Chapter 273: Layers of Fear (Part 2)

The sky over Gotham City was howling with cold wind, and faster than the wind was Bruce, who was fleeing for his life in the black rainy night.

Behind him was a deformed monster chasing him. It was a monster with extremely long limbs, like a spider, and more importantly, this monster had Alfred's face, and one of its arms was holding a cup of hot milk.

Constant screams came from behind, Alfred's voice becoming weird and shrill: "Young Master, you have to drink milk to sleep, have you forgotten?!!"

"You are not a good child!!" Alfred's face became more and more distorted. He waved his limbs that were several meters long, crawling on the ground, looking like a huge arthropod. His head rotated 180 degrees, and he kept shouting in his mouth: "Good children must finish their milk before they can sleep!!!"

Bruce ran forward while recalling what had happened a few minutes ago.

After discovering the globe and the note, he was attacked by the clown under the bed again, and then sat up from the bed again.

Undoubtedly, he had mastered more clues. Globe? Bruce thought, a spinning globe, what would it represent?

But that guy under the bed was very difficult to deal with. Bruce would be hit by his dagger no matter what angle he used to take the globe, and then wake up again.

Bruce, who couldn't achieve results in this regard, could only walk out of the bedroom door again and explore in the corridor and other rooms. But just like those traps in the bedroom, Bruce was killed by clowns in other rooms again and again.

Soon, Bruce stopped in the middle of the corridor and then looked back at his bedroom door.

Every time he woke up, he opened the bedroom door from the inside, and after being killed by the clown outside, he returned to the bed and opened the bedroom door from the inside again.

But he had never stood in the corridor and opened the bedroom door from the outside.

Bruce stood in the pitch-black corridor, holding the bedroom doorknob, thinking for a long time, and then deduced the rules here—he must face his fear directly.

When in the bedroom, his greatest fear was the story he had heard in his childhood. Perhaps he thought he had long forgotten all this, but clearly, he hadn't forgotten it in his dream. This kind of fear was engraved in his deeper consciousness, and only now was it dug out, becoming a mountain blocking him from finding the truth.

And in the corridor, what he feared most was perhaps opening his bedroom door, because he knew that this not only meant the end of a desperate day, but also meant that the next desperate day was about to begin.

Bruce recalled that once, for a long time, he was very afraid of returning to his room to sleep. Every time he pushed open the bedroom door intending to rest, he felt a strong sense of guilt and culpability, because he felt there were more important things waiting for him to do than sleeping.

And now, when he held the bedroom doorknob again, that familiar feeling surged up again, just like the fear he felt when looking under the bed before.

But he still pushed open the door directly, and on the other side of the door was the second floor of Wei En Manor.

When he stepped into the second floor, the door behind him disappeared, but Bruce knew that more terrible things would happen next, because there were more rooms on the second floor than on the third, and more importantly, this was where Alfred rested.

When he walked into the second-floor corridor, he met Alfred holding a tray. That tray had a cup of hot milk on it. Alfred looked at Bruce and asked concernedly: "Young Master, did you have a nightmare again? Have a cup of milk."

Bruce didn't move, and then suddenly, the cup of milk turned into a comical bomb, "bang" exploded, Alfred was blown to pieces, and Bruce was scared awake from the bed again.

The second time, he tried to pick up the cup of milk, but the milk still turned into a bomb, blowing him up and making him start over.

"Face fear directly..." Bruce muttered to himself.

What was he afraid of? Afraid of Alfred? Or was it that he didn't dare to face Alfred's concern?

Waking up again and again, no matter what posture Bruce used to take the cup of milk, no matter what he said, he would eventually wake up.

But soon, Bruce's thinking became clear. When facing Alfred, he said: "Thank you, Alfred, but could you please send the milk to my room?"

This time, the milk didn't explode, and neither Alfred nor Bruce was blown up. Alfred just smiled and nodded, saying: "Okay, Young Master."

Now, Bruce was on the second floor, and his instruction was for Alfred to send the milk to his bedroom on the third floor, so he now had to return to the third floor, but there were no stairs for him to walk.

The fastest way was to be scared awake again and appear on the bed in the third-floor bedroom, but Bruce was surprised to find that the entire second floor was too normal, there was no terrible clown with a dagger, and no stairs to fall from.

Bruce found that he couldn't perform the next cycle.

When you know you are dreaming and want to wake up, what would you do?

Most people would choose to jump off a building; the falling sensation would make people wake up from the dream quickly, but there is another way, which is to produce enough pain, or rather, suicide.

"Face fear directly..." Bruce muttered this word again, and then he thought, as long as you are human, you cannot avoid the fear of death, so suicide should be the best way to face fear directly.

He found a screwdriver from one of the rooms. The sharpness of this tool was enough to pierce his heart, but when he got this tool and held it against his chest, Bruce realized that besides death, there was another fear surrounding him, making his hands tremble constantly.

What if this wasn't a dream?

What if he had been deceived?

What if this time, the process of him waking up from the bed, walking out of the bedroom, coming to the second floor, meeting Alfred, and letting him send the milk upstairs, all happened in reality?

What if after the screwdriver was inserted into his heart, he didn't wake up, but waited in pain on the ground, only able to wait desperately for death to arrive?

That would be the biggest joke of the century.

Bruce didn't doubt at all that some madman would set up these traps one after another for the sake of creating this joke, until inducing him to voluntarily insert a sharp weapon into his own heart, and then welcome death.

Bruce suddenly realized that he understood all the madmen in the world. Whether they were laughing wildly, screaming, self-harming, or attacking others, perhaps they were just like Bruce now.

Perhaps they attacked themselves just to break free from some terrible nightmare, and they attacked others just to attack some monster in the dream.

Just like if you watched Bruce's actions during this period from the perspective of a bystander, no matter who it was, they would think he was a madman.

He jumped up and down in his bedroom, lifted the mattress, moved the desk, repeatedly walked into the washroom, kept twisting the doorknob, checking every single thing in the room without stopping, just like a patient with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, constantly repeating those stereotyped behaviors.

To a bystander, he had an inexplicable fear of stairs, preferring to jump down from the skylight rather than step on the stairs. He lay on the ground, crawled under the bed, and after taking out a perfectly normal globe, thought for a long time in place.

He stood sluggishly in front of his bedroom door but didn't push it, faced the butler who brought him milk but suddenly showed a sad and terrified expression, held the milk cup as if holding a bomb, and then waved his arm and threw the milk cup away...

Just as the screwdriver pressed against Bruce's chest, he suddenly understood the Joker.

The Joker kept laughing wildly, and others called him a madman, but perhaps he just saw a funny joke in his hallucination. In his own dream, the choices he made were perfectly normal.

"Fairy Wood Origin"

Every madman is a normal person in his own world.

Just as Bruce held the screwdriver and slowly applied force, drawing a wound on his chest, he suddenly heard a shrill scream, and immediately after, behind Bruce, a monster with Alfred's face appeared. He rotated his head while shouting: "Young Master! Why are you not in the room?!"

"To avoid drinking milk, you actually ran here! Hurry back with me, finish the milk before you can sleep!!"

Regardless, seeing his butler turn into an arthropod with long limbs, and his head still rotating constantly, this kind of impact was also a bit big for Bruce, so his first reaction was to avoid the attack.

He rolled to the right, and then took advantage of the gap when Alfred turned around, and fled.

There were no stairs on the entire second floor, but the moment Bruce rushed into the corridor, the window at the end of the corridor "bang" opened, cold wind poured in, and Bruce had no choice.

When he jumped down from the window, he thought this weightless and dizzy feeling would make him wake up again, but it didn't happen. He fell solidly to the ground, and severe pain came from his back and shoulders.

This overly real pain made Bruce start to doubt whether he had really returned to reality, but clearly, that monster that violated common sense was reminding him that this was still a dream.

The rain began to get heavier and heavier, and the monster's roar behind him became shriller and shriller. Everything seemed to become more chaotic, as if it had suddenly turned from a puzzle-solving game into a horror game, and it was the kind with extreme chase battles.

Bruce accelerated his running pace, because he wasn't sure if he would have a chance to wake up again if he was really caught by that monster.

Bruce was very familiar with the road outside Wei En Manor, because he had walked it countless times, but now, he found that the surroundings of his home seemed to have become an endless maze.

The monster kept chasing, and Bruce kept running, just like the common nightmare of being chased. After a long time, both spirit and physical strength were constantly consumed.

What are the rules? Bruce thought, face fear directly?

Fear...

Suddenly, he stopped at a familiar intersection. That was an intersection he had passed several times but ignored.

That was an intersection he was very familiar with. How many broken stones were piled there, how many wires were there, he knew clearly, because it was the gunshot there that changed his life. ===== CHAPTER 274 =====