have also lost most of the foresight that can be brought about by precise calculation and rational judgment. Simply put, I have lost the ability to take hundreds of turns around a thing, and like a normal person, I am taking it one step at a time."

"What is the benefit of this?" Bruce asked, completely baffled. "You went to great lengths to turn yourself into a weakling?"

Shiler shook his head helplessly and said, "Did you even listen carefully to what I said before? You feel that normal people live more bitterly than you, so they are all weaklings? Is there a possibility that normal people are actually much happier than you?"

Shiler, as if facing a piece of rotten wood, had to take a deep breath, stood up, supported his hands on the desktop, looked at Bruce, and said, "I ask you, why did you become stronger?"

"To save the world?" Bruce answered somewhat uncertainly.

"Then by saving the world, what can you get?"

"I don't want to get anything." Bruce was a little firmer.

"No, you want to get happiness." Shiler looked down at his eyes and said, "Then why can't I abandon the ability to save the world and directly exchange it for happiness?"

Bruce pursed his lips, appearing very disapproving. He raised a question: "If you become a normal person, how do you plan to deal with those serial killers who come one after another?"

"I already said, don't imagine normal people as fools. As long as there is no special mental illness and the ability does not exceed a certain limit value, they all count as normal people. Could it be that there are no detectives among normal people?"

"Are you sure a detective can take out two serial killers in three nights? Perhaps even more than two." Bruce looked Shiler up and down and said.

"If your imagination could be as rich as it is now when you are writing your thesis, that would be great." Shiler rolled his eyes.

After finishing, he stood up, walked to the phone on the cabinet, picked up the receiver, and then dialed. Shiler said to the other side:

"Commissioner Gordon, it's like this. Recently, I learned that a serial killer has set their sights on me. I hope to get police protection... Oh, is that so? Alright, I'll go to the Cat Getan Police Department to discuss it in detail later."

When Shiler put down the phone, the morning light just happened to shine into the room. A newsboy ran past the room door in a flash, and through the newspaper delivery slot on top of the cabinet, threw in a brand-new newspaper.

Shiler picked up the newspaper that had just been delivered, and while unfolding it, walked back to Bruce's side. Bruce pointed at his left hand and said, "You got ink on your hand. Do you really not plan to wear finger cots?"

Shiler closed the newspaper with a "snap," tilted his head, and looked at Bruce from above his glasses.

"If your hands get dirty, you can wash them... a fun fact."