Chapter 2853: The Forbidden Area of Alien Demons (Thirteen)

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Shiller felt the situation was somewhat tricky.

The Bishop had called him in, clearly not just for him to collect a consultation fee for nothing. His services were indeed expensive, but as always, he might be unscrupulous but was absolutely not a quack. If he took someone's money, he had to do the work.

However, this case was one he had never encountered before, rare for two reasons.

First, the patient's symptoms didn't arise out of nowhere, nor were they fabrications. Shiller now knew that the patient's hallucinations might not be hallucinations at all—the monster could actually exist. This was a situation Shiller had never dealt with before.

Most of the patients he had seen previously had various reasons for their hallucinations, but what they had in common was that their monsters were purely imaginary and didn't exist in the real world. Usually, they could realize this fact, which gave them the strength to muster courage to confront these monsters.

Second, the patient's condition had deteriorated too rapidly. Up until now, it could be described as gravely ill; which is to say, even if they were just frightened when they first saw the monster and didn't have any pathological disease, by now they were essentially a complete mental patient.

Generally speaking, most people wouldn't wait until their condition was as severe as this to see a doctor. They would choose to go to the hospital when hallucinations severely interfered with their daily life, but if nothing unexpected had happened, this patient had probably never been to a hospital, at least not seen a psychiatrist, and likely hadn't taken any medication either.

Shiller thought that the patient was Martha Wayne.

The reason it was not Bruce Wayne was that no Bruce in the world was like this. Batman was actually extremely arrogant. If he saw a monster and judged that he was mentally normal and wouldn't have hallucinations, then he would firmly believe the monster was real, rather than doubting his own sanity, thus avoiding internal conflict.

Like the psychological issues that arose from Cobblepot, ordinary people are more dependent on social validation, affirming themselves by the recognition of others, with almost no absolute and solid anchor point for self-recognition.

But Batman and people like the Joker are different; these concepts usually aren't a problem for lunatics. Their anchor points for self-recognition are solid enough, and their wisdom is high enough that even if they are deceived temporarily, they can ultimately rely on themselves to discern whether the monster truly exists or if they've gone mad.

So those who would feel confused and frightened by this are essentially only ordinary people. There are not many that can be counted as ordinary in Gotham; Cobblepot is one, but his symptoms don't match. That leaves only Martha Wayne, who appeared in the phantom images.

Little Bruce had mentioned to Shiller before that being targeted by Nya wasn't that simple, and he also mentioned his mother. Now it seems, perhaps all the sources of contamination are on Martha Wayne.

Then the question arises: Martha Wayne has long been dead, so what was the anomaly that erupted at the hotel and across the city 20 days ago?

Shiller believed that to ordinary people it seemed like when a person dies, everything ends with them; naturally, a deceased person can't cause trouble. But it's not that simple. They had previously discovered that human brainwaves affected by Earth's magnetic field could become an unusual set of brainwaves, also known as ghosts.

So, since brainwaves can be influenced by the Earth's magnetic field, they can naturally be affected by other magnetic fields, or even other radio wave interference. Shiller had previously speculated that the knowledge infusion from Outside Gods to humans might be a kind of radio wave interference.

If Martha Wayne had been interfered with while she was alive, it's very likely her brainwaves didn't dissipate but instead became something akin to a ghost.

Saying that ghosts are bound by their obsessions from life isn't without reason. Although the brainwaves become abnormal, most of their fundamental properties don't change, and they might still hold memories from when they were alive. For Martha Wayne, that meant her soul and contamination were left behind together.

To solve the hotel mystery, they naturally need to find Martha Wayne's ghost. The Martha that appeared in the room was just an illusion, but it also indicated a possibility—Martha might actually have wandered around the hotel, and has never left to this day.

To find Martha's ghost, they need to start with her mental state and find out just how much it had deteriorated before her death. But attempting to understand her mental state before death according to the hotel's rules and exploring deeper step by step is undoubtedly falling into a trap.

Shiller had already planned to speed up the process and obviously couldn't continue playing by the opponent's rules. Otherwise, even if they could find Martha in the depths of the hotel, they would definitely lack the capability to pacify her.

Shiller knew this was why the Bishop had called him here. They could explore step by step, like the investigator, but in fact, the simplest method was still to use their expertise to guess the answer out of thin air, without putting it into practice.

Shiller indeed had this ability. His clinical experience was very rich; he had seen the complete progress of many such patients' conditions.

He knew that feeling the invasion of private space and being monitored was only the beginning of this stage of the condition. Seeing close ones as observers who might harm them at any time was only the initial phase of disease progression.

If Shiller was not mistaken and if this stage wasn't contained, the patient would begin to show aggressiveness. In the beginning, it might just be rambling and shouting, saying things like "you all are out to harm me," and repeatedly asking "how do you plan to harm me?"

At this stage, the patient still has some lucidity. They shout and even attack essentially to push close ones away. Instinct makes them want others to keep their distance, and they aren't considered dangerous yet.

Moreover, they would have noticeable periods of excitement and exhaustion. During the excitement phase, they would blame and shove others around randomly, sometimes for ten or more hours non-stop, showing varying degrees of delirium based on individual constitution.

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But in the exhaustion phase, they would appear disappointed and depressed, losing interest in everything and even panic-stricken to the point of numbness, unable to act; thus, presenting a very typical catatonic state.

If untreated at this stage, the aggressiveness from the excitement phase would become increasingly severe, with complete loss of direction, confused senses, abnormal bodily movements, and eventually evolve into disordered, chaotic attacks.

Most of the doctors and nurses in the hospital who were assaulted by patients were attacked during this stage. The attackers did not actually intend to harm others; they simply couldn't control their own brains. The brains could not properly mobilize their limbs, so an inadvertent approach might result in a punch, but if left alone, they could just as likely collapse to the ground, utterly unable to move normally.

Shiller thought that if all the abnormalities in the hotel were caused by the contamination of Martha's brain waves, then each part might represent every phase of her illness. The manor above the swimming pool was the transition from mild to severe symptoms, which could be considered a watershed in the illness.

Shiller wasn't certain that resolving the incidents here would diminish the contamination of Martha's brain waves, but now that they had entered the place, they had to find a way to solve the manor's problems in order to survive.

However, after all, this was not a purely mental issue. As previously mentioned, the monsters truly existed, and now they were in the midst of the patient's hallucination, unable to interfere with the patient's illness as an external condition. Lacking such experience, Shiller, as a doctor, couldn't afford to be overly confident.

Shiller pondered for a moment and felt it necessary to call for a multidisciplinary consultation.

But consultations required funding. After all, each personality trait was still adjusting to a new body, and it wouldn't be easy to summon them back to High Tower. His newly acquired consultation fee, which he hadn't even had time to warm up, made Shiller feel a sharp pang of loss.

However, out of a sense of responsibility to his patient, Shiller knew he had no choice but to proceed.

When the Bishop came back, he was still confused. He looked around and didn't find any notes left behind. Greed, hastily returning to High Tower, had only said a few words, telling him to wait and not providing any useful clues. Bishop felt like his consultation fee had been wasted.

The Bishop didn't think it was likely. He knew Greed; the guy exemplified the notion of "you get what you pay for." The offering wasn't much, but it wasn't insignificant enough for him to do nothing.

As Bishop was pondering this, Greed had already started to rouse people in the Superego's office.

Soon after, Arrogant pushed the door open, looking impatient as he said, "What's the matter now? Do you have another unmanageable patient?"

"Believe me, this time it's really tricky," Greed admitted, showing some uginess. "It's not just a pathological issue, it also involves magic. If you're free, go summon those magic side personality traits. We need to have a big consultation."

Arrogant was initially inclined to scoff, but seeing Greed's expression, he understood the gravity of the situation and left without further comment.

After a while, numerous personality traits started knocking on the door one after another. Seeing Greed frantically sorting out paperwork, they knew to keep to themselves and headed to the conference room.

When Greed was done organizing all the materials, he opened the door to discover the conference room was already neatly seated with two rows of people. Most were flipping through the memory bank's documents, inspecting the internal situation of the hotel from the Bishop's stream.

Greed walked to the front and aligned the documents on the table before saying, "I presume everyone has already grasped the current situation. The specific details of the case are in the memory bank; you can look through it yourselves."

"Since this is a multidisciplinary collaborative consultation, to save time, each discipline should first discuss internally, provide their consultation opinions, and then proceed to a larger discussion."

Whispers immediately filled the conference room. Arrogant sat in a chair on the right side of the first row, appearing utterly unflustered, obviously already concluding. He even had the leisure to chat with Greed.

"You really are generous, aren't you? That offering was quite substantial," he said.

"Only someone who's never seen money would think that trinket is substantial," Greed retorted while reviewing his notes and still managed to respond to Arrogant.

Arrogant snorted, uncharacteristically not arguing back. He sat and thought for a moment, then said, "I have a feeling we're going to run into more of these cases in the future. If we move to the new bodies by then, it'll be troublesome if something like this comes up."

"It's not essential to do it this way to find a solution." Greed, with his head down, flipped another page before saying, "This case is very rare. I truly haven't seen one involving real monsters before. Miss this village, and there won't be such a shop again."

"I knew you weren't that benevolent," Arrogant shook his head. "Martha's personality really isn't worth mentioning, don't expect me to dissect something that could turn the situation around. She's just a traditional good mother; there's not much to go on there."

"Then do your best," Greed finally looked up at him, "Don't think you can take the consultation fee and do nothing. You have to make an effort, even if it's just padding the numbers."

"Don't worry, I'm not Bruce." Arrogant smiled and said, which Greed assumed meant he would do his best to analyze. But then Arrogant said, "Still, when it comes to padding the numbers, I'm quite skilled."