Chapter 4637

Anatoly began to observe the environment in the room. This was a very empty cylindrical hall. The first thing he noticed was the torches on the wall. Unlike the torches they had picked up from the rooms before, these torches were larger and brighter, illuminating the entire room as if it were day.

"Something's wrong," Anatoly said, "Flames of this volume cannot emit such intense light."

From the moment they entered the room, all their attention had been attracted by the mechanism in the middle, and the room was relatively large, with several meters from their location to the wall, so they hadn't carefully observed the things on the wall at all.

Anatoly walked over and stared at the torch, but because the entire hall was also very high, even though the torch was fixed in the middle of the wall, it was still much higher than a person, and it was impossible to see the flame very clearly from below.

Anatoly reached out his hand and felt it in mid-air for a while, then said: "The light and heat of this torch are not conserved. Could it be electric?"

Lucifer also walked over and looked up. He sized it up and said: "I don't know if this is electric, but it's definitely not an ordinary flame. It's very similar to the torches used to illuminate the Hell Palace; it only takes a little flame to emit very bright light."

Anatoly gently patted the wall in front of him with his hand: "There must be wires laid inside the wall. Unfortunately, the wall cannot be smashed."

As he spoke, he walked along the wall to the back of the mechanism. There was a door behind the mechanism, and this door was not locked, which meant that the setting of this level was that one could jump over it directly, and it didn't matter whether one donated blood or not.

After walking around the wall, he still found nothing, so Anatoly looked up again. The mechanism on the other side of the scale was connected to the ceiling, but it was also surrounded by a metal cover, so he couldn't see the detailed situation inside, nor could he deduce what it was used for from the mechanical structure.

The design of the entire scene was like a flawless turtle shell. The previous levels hadn't given any useful props at all, and now they had nothing but iron rods with chains and a crowbar in their hands; violent destruction seemed completely unfeasible.

The wire mesh wasn't completely closed, but whether it was the crowbar or the iron rod, the length couldn't reach the things inside at all. Moreover, this wire mesh was very likely to be electrified, and one would suffer if they touched it carelessly.

Lucifer had been following behind Anatoly, but he stopped soon because he had no strength again. The fact was that humans shouldn't have wings; he was equivalent to moving forward with a load at all times, and his mobility was discounted by more than half.

Anatoly still didn't intend to give up; he turned counterclockwise again. However, he didn't walk many steps this time before he discovered the problem—there were a few floor tiles on the left side of the machine that were somewhat sunken.

Anatoly couldn't be sure whether he hadn't discovered it before or if this problem had appeared suddenly. But he thought the latter was more likely because Lucifer was very heavy, equivalent to the weight of two people. It was possible that these floor tiles, which were already problematic, had sunk after being stepped on by him.

Anatoly walked over and picked at the floor tiles with his hand, finding that his fingertips were stained with some sand and soil. He looked at the bricks next to them; each one was seamless, and it seemed only the ones nearby were somewhat loose.

Anatoly pressed over one by one until a whole line of sunken traces formed, spreading to the seam between the machine and the ground. Anatoly was somewhat enlightened: someone had pried the bricks off.

This wasn't completely impossible. The connection between the bricks was indeed very solid, but the entire machine was made of metal, so of course, it couldn't be integrated with the stone bricks, so there must be seams. It was likely that someone had pried off the first brick along the seam and then pried so many one by one.

Anatoly came to the first brick at the seam and indeed found that the gap was larger than other bricks. But because of the position of the torch, there was a circle of thick shadows around the machine, and such small details were almost impossible to be discovered.

Anatoly held the iron rod in his hand and didn't pry at the seam because this might cause an electric shock. He inserted the iron rod into the gap between the first brick and the second brick, used the crowbar to smash down hard, and after smashing it in, slowly pried it outward.

It didn't take much effort to pry it open because it had already been dug out by someone. Anatoly successfully got that brick down, and after looking at it in his hand, it was just as he expected: the person who dug out this brick used the exact same method as him, and there was another vertical trace on the side of the brick.

At the same time, in the soil below, there was a very deep hole, the thickness of which was just about the same as the iron rod. This should have been caused by the other party constantly smashing the iron rod down when prying the bricks.

Anatoly's expression gradually darkened.

"Hiss..." Lucifer walked over and took a look, gasping for air, "This strength is too great, right? How did they do it?"

"Alright. Let's finish the business here, and then we'll go," Schiller said.

"Business here?" Bruce was somewhat puzzled again, "Didn't you say we aren't playing this level?"

"If you chose the short reason, I wouldn't need to explain these things to you, and then we could naturally leave. But now that you already know, we can't just walk away; of course, we have to do something."

Bruce looked at Schiller, feeling a faint bad premonition in his heart. And when Schiller took out a disposable needle, Bruce pursed his lips and asked: "Are you going to draw blood?"

"I remember I told you before. This dungeon didn't completely restrict my abilities; when I'm in a bad state, I can still use strength that exceeds ordinary people."

"What do you want to do?"

"I understand Anatoly. Facing this situation, he will definitely want to thoroughly crack this puzzle. No matter what difficulties he faces, he won't give up. And I must help him."

"The method is to hurt yourself?" Bruce looked at him and said, "Then we might as well play the game according to the rules, so we can also pass this level safely."

"That's why I said, the environment you lived in has influenced you more deeply than I imagined," Schiller turned his head to look into Bruce's eyes, "Although you are no longer Batman, you are still an American, and a Gothamite. You have become accustomed to spending all your strength to survive, accustomed to only focusing on the next night you can pass through safely."

"If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand," Schiller continued, "When there are many near sorrows, one becomes accustomed to having no distant thoughts. This is the crux of the entire United States, and it is always so clearly reflected in every American."

"As you said, we can donate blood, perfectly complete the whole game, and it seems we can also avoid more serious consequences. But you cannot let yourself slide toward 'accepting a result that is barely acceptable.' Because people are turned into walking corpses step by step like this."

"Wait until you are eaten to the bone by the game rules of endless exploitation, and then think of breaking the rules to resist, it will be too late. Because by then you will have no strength left. If you are not alert enough, that is not your fault, Bruce. The mark left on you by the temperament of this country has never been so easy to erase."

Bruce's Adam's apple moved; he looked at Schiller with somewhat moist eyes and said: "But you said, if I don't ask for the specific reason, we can leave."

"Between you and Anatoly, I must make a choice," Schiller's tone lowered, "If I want to help him, I must hurt myself; I know this will definitely make you sad. And if I don't help him, he will probably get hurt too. For me, this is a very difficult choice. So I decided to use a better method."

"Let me decide?" Bruce's tone contained anger, "But you didn't tell me anything! You should have told me in advance!"

Schiller shook his head: "This is not achieved by telling you. I just wanted to know whether you are willing to explore the deep reasons behind this, or just treat this as an ordinary game and muddle through."

"You know I would definitely want to explore," Bruce took a step forward and said, "I am good at thinking, full of curiosity, and I am good at exploring anything in this world. And you are my professor; I am accustomed to thinking about the questions you raise. You cannot weave a trap targeting my respect for teachers!"

"No, that's not what I meant either," Schiller said, "You decided to stay and listen to what I thought because you had doubts about my decision not to sacrifice. This shows that you subconsciously think I am the kind of person who would be willing to sacrifice. As a teacher, I cannot let my students down."

It seemed Bruce collapsed in an instant. He gritted his teeth and said: "I was... I..."

"What's wrong with you?" Schiller suddenly sneered somewhat mockingly.

Bruce clenched his fists tightly. Schiller took a step forward, narrowed his eyes slightly, and stared at Bruce's blue eyes: "You anticipated that it would be entirely up to you to sacrifice, right?"

Schiller took two more steps back and then laughed: "So many years have passed, Bruce, and you still haven't made any progress at all. What I meant by you not being alert enough is that you still haven't realized how easily I saw through you."

"You thought it could be entirely up to you to donate blood, so you didn't support my choice to skip the level, but wanted to fight for the opportunity to stay; I was just compromising with you. Bruce, every moment you tried to become a savior like Batman again, I stopped you; why did you think I wouldn't this time?"

After speaking, Schiller reached his arm into the wooden exit. Just as Bruce took a step forward, Schiller's voice rang out coldly again: "If I were you, I wouldn't move. You know clearly that all this is self-inflicted."

"I am just making the right choice; this is most advantageous for us," Bruce raised his volume, but he immediately realized he couldn't fall into a self-proving trap, so he began to attack others. "It's clearly you who wanted to self-harm, but you were afraid your doctor would blame you, so you designed a linguistic trap to push the responsibility onto me!"

Schiller turned his head to look at him and said nonchalantly: "Then how do you plan to counterattack, Bruce?"

After speaking, he turned his head back, inserted the disposable needle into the soft tube, and aimed at the blood vessel on his arm.

The next second, Bruce rushed over directly, snatched the disposable needle inserted in the soft tube, threw it into the mechanism along the hollow wire mesh, and it could never be taken out again.

"You can't do this, Schiller. Don't even think about it."

Who knew, Schiller wasn't angry at all. He just smiled at Bruce again and reached out to touch his own collarbone.

"I said, if I were you, I wouldn't move. Bruce, you will never listen to me properly."

As the voice fell, the pale fingers were like a sharp knife, deeply inserted into the wound on the collarbone. One second, only one second.

The moment Bruce pounced, the collarbone snapped. Afterward, he flew out as if he had hit a train head-on, his forehead hitting the ground. In the blurred vision with blood flowing into his eyes, he saw Schiller tilt his head slightly, pull the ring on his collarbone with the iron chain, and amidst the splashing blood, he held the detached iron rod and slowly stood up straight.

Flames rose in the eyes of Bruce, who had fallen to the ground. Every moment he tried to become Batman again, Schiller stopped him, he thought, but he also gave Schiller a lesson—this time would be no exception.