Chapter 2043: A Night of Knightly Terror (22)

The disastrous night ended.

Cat Getan's dawn is the brightest time for this city; the dark clouds haven't had time to cover the sky, so a bright, vivid red sun that makes people unable to open their eyes hangs on the horizon, like those fresh hearts that are beating again.

Batman took the Scarecrow and the Penguin to the Cat Getan Police Department, and Peter was responsible for bringing back a group of people from the underground cold storage in Blüdhaven.

Before Peter left, Jason, who was still in the cage, called him; Peter turned back to look at him and said: "Sorry, but you can't come out for the time being; the symbiote needs time to repair your body."

"Get that thing out." Jason said in a hoarse voice: "I don't need him to give me..."

"This is Batman's order." Peter shook his head and said: "He hopes this thing can heal the wounds on your body, but he is not at ease with alien life running around outside the cage, so I'm afraid you have to stay here until the repair is complete."

"And as you can see, I have no way to change his decision, and I don't have the key to the cage; the symbiote will provide all the energy you need, so you won't feel hungry or thirsty; perhaps after a sleep, everything will pass."

"Batman's lapdog, huh?" Jason stared at Peter and said: "You listen to him for everything; will you kill for him?"

"I don't kill." Peter turned his head back, tidying up the equipment on his wrist and saying: "Usually I don't argue with him, because it makes no sense; whatever he tells me to do, I do."

Jason's lips turned white; he shook the bars of the cage hard again, watching Peter turn to leave; he finally took a deep breath, lowered his head, lowered his eyes, and asked.

"Has Batman really changed? Because of me?"

"I don't know; when I met him, he was already like this."

"He let you cut open the Penguin's body and put poison in it?"

"You sound a bit surprised, but as far as I know, this Mr. Oswald doesn't count as a good person, and he doesn't shed tears until he sees the coffin; in this situation, no one has the position to accuse Batman of being too extreme."

Jason was choked; he thought, I accuse Batman of being too extreme? Since I knew Batman, there hasn't been a day I wasn't accusing him of not being extreme enough.

"Have you ever seen someone with a mental breakdown?" Peter finally turned around completely, stood in front of the cage, looked at Jason, and said: "Have you visited a mental hospital?"

Jason shook his head slowly, but still looked at Peter with stubborn eyes and said: "You can't convince me, kid; for Batman, you are the later one, and you have no principles you can assert in front of me."

"I'm just describing a fact." Peter lowered his head slowly, as if recalling something, and showed a hint of hesitation, seemingly not wanting to say it.

Jason stared at him, annoyed by his attitude, and said: "Do you think there is anything I can't accept until now? I spent a year under the Joker's torture; is there any situation worse than this?"

"What would you think if I said the Joker didn't actually get serious with you?"

The veins on Jason's hand gripping the bars popped out; Peter maintained that expression and continued: "His opponent from beginning to end was Batman, not you; you were just a means to torture Batman."

"Of course, you will think, I must be bragging." Peter slowly licked his lips, easing his nervous mood, but he still continued: "One day, I just came to the bottomless abyss in a person's mind, completely out of curiosity."

Peter's body movements became obviously more frequent; he first shrugged his shoulders upward lightly, then turned his two hands palms up, showing he was not hiding anything.

"You can understand it as a part of the Joker; this is the most important reason why I would take the initiative to have a connection with Batman."

Jason was attracted by what he said; he knew Peter was telling him that this young man named Peter Parker appearing in this world was not a coincidence, and this might still have something to do with the Joker.

"But he is not completely the Joker, he... I don't know what he is; perhaps human, perhaps not."

Jason was confused by Peter's incoherent words; he finally lost patience, patted the bars, and said: "What exactly do you want to say?"

Peter pursed his lips and said: "Death is not the best evil retribution, and you have the ability to turn this into a gift."

"What?"

"Have you seen someone with a mental breakdown?"

Jason finally understood that Peter wouldn't give up until he got an answer, so he shook his head slowly.

"I've seen lunatics." He answered like this: "Evil, cruel, indifferent, unreasonable."

"No, I'm not referring to this kind of person." Peter denied, saying: "Those people are perverted natural bad seeds; no matter how crazy they are, they are not worthy of sympathy; I'm referring to those humans whose spirits have been completely crushed."

Jason watched him, and a bad premonition rose from the bottom of his heart; Peter put his hand on the table next to him, his knuckles slightly forced, repeatedly pursing his lips, and then said.

"I saw a memory of Schiller there; perhaps he showed it to me, perhaps he always put it there for everyone to see."

"What?"

"A child died; that was his patient, a very poor child with congenital heart disease; very unfortunate, but still lucky; his parents let him receive treatment in time."

"The surgery was very successful; it can be foreseen that as long as the subsequent rounds of surgery are completed in the same way in the next few years, he will grow into a healthy child."

"But things didn't develop like this." Peter shook his head and said: "His parents abandoned him."

Jason couldn't help but be attracted to his attention; he looked at Peter and asked: "Why?"

"Unreasonable, right?" A hint of anger appeared in Peter's tone, but it disappeared quickly; he said: "I realized long ago that everyone's love is limited, and some people are exceptionally limited."

"In peaceful and affluent circumstances, they are not stingy about making kind decisions, or rather, kindness itself maintains their reputation and brings them benefits."

"But once the situation changes, it's not even saying it endangers themselves; just when kindness can't bring them enough benefits, they will make the exact opposite choice."

Jason understood what he meant; in fact, he had always been very smart, even in understanding and empathizing with others, he was the exact opposite of Batman.

Or rather, he should have been; because he wasn't a rich young master who was pampered; he was born at the very bottom of Cat Getan and had mixed in the most chaotic and evil areas of this city for a long time.

The kindness he had seen was very limited, but the moments he had seen others abandon kindness were countless.

"That's it; the child's parents gave up treatment." Peter blinked and said: "In a situation where they still had the capacity, and even completely didn't need to do so."

"Doctors would be very angry, right? Usually, they would feel sad, helpless, disappointed in human nature, watching the life they tried their best to save pass away because of others' indifference; it's a very bad feeling."

"But this doctor is a bit special." Peter rubbed the edge of the table with his fingers and said: "This is the first time he recognized society and human beings in this way."

"He didn't feel sad or helpless; he was just very curious; he wanted to know if they could be so indifferent in any situation, so he did an experiment, using his professional knowledge."

"Perhaps not that professional, at least... didn't learn that part of professional ethics."

Peter's narration was too obscure; Jason took a while to understand what he was saying; he asked: "You saw this doctor's memory; he did something to those parents, right?"

Peter nodded and said: "I won't tell you what I saw; I won't tell anyone; but I can describe to you what the ending of those parents was like."

"They had a mental breakdown?"

"Yes, and it was completely artificial; the way to do this must be much simpler than you imagine; it can simply be called easy."

Peter took a deep breath, rebuilt his psychological construction, and then began to describe what he saw.

"At the beginning, they would tear their clothes with very large movements, hit the wall with their shoulders or heads, pick their skin with their nails until they were bloody, and stick their fingers into any gap they could reach, just to tear off one of their organs."

"In the second stage, they began to become dazed, no longer making huge sounds like roaring, but staying in one place and crying for twenty-something hours, keeping an extremely strange and very uncomfortable posture motionless; if someone pulled them, they would make screams and wails that didn't sound like humans at all, as if they had been attacked."

"Immediately after, they began to have hallucinations, constantly running away, or waving their arms and kicking with enough force to hurt themselves, against the empty air, hard walls, or other things that hindered their activities."

"They began to regain the ability to speak, but the language had no logic, constantly muttering a sentence, either describing hallucinations in a tone that didn't sound like a sound, constantly muttering things from a certain period of their lives, saying it intermittently for several hours."

"Finally, they began to become like an ignorant baby, losing all the abilities a social person should have, seeing everything in front of them as thin but equal, blurring all understanding of objects."

"They will completely lose their sense of shame and morality, lose everything society taught them, everything acquired, not realizing what they are doing at all, exploring anything by instinct, no sense of smell, no sense of taste, seeing but not recognizing, remembering but having no concept."

Peter's tone was already shaking uncontrollably; Jason could hear that he was trying hard to suppress his fear, because he was the same; he couldn't imagine what could torture human beings like this.

"The thing that makes me feel the most fear is." Peter took a deep breath with the same trembling movements and said.

"When I saw such a person jump down from a high building and fall into a flower of blood, I wanted to thank God from the bottom of my heart, thank him for his forgiveness, and praise his mercy."

The hair stood up one by one, and cold sweat surged down along the hair on the back of his neck like a waterfall; Jason simply heard the sound of blood in his blood vessels freezing, which made him feel like falling into an ice cellar.

"So..." Peter stepped forward, separated from Jason only by the cage, and said: "Don't complain about anyone not being cruel enough, please, this world really doesn't need more cruel things; someone has already made human beings suffer this kind of torture that breaks the bottom line in a place you can't see."

"If you take not killing as the bottom line, then if one day something makes you angrily break the bottom line, it's just giving them a quick end."

"And if your bottom line is killing with killing, then sooner or later one day you will meet someone who makes you feel that death is not enough to make up for his crimes."

Peter stepped back two steps, shook his head, and said: "Then you will embark on such a road—death is not the best evil retribution, you have the ability to turn it into a gift." ===== CHAPTER 2044 =====