Chapter 2059

Bang!

A cup was smashed onto the ground, shattering into a desolate mess of fragments. An elderly general rested his hands on the armrests, looking at the shards on the floor with a cold expression.

"Bruce Wei En actually dares to burn his bridges!" The General took a deep breath and said, "Who did you find to handle this? How could they be captured by a bunch of half-grown kids?"

"It's not just..." The Lieutenant General beside him paused before changing his phrasing. He said, "There must be the handiwork of that bunch of lunatics."

The General looked solemn. After the initial anger, he quickly regained his reason and speculated in a deep voice, "Bruce Wei En is indeed always called a playboy by the media, but we all know he isn't."

"If he previously needed to do some extreme things to maintain this disguise, then you saw it just now—he has already bared his fangs and doesn't intend to pretend at all. So why bother with this kind of childish venting?"

"Disclosing that we secretly sent people into Cat Getan and even approached Wei En Manor will indeed cause a public opinion storm," the young general said.

But the old General snorted coldly, touched the white hair at his temples, and said, "You understand that it's never the public who decides these things. Doing this has no effect other than making the military lose face."

"But in a situation where they can already threaten our actual interests, he didn't need to do something so superfluous. It will instead completely block the path for future negotiations..."

"Then what do you think..."

"I'm afraid someone wants to help him block the path for negotiations." A cold light flashed in the General's eyes. He said, "Either that bunch of lunatics in Cat Getan can't wait to leave this city. As long as Wei En completely loses the possibility of negotiating with us, then the closing of Cat Getan Prison is only a matter of time, and so is their freedom. The prison those idiots built can't hold these super-criminals."

"Or..." The elderly General's tone grew lower and lower, his fingertips even trembling as they pressed against the tabletop. He said:

"Those people have had enough of the greedy FBI. They intend to throw the old chessboard into the trash and find a new one."

The young subordinate showed a curious expression, while the elderly General explained to himself, "They want to turn Cat Getan into a new chessboard and choose a new guardian, and that person is Bruce Wei En."

"Whether it's the shareholders of Wei En Enterprises or that group of people who need to conduct interest exchanges, they must all prefer Bruce Wei En, because his actions so far have already shown that he is a businessman—purer and more indulgent than the FBI."

Tapping his knuckles lightly on the table, the elderly General sighed and said, "They don't want to hide anymore. They hope all of this becomes a matter of course. The biggest problem they encountered in the past was that those who dared to act had no ability, and those who had the ability didn't dare to act."

"Now, Bruce Wei En has arrived." The old man closed his eyes and sighed softly, as if in prayer: "Since he has raised his hand, there will be someone to help him press it onto the Bible."

In the Batcave, Robin and Nightwing looked speechlessly at the surveillance footage of Cat Getan Bridge. The feed sent back by the drone showed not only swarms of Cat Getan reporters rushing there, but also convoys of reporters from out of town who didn't fear death driving in.

"What did Batman say?" Robin turned his head and asked.

Nightwing sighed deeply, sat down in the chair nearby, spun the chair around, and then said, "He said it was he who directed Peter Parker to do it, but I always feel that the meaning of this sentence is: no matter what Peter did, don't hold it against him."

"I think you're right, but this is too extreme." Robin looked back at the surveillance screen. More eye-catching than the group of reporters were the several dozen people hanging from the steel cables of Cat Getan Bridge.

Of course, this group had infiltrated secretly and wasn't wearing military uniforms. From their appearance, one couldn't tell what their status was, but that didn't stop someone from using colored webbing to stick a line of large characters on them: "They are soldiers."

This sentence was a bit aimless, but reporters could smell a big story from these few short words.

First, this group were soldiers, which meant they were military personnel. Then the problem arose: since the military knew a great disaster was happening in Cat Getan and had the ability to send people in, why did they only send these few?

Now the entire city was shrouded in the shadow of terrorist attacks. You couldn't say the whole army was deployed for disaster relief, right? What about the helicopters? The paratroopers? The airdropped supplies?

Looking closer, this group wasn't wearing military uniforms, and judging by their temperament and attire, they didn't look like ordinary soldiers but rather like special forces. If you were to say they were secretly infiltrating to capture terrorists, then how did they end up being the ones hung on the bridge?

In any case, either the military disregarded the lives of citizens, or they suffered a huge loss at the hands of the terrorists. No matter how it was written, it would be enough to earn plenty of hype.

You couldn't blame these reporters. Having rushed to the front lines of the news shortly after waking up, this report was written to be tear-jerking enough. Wouldn't this year's Pulitzer Prize be easy to get?

"Let's go take them down," Robin sighed and said, "It's no good hanging them like this forever. It's quite cold outside."

Nightwing just wanted to get up, but he hesitated. In the end, he called out to Robin and said, "I think we should observe the situation a bit more. After all, Batman didn't tell me to take them down just now. What if this is part of Batman's plan?"

Robin's footsteps also stopped. He felt Nightwing made sense. Since Batman hadn't expressed his opinion, if they went on their own and ruined Batman's plan, what then?

Nightwing crossed his arms, looked up at the largest screen, and said, "That kid still has some humanitarian spirit. He didn't hang them by their hands directly but wrapped them into cocoons. That material looks quite warm, and more importantly, this group shouldn't be afraid of the cold."

Robin glanced at Nightwing's expression. It was clear that Nightwing probably guessed what this group had come to do. Then he smiled self-deprecatingly and said, "If they really were coming for the Bat-family, then they came at a really good time. I'd still like to see their expressions when they faced that kid, Peter Parker."

"Forget it." Nightwing sat back down in the chair, resting his cheek on one hand, and said, "Even we can't catch him. Do you know where he went now?"

"I saw him head east earlier, but... never mind. Batman always has that period where he favors the newcomers."

Nightwing also laughed, and then, as if remembering something, he said, "It's a good thing your predecessor wasn't here when you first arrived. I know Jason; he would have challenged you to a duel and then punched two of your teeth out."

Robin shrugged and said, "I'm not that easy to deal with either, but that guy is indeed frighteningly strong... By the way, how is he? Should we give him a call?"

The isolated island was like a small boat floating on the sea—desolate, lonely, and uninhabited—until a jet ski cut a graceful trajectory across the coastline, dragging a wake behind it, breaking the long-standing tranquility of the place.

Peter Parker parked the jet ski next to the dock and stuck it firmly with webbing to prevent the wind and waves from blowing it away.

Then he began to move ingredients from the trunk. Because most of the shelf-stable ingredients had already been transported over by speedboat, Peter was only delivering some seasonal vegetables that were difficult to store this time, contained in two light boxes.

He carried the boxes into the cabin and saw Jason curled up on the sofa at first glance.

Schiller was tidying things up in the kitchen nearby. Seeing Peter enter, he greeted him and said, "Thanks, Peter. Just put them by the door."

Schiller put down what he was busy with, walked to the door, smiled at Peter's back, and said, "I've already seen it on the news. You did well, but I have to remind you, Peter: Batman must be very angry right now."

Peter licked his lips, made a wry face, spread his hands, and said, "Got it, Doctor. When he comes back, I'll remember to run fast."

Then he peeked inside, raised a hand to point lightly at Jason, and made a curious expression, the gist of which was asking, "Is he really okay?"

Schiller followed Peter's gaze and looked back at Jason, who was sitting on the sofa hugging his legs with a somewhat dull expression. He answered smoothly and naturally, "He's fine, Peter. Medical students nearing exams are all like this: eyes unfocused, limbs stiff."

"It's just because too much complex knowledge has occupied their brain capacity, preventing them from carrying out daily activities well. But such effort is worth it; they will achieve good results in the exams."

Peter swallowed hard and looked at Schiller from above his eyes. Schiller reached out and patted his arm, saying, "Don't worry, surgery isn't a required subject for you. You can take it as a hobby, but no one requires you to take the exam."

Peter breathed a sigh of relief, cast a sympathetic glance at Jason, and turned to leave as quickly as possible.

After closing the door, Schiller carried the two boxes Peter had just brought in to the kitchen, selected some fresh vegetables from them, and started the toaster.

Not long after, a plate of sandwiches was placed in front of Jason. Jason's eyes, somewhat cloudy from fatigue, turned, but his gaze didn't land on the sandwiches; instead, it fell on Schiller's hands.

Schiller sat down opposite Jason after placing the plate, clasped his hands together, rested his forearms on his legs, looked at Jason, and said, "Now you should understand, right? I did it for your own good. Are you still afraid of the Joker now?"

Jason remained silent, not speaking; only his Adam's apple moved slightly up and down.

He knew his answer was "No."

But he also believed that no one could give an affirmative answer after experiencing all of this.

It was just that what made him feel afraid now was no longer the Joker, but Schiller.

It was hard for Jason to describe how much he regretted using a flock of sheep as a metaphor for the society of ordinary people. It wasn't that the metaphor was inappropriate, but he discovered that when he only saw it as a metaphor, someone was using practical actions to put it into practice.

Jason had cut open the Joker.

But this was only the first step.

When Schiller's scalpel was held against his neck, what made him feel the most fear wasn't the threat of death, but the look in the Joker's eyes as he lay on the operating table.

That look was as if to say, "You will always be a little lamb tied to a chair. I can do whatever I want to you at any moment. You have no power to resist, and you can't even summon the heart to resist."

Jason was terrified that he would really become like that.

So he acted.

The feeling of cutting a living person was completely different from dissecting a corpse, and cutting the Joker was another thing entirely.

When Jason cut open the man's chest, he could feel the living limbs twitching in fear, and could clearly feel the heartbeat and the flow of blood.

Too vivid, too warm, too cruel, too extreme.

But the moment the skin around the incision tightened suddenly, Jason realized that the Joker could feel pain too.

Perhaps he was a lunatic, perhaps he was willing to pay anything for his evil grand plan, even his life, but pain was a feeling no one could be exempt from. The same wound would bring the same suffering.

It couldn't be said that Jason hadn't learned something from the feeling of that moment, but before he could experience and digest it, Schiller's order came again.

As a matter of course: remove the ribs, cut away two-thirds of the right lung, as well as the pancreas and a portion of the small intestine.

Jason's hands were shaking, but he did it.