Chapter 804: How Schiller Broke Apart (Part 1)

Another silent night in Gotham, the hospital's empty corridor held only faint footprints on the tile floor, whispering of daytime bustle and the stillness of night.

In a city always noisy with gunfire, the hospital remained quiet—those wounded here silently licked their wounds before returning to face the dangers outside.

A hand gripped the doorknob of the ward, turned it gently; the door opened without masking the faint tremor of machines, the soft rustle of paper. Victor, standing at the bedside reading the report, looked up at Schiller and said, "What did the attending physician say? How's the drug tolerance?"

Schiller stared at the report in his hand, one drug response data point feeling strangely familiar.

Connors had once told him what kind of data signaled the lizard serum's efficacy—and the good news was, this string of numbers fell precisely within the effective range.

Schiller stepped to the bedside, looking at Bruce lying there—now unrecognizable.

His burns from the warehouse fire had not yet healed when he was doused in chemical agents, then left exposed to wind and sun without proper treatment, causing his wounds to worsen and become infected.

Worse still, he later fell into a vat of chemical dye; most of his body hair had been corroded away, his skin turned into a rough, zombie-like surface.

The sight was horrifying—after the epidermis was eaten away, subcutaneous fat, muscle, and tendons twisted together, turning him into a living anatomy textbook figure of muscle, yet far more terrifying.

Bruce no longer bore his handsome appearance; youth, strength, beauty—all vanished with that fall. His flesh had gone still, like a bat stuck to a glue trap, forced to shed its own skin to fly again.

But neither Victor nor Schiller saw this monstrous form—they saw, beneath it, a soul slowly awakening.

The immense power radiating from it startled Victor, and Schiller silently made the sign of the cross over another smiling bat in his heart.

May God protect him, Schiller thought—a Batman who laughs only because of the Joker virus could never match a Batman who laughs from within.

Schiller unconsciously reached up and touched his neck side; Victor's gaze followed his fingers, and he saw a faint scar between them.

Since Victor had known Schiller, this scar had always been there—and it puzzled him, for he couldn't imagine anyone in this city capable of injuring Schiller.

But Schiller never spoke of it, as if it weren't a trivial accident. Standing by the bed, Victor spoke again: "Schiller, can you tell me what happened? I don't think you're the type to abuse students—how did Bruce become like this?"

"Victor, would you like to hear a story?" Schiller stood by the bed, gazing into Victor's eyes through the soft glow of the ceiling lamp. "A story about pride and prejudice?"

Schiller lowered his eyes to the monster on the bed. "When Bruce first enrolled in school, he was far from the dominant figure he pretended to be—and even now, he still is."

"He's always relied on bluster to convince himself he can complete his revenge. I've never liked dealing with people like him…"

Victor thought a moment. "Indeed—if someone is so obsessed they can fool even themselves, they'll inevitably demand others comply with their delusion. They must immerse themselves so deeply they never wake up."

"I understand that well…" Victor's face darkened. "In my darkest days, I told myself my wife would wake up. She would wake. She would recover."

"If anyone looked at me with pity, comforted me, urged me to accept it—I felt like killing them, because they shattered my illusion. And I lived only because of that illusion."

Schiller sighed slightly. "At the time, I thought refusing Bruce was my own emotional choice, a conclusion reached through rational analysis. But I didn't realize that, from that moment, something terrible began."

Victor's eyes widened slightly, fixed on Schiller—what could possibly be called "terrible" by him?

"You should know I'm not from Gotham. Since arriving in this city, I found it dull, tedious, utterly boring."

"Then Bruce appeared before me and asked me a question—and suddenly, a string of laughter rang out inside me. But at the time, I didn't grasp the severity…"

Schiller paused briefly, then said: "You may know I suffer from mental illness—congenital autism, acquired anxiety, and some obsessive-compulsive tendencies."

This was the first time Victor heard Schiller admit he was mentally ill—but he had known it all along.

Schiller's daily habits were indeed unusual, but in Gotham, that meant nothing—no one paid attention.

Yet Schiller had always avoided the subject, unwilling to speak of his mental state.

Victor understood: no matter how well one studied theory or how experienced one became, a doctor could not heal himself—for doctors were human, too, with weaknesses, and they refused to face their own illness.

Now, for the first time, Schiller spoke openly of his condition—unveiling the mystery Victor had long wondered about.

"I don't know if you're familiar with savant syndrome, but since I can remember, my inner world has always been different from others'."

Schiller tapped the bed rail lightly with his finger, producing a crisp sound. "Of course, I only realized this later—that normal people's minds are chaotic and disordered; their way of thinking is utterly unlike mine…"

"They retrieve memories not by descending stairs, searching for date tags on files, pulling out folders to examine them carefully—but through a vague, chaotic method, recalling experiences, sometimes even losing them."

Schiller tightened his grip on the rail; Victor caught the detail. "If you truly can't bear to recall, don't think about it. Let's talk about something else."

Schiller shook his head. "When I was very young, I saw other children building with blocks. I found it fascinating, so for the first time, in my inner world, I assembled a tower from memory fragments."

"The tower was tiny, wobbly, collapsing at the slightest touch. But in the days that followed, I had nothing else to do, so I kept trying to make more blocks, building a taller tower."

"At the time, I was driven by instinct, unaware of what I was doing. I simply found it interesting, never sensing the danger within."

"I only wanted a grander tower, so I made more blocks, climbed higher—but I think you know: blocks always fall."

Victor understood Schiller's metaphor—he had read Schiller's papers on the Palace of Thought. He asked: "In childhood, you built a tower you couldn't control. One day, it collapsed. What happened after?"

Schiller fell silent for a long time. "The accident in the real world didn't happen on the day the tower fell. Signs were there all along."

"As I built the tower higher, I noticed my memory growing stronger—I could recall every detail of daily life, remember everything perfectly, recite it backward. And since my mind was already abnormal, I never consciously concealed it."

Victor felt a bad premonition. "You revealed your genius traits. Then what?"

Victor noticed that whenever Schiller recounted this, he habitually paused for long stretches—as if trying to skip certain experiences, or deciding which parts he could speak of.

After another moment, Schiller continued: "Unusual traits, unlike those of most ordinary people, are easily noticed. My life changed. At first, it didn't matter—but after the tower collapsed, everything spiraled out of control."

"Did your mind break down?" Victor asked.

"Worse." Schiller looked down at his fingers. "I'm just an ordinary person. The human brain has limits. Thought is always bound by bandwidth—it cannot expand infinitely."

"I turned every piece of information I gathered into blocks. To build higher, my personality climbed up the tower, just to place the next block on top."

"If the tower represents all the information I've gathered, then the ground represents my mental foundation. Clearly, my mental stability was never strong."

"So one day, an earthquake happened."

Victor's fingers tightened on his notebook. He looked at Schiller—no special expression on his face, but clearly, this was far from easy to say.

Translating these metaphors into direct concepts made the truth far more terrifying.

A genius born with savant syndrome, possessing superhuman memory and learning ability, whose inner world collapsed entirely—that could spawn countless horrors.

"The ground cracking, the tower falling—none of that matters…" Schiller shook his head. "What matters is that my personality fell from the top… and shattered."

Victor stared, speechless.