Chapter 925: Schiller

As winter approached, Gotham’s rain did not lessen; the drizzling rain slid down eaves and fell upon the garden, knocking off the tender leaves of ornamental plants, bending supple branches to the ground, emitting helpless cries.

Merkel put on his raincoat and stepped out with an umbrella; Wei En, who had been reading by the fireplace, looked up and asked, “What’s wrong? Where are you going?”

“Sir, the rain tonight is too heavy—the newly transplanted plants won’t survive it. I’m going to set up the rain shelter so they can make it through this winter.”

Wei En shook his head, helplessly saying, “Even without rain, they won’t survive this winter—they probably won’t even make it through tonight…”

“Merkel. I told you long ago: Gotham isn’t a city where you can practice horticulture. Those delicate European saplings belong only in European aristocrats’ gardens. Gotham? It’s their grave.”

Merkel sighed softly. “Last month, when there was sunlight, they grew quite well. But I didn’t expect the clouds to have lingered over this city for the past week.”

“Even if we can’t save them all, we must at least preserve the few remaining ones. After all, how can an estate’s garden have no flowers?”

Wei En sighed again but said nothing. Merkel took the umbrella and went out.

Through the floor-to-ceiling window behind the parlor, Wei En saw that the moment Merkel stepped outside, the wind snapped the umbrella’s ribs—the force of the wind against the canopy hurled him into the tree behind him, and the exposed roots tripped him.

When he stood up again, Merkel threw the broken umbrella aside in a fit of pique, pulled the hood of his raincoat tighter, and walked back in. Wei En smiled and said, “Why bother? Couldn’t you wait until tomorrow morning? Tonight’s a typhoon.”

He closed his book, walked to the door, and glanced back at the garden.

The situation was indeed grim—not only the newly transplanted plants, but even many of the original estate’s rosaceous plants and dense shrubs were struggling, swaying precariously in the howling typhoon.

Wei En turned back, went to the coat closet beside the stairs, and took out two umbrellas. He handed one to Merkel, who looked at him in confusion. Wei En shrugged and said:

“We have to save the plants. With this weather, tomorrow’s gardeners in Gotham will be overwhelmed. You can’t expect the wealthy ladies of the estate district to venture out in this rain to rescue their gardens.”

Wei En pulled on his raincoat, took his umbrella, and stepped into the garden. The wind whipped against his raincoat with a drumming sound, but his umbrella remained rigid, unmoved by wind or rain.

The Rodriguez Estate’s garden was among the largest in the estate district. Rumor had it the original owner loved horticulture. Though Wei En couldn’t fathom how a proper Gothamite developed such a taste, he’d paid a third more for the estate solely because of its beautiful garden.

Wei En had no habit of cultivation. After acquiring the garden, he’d briefly considered planting something—but the result wasn’t spring blossoms and autumn fruit; it was nothing but endless fallen leaves.

Before attempting cultivation, he’d studied horticulture intensively—but once he started, he realized cultivating a garden in Gotham was simply too extravagant. Most native plants here had survived generations of natural selection to endure the harsh environment.

Gotham’s rain was impartial to all life: humans went mad, animals turned vicious, and plants—thankfully—hadn’t mutated into anything terrible yet. To expect them to bloom luxuriantly was simply too much.

After several failed attempts to transplant new plants, Wei En gave up on the garden entirely. Later, Batcat and Pikachu damaged most of the estate’s structures, forcing Wei En to move back to campus for a while.

Damaged buildings could be repaired—even the room layouts he disliked could be remodeled to his liking, and the decor unified. But the only regret was the great garden: after the collapse, many plants were injured and died before surviving one winter.

Wei En’s estate was a classic English manor: after entering the main gate, one faced a three-sided courtyard overhead. To the left was the great hall; to the right, the parlor.

South of the parlor stood a row of tall, narrow glass panes for light; north of it was a full curved floor-to-ceiling window, followed by the door to the garden—beyond which lay the garden itself.

That meant guests waiting in the parlor could see the garden immediately. When Wei En first viewed the house, it was precisely this feature that drew him.

Pushing open the heavy door, sunlight poured down from the courtyard. As one entered the parlor, the taller narrow panes sliced the light into slender beams, casting warm, non-glaring patterns across the room.

Sitting on the parlor sofa and turning one’s head, one could see the garden in full bloom.

Looking out through the floor-to-ceiling window: first, rosaceous vines climbing trellises; then, uneven reeds and half a pond; then, winding paths lined with hedges, a grand tree in the courtyard’s center, and farthest away, a white pavilion.

This pane of glass framed the garden’s most beautiful scene like a picture frame.

After the garden’s destruction, the trellises collapsed. Low-growing climbers survived, but nearly all the ancient roses perished. The brickwork around the pond was shattered; the reeds lay bent and broken.

The distant paths, pavilion, and tree remained intact—but without the foreground to frame them, they appeared even more desolate.

When Merkel arrived, he adored the garden’s scenery. He claimed he’d studied gardening at the butler academy, so Wei En often saw him moving through the garden with pruning shears while reading newspapers in the parlor.

But after the garden was destroyed, Wei En became preoccupied with supervising the vocational academy’s children and rarely returned to live at the estate. After Merkel called him, he imported a batch of horticultural plants from Europe and planted them during the last transplanting season.

The result was predictable: after two seasons of devastation and the heaviest rain in Gotham’s decade, eighty percent of the transplanted plants never even reached flowering season—they returned to the earth. The remaining twenty percent barely survived, their condition worsening daily.

Standing in the gale and torrent, Wei En stared at the few seedlings tied with thin ropes to correct their growth, and sighed helplessly. He felt these last plants wouldn’t survive the night.

At that moment, Merkel arrived carrying materials for the rain shelter. Wei En took from him a gardening spade and two shelter brackets, walked to the other side of the garden, loosened the soil, and buried the brackets.

After securing all four brackets, he hung the rain shelter, fastened it with several loops of rope, then walked to the opposite side and secured it there too.

“I think we’re doing useless work,” Wei En said as he tied the ropes. “We’re only satisfying our pity—it won’t help these poor plants at all.”

“What did you say?!” Merkel shouted from the other side of the garden. The wind and rain drowned their voices, so they had to shout louder. Wei En repeated, tying the rope: “I said! This is pointless! We can’t guard them every night! They’ll die in this rain anyway!”

“But we have to do something, don’t we?!” Merkel tightened his raincoat collar, pulled his hood tighter, squinted against the stinging rain, and shouted: “Last time! Alfred came to pick up Elsa! He shook his head and sighed at the window! He must have formed some opinion about my butler academy training!”

Wei En tied a knot in the rope, shoved it hard against the bracket, and shouted back: “I think he has an opinion about me! Because Elsa still hasn’t learned to say his name—but she learned mine!”

“Oh, damn it!!!” Merkel stumbled, shook his hand violently. Wei En glanced over and asked, “What’s wrong? Running out of rope?”

“No! This damn bracket has a splinter—pierced my palm! I need to get this bandaged!” Merkel frowned, staring at his palm, grimacing.

Wei En was about to speak when a gust struck. Merkel pulled both hands back, losing his grip on the bracket. The wind swept over, and the already-raised rain shelter collapsed like the earlier umbrella, crashing to the ground.

Wei En let go, stepped back, and watched helplessly as the brackets and shelter smashed down onto the few poor seedlings.

He shook his head. “Looks like I was too optimistic. They might not even survive the first half of the night…”

Both returned to the estate. Merkel took off his raincoat and went upstairs to bandage his wound. Wei En stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the collapsed shelter roll across the ground, blown by the wind like a spider monster full of destructive intent, crashing into the garden’s outer edges, scattering the pebble path and the front lawn into chaos.

When Merkel returned downstairs, Wei En walked back to the sofa and said, “I thought this garden might last until Elsa learned the word ‘garden.’ I didn’t expect it to be destroyed so soon…”

Merkel wore an expression of guilt. “I shouldn’t have tried to save those seedlings. Tomorrow morning, I’ll have to dismantle the shelter, relay the pebble path, and fix the hedges and shrubs—good heavens!”

He hurried to the phone. “I hope God forgives me for calling Old Man Bigfoot this late—ask him to recommend a gardener…”

He picked up the receiver and dialed, listening as Merkel negotiated with his contacts about scheduling gardeners and repairmen. Wei En returned to the window, watching how the spider-like shelter had ravaged the garden.

Now, the shelter had been blown beneath the estate’s oak tree. The tree’s massive root system had caught the shelter’s legs, weakening its menacing posture. It seemed the destruction had halted.

Wei En was about to turn away when he saw a dark shadow leap from the estate’s roof onto the oak tree, then drop from its branches.

As it landed, its cape caught on the upright shelter brackets—like a mosquito snared by a monstrous spider, or perhaps… a bat.

For the first second, Batman didn’t realize why he was suspended midair—he’d taken this route countless times; it was nearly impossible for anything to go wrong.

But quickly, he realized: it wasn’t him that had failed—it was Wei En’s estate.

Looking at the estate as if ravaged by a giant monster, and meeting Wei En’s calm gaze through the window, Batman was startled to find himself exhaling a sigh of relief.

Not for Wei En—but for whatever monster might have attacked Wei En’s estate… and for himself.

Not for Shiler, but for the monster that may have attacked Shiler’s estate, and for himself.