Chapter 1940

"Was Shiler really a surgeon?"

Lord Superman looked at Bruce and asked. Bruce paused, then slowly shook his head and said, "I can only say he knows how to perform surgery, but whether he was truly a surgeon, no one knows."

"A general surgeon wouldn't choose to be a psychiatrist, right?" Spider-Man raised an objection and said, "These seem to be two completely different categories."

"The question now is not whether Shiler can perform surgery, but whether his surgical skills can save this child." Constantine sighed and said, "In my opinion, the possibility of this child surviving is slim. Actually, he should have died long ago."

Spider-Man turned his head and looked at Constantine with some dissatisfaction. Constantine pursed his lips and said, "I'm not cursing him."

Then he shook his head, as if he knew some hidden truth but was unwilling to say it.

At this moment, Owen finally spoke again: "Come on, friends, second round of betting! This one is simpler: bet on whether Shiler's surgery will succeed. Minimum bet is one point, no upper limit, triple payout. Start betting."

"Wait, give us a moment." Lord Superman interrupted him, then turned his head again to look at Bruce and said, "Have you ever seen your professor perform surgery?"

"He performed sutures on me." Bruce said deliberately, "But one cannot judge his surgical skills from that; after all, even an ordinary person can suture with a little training."

"I think you should think about the hallucination you saw with that Batman earlier. Do you know how hard it is to peel a person's skin off completely?"

"He preserved the subcutaneous nerves almost completely." Arthur chuckled and said, "Only if the nerves are intact enough can his fish feel enough pain to jump higher."

"That's what I said; he does have very brilliant surgical skills, but they are rarely used for medical purposes." Bruce nodded and said.

"He said he once performed an extremely difficult cardiac surgery on a child; the surgery was successful, but the child eventually died. Is that true?" Constantine raised a question.

"I don't know; that must have been from his younger days."

"You wouldn't want to deliberately hide it from us, would you?" Lord Superman frowned as he looked at him.

"That makes no sense. If I knew, I would tell you, and then we would win together. There's no loss for me, but I truly cannot be sure."

"Have you ever thought there might be a trap in this?" Constantine spoke up again: "The current situation might be very similar to what Shiler once encountered. The organizer might be trying to evoke his memory of that child."

"That doll once asked, 'Is it like this every time?' This is clearly saying Shiler has failed before. Although the surgery was successful back then, the child still died. Will this have an impact on him?"

"But those parents also died." Bruce turned his head to look at him and said, "At least from Shiler's own words, we know they jumped off a building because they were too heartbroken."

Arthur laughed softly twice, clearly finding this reason amusing, but his eyes rolled, as if he realized something, and then said, "I choose failure; this surgery cannot succeed."

Lord Superman wanted to choose after Bruce, but Bruce delayed, as if wanting to be the last one. So Lord Superman voted for success and said, "He is a madman, but he is a talented madman. Perhaps he can turn things around."

Constantine voted for failure. After voting, he said, "This matter is not that simple; it's not a question of surgery at all."

Bruce immediately voted for failure as well. Lord Superman seemed very surprised by this result, but Bruce shook his head and said nothing.

Spider-Man finally voted for success and said, "This is a kind of blessing from me; I hope this child can be saved."

The group turned their eyes back to the screen. Shiler on the screen was checking the surgical instruments; it seemed he really intended to perform the surgery.

"I also need to perform an examination first." Shiler put on his gloves and said, "There's no need to consider hygiene in this situation, because he likely won't live long enough to get an infection."

"I'll state first that I won't perform surgery, but I must first see the condition of his heart before deciding whether to call a surgeon up."

Although Shiler already had a plan, he believed it was a last resort. If the problem could really be solved by surgery, of course, he would perform surgery.

Opening the chest for cardiac surgery is actually not complex. As Shiler said, there's no use in worrying so much; the patient only has one breath left, so it couldn't get any worse.

As soon as the time freeze was lifted, little Bruce on the operating table resumed breathing, but unfortunately, it was as if he hadn't. A visible life bar appeared above his head, and the red portion was dropping at an extremely fast speed.

Shiler estimated that he only had about 15 minutes left. Fortunately, the doll still had some humanity; it seemed anesthesia had already been administered, so little Bruce had no reaction when Shiler made the incision.

Examining the heart is really nothing more than opening the chest cavity to see the state of the heart and comparing it with the film. But when Shiler opened the chest cavity, he discovered there was actually a cut on the heart.

That is to say, a doctor had already opened the heart to examine it, but the situation had not changed at all.

Shiler looked at the film again and found that it showed nothing. He frowned deeply.

Now there was only one possibility left: the thing that made most surgeons shrink back was not outside the heart, but inside. But once the heart was opened, the surgery had to succeed; there was no turning back. Little Bruce's life bar had hit the bottom and couldn't withstand any more tossing.

Shiler didn't hesitate for even half a second and made the cut. Anyway, he had an emergency plan. But with this cut, the scene inside the heart stunned everyone.

So-called tricuspid atresia is actually just a piece of muscle left where the tricuspid valve should be, with no structure. This causes the right atrium and right ventricle to be completely separated; blood from the right atrium cannot enter the right ventricle, and thus cannot enter the pulmonary circulation.

These principles are actually not important; one only needs to know that tricuspid atresia is missing a piece. The film Shiler got indeed showed this.

Before cutting the heart open, the heart's shape, size, and basic structure were the same as on the film. But only after cutting it open did he realize this was no tricuspid atresia.

Inside little Bruce's heart was a maze.

He had no atria or ventricles in the general sense; his heart was like a beehive, full of dense little compartments. Blood flowed irregularly inside, which looked very terrifying.

But even more frightening was that the direction of the blood flow formed a pentagram, and if one looked at the cross-section of the heart, one could find that the dense maze formed a pattern—it was the face of a ferocious demon.

Standing at this angle, only Shiler could see the complete pattern. A demon lived inside little Bruce's heart.

No wonder those surgeons didn't dare to perform surgery; this was not a question of surgical difficulty. Who would dare to take a knife to a demon inside a heart?

But it wasn't over yet. Before Shiler could pull back his hand holding the scalpel, blood-red blood coiled around his fingertips. Shiler heard a burst of evil laughter, and the demon's face on the heart moved.

"He is mine."

Everyone heard this voice. Shiler pulled his hand away, and the others also saw the scene inside the heart.

Seeing this scene, Thomas and Martha let out a scream in unison. Then Thomas grabbed Martha's hand tightly and said, "No wonder, no wonder the person they asked us to find is a Pope. Our child is entangled by a demon!"

"Oh my god, God, please save him! Lord, I beg you, save my child!"

"Doctor, oh no, Your Holiness the Pope, hurry and expel this demon! We are willing to pay any price!!"

Shiler stared straight at the demon's face and said, "So you are the owner of the necklace?"

The demon was stunned.

Shiler sighed and said, "Can't the people of one town satisfy your appetite? You must have seen his great destiny in this child, but you don't know where this destiny comes from. You will pay the price for this."

The demon's face became increasingly ferocious. At the same time, little Bruce let out a cry of pain.

Everyone on the viewing platform stood up. Constantine took a few steps forward, looked at the screen, and said, "It's too late. Whether it's expelling or killing the demon, this child will lose his heart. He is doomed."

"You knew it all along, didn't you?" Spider-Man asked anxiously, "Why is it like this? How could his heart turn into a demon?"

"Someone carved runes on his heart. I guess it should be 'Dwelling of the King' or 'Land of All Evils', turning his heart into a vessel to nourish the demon."

"Then what should be done in this situation?"

Constantine shook his head and said, "The runes could be cleared before the demon was summoned, and the demon could be expelled if it hadn't lived there long. But now the entire heart has been alienated. Once the demon leaves, there is nothing left inside the heart. Humans cannot survive with a heart that has no structure."

"The demon has become one with this child. If the demon dies, he dies too. If the demon leaves, he still loses his life."

"Why did the person who carved the runes want to harm him?"

"Perhaps it wasn't to kill him; the other party just wanted this heart. The demon living in the heart can provide the summoner with powerful strength. I have seen children made into vessels before; their performance was the same as this child's, and without exception, they all died."

The demon living in the heart clearly knew this too. It showed a ferocious grin at Shiler, with an attitude of having nothing to fear. It could neither be killed nor expelled. It was determined to have this heart.

Shiler turned his head to look at the TV, then at the heart, and then at the TV again.

He let out a long sigh, stared at the demon's face on the heart, and said, "You don't know how rich the Wayne family is... consider yourself unlucky."

As his voice fell, Shiler waved his scalpel extremely fast, carving a pattern on the skin of the heart.

The next second, all the lights went out.

The TV in the room, the TVs in the hallway, the screen in the screening hall, and even the lights in the screening hall all went out. Everywhere was pitch black.

"Didn't you say he couldn't see us?!" Constantine roared, "He can even affect us!"

"No, wait, something went wrong! Wait! Wait! What is going on?!!" Owen's panicked voice came from the darkness.

Suddenly, red light shone. The heat vision in Lord Superman's eyes emitted a faint light, and at this moment, Owen happened to restart the screen.

Shiler on the screen had already started suturing.

Little Bruce lying on the operating table was recovering at a speed visible to the naked eye. It wasn't even just recovering breathing or heartbeat; the whole person was being blown up like a balloon. Almost in the blink of an eye, he went from a dried corpse to a normal child with a rosy complexion.

Everyone was stunned.

"Replay, replay quickly! What on earth is going on here?!" Constantine shouted in disbelief, "This is impossible! He wouldn't have summoned God, would he?!"

Owen started replaying in a flurry, but as long as it replayed to that node, the screen would go black, and nothing could be seen at all. Owen debugged for a long time, but there was no progress.

At this time, Bruce suggested: "Replay Shiler's perspective directly; he must have visual persistence."

Only then did Owen remember he could open the first-person view, so he immediately manipulated the perspective to Shiler.

After Shiler finished that sentence, he carved a pattern on little Bruce's heart at an extremely fast speed. Instantly, his vision also went pitch black.

But sure enough, before the lights went out and made him unable to see anything, there was a certain amount of visual persistence, preserving the pattern he had carved.

But this made everyone even more confused.

Because it was neither a rune nor a spell; it was a pattern roughly composed of three circles. The circle at the bottom was the largest, and there were two small circles on the upper left and right sides of the circle.

This was a quite classic pattern, and people generally called it—Mickey Mouse.