Chapter 2042: A Night of Knightly Terror (21)

Batman frowned deeply.

"Sorry, this is one of the gifts I brought." Peter shrugged, looked at Jason, and said: "This is a specialty of my hometown; they are kind parasitic lives, or rather, whether they are kind or not is determined by their previous host."

"Sorry, but Jason, your actions of building the base couldn't be hidden from Batman; you should know you couldn't hide it from him, right?"

Jason didn't rush up, but shrank into the corner in some horror, staring at Batman and saying: "You want to monitor me from inside my brain, huh?! You... you..."

When a parent breaks the lock on a child's room without consent, the child will be angry, but when a parent opens a child's skull and implants a positioning chip, the child probably only has fear left.

Jason is a bit scared now.

It is said that one should look at a person with new eyes after three days of separation; what did Batman experience in the year he was away?

"But it's not over yet." Peter continued.

"Although letting the fear toxin disaster break out was indeed Batman's plan, he had to take an extra layer of insurance."

"So even if he knew in advance that you were going to cooperate with the Scarecrow, he didn't stop you, because as long as you were there, all of the Scarecrow's actions couldn't escape his field of vision."

"Despicable! Batman! You actually used a spy, such a low-level method! You are simply the shame of superheroes!" The Scarecrow gritted his teeth and cursed.

"But Batman also knew that if you were pushed too hard and you detonated the city's toxin, it would still lead to a certain amount of chaos, so after grasping your whereabouts, he didn't immediately go to arrest you."

"On the contrary, he let me pretend to be kidnapped by you... oh, kidnapped by the Arkham Knight who was with you; by the way, the kidnapping process was the symbiote modifying memories."

Peter looked at Jason and said: "If you think about it carefully, you should be able to recall that it was I who choked you out with spider silk, not you who knocked me out."

Schiller's eighth rule of fabrication: facts remain unchanged, time is chaotic.

Actually, it was after Peter choked out the Arkham Knight that he put the symbiote into his body, but Peter's expression was as if the symbiote had actually been in Jason's body all along, used by Batman to monitor Jason's actions.

Jason was indeed fooled; he leaned against the corner with his hands on the ground, looking at Batman with a stiff body, and said in disbelief: "You modified my memories?!"

"Because if it wasn't like this, it would be hard to deceive the Scarecrow." Peter shrugged, walked back behind Batman, and said: "And this move is indeed not bad; the Scarecrow fell for it."

"My running away halfway was naturally also under Batman's instructions, because this would make the Scarecrow further lose confidence, making him more and more irritable, while also starting to feel fear."

"Without the hostages of the whole city, he could still hope to kidnap hostages, but if he didn't have the kidnapped hostages, he must not be caught by Batman, and even more must not be caught by him; that's what you thought, right?"

Peter spread his arms and said: "Look, you were caught by him, and then? Batman doesn't kill; you should have thought that even if you were locked in prison by Batman, you would have a chance to escape, instead of dying on the spot."

"Even if Batman doesn't kill you, he would definitely hold back when he makes a move, so you would also have a chance to use fear toxin to run away from under his nose again; there was no need to panic."

"But this is the pressure Batman wants to apply to you; as long as you focus your attention on escaping, you won't have time to threaten others."

"And I could also gather the remaining parts of the Bat-family in the city under his instructions, not giving you and other villains a chance to kidnap those around him, such as Barbara, Gordon, Nightwing..."

"They were all on the way you were busy escaping, and were knocked out by me with Poison Ivy, and then transferred to other safe places by truck; when only you and Batman were left in this city, you no longer had any advantage."

The Penguin shrank his neck; he knew what Peter said was right; the way most Cat Getan villains interfere with Batman is by kidnapping those around him; this move is always effective.

But he also thought, if Batman had long realized this and had the ability to transfer them early like this time, why didn't he do it earlier?

Or rather, is this actually a trap? The Penguin frowned, letting them feel that kidnapping hostages is the final insurance, so that even when the situation is unfavorable, they don't withdraw from Cat Getan, but accompany him to play this game to the end, and finally play themselves into the Batcave.

The Penguin covered his eyes and thought, Batman is more cunning than he thought; this move of letting go to catch made him lose his most basic vigilance; in fact, he should have withdrawn as early as when the chaos promised by the Scarecrow didn't appear.

But the Scarecrow still didn't understand; he grabbed the bars, squeezed his head out hard, as if he wanted to drill out and bite Batman, looked at Batman and said: "You took advantage of the conflict between me and the Penguin to ambush us..."

"Then have you ever thought about why you would have a conflict with the Penguin?" Peter still hid behind Batman, just poked his head out and said: "I can tell you, it's because Batman let me impersonate your student to find the Penguin, cut open his chest, and stuffed two concentrated fear toxin capsules into his windpipe."

The Scarecrow opened his eyes wide and turned to look at the Penguin next to him; the Penguin rolled his eyes and pulled his shirt down hard; the Scarecrow saw the surgical marks on it.

Directly stuffing concentrated fear toxin capsules into the body?

The Scarecrow, who possessed professional knowledge, immediately thought of what the consequences would be; the effect might be 10-20 times that of oral administration.

And it's not just the speed of the outbreak; no matter how thick the fear toxin inhaled from the outside is, it only affects people's sanity, and at worst, it only makes people fall into a state of extreme chaos, starting to attack others indiscriminately.

But high-concentration fear toxin directly participates in pulmonary circulation, but it can completely burn people's brains in a fraction of a second, leaving behind either complete idiots or vegetative people who have no ability to act at all, which can be called a new era of lobotomy surgery.

Instantly, the Scarecrow's look at Batman became a bit creepy.

No, which of us is the villain? Which of us is the supervillain? Who is the mastermind behind the fear toxin disaster?!

"Nonsense." Batman commented.

"Ah, here we go again." Peter raised his hands high and dropped them, shook his head with some annoyance and said: "Yes, the Penguin reading the script on the big screen, that part was added by myself, but this better paralyzed the Scarecrow, didn't it?"

"This will make him think you will definitely go to find trouble with the Penguin first, thereby relaxing his vigilance; only then would he want to run to the Stagg Group airship to catch the betraying Stagg, instead of finding a place to hide, which is not bad either."

Peter walked out from behind Batman again, came to Jason's cage, and said: "Sorry, it wasn't intentional to fabricate the news of your death, but the words I said when I found you later were all told to me by Batman; don't blame me."

Jason looked at him in disbelief.

"It's not hard to understand; if you didn't get angry and collapse emotionally and faint, how would you be here? You wouldn't expect Batman to catch you all over the city, would you?"

"As far as I know, he is not such an inefficient person, and you should know him better than I do, right?"

Jason's chest began to heave constantly, and the anger sprayed out with his breathing almost had a shape.

But the root of anger has always been fear.

Batman was surprised to find that Jason didn't rush up to question him as before.

He was angry, and then sat in place motionless.

Batman cared about every abnormal behavior of Jason, so he stepped forward slightly.

The three people in the cage retreated one step in unison.

Jason had already shrunk to the corner of the cage and had nowhere to hide; he just stiffly pressed his back completely against the wall.

When he looked up at Batman, Batman actually saw unprecedented, extremely straightforward horror in his eyes, as well as the kind of pleading from the desire to survive.

Just like finding a fragile crack on a stone full of thorns, Batman thought, is he afraid of me?

But he was actually thinking, is he only starting to be afraid of me now?

Is he only starting to feel fear now?

If so, then where did his previous inexplicable irritability come from?

If not, how long and how deep is his fear? And how many times has he been deeply disappointed by his own lack of awareness?

Batman remembered the words written on the wall: "I once trusted you so much."

That might not be a portrayal of temporary anger, but an echo of long-term disappointment.

"That's it." Peter spoke again: "You two fought, Batman didn't spend much effort to subdue you, he fainted himself, and Batman brought him back directly."

Then Peter turned and walked toward the table behind him and said: "Of course there is also the Joker problem that is hardest to solve, but that doesn't count as a problem."

Peter turned his head, looked at the place where the Joker hallucination appeared within Batman's field of vision with sensitive spider-sense, and then said: "I have a way to get magical energy to resurrect you, but magic is something no one can say for sure."

"Perhaps in your experiment, you are you after being resurrected in the body of any Joker virus-infected individual, but if a new shell is resurrected into the Joker, and it is resurrected with magic, then will the new Joker still be you?"

"Maybe we will have two Jokers." Peter sighed and said: "Although you are in Batman's body, I'm afraid you can only watch other Jokers play games with Batman."

"Or... you make Batman not want to play games."

The voice from Professor Schiller ringing in Peter's ear overlapped with Peter's voice line; clearly, only the Joker who understood Batman best could draw a perfect period for this test paper.

Peter stared at the Joker in the void, repeating Professor Schiller's low tone.

"You may have already discovered that in the situation where you haven't paid attention to Batman, he has changed a lot, and it is a profound, principled change."

"Where does this change come from?"

This question almost immediately attracted the attention of several people present, including Batman himself.

"A father lost his child." Peter dropped his shoulders and said in a slightly sad tone: "For any emotional creature, this is a great misfortune."

"And this tragedy did not get timely comfort and recovery." Peter looked at Jason and said: "Every street, every house, every time he saw the empty surveillance screen, it was like a knife of disappointment, carving a scar on his soul."

"In this year, his soul was completely shredded, and then reorganized; the one who survived is still Batman, but it is a brand new him."

"The one who brought this about is you, Joker, but in this story, you are just a despicable supporting role; what shaped the brand new Batman was not the disaster you caused, but his own family affection and love."

"It was his intense family affection for Jason that let him be shredded by the blade of guilt he polished himself, and it was his hope that Jason was still alive that let him reshape himself with his own great love."

Batman felt he was strangled by these words.

And the things in those words wanted to break out of this cold and stiff shell, and he had never thought that one day he would be like this, knowing he would bleed and cry, but be willing to do so, feeling warm.

Batman unconsciously opened the door of the cage in front of Jason; this time he only regarded him as an injured child and picked him up from the ground.

Peter behind Batman looked at the nothingness in front of him; he seemed to really see the Joker, saw his unbelievable crazy expression.

Then, no longer needing Schiller's guidance, Spider-Man said his own heart's voice.

"In this near-desperate disaster, the Batman he reshaped will more profoundly realize how such intense family affection and great love occupy an important position in his life."

"The recovered Batman will understand what he must never lose, thereby putting down the trivial details like you, like the two of them, abandoning you, forgetting you."

"In this greatest comedy in Batman's life, he is the true lead actor; past, present, future, I'm afraid you will never be able to direct a play that makes him happier than now."

Batman heard the Joker's furious scolding behind him; he didn't even have half a thought to turn his head.

And when that drop of moisture on Jason's face finally fell on the back of his hand, it was dawn.

The world returned to its proper colorful colors, leaving only a few strokes of fireless ashes, and the stubborn bones remaining after the fire of karma burned out.

There was a father, there was a son, without that emotional void that needed to be filled, there was no Joker sneering in the void.

There was a knight, and there was another knight, without that windmill giant that could never be chased, there was no treacherous court jester on the absurd stage.

It was dawn. ===== CHAPTER 2043 =====