Chapter 961: Shiler's Sharp Blade (Part 1)

Scott, who heard this, was stunned for a moment, then lowered his voice and said, "Are you crazy? You'll die!"

As his hand gripped tighter and tighter, Shiler found it difficult to breathe. He said intermittently, "So... you must make a decision now. Gamble that your hand, which is trembling even more than mine, won't damage the trachea and arteries when you stab the sharp military knife into my neck..."

"Aren't you afraid I'll really kill you?!" Scott asked, gritting his teeth.

"You won't do that. As a seasoned agent, you know better than I do, *cough cough*..." Shiler panted again, then continued, "He will stand opposite you and try to communicate with you precisely because your knife is pressed against my neck. If I die, you can only pray that that crocodile monster isn't hungry now."

Scott's fingers were clearly trembling. He saw that after subduing all the surrounding agents, that terrifying monster was walking toward him.

Although he was an elite agent who had served for many years, his opponents for so many years had been limited to all kinds of vicious or cunning ordinary people, not this kind of monster that exceeded common sense.

Even in a city like Cat Getan, Killer Croc's appearance was deterrent enough. It could be seen from the fact that he couldn't even find a job as a gang thug. Even for Gothamites who were not picky, Killer Croc's appearance was a bit too advanced.

Watching the tall monster walk toward him, Scott tried hard to take a few deep breaths, forcing his brain to calm down, hoping he could control his arm and stop it from trembling again.

Just as Shiler said, a hostage only had value when alive. Now, the consequence of his hand trembling once might be the death of both.

"If you don't have experience in this area, just do as I say." Shiler swallowed his saliva and said in a dry voice, "Hold the knife with a forward grip, stab it directly in from three centimeters behind the scar, and then pull it out immediately."

With Batman and Killer Croc approaching step by step, Scott knew he had no choice.

Before he acted, he glanced at Batman. The moment Batman caught his gaze, a syllable blurted out:

"No..."

"Uh!

!

!

!

!

!"

Instantly, fresh blood splashed. A bright red scar appeared on Batman's pitch-black chest armor as he rushed in front of Shiler, like the sunset river gradually swallowed by darkness at Cat Getan's sunset.

At this moment, in the dark underground room, the soil layers collapsed heavily. Batman discovered that he was standing on a bridge, and beneath his feet was the Cat Getan River under the setting sun.

This tributary, which flowed into the sea via Cat Getan, was always more damp and turbid than other rivers because too many dead bones were buried under the hidden mud and sand, never seeing the light of day.

Batman remembered that the last time he had such a fantasy about blood bursting out was when he was standing in a dark alley, watching a pearl necklace fall to the ground.

That reminded him of the heavy snow in Cat Getan's winter and the moon hanging high in the sky.

And at this time, he saw fog rising on the river surface. Soon, the thick fog blocked all sight. The faint sound of the smoke grenade made Batman wake up. But at this time, the chair in front of him was already empty, and both the kidnapper and the hostage were nowhere to be found.

Killer Croc coughed hard twice, waved his hand to clear the fog in front of him, and said, "This cunning guy actually used a smoke grenade?! Batman, are you okay? You..."

Batman, standing in place, shook his head hard. Killer Croc's gaze fell on his arm. Even through the fabric of his clothes, one could see that the muscles of Batman's arm were tensed very tightly and had begun to tremble slightly.

"Wei Lun, Wei Lun..." Batman suddenly spoke. He turned his head to look at Killer Croc, stared at him with a burning gaze, and then said, "You can smell the blood, right? Follow this kind of scent, catch up with them, hurry!"

Killer Croc hesitated for a moment, then sniffed and said, "There is indeed some scent. Let me see... it should be this way!"

After saying that, he pointed in a direction. Batman rushed over without even thinking. But just as he rushed into the passage, he discovered that a burst of thick smoke was surging out from the passage. He didn't have an oxygen mask, so he had to retreat back into the room.

Killer Croc poked his head in to look, and was also choked out. He coughed hard twice and then said, "Damn it, they are really smart. In this kind of enclosed passage, the most feared thing is thick smoke, and this will make my sense of smell fail. I can't smell anything now..."

"Bang!"

Batman hammered the wall with his fist. He said in a slightly trembling voice, "That wound just now might have damaged an artery or trachea. Emergency aid must be performed immediately."

"Arterial bleeding might have a possibility of rescue, but if the trachea is injured, a large amount of blood rushes into the trachea, leading to mechanical asphyxia. In the case of complete blockage of the trachea, the heart will stop beating in at most one minute, and death will inevitably occur within three minutes."

"Find him... find him!

!

!"

Batman turned around and rushed out of the room from another path. When his brain, which had almost condensed all the wisdom in the universe, began to operate at the highest speed, time seemed to slow down.

Back then, when the Venom symbiote was parasitic on Batman's body, because it was completely unable to defeat Batman's willpower, it almost had no room to play and failed to show the characteristics of a symbiote on Batman, such as taking over the host's body, condensing armor, high-speed recovery, etc.

And the Gray Mist was completely different from Venom's properties. Therefore, Batman didn't discover that Shiler's ability to turn into Gray Mist came from a symbiote like Venom.

He thought that this ability, like Constantine's magic, needed to be artificially activated and controlled.

And before, Batman had written in the weakness analysis of Constantine that as long as you break his limbs before he casts a spell, or directly make him unable to make a sound or make a movement, then the vast majority of magic cannot be successfully cast.

The weakness of mages has always been their bodies. Once the body suffers heavy damage and cannot perform precise movements, it is very easy to be defeated all the way and lose the possibility of a comeback.

By analogy, if it was said that Shiler was just in a poor mental state before and was seized by the agents, then now, a body suffering heavy damage might mean he had completely lost the ability to resist and had fallen into great danger.

And the reason why Shiler said he was an organizer of the Central American revolutionary organization when he was arrested by the agents was very likely to cover for Alfred. He might have felt that his exposure was inevitable, so he might as well take on an important identity directly to protect the safety of important comrades.

Now, Batman understood that he wasn't racing against the agents, but racing against time, or rather, racing against the speed of Shiler's life draining away.

And on the other side, Shiler covered his neck and sat down on the side of the passage. Scott tore the hem of his clothes into cloth strips to bandage Shiler.

"The degree of your nervousness exceeds my imagination, Agent." Shiler said while holding the wound and wrapping the bandage, "If your hand trembles one more time, we can only meet in hell."

Scott cursed, then said, "You are really the craziest lunatic I've ever seen! I really don't understand, what exactly do you want to do?!"

"Me?" Shiler wrapped the bandage in a pretentious way, then used the Gray Mist to heal most of the wound, leaving only some epidermal wounds to continue bleeding. He sat in the dark passage, his back against the cold and dry wall, looked up at the ceiling, and said:

"Agent, I have to say, the truth serum you used has a high concentration. Don't you think now is a good time for interrogation?"

"To hell with interrogation!" Scott looked at Shiler, a bit broken down, and said, "Is now the time for interrogation? That damn crocodile man, and that lunatic dressed as a bat, what exactly is going on with them?"

"Why exactly are they chasing us? And how can we leave here?" Scott kept taking deep breaths, wanting to calm himself down.

However, this kind of environment in the underground passage was not suitable for human survival at all. Being in this environment for a long time would bring great pressure to people's emotions. Scott felt that his senses were magnified, and any slight disturbance would make him feel nervous.

"Don't be nervous. You should relax, just like me." Shiler took a cigarette out of his suit pocket. Scott widened his eyes. Shiler shook his head and said, "What about the thing you used to light the fire just now?"

"Help me light a cigarette, sir. Only then can I recover faster, and then as you wish, follow you to leave this ghost place." Shiler's speech was still a bit difficult. His speaking speed was fast, but the pauses between sentences were very long. Accompanied by the light of the cigarette being lit, Scott saw that the hand he used to hold the cigarette had been trembling violently.

"How do you feel?" Scott glanced at the fresh blood on his neck and then said, "You'd better not die here, better not..."

"Don't worry, I can't die." Shiler coughed hard. Instantly, the fresh blood completely soaked the bandage cloth strips, overflowing from the wound again. His voice was hoarse and trembling, just like the kind of drug addict Scott often saw.

"It's just that a large dose of barbiturate medication caused some bronchospasm, difficulty breathing, and my heart rate is also a bit irregular, and my body temperature has dropped by about two degrees. If you could get a shot of adrenaline, I think I would be better."

Scott just wanted to speak, but Shiler continued at a fast speaking speed: "But I have to say, as a drug for drug interrogation, it really makes me feel very relaxed. My brain is urging me to say something..."

"What do you intend to say?" Scott finally recovered a bit. He sat opposite Shiler, looked at the flickering light of the cigarette in his hand, and said, "Are you going to talk about how you organized and led the revolution in Zhongmeizhou?"

"Don't mention those uninteresting things." Shiler shook his head, used his trembling arm with some effort to send the cigarette into his mouth. The shaking of his arm brought the shaking of his lips. He had to grit his teeth to ensure the cigarette wouldn't fall out.

Thus, his voice became like it was squeezed out from between his teeth, a bit vague. He said:

"Perhaps, you have seen many high-IQ criminals. They graduated from prestigious schools, had extraordinary talents, and achieved success. Without any external coercion, nor any environmental pressure, they just embarked on a path of crime."

"When you face them, you feel very puzzled. Why do they want to waste their talents like this? Why don't they cherish the gifts God gave them? You feel they are born bad seeds, even worse than ordinary people who do evil..."

"Actually, you are jealous of them, jealous that they possess everything you don't have, yet they waste these precious things unscrupulously..."

"Talent, youth, friendship, love..." When Shiler's voice echoed in the narrow passage, it seemed to be covered with a layer of hazy and old gray.

Scott's reason told him not to listen to the words of such a lunatic, but he was like being lured by a devil, listening to his story.

"How you view these high-IQ criminals is how I view you, ordinary people..."

"You born bad seeds, insects that make me feel disgusted, stupid and dirty garbage..."

Shiler began to pant violently again. He seemed to be excited again, and even the overdose of sedative medication couldn't stop his state of agitation. The light of the cigarette was already shaking as if it were painting in the air.

"You have never realized how much you actually possess: a strong and energetic body, a vigorous soul, a heart filled with surging emotions, and a brain that will forget..."

Shiler kept taking deep breaths, his words turning into fragments in the intervals of breathing. But suddenly, he became quiet again, as if the released drug effect suppressed his agitation again. After being silent for a while, he continued:

"Ordinary people sacrificed their superior talents and lived ignorantly and confusedly, but they were very happy. Lunatics have abilities far beyond ordinary people, but they must face madness and chaos for their whole lives, finding it difficult to soberly experience emotions..."

"It's hard to say which of the two is more unfortunate."

"Originally, I had accepted the reality that these two cannot be possessed at the same time. But suddenly one day, a person walked in front of me and broke my idea because he possessed all of this at the same time."

"Batman..."

Shiler opened his eyes in a daze, as if seeing some hallucinations in the agitated nervous activity. When he spat out this word, it was as if he had chewed every letter, carrying malice for no reason.

"He possessed everything: rationality and sensibility, logic and intuition, reason and emotion..."

"He can enjoy a high IQ without having to bear the emotional lack brought about by extreme rational thinking. He has both the concentration to calculate everything precisely and the sense of justice that limits him from violating morality..."

"When I first saw him, I was sure he was such a person, a damn lucky guy, a creature God was biased toward..."

Shiler coughed twice in a low voice and then said: "But I saw a terrifying future in him. Do you know? Do you know?"

"That made me feel shocked because, judging from this terrifying future, he shouldn't have such a high starting point. He shouldn't be a normal person, shouldn't enjoy everything..."

"And what made me feel even more puzzled is, he clearly possessed everything, yet how did he waste it all in just a few decades?"

"When he was 18, he was still just a genius hero with slight psychological trauma."

"And when he was 40..." Shiler's tone gradually lowered, and then appeared again from nothing: "When he was 40, he became a lunatic just like me..."

Shiler panted again, as if struggling with fearless hallucinations, and then he revealed an ugly smile, saying: "Then I understood, it's Batman, it's Batman who made him become like this."

"It's Batman who made him head toward madness in the twenty most precious years of human life."

"It's Batman who made Bruce spend twenty years crawling from the sunlight into the shadows, taking off his armor and putting on a straitjacket."

"It's Batman who made a perfect genius I dreamed of become me."

"When I realized this, it was as if I heard the biggest joke in the world, and then, I laughed."

"You're crazy." Scott looked at him and said: "You've already started talking nonsense. Don't believe the hallucinations you see anymore. This will only aggravate your condition."

"This is what I said, you are much more professional than him." Shiler tried to calm down for a while, then said: "If he heard these words, he wouldn't take this as nonsense, but would remember every word in these words, find out the abnormality from them, and figure out what exactly is going on."

"So, he will never be a psychologist!" Shiler raised his voice and said: "Because the first rule of a psychologist is not to believe the crazy words spoken by mental patients, don't believe a single word."

"This is also why lunatics all over the world can be psychologists, but he can't."

Shiler had been speaking intermittently, but Scott didn't understand what he was talking about at all. He vaguely discovered that Shiler seemed to be talking about the person chasing them, but he didn't know what kind of relationship Shiler and that Batman had.

And after Shiler said this rule, Scott became even more conflicted. He always felt that Shiler was hinting at something, but if he followed this rule, he shouldn't listen to Shiler's words now, because he was completely a lunatic.

Scott had seen countless criminals who appeared with various reactions during drug interrogation. Some people wouldn't open their mouths, as if the medication had no effect at all. Some people still circled around the interrogator, and all questions would return to the starting point.

But Shiler, he created a new style.

He would start a new topic, and then start complaining, scolding, and sighing to himself. He was indeed accepting interrogation, but the object of his interrogation might be the hallucinations he saw himself, which had nothing to do with reality at all.

In the following period of time, Scott tried to use the interrogation techniques he had learned to bring the topic back, but it had no effect at all.

The result he obtained was that Shiler changed one topic after another, using vicious language that Scott had never heard or thought of, scolding some people Scott didn't know at all.

Seriously, Scott never thought in his life that English could have such rich vocabulary for scolding and sarcasm.

At the beginning, he regretted not bringing recording equipment, but later, he felt that this secret scene was just right. If heard by the parties involved, they might encounter even more terrifying pursuit.

Thus, he reached a conclusion: perhaps from beginning to end, what Shiler said was nonsense. He wasn't any organizer or leader of the Central American revolution; he was just a lunatic with a mental disorder who was talking nonsense.

Scott stood up. He turned to Shiler and said: "You'd better say the same thing during the interrogation in Washington. In this way, they can issue you a diagnosis of mental illness, and you can go to a mental hospital for treatment instead of being sent to prison."

Shiler finally became a bit quiet. He sat in place with his head lowered, his expression dark and unclear. Scott bent down and said to him: "Stand up, Professor, we have to leave here."

"No, no, you shouldn't urge me like this." Shiler swallowed his saliva and said: "You never asked the point. This is contrary to your professional agent level."

Scott squatted down with some helplessness, looked at Shiler's face, and asked him with the patience of treating a mental patient: "Then, Professor, what do you hope I ask? Or rather, what do you want to answer?"

He shook his head and said: "Haven't you discovered it yet? I don't have to ask at all. You can say whatever you want. Normal people can't interfere with you because you are a lunatic."

"Indeed, I am a lunatic." Shiler turned to look at Scott and said: "I have introduced many of my friends to you, but I forgot one person, a child I like the most. His name is Jason."

Shiler stood up from the ground swaying. Scott breathed a sigh of relief. He turned around and walked forward, saying while walking: "Professor, you are finally willing to move forward. We have to leave here quickly..."

But the next second, he felt Shiler lean up from behind. Before he could react, a tie gripped his neck.

Shiler exerted force while whispering in Scott's ear: "Jason... Jason... a good child, always able to remember every word I say."

"Uh uh uh!

!"

The pale knuckles became bloodless due to the force, and the dark plaid tie was deeply embedded in the Adam's apple. After Shiler let go, Scott fell to the ground silently, but Shiler didn't leave just like that.

He acted as if he didn't know at all what he had just done. He squatted down, looked at Scott, and said: "Forgive my rude words just now. I was definitely not speaking ill of my friends behind their backs. Every one of them is a good person."

Shiler reached out, covered Scott's eyes, pressed his protruding eyeballs back, and closed his eyelids.

Then, he stood up, leaned against the wall of the passage, and walked toward the depths with staggering steps, leaving only a low voice echoing:

"But I have a sharp blade specifically used to deal with good people. It is precise, elegant, and fatal in one strike."

"Its name is Guilt." ===== CHAPTER 962 =====