Chapter 2183: Battle of the Two Cities! (Part 61)

Batman was experiencing the longest day.

Later that day, Batman processed the Wei En Group's work at the fastest speed. His rigorous personality led him to investigate all the business conditions of the past three months and adjust numerous details, so although his efficiency was maxed out, it was already late at night when he finished.

A lamp was left on for him in Wei En Manor, but when he stepped into the manor hall, he saw a scene he had never seen before.

If Batman had to describe this scene, his artistic cells, which were not inferior to anyone's, would describe it as "lively remains" or "warm wreckage."

The fire in the fireplace had gradually gone out, the blackened charcoal fading from residual red. When the ash rose along the flue and was magnified by the faint firelight into swaying shadows on the sofa, they looked like a group of jellyfish floating and rising in the dim light of the deep sea.

Obvious indentations were left on the fabric sofa—this was a detail that Batman's instinctive detective vision stuffed into his brain. Thus, he saw several familiar figures sitting around the fireplace: his Robins, Damian, a few younger children, and Bruce, who was sitting on the sofa opposite the fireplace.

In the hazy firelight, their bodies leaned forward, looking at the drawings on the coffee table. When Batman walked over, he saw several pairs of fair, slender young hands, or slightly immature children's hands, writing and drawing on a piece of white paper.

Now the people had left, and only the soccer formation patterns densely drawn on the paper left on the coffee table told of the lively discussion that had taken place here about an hour ago.

Bone china cups and saucers were placed separately, with water stains from warm water running down them. They must have been in a hurry when drinking, wanting to pour the water into their throats quickly and then open their mouths to say the next sentence.

Fine cookie crumbs spread along the edge of the coffee table to the floor. Eating while watching, of course, and using hands covered in crumbs to pull at the drawing paper and push the people around them.

Many footprints were left in front of the coffee table. Bodies were always leaning forward, listening intently, discussing intensely, and two big guys were twisting and turning on one sofa just to get the best view of the tactical formation they had drawn.

At this moment, it was silent here, but Batman could be surrounded by the liveliness in his imagination, just like every time he stepped through the deepest darkness before dawn to return to the Batcave, seeing the traces left by those birds active in their nest all night.

But that was usually relatively fragmented, like scattered sparks, but this time someone had gathered them together, so the crackling sound of burning firewood was also deafening in Batman's imagination.

"They were very happy." Alfred's voice appeared behind Batman. He brought a cup of hot tea for Batman and said, "They made a fuss until eleven o'clock before sleeping. No one could convince anyone, so they plan to hold a simulated soccer match on the garden lawn tomorrow morning."

The fingers of Batman, who had taken the teacup, paused. He lowered his eyelids, blew on the tea, and asked, "Are there enough people?"

"Of course not enough, but Dick decided to call his classmates. He met a few friends at the summer camp when he entered high school, as well as classmates who take ballet lessons together."

"In the garden?"

"Yes, the east lawn. I will get up early tomorrow morning to clean it up. Master Thomas said they will be back tomorrow morning, and we will still have breakfast together."

"That's a good thing, Alfred."

Batman nodded, his expression somewhat inexplicable. Even Alfred, who knew him best, couldn't say he often saw Batman with such an expression.

Or perhaps close to... envy?

Alfred knew best when Batman would take off that serious outer garment. He had seen more than once the slightly exhausted Batman returning at dawn, throwing himself into the sofa like a perfectly normal human being, drinking hot tea, and observing everything in the Batcave.

Alfred knew he wasn't looking at those devices or furniture, and not even at the amazing collections in the Batcave, just as if the sound waves that couldn't be perceived by humans allowed him to see things humans couldn't see.

Perhaps in Batman's eyes, time wasn't necessarily continuous. His amazing observation skills allowed him to see every detail of the Robins' activities in the Batcave, and his brain, which had completely exceeded the human category, allowed him to reproduce all the traces into real scenes around him.

In this way, he seemed to be immersed in this liveliness, shuttling through the flock of birds, squeezing through a group of fluffy, messy feathers and shiny, smooth young beaks, and sleeping until dawn.

But if another young version of himself were added to this fantasy, it would inevitably make Batman surprised to discover that he could still dig a bit of humanity out of the cracks in the hard rock walls he had forged. He felt a strange kind of jealousy.

In the past, this liveliness was prepared for him alone, because only he could see it, only he could imagine it, and only he could remember it.

Even this group of birds couldn't do it. They treated every day spent here as an ordinary day, no need to care, and even less need to remember deeply, because they were the creators, and they already possessed it at that moment.

But Batman observed and collected it afterward, so he picked and chose quite carefully, repeatedly constructed it, and finally preserved it extremely cautiously.

He couldn't possess it, because if he joined it at that moment, the creators of this liveliness and warmth would scatter and flee due to nervousness and fear.

Batman understood the cause of this situation better than anyone, because he chose to build himself into a symbol of fear. Fear is an extreme emotion, and there is no such thing as being able to control it at will. Either you can intimidate everyone, or you can't intimidate any one of them.

So he chose to stay away, observe, collect, and reconstruct, enjoying the lively and warm family atmosphere in a category that was more about psychiatry than social engineering. He thought this was good for all of them.

But now there was such a bat. Batman couldn't even say he was a bat; he looked exactly like a bird.

Even without a disrespectful attitude, Batman could only say this guy was more like Nightwing when he wasn't arguing with him. He just mixed into the flock of birds, creating and enjoying the liveliness with them.

He didn't even sweep past like a thief, or sneakily squeeze in. He just spread his wings and crashed into the bird's nest, making a bigger commotion than a robin or even a cuckoo, like a eulogist leading birds to sing in a fairy tale.

Batman looked up. He saw Bruce standing quietly in front of the patio on the second floor, one hand on the railing and the other hanging by his side—sorry, Batman could only think so. If Bruce didn't smile, he couldn't distinguish between Bruce and Nightwing at first glance.

Bruce smiled, but Batman felt he might as well not have smiled. Now who could tell him apart from the Joker?

"We had a very pleasant chat." Bruce leaned his body forward, folded his forearms on the railing, and said to Batman with a smile: "We decided to hold a friendly match tomorrow morning, or to be precise, after breakfast. I decided to name this the First Wei En Cup."

"Of course, there will be a Wei En to be the referee. We only need one, and I think it's Thomas. What do you think?"

Batman looked up at him quietly. After a long while, he opened his mouth and said: "You are me. We both know what kind of people we are. Setting aside the tragedies in your life that have already been reversed, do you think you can never reveal your true colors?"

Bruce restrained his smile a bit. The moonlight coming in through the long Gothic windows on both sides of the patio fell just on both sides of his body, like a pair of long, spread wings.

"Antisocial personality, manipulative tendencies, psychopathy—we all know we are essentially no different from that lunatic."

Bruce stretched out the index finger and thumb of one hand, shaped them into a gun, and then pointed his index finger at his own head and said: "We are the very lunatics we hate. You choose to refine your will and wisdom into the thickest iron chains, firmly locking away those crazy parts, only taking the advantages that high functionality brings us."

"And you choose to become one with them." Batman's low voice echoed in the hall: "You accepted them, used them with ease, like those lunatics, gaining enjoyment from attracting others' attention, manipulating, and abusing others' spirits by any means necessary."

Batman looked directly into Bruce's eyes and said: "You aren't really interested in soccer, and in fact, you disdain their adoration and enjoyment of liveliness. What truly excites you is going against me, taking certain things away from me. This is the most typical manifestation of a psychological sadist."

There was no smile on Bruce's face at all, and he appeared somewhat indifferent. He hugged his arms, wearing slippers, and walked down from the second floor with a shuffling sound.

When his footsteps crossed the light cast by one window after another, he seemed to be walking down the stairs of heaven, constantly sinking from light into darkness.

Until he stood in front of Batman, Batman saw through those blue eyes a version of himself with blood-red pupils standing within this shell.

They had completely become one. This was the worst news Batman had heard recently.

It wasn't the Joker and Batman becoming one, but Batman's own reason and madness, indifference and excitement, darkness and light, imagination and logic, absurdity and reality—everything that constituted the tragedy and comedy in Batman's life, completely becoming one.

He was no longer a knight bound by a creed, but a lunatic accepting reality; no longer the embodiment of any extreme emotion, but an ordinary person who had completely reconciled with himself.

The time he took to complete this change wasn't long. Batman could see that this wasn't exactly the same as the Bruce he saw in Schiller's Tower of Thought. He should have been silent for a period of time, completing the spiritual fusion and transformation.

Brilliant, Batman could only evaluate it as such.

But Bruce was clearly more brilliant than he had imagined, because the next morning, he got up to cook breakfast. ===== CHAPTER 2184 =====