It was another night of cold rain in Gotham. In the season of spring and summer, the rain brought with it the coldness of late spring that had not faded away. Before the freshness and enthusiasm of early summer could be integrated, it was already frozen by the chill condensed in the dark night on the cold stone road.
It turned into fine pieces of ice, evaporated into mist in the sky, and disappeared.
Leather shoes stepped on the stone pavement, causing a slight splash. A pair of slightly old hands grasped the door handle, pushed open the heavy door of Wayne Manor, and hung the towel wet with mist on the hanger next to it.
.
Alfred held the kettle in one hand and spread the newspaper next to it on the round table with the other hand. He placed the hot kettle on the newspaper, took out the cup from the cupboard, and poured boiling water into the cup.
Rinse it lightly and then splash it outside the door. The mist from the hot water is like the muzzle of a shotgun after being fired.
After the cup became warm, Alfred took out a bottle of wine from the wine cabinet above. The wine flowed in along the mouth of the cup. The warm walls of the cup were like people's lips, teeth and mouthpieces, and the aroma of the wine spread out.
Come on, it looks rich and thick.
He pinched the upper half of the cup with his gloved hands and placed it on the tray. He took a new towel from the side of the cabinet and put it on his arm. Alfred carried the tray to the sofa.
On the sofa, Bruce was holding a stack of documents and looking at them carefully. Alfred gently placed the wine glass in front of him. Bruce said without raising his head: "Thank you, Alfred."
Alfred nodded and left. On the way up the stairs, he passed by Jason. Jason looked back at the old butler's back, shook his head gently, and ran down quickly.
building.
"Bruce, it's so late, why aren't you sleeping yet?" Jason ran to sit across from Bruce, looked at him and said, "You seem to have something on your mind?"
Bruce lowered the document a little, exposing his eyes. He looked at Jason and said, "Aren't you asleep too? Are you worried too?"
Jason sighed softly, looked at Bruce seriously and said: "You didn't look good when you came back. Everyone can see that you may have encountered something. Believe it or not, apart from me, Dick and Ti
Mom hasn't slept either, but they are too embarrassed to come to you."
"I chose victory, but turned myself into a ruthless criminal, no different from my enemies all along."
Dick was wearing dark orange striped pajamas and holding a pillow in his hand. Tim was wearing a nightgown common to young masters from rich families and an inappropriate nightcap, holding a teddy bear in his hand.
.
"Just think of it as today's bedtime story." Bruce slowed down his tone and said in an extremely hypnotic tone: "The story has to start with a piece of broccoli... You may have heard of it or you may be very familiar with it.
One professor I knew well, Schiller Rodriguez, had a severe broccoli allergy."
"I said, this is the most subtle part of this trap." Bruce turned his head and looked at Dick with dull eyes and said:
"Dick, prison robbery is equally illegal and immoral."
Bruce took a deep breath, paused, and continued: "I am eager to win and to pass this exam to prove to everyone that I have made progress in the field of psychology."
"What about you?" Bruce asked.
"I once saw Schiller's past in Schiller's palace of thought." Bruce's eyes stared blankly ahead, and he slowly said: "He was imprisoned in a dark place for a long time.
It was also a terrible memory for him in the mental hospital."
"So, when I wanted to prove that I could pass the exam, I knew that I had to resist and take the initiative to prove that I had not been tamed by him and that I was Batman, not someone else's lamb."
The man's deep and gentle voice echoed in the empty manor hall, and the moonlight shining in through the Gothic floor-to-ceiling windows also made him feel low for a long time.
"So, Arrogance kept teaching me and even revealed some of the questions to me, hoping that I could get a good result."
"I also expected that you would regret and suffer from this. When you want to redeem yourself, you will find that you can only adopt less honorable methods and become even more painful."
"I think this is a pathological conspiracy from beginning to end. He not only guided me, but also arrogance. Perhaps a long time ago, he told the professor that he was going to organize a graduation exam. The question was whether I should
What did you learn from arrogance?"
"But this was the terrible bait that lured me into the trap. I knew I wanted to win, and I knew I could figure out how to win."
"Go and call them two down. I have something to talk to you about." Bruce looked at Jason and said.
"But at that moment, I realized that this was a trap from beginning to end. The morbid purpose was to get me into my current state."
"But how do I defeat Schiller?"
The two of them walked down the stairs one after another and came to the sofa. Jason pulled Tim and the two sat opposite Bruce. Bruce turned to look up at Dick and patted the spot next to him with his hand.
.
"And I..." Jason shook his head and said: "I like to speak directly and don't like to guess. Even if everyone suspects that I have other agendas, as long as I have a clear conscience, I don't care about them.
What are you thinking about?"
"In the previous exams, the most serious mistake I made was that I kept following Schiller's ideas, being bewitched by him, and making sacrifices to him. In the end, not only did I not realize the danger, but I was moved by myself, like a docile bird.
Lamb.”
The terrifying chaos of Gotham that fell into turmoil due to the mad virus, the fantasy scene in the spiritual world, the legendary adventure in hell, the destroyed bookstore street, the Falcone family's banquet, the terrifying serial killer, and the bloody...
The Lamb, and the shepherd who sinks into darkness but is omnipresent...
Bruce put his hands in front of him, relaxed his shoulders, raised his head, leaned on the back of the sofa, stared straight at the ceiling and said:
The three children sitting on the sofa were deeply attracted by these mysterious adventures. They were more fascinated than the moonlight. In the cold rainy night of Gotham, there was nothing more scary than this kind of story.
, can make people sleep more peacefully.
Bruce's fingertips began to tremble continuously, and Dick looked at him with a very worried look. Dick glanced left and right in a panic, trying to concentrate his thoughts, and then said: "But you can still save it, you can go
Get Professor Schiller back!"
"No one will admit defeat." Bruce closed his eyes in pain and said, "I am like this, and my teacher is like this too. Neither of us can accept it. After four years of mutual torture, neither of us can accept it."
It’s an ending where we can make any progress from the opponent.”
Bruce slowly put down the file. He reached out and touched Jason's head. The feeling was not very good. Jason's hair was hard and felt like the bushes outside. It was a bit prickly, but it was just like his character.
, with pure wildness.
"I don't care about that." Jason shrugged and said, "The line between caring and snooping is always not clear enough. Tim admires you and doesn't want to leave a bad impression on you. He's afraid that you think he's snooping on you, so
Even if I’m not asleep, I still pretend to be asleep.”
"Schiller expected that because you wanted to win, you would use less honorable means, which would make you feel regretful and painful."
Dick sniffed, rubbed the area under his lips with his hand, pulled on his slippers and walked over to sit down.
Bruce asked a question. His eyes seemed a little distracted, as if he had returned to his thoughts at that moment. After a slight pause, he continued:
"At the time, I didn't notice at all. When I started thinking about this issue, I had already stepped into a trap. My desire was the sweet bait on the trap."
Judging from the looks on their faces, they were indeed not asleep. Tim even put his ear against the bedroom door a second before the door opened, listening to what was going on outside.
Tim covered his eyes with his hands. When he put his hands down, he looked at Bruce with even a hint of sympathy. He glanced at Jason and whispered: "I take back what I said before.
Even if he is your enemy, it will not..."
"Dick is always worried about gains and losses. One moment he feels that he should care about you, and the next moment he feels that if he cares too much about you, you will think that he has no independent opinion, so although he is not asleep, he pretends to be asleep."
"I want to tell you about something that happened to me recently." Bruce leaned back completely on the back of the chair. It could be seen from his expression that he looked a little decadent and tired, and also a little overwhelmed.
Bruce's voice deepened, and it was obvious that the next words were part of his painful memories.
"Because of my competitive spirit, I framed non-existent charges on my teacher. This not only violated my moral bottom line, but also violated the law."
"I did it."
Tim took a breath, stared into Bruce's eyes and said, "You don't want to say that Professor Schiller had expected this day, right?"
"But the answer I got was that I needed to trick Schiller and make him pay."
"The only way to defeat a man is this. Defeat him with wisdom, defeat him with strength. I use my own strategy to make Schiller subdue, and I can achieve these two goals at the same time."
But when he spoke, his attitude was not serious at all. Perhaps he just wanted to find a few listeners, rather than really getting any advice.
"As expected, I failed to pass the first exam without any precautions, but this is actually not the end at all, but just the beginning. Everything is leading to the final trap."
Jason pursed his lips. He jumped off the sofa and ran upstairs quickly. He almost bumped into Alfred who turned around and walked downstairs. Like a reckless lion cub, he rushed to the door of Dick's room and knocked on the door first.
Then he rushed directly into Tim's room and pulled him out.
After telling the whole story, Bruce remained silent for a while and then said:
"I know you want to ask, why did I come back here instead of going to Schiller? But that's the genius of this trap."
"He guessed your every desire and turned it into poison."
"In my confrontation with Schiller, I won, but at the expense of everything I cared about and insisted on."
"I know that when I know that Schiller will be locked up in the same prison that never sees the light of day, because of my relationship with him and my heart of justice, I will definitely want to save him."
"But if I really go, rob a prison, and destroy public order by means that are both illegal and immoral, I will do what he wants and use the means he taught me to commit the crime he wants me to commit.
Become his meek lamb.”
"So now, I'm trapped here, trapped in the same cell that never sees the light of day. I can't move forward or retreat."
"I am also trapped in the chains that bind the lamb. I cannot be silent or cry out."