Chapter 266

Lightning flashed and thunder roared; the rain poured down. Gotham's night was always this dark and terrifying—a bolt of lightning split the sky, illuminating Arkham Asylum, where the only room lit up held two people facing each other.

When Hugo awoke from dizziness, he saw a figure in a white coat sitting across from him, watching him with obvious concern.

Hugo closed his eyes again, strained to move his eyeballs, and cleared the blurred halos from his vision—he saw that the doctor across from him had green hair and wore clown makeup.

The green-haired doctor pulled a medical file from a nearby shelf, looked up at Hugo, and said: "Hugo Strange, diagnosed with severe delusional disorder, hospitalized for three months. This is your second follow-up this month. Has your condition improved?"

Hugo opened his mouth and said: "Jack, what are you doing here?"

Hugo looked down and saw he was wearing a psychiatric restraint gown. He twisted his body violently and shouted: "... top your prank, Jack! What are you trying to do? Let me go!"

The doctor called Jack gave a helpless expression and said: "Looks like your condition has worsened. You still believe you're a psychiatrist and that all the doctors here are patients?"

"What are you talking about?" Hugo exclaimed, eyes wide. "I am a psychiatrist. You're the patient who calls himself the Joker. Didn't we just collaborate... wait!"

Hugo shook his head hard. Fragments of memory surfaced in his consciousness. "No—I should be inside Schiller's consciousness. How did I end up..."

"New symptoms?" Jack frowned at Hugo. "What new story did you make up this time?"

"Listen, Mr. Strange, I don't know where you got those high school and college memories—or if you invented them—but no matter how detailed your fantasy, you're not the world-renowned psychological master you imagine yourself to be."

"I really don't want to spend twenty minutes recounting your life story again, but if that's the only way to snap you out of it, I'll do it."

"Hugo Strange, you are a truck driver employed by a gang on Elizabeth Street. You are not an outsider—you're a native of Gotham..."

"One rainy night, you laughed while wielding a dagger and attacked Bruce Wayne, heir to the Wayne family. But Young Master Wayne is a good man—he recognized your mental illness, didn't press charges, and had you committed here."

"Listen, Hugo, you need to cooperate with treatment. My time is valuable. If not for the Wayne family paying, I wouldn't be treating you here..."

"What?! I'm... what insane nonsense are you spouting?!" Hugo said in disbelief. "Those details you just described—they're yours, Jack! Stop joking! This isn't funny! Let me go!"

"See? That's exactly it. Honestly, your symptom is quite rare—you absorb other people's life stories and imagine them as your own. And you're also the most uncooperative patient I've ever encountered."

Jack sighed, pressed a button on the table. After a moment, another doctor in a white coat entered. He adjusted his glasses. Jack waved at him and said: "Doctor Victor, I'm really getting a headache."

Jack stood up from his chair and pointed at Hugo. "I know his medication dosage has reached its limit, yet his condition shows no improvement..."

Across from him, Hugo was already writhing, trying to break free of the restraint gown. He stared at Victor and said: "Victor, are you crazy too? The consciousness space... where is this?"

"Where is this?"

With Victor's voice, the room Hugo stood in transformed into a square box, shrinking gradually. The four walls that held it up unfolded and flattened; wooden planks rose from where the walls had been, assembling into a wooden stage. Two heavy red curtains dropped with a sharp "whoosh" from either side of the stage.

From the stage, rows of audience seats stretched below. Victor sat among them and asked: "Where is this?" The globe-headed Schiller answered: "This is the Upside-Down Tower."

"The Upside-Down Tower? What's that?"

"Think of it as one of the zones in my mental palace—like a theater."

"The Upside-Down Tower occupies the 7th, 8th, and 9th levels of my mental palace. Of course, as you saw before, I had the elevator attendant give Hugo a backdoor entry—otherwise he couldn't even climb the first step."

"Then why did you send him here? What's special about this place?"

"The teleportation was random—I didn't specify it. He's just lucky."

"Lucky? What does that mean?"

"I've said before—each zone in my mental palace has its own unique rules."

"So what are the rules of the Upside-Down Tower?"

"The Upside-Down Tower is where I practice perspective-switching. When treating patients, I must step into their shoes, feel their current mental state, and judge whether their stress threshold can handle my next question..."

"Hence the Upside-Down Tower. Here, every identity you firmly believe in is inverted: doctors become patients, patients become doctors."

"So when you treat a patient, you come here and turn yourself into the patient, to empathize?"

"Exactly. That's why I said he's lucky. The rule in the consciousness space is 'what you believe is true becomes true.' But here, it's reversed: the opposite of what you believe becomes true. Hugo, who firmly believes he's a psychiatrist, becomes the patient here—and the patients he remembers become the doctors."

"Then how does he leave?" Yin Wensi asked, puzzled.

"A madman once climbed past here. He gave a perfect demonstration."

"What did he do?"

"If you believe you're a doctor, you become the patient. Conversely, if you believe you're the patient, you become the doctor."

"Similarly—if you believe there's a staircase leading upward, it won't exist. But if you believe there's never been a staircase upward, then one will appear."

"It's not difficult. For ordinary people, convincing themselves to believe something entirely opposite might be hard. But for someone with psychological expertise, it's not too hard. That's why I said he's relatively lucky."

"The only question is—how long will it take Hugo to figure out the rules here and find a way out?"

Victor turned his head back, his gaze falling again on the stage. Now, Hugo in his restraint gown had returned to his ward—he was clearly overwhelmed by shock and confusion.

His first question, of course, was: Why is Schiller's consciousness space so elaborate?

This wasn't just about realism—it was beyond that. Every person, every object, every detail here matched the real world perfectly. For a moment, Hugo almost believed it.

Then came the strangeness: usually, things appearing in the consciousness space represent aspects of the psyche—a pink room might symbolize love or gender reflection; a pencil might represent academic life or childhood memories.

But now Hugo was confused—what did a psychiatric hospital with inverted identities represent?

Everything here was identical to the real world—and precisely because of that, it felt wrong.

Regardless, Hugo, baffled and unable to make sense of it, began his life as a psychiatric patient.

After all, he was a psychiatrist—he knew what patients did in asylums. He tried spitting out his medication, prying open his restraint gown, even attempting to jump out the window—but all failed, because the doctors watching him were too many: not just Jack with his clown makeup, but also Victor, Cobblepot, and Alberto.

Day after day, the rain outside Gotham's windows never stopped, and Hugo never escaped their surveillance. As he struggled to think, to crack the secret, he suddenly realized this calm life was sliding into an unpredictable horror.

When he tried again to spit out his pills, Jack, the clown-faced doctor, had a nurse bring a funnel and poured an entire bottle of pills into Hugo's mouth. When he tried again to break free of his restraint gown, they brought thick iron chains and wrapped him layer upon layer.

Their treatments grew increasingly dangerous—from forced medication, to being bound with iron chains, to being strapped to a treatment chair and subjected to electroshock...

The rain outside Arkham Asylum grew heavier; Gotham's night grew darker. Until one night, a figure wielding a dagger stepped into his room. A flash of lightning outside illuminated his face—it was a clown, grinning madly.

The clown approached Hugo with the dagger. Hugo screamed, trying to retreat—but the chains bound his hands. He had nowhere to run.

The clown sliced open Hugo's face, peeled off his skin. Hugo shrieked in agony. In the shadow cast by the lightning, the dagger fell again and again, blood spattered, the mad laughter echoing farther and farther...

Amid the intertwining laughter and rain, the curtains slowly closed. Victor in the audience rubbed his arm and said: "You know, this movie would definitely be rated for viewers 21 and over..."

"Things got out of control. Why?" Cobblepot asked.

"I said before—the lower the floor, the more chaotic it is. The higher the floor, the more orderly. In a 330-level mental palace, levels 7, 8, and 9 are extremely low. So collapse happens fast."

"The longer you stay, the worse the world unravels. After all, this is consciousness space and dreams—anything terrifying can happen, just like in a nightmare."

Yin Wensi shuddered: "What a terrifying nightmare—a doctor dreaming he becomes a patient, and then gets..."

"Honestly, he disappointed me. The last madman who climbed stairs solved everything in less than a day—he even made the staircase appear right before him, and had time to blow a few kisses to the people on this floor..."

As he spoke, the globe-headed Schiller turned his head toward Jack, who was dozing beside him. Jack didn't react at all.

"If this really is a nightmare, he should've woken up by now. What happens next?"

"If he wakes up, it means he failed the trial—he'll be sent back to Level One."

"Then let's see—where will the elevator send him next?"