Chapter 1429: Research on Manipulation (Part 12)

The special confinement cell that made everyone in the prison change color at the mention of it was the cell prepared by Amanda in the earliest days of the prison's establishment for those high-risk prisoners with special abilities. It did not follow any humanitarian code and was a harsh, isolated confinement twenty-four hours a day.

Bruce couldn't think of any reason why Bane would deliberately go to this kind of cell, but he indeed did it on purpose.

Amanda told him to kill Elliot, but he didn't. She told him to protect Gallardo, but he killed Gallardo as soon as they met. This was clearly deliberately angering Amanda. He had long expected that Amanda's final means of dealing with him would be to transfer him to the special confinement cell.

Why did he want to do this?

The several confrontations with Bane that Bruce had envisioned hadn't even begun before they ended. Bane hadn't revealed any information in his few conversations.

Bruce should have breathed a sigh of relief. He could now return to his original plan and upgrade step by step: first manipulate Jimmy, then drive Tan En crazy, and when a new cellmate was transferred over, he could still use the same method to provoke their contradictions, summarize behavioral patterns and techniques for manipulating others from it, and complete a not-bad paper.

But Bane's appearance successfully aroused his curiosity. He was very curious about what kind of story this beast with a philosopher's soul had.

In the final analysis, there was always a kind of chivalry in Batman. He didn't like crushing weak opponents but liked hunting equally powerful beasts.

There was a special attraction between lunatics. When the opponent didn't appear, ordinary people could also be a comfort, but once a true opponent stepped onto the stage, no matter how gorgeous the dance steps of the others were, they were just foils, just like Batman and the Joker, just like Batman and all other Cat Getan villains.

Bruce was attracted by Bane's temperament and secrets. When Bane killed Gallardo, he almost instinctively blurted out the weak point of the electric shock ring on his leg because he subconsciously didn't want Bane to be taken away, because he urgently wanted to peek at the secrets behind Bane's mask.

And Bruce firmly believed that Bane was not without interest in him either; otherwise, he wouldn't have needed to keep him after killing Gallardo. He could have gone on a killing spree in the cell, which would have better stimulated Amanda.

Since that was the case, why did he want to go to the isolated special confinement cell? What was in there?

Bruce sat quietly on the bed. The other two versions of him—one sitting on the opposite bed, the other standing in the center of the room—countless thoughts flowed between the three figures. He felt his thinking somewhat stagnating.

Bruce's massive memory bank appeared somewhat raw when mobilizing information. He wasn't used to the feeling of himself communicating with himself while the other two versions of him were recalling, and those memories appearing in his mind at the same time.

Bruce's past way of thinking wasn't much different from ordinary people: first recall, then summarize, then think. He needed to first retrieve information from memory, then analyze this information. Humans always needed to first recognize and then think. If they didn't think of a thing, they couldn't analyze a thing.

But now Bruce was experiencing a very wonderful experience: when one version of himself was thinking about a thing, the other two versions of himself were recognizing this thing. Recognition and thinking were parallel, and thinking was parallel to thinking at another stage.

Theoretically, if a human brain was divided into three threads, the efficiency would definitely be much higher, but Bruce felt somewhat confused.

Clearly, one version of himself had thought to node three, while another version of himself was still at node two, but the conclusion obtained at node three wasn't recognized by the other version of himself, and then the other version of himself repeatedly thought about node three. The efficiency didn't increase at all, and the repeated conclusions also increased the redundancy of memory.

It could be said that this way of thinking was still too early for humans.

I really don't know how those hundreds of personalities of Schiller operate, Bruce thought with a headache, but in the end, he decided to solve Bane's matter first.

About half an hour later, the infirmary sent someone to deal with Gallardo's corpse lying in the room. The prison guard told the prisoners to hug their heads and squat down. Bruce squatted in the corner, reached a hand into the ankle ring without changing his expression.

"Zzzzt!", an electric current flashed. Bruce quickly threw the ankle ring away, nimbly passed through the medical staff who hadn't reacted, formed a fist with his middle finger protruding, and punched the prison guard in the face.

"Ouch!"

The prison guard covered his nose and leaned back. Bruce snatched the gun from his hand, pushed the door open, and rushed into the corridor. A sharp alarm sounded.

Theoretically, the best way at this time was to take hostages, but Bruce didn't do that. It wasn't because his moral standard was high, but because he didn't intend to break out of prison at all. He intended to go to the special confinement cell to find Bane, but first, he had to get close to there.

He held the gun and pretended to rush to the end of the corridor recklessly, and then he saw Amanda rushing in with a team of armed personnel.

Bruce's pupils shrank. The armed guard team that subdued Bane at this time point should have just disbanded. They couldn't have reassembled and armed so quickly. Bruce originally wanted to take advantage of the lack of armed force to be taken to the vicinity, and then find a way to get close to the destination.

Countless pitch-black gun muzzles pointed at Bruce. Bruce could only raise his hands and let the prison guard disarm him. Amanda showed a cold sneer. Her expression made Bruce somewhat puzzled.

Amanda wasn't surprised or angry, just staring at Bruce's single eye with a cold, mocking expression, as if everything had been expected and was under control.

Facing Bruce, Amanda took the phone from her subordinate. After dialing, she said to the other side.

"Professor, he was indeed as stupid as you expected, intending to break out of prison during the chaos of Bane killing Gallardo. Now, I have a legitimate reason to lock him into the special confinement cell."

Bruce slowly widened his eyes, and then he heard a familiar voice in the receiver of Amanda's phone.

"Yes, Amanda, what a stupid little lamb. A mercenary working for money, a drug dealer who was about to be executed—could make him do such a reckless act... So now, do what you should do."

"Take him to the special confinement cell, highest monitoring standard!"

Amanda raised her head and said, not looking at the escorted Bruce. She could feel the other party's burning gaze, which filled her heart with the pleasure of successful revenge. This damn serial killer finally received the punishment he deserved.

But if she had turned her head slightly to look at the criminal walking past her, she would have been able to discover that the single eye was staring not at her, but at the phone in her hand.

Schiller put down the phone in his hand. Constantine, lying on the examination bed in the office, put his hands behind his head, looked at the ceiling, and sighed, "Before I met you, I never thought there was such a petty person in this world."

"Bruce locked you in a harsh confinement cell, so you want to lock him in too, even at the cost of letting Zatanna use the power of her mental magic to hypnotize Elliot into hijacking the surviving little girl."

Schiller gently wiped the dust off the phone receiver, sighed, and said, "Bruce thinks everyone acts as rigorously and flawlessly as he does, but in fact, Elliot never intended to cut weeds and roots."

"He had long forgotten that little girl. If I hadn't let Zatanna control Elliot to walk into Bruce's trap, how could he have completed his perfect substitute plan?"

"You really understand Bruce too well." Constantine let out a long sigh, sat up from the bed, came to the sofa, poured himself a drink, and then said, "But I'm still very curious, how did you lock him in? What happened in the prison?"

Schiller smiled, sat opposite Constantine, unbuttoned his suit, and crossed one leg over the other.

Constantine raised an eyebrow. He knew this was Schiller's relaxed posture, so he took out a cigar box from under the table and asked, "Want one?"

Schiller nodded gently. While watching Constantine cut the cigar, he said, "Bruce's biggest problem is that he treats everyone as a genius like himself, and there must be a shocking motive and a mysterious background story to facilitate them to do a series of things."

"But in fact, the motives and methods of most people other than him are very simple, and once Bruce makes this brain-filling too complex, he will do some things that seem very reasonable to him but look very stupid to ordinary people."

"For example, this time, he annoyed me with a field of broccoli. He felt that I wouldn't forgive him so easily, so what he did wasn't to come over and apologize, but to plan to do some very difficult social practice, even at the cost of cutting his own face to swap identities with Elliot, and then getting himself into prison."

"So in fact, if he came to apologize, you would forgive him?"

"Generally speaking, as long as anyone sincerely apologizes to me without causing me serious harm, I will forgive them and will greatly weaken the severity of my subsequent retaliatory behavior."

"Sounds incredible."

"I do adhere to such a criterion." Schiller supported his chin with a few fingers on the armrest and said, "But they always seem to have some misunderstandings about my temper. Even Clark thinks that apologizing to me is not as good as running away quickly."

"Even if he blew up my Tower of Thought twice, I didn't do anything to him, but he still firmly believes so, and the reason he usually stays in place waiting for me is that he pessimistically thinks he can't run away."

"And so far, you are the only one who has sincerely apologized to me and actively provided the help I need, so now not only can you drink my wine, but I don't mind you cutting the expensive cigars Alberto gave me into a mess."

Constantine looked down at the cigar in his hand, gave Schiller an embarrassed smile, and while opening the matchbox, said, "Thanks to all the things I messed up in the first half of my life, they made me firmly believe that apologizing is the only thing I can do well."

Seeing Schiller really take a puff of the cigar he cut, Constantine's pupils shrank. As a magic consultant who often enters the mansions of the upper class, Constantine wouldn't cut a cigar that badly. He believed Schiller knew this too.

A sense of unavoidable guilt and remorse rose from his heart. He knew Schiller had severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, but he still acted like a child who deliberately broke a toy, wantonly ruining expensive items, expressing his dissatisfaction that he didn't know where it came from and had no position to possess.

Doing this in front of someone with excellent self-control made it seem even more like making trouble for no reason. Constantine took a deep breath, said a thousand times in his heart that this must be another trap of Schiller's, but still leaned back on the sofa weakly, turned his head to one side, and said, "Condescending, Professor. Sorry, my hand was shaking a bit."

Schiller smoked the cigar and sat back on the sofa, smiled, and said, "It seems that the pathological left a deep impression on you, but I am not him. I don't use every detail in life to manipulate others. I am telling the truth."

"It's not like you're the only one involved in this who apologized to me, right?" Constantine picked up the wine glass again and took a sip, wanting to make his pounding heartbeat slower.

Seeing the expression on Schiller's face, Constantine was still very surprised and said, "No way?"

"The facts are as such."

Schiller exhaled a puff of smoke and continued, "Let's talk about what happened in the prison. The process is actually very simple..."

"I know Bruce very well, and he also knows me very well. He knows that if I turn over old accounts, I will definitely turn to him first, so he definitely ran first."

"I have been paying attention to his movements. When I found that his itinerary overlapped with Elliot, who was being hunted by the FBI, I knew what he wanted to do..."

"How did you know their foothold?"

"When I was on the West Coast, I served as a psychology lecturer at the FBI Training Academy for a period of time, so naturally, I had a way to get the pursuit situation of important fugitives. As for Bruce's itinerary... he told me himself."

Constantine stared at the texture of the pupils on Schiller's gray eyes, as if he saw the situation in Schiller's Tower of Thought a few days ago.

A "knock, knock, knock" sound rang out in the corridor of the Tower of Thought. Schiller, in a black suit, opened the door, looked at Bruce standing at the door, gave way, and said, "Come in."

Schiller led Bruce toward the table and asked without looking back, "You left Cat Getan?"

"Yes, I'm currently talking business at the headquarters of Monsanto in Missouri." ===== CHAPTER 1430 =====

"Yes, I am currently negotiating business at the headquarters of the Monsanto Company in Missouri."