Chapter 1175: The Cry of the Lamb (Part 4)

Cat Getan was having another cold rain. In the season of alternating spring and summer, the rainwater carried the chill that hadn't faded from late spring. The vitality and enthusiasm of early summer hadn't yet blended in, and it had already been frozen into fine ice shards by the coldness condensed in the dark night on the black stone road, evaporating into a thin mist in the daylight, disappearing without a trace.

Leather shoes stepped on the stone road, bringing up slight splashes. A pair of slightly aged hands grasped the doorknob, pushed open the heavy door of Wayne Manor, and hung the towel stained with mist on the coat rack beside it.

Alfred held a water pot in one hand and spread the newspaper on the round table with the other, placed the boiling water pot on the newspaper, took a cup from the cupboard, rinsed it lightly with boiling water, and then splashed it outside the door. The mist raised by the hot water was like the muzzle of a hunting rifle after firing.

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

The gloved hand pinched the upper half of the cup and placed it on the tray. Alfred took a new towel from the side of the cabinet, draped it over his arm, and carried the tray to the side of the sofa.

On the sofa, Bruce was looking at a stack of documents carefully. Bruce didn't lift his head and said: "Thank you, Alfred."

Alfred nodded and left. In the process of going upstairs, he brushed past Jason. Jason looked back at the old butler's back, shook his head slightly, and ran downstairs quickly.

"Bruce, it's so late, why aren't you sleeping?" Jason ran to sit opposite Bruce and looked at him: "You seem to have something on your mind?"

Bruce lowered the documents a little, revealing his eyes. He looked at Jason and said: "Aren't you also not sleeping? Do you also have something on your mind?"

Jason sighed softly, looked at Bruce seriously, and said: "Your complexion wasn't good when you came back. Anyone could see that you probably encountered some things. Do you believe it? Except for me, Dick and Tim are also not sleeping, they are just too embarrassed to come to you."

"And you?" Bruce asked.

"I don't care about these." Jason shrugged and said: "The boundary between concern and prying is never clear enough. Tim admires you and doesn't want to leave a bad impression on you, so he's afraid you'll think he's prying, so even if he's not sleeping, he pretends to be."

"Dick is always worried about gains and losses. Sometimes he feels he should care about you, sometimes he feels that if he shows too much concern, you'll think he has no opinion, so although he's not sleeping, he also pretends to be."

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

Bruce slowly put down the documents. He reached out and touched Jason's head. The feel wasn't very good; Jason's hair was hard, feeling like the bushes outside, a bit prickly, but just like his personality, it carried pure wildness.

"You go call them both down. I have something I want to talk to you about." Bruce looked at Jason and said.

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

From their expressions, they were indeed not sleeping, and Tim even had his ear pressed against the bedroom door to listen to the movement outside the second before the door opened.

Dick was wearing dark orange striped pajamas and holding a pillow. Tim was wearing pajamas common to wealthy young masters and a not-so-fitting nightcap, holding a toy bear.

The two walked down the stairs one after another and came to the side of the sofa. Jason tugged at Tim, and the two sat opposite Bruce. Bruce turned his head and looked up at Dick, patting the seat beside him with his hand.

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

"I want to tell you about the things I encountered recently." Bruce leaned his back completely against the back of the chair. From his expression, it could be seen that he appeared somewhat decadent and exhausted, and also somewhat at a loss.

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

"You can just treat it as a bedtime story for today." Bruce slowed down his tone and used an extremely hypnotic tone: "The story has to start from a head of broccoli... A Professor Shiler Rodriguez, whom you may have heard of or are very familiar with, has a very serious broccoli allergy."

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

The terrible chaos in Cat Getan caused by the madness virus, the fantasy scenes of the spirit world, the legendary adventures in hell, the destroyed bookstore street, the banquet of the Falcone family, the terrible serial killer, and the lamb that bled out, and the shepherd who sank into darkness but was everywhere...

The three children sitting on the sofa were deeply attracted by these mysterious adventures. They listened more intently than the moonlight. On a cold rainy night in Cat Getan, nothing could make people sleep better than this kind of story with a slightly terrifying color.

After finishing the whole story, Bruce was silent for a while in place and said:

"I know you want to ask why I didn't go find Shiler but returned here? But this is exactly the cleverness of this trap."

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

"I think this was a pathological conspiracy from beginning to end. He not only guided me but also guided arrogance. Perhaps a long time ago, he told that professor that he was going to organize a graduation exam, and the exam question was whether I had learned anything from arrogance."

"So, arrogance kept teaching me, and even revealed part of the questions to me, hoping that I could achieve a good grade."

"As expected, I, who was completely unprepared, failed the first exam, but this actually wasn't the end at all, but just the beginning. Everything was for the final trap."

"No one will admit defeat." Bruce closed his eyes somewhat painfully and said: "I am like this, and my teacher is like this. Neither of us can accept the ending that after four years of mutual torture, neither of us has made any progress from each other."

Bruce took a deep breath, paused, and continued: "I desperately craved victory, craved to be able to prove to everyone through this exam that I had made progress on this path of psychology."

"But this is exactly the terrible bait that lured me into the trap. Pathological knew I wanted to win, and also knew that I could think of how to win."

"In the previous exams, the most serious mistake I made was always following Shiler's train of thought, being bewitched by him, sacrificing to him, and in the end, not only did I not realize the danger, but I was also self-moved, like a tame 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 hadn't been tamed by him, to prove that I was Batman, not anyone's lamb."

"But how could I defeat Shiler?"

Bruce raised a question. His eyes appeared somewhat scattered, as if his thoughts had returned to that moment. After pausing slightly, he continued:

"At that time, I didn't notice at all that when I started thinking about this question, 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 Shiler and make him pay the price."

"The methods to defeat a person are nothing more than that: defeat him in wisdom, knock him down in strength. I used my own schemes to make Shiler plead guilty, which could achieve both goals at the same time."

"I did it."

Bruce's voice lowered, obviously the following words were part of his painful memories.

"But at that moment, I realized that this was completely a trap. From beginning to end, the purpose of the pathological was to make me fall into the current state."

"In the confrontation with Shiler, I achieved victory, but sacrificed everything I cared about and insisted on."

"Because of my desire to win, I framed my own teacher with a non-existent crime, which both violated my moral bottom line and broke the law."

"I chose victory, but turned myself into a ruthless criminal, no different from the enemies I have always had."

Bruce's fingertips began to tremble constantly. Dick looked at him with a very worried gaze. Dick glanced left and right somewhat flusteredly, tried hard to concentrate his thinking, and then said: "But you can still make amends. You can go save Professor Shiler!"

"I said, this is the most exquisite part of this trap." Bruce turned his head and looked at Dick with somewhat listless eyes:

"Dick, jailbreaking is also illegal, and also immoral."

Tim gasped. He stared into Bruce's eyes and said: "You aren't trying to say that Professor Shiler had long anticipated this day, are you?"

"Shiler anticipated that you would use not-so-honorable means because you wanted to win, making you regret and feel painful for it."

"And anticipated that you would regret and feel painful because of this, and when you wanted to make amends, you would find that you could only adopt not-so-honorable means, becoming even more painful."

"He saw through every desire of yours and turned it into poison."

Tim covered his eyes with his hand. When he put his hand down, he looked at Bruce with a look that even carried a trace of sympathy. He glanced at Jason and said in a low voice: "I take back what I said before. Even if he is your enemy, it shouldn't go as far as..."

"I once saw Shiler's past in his mind palace." Bruce's eyes stared blankly ahead, speaking slowly: "He was once imprisoned in a dark mental hospital for a long time, which was also a terrible memory for him."

"Pathological knew that when I knew Shiler would be locked in the same dark prison, because of my feelings for him and my heart of justice, I would definitely want to save him."

"But if I really went, went to jailbreak, went to destroy public order and good customs with illegal and immoral means, I would be doing as he wished, performing the crimes he wanted me to perform with the means he taught me, becoming his tame lamb."

"So now, I am trapped here, trapped in the same dark prison, unable to move forward, unable to retreat."

"Also trapped in the iron chains that bind the lamb, unable to be silent, and unable to cry out." ===== CHAPTER 1176 =====