Chapter 4905: There Is No Batman Here (Ten)

Ted poured Lilith a cup of warm water. He looked at her with some concern, then said, "Are you okay? You seem a little different from when you activated your prophetic ability before. What happened?"

"I didn't activate my prophetic ability." Lilith nodded at him, took a sip of water, then said, "Have you heard of the collective unconscious?"

Ted gave her a questioning look with his expression. He said, "You know. Back at the academy, I failed psychology. Even behavioral analysis, I could only get a score in the forties, Professor Wayne would avoid me..."

"Well then, I'll explain it to you in the simplest, most plainspoken way." Lilith turned to face him and said, "Since ancient times, what humanity has inherited is not only physical genes, but also the souls of our ancient ancestors. Part of our ancestors' souls has always resided within our bodies."

Ted shivered: "Sounds a bit scary."

Lilith shook her head and said, "Why is it that even newborn babies instinctively fear fire? Why do we fear heights, dread bottomless cold pools, and tremble at the roar of wild beasts?"

"Isn't that normal?" Ted said, "These things are dangerous, so naturally we associate them with being harmed by them, and thus feel fear."

"The problem lies in why you know these things are dangerous. You understand that falling from a height means death. But there are certain things that, when you stand atop a skyscraper and look down, awaken your fear even earlier than this logic does. This is humanity's collective unconscious."

"I see." Ted nodded and said, "Because humanity has always feared these things, it has become an instinct of ours, allowing us to avoid harm from them not through logic, but through a simpler, more direct means."

"That's one way to understand it. If avoiding these dangers required cognition and logic, humanity might have already gone extinct. Because that would be too slow. Those codes etched into the depths of the human soul are the spoils humanity gained through struggle on the evolutionary path, helping us stand out from the beastly masses and become Earth's rulers."

"But what does this have to do with your reaction just now?"

"The unconscious is unconscious precisely because humanity cannot actively discover or utilize it. Only conscious intent can be actively used, and humanity has no collective consciousness. Aside from psychic individuals, people cannot directly engage in psychic communication with another individual."

Ted nodded and said, "Indeed, that's the case. So you can't actively use your own unconscious either?"

"Some powerful psychics can indeed control their own unconscious, but that is their own." Lilith emphasized, "Humanity's collective unconscious belongs to no single person; it is humanity's collective instinct, and it cannot be controlled by any single individual."

"I felt something," Lilith said, "that made me more deeply aware that, within the human collective, there is some bond connecting everyone. Before, this connection lay hidden beneath the water's surface, so even I could barely glimpse its form. But just now, it moved."

Ted shivered again: "Sounds like it's not a good thing."

Lilith, however, shook her head. She looked somewhat puzzled: "If I had to say what binds humanity together, I would say it is the birth of new life. This represents reproduction and inheritance, the moment humanity comes closest to touching instinct."

"But that hidden bond beneath the water's surface is showing me: death is humanity's most unbreakable bond. Graves bind us together. I don't know if my feeling is wrong, but if it truly is..."

Lilith did not continue speaking. Evidently, some things surpassed her cognition, shattered her previous fixed impressions, causing her to doubt her experience one moment and her feelings the next.

"Your feeling is not wrong, Young Lady." A voice appeared. Lilith looked toward that direction, and when she saw the blue-eyed youth, she froze.

"You are... Charles Xavier?" Ted said, somewhat surprised, "I heard Professor Wayne mention you. He said you are the most powerful psychic in another world. I didn't expect you to come as well."

Charles gave a light laugh, but Lilith looked at Ted and said, "We must show sufficient respect to Professor Xavier."

"No need for that," Charles said, "I like to move about in this appearance precisely because I don't want to hear people constantly calling me 'Professor.' Only old fogeys like that. You can just call me Charles."

Lilith and Ted exchanged a glance. Charles walked over and sat down—but this was actually just a brainwave projection, created by interfering with their brainwaves, appearing before them as an illusion—still smiling as he said, "I really like your understanding of the collective unconscious, Young Lady. However, regarding the 'death' in the collective unconscious, perhaps you have some misunderstanding."

"Please enlighten me." Lilith said, "In fact, I have indeed not felt an overly strong sense of decay and destruction, which does not align with how people usually understand death."

"That is because death in humanity's collective unconscious represents a certain unhealthy mental state that needs to be restructured. Death is the process of remaking oneself. Rather than saying it is death, it is better to say it is breaking the old to build the new, facing death to be reborn."

Lilith suddenly understood, and she said, "So it is not ordinary death, but 'ego death'."

"Yes," Charles said, "This also shows how death, through humanity's collective unconscious, shapes each of us—how do you view your own pathology?"

Lilith hesitated for a moment, then said, "I do not entirely deny the pathological aspects of my personality. My fragility and sensitivity give me stronger emotional perception, my anger gives me greater drive for action. I do not believe these need to be eliminated."

Charles nodded and said, "Indeed so. Every person's personality contains pathological aspects, and there has never been a completely healthy and normal person in the world. But how do we distinguish acceptable pathology from those that must be treated and improved?"

"Pain," Lilith said, "If I do not feel pain from my pathological aspects, then they need not be improved. Conversely, if those things often trouble me, causing me great pain and despair, then I must make a change."

"This is the meaning of ego death." Charles's blue eyes flickered with an indeterminate light, "When you feel pain and urgently wish to eliminate the pathological aspects causing you pain, the God of Death will answer your call—the 'death' in the collective unconscious is humanity's internal driving force for renewing personality and psychological state. It represents 'escaping past suffering' and 'welcoming the coming rebirth'."

Lilith also fell into deep thought. Charles then said, "But is it really that simple to kill those pathological aspects that cause you pain, to reshape your personality and psychological state?"

"Don't say it's ordinary people—even we psychics, with our control over our inner world down to the finest detail, could we really have such powerful drive to accomplish all this?"

Lilith gave a slight shake of her head. Her eyes flickered. These individuals with exceptional psychological talent, when pondering such questions, always display the same demeanor—looking melancholy, fragile, and sensitive.

"No," Lilith said, "It's not that simple. Everyone's greatest enemy is themselves. Even if he is Superman, even if he is Batman, there are moments when they are defeated by themselves."

"Then what is it that enables them to win in those moments when they triumph over themselves?" Charles asked, "What lets them decide to overcome their pathology, reshape their psychological world, and gain rebirth?"

Lilith thought in silence for a long time, finally uttering a single word: "Love."

"Yes. Love and death are inseparable in this way." Charles said, "When you love something, love someone, love a way of life, only then will you be dissatisfied with the status quo, want to change, and truly possess the powerful drive to reshape yourself."

"How does death become a bond that unites all humanity?" Charles continued, "Not through fear, but through love."

"In that barbaric and primitive age, we relied on tending to each other's wounds, seeking food for our companions, and thus established human society. But this was not innate or instantaneous. Primitive instinct is always selfish, and humanity relied on love for one another to achieve the shift from solitary to social, from individual to collective, from individuality to socialization, accepting others and society in one death and rebirth after another, ultimately becoming inseparable, fused by blood and milk."

"Humanity's collective unconscious death—reshaping instinct through love, just like other instincts, is a precious legacy left by our ancient ancestors, an unbreakable bond, the amniotic fluid and umbilical cord of the human race."

Lilith was somewhat stunned. Charles then said, "But if this applies to a specific individual, death is certainly painful. Like breaking a malformed bone so it can regrow. The bone will eventually heal, but the scars will remain."

"Yes," Lilith whispered, "The reshaping of the self cannot erase everything from the past. Those pathologies, the pain they bring, will still be retained in memory, and even leave traces in the new personality, like a shadow, inescapable."

"The stubborn, unchangeable parts of the changes we brought about through love, those things shattered under powerful inner drive, are like dead resentful spirits, always clinging to us. Is it death that makes them grow more resentful? Or is human nature simply self-loathing?"

Lilith seemed somewhat lost in thought. She gradually entered a profound and mysterious prophetic state, as if hearing the pulse of death's bond like a heartbeat, using this rhythm to part the mist and see the truth of the collective unconscious.

"On a wasteland, a tower built from ruins resembles a tomb more than anything." Charles's voice echoed in her ears, "Love is the gravekeeper, letting the reborn self remain restrained; death is the gravedigger, letting pathology be released, binding past and present together."

Before Lilith's eyes, after the mist cleared, stood the Tower of Babel built by humanity. They, through one death and rebirth after another, have constructed their society to a height no beast can aspire to, spiraling endlessly upward until touching the sky's limit.

Yet within that magnificent tower reaching to heaven, at the center of the ground lies a hole, suppressing humanity's and society's pathology, pouring out from it, likewise endlessly upward, until forming a double helix like genetic structure, inscribing the steles of countless dynasties' rises and falls, and in history's spiral, becoming what we see today.