Chapter 1192: The Cry of the Lamb (IV)_1

Another cold rainy night in Gotham, in the transition of spring to summer. The rain carries the lingering chill of late spring. However, before the vibrancy and heat of early summer has a chance to merge in, they are frozen into shards of ice on the cold stone pavement amidst the night. These shards evaporate into thin mist under the day's light and disappear.

A pair of shoes step on the stone road, splashing water slightly. A pair of relatively aged hands grasp the doorknob, opening the heavy doors of Wayne Manor. The towel in their hands, dampened by the mist, is hung on the coat rack by the door.

Alfred holds a kettle in one hand, and spreads a newspaper on the round table with the other. He places the steaming kettle on the newspaper and picks out a cup from the cupboard. He rinses it with boiling water and then throws the water outside. The steam rising from the hot water is like the muzzle of a shotgun after being fired.

The cup becomes warm. Alfred then retrieves a bottle of wine from the cupboard above, and the liquid flows inside the warm cup. The wine's aroma spreads out as the warmth of the cup warms the liquid, making it richer and heavy.

A gloved hand squeezes the top of the cup and places it on the tray. Alfred takes a fresh towel from the cupboard, drapes it over his arm, and carries the tray to the couch.

Bruce, sitting on the couch, is examining a stack of documents carefully. Alfred softly places the wine cup before him. Without lifting his head, Bruce says, "Thank you, Alfred."

Alfred nods and leaves. On his way upstairs, he crosses paths with Jason, who turns his head to look at the butler's retreating figure, shakes his head slightly, and quickly runs downstairs.

"Bruce, it's so late, why aren't you sleep?" Jason rushes to sit opposite Bruce and looks at him. "You seem to have something on your mind?"

Bruce lowers the documents slightly, revealing his eyes. He looks at Jason and says, "Aren't you also awake? You have something on your mind too?"

Jason sighs lightly and looks at Bruce earnestly. "Your face has been off since you came back. Anyone can tell, you must have encountered something. Believe it or not, Dick and Tim didn't sleep either. The only difference is they are too embarrassed to come to you."

"And you?" Bruce asks.

"I don't care about those things." Jason shrugged. "The line between caring and prying is always blurry. Tim admires you and he doesn't want to give you a bad impression. He's afraid that you'll think he's prying. That's why he pretends to sleep although he's awake."

"Dick is always indecisive. Sometimes he feels he should care about you, but sometimes he worries that if he shows too much concern, it might make you think he's indecisive. That's why he also pretends to be asleep."

"As for me..." Jason shook his head. "I like to be straightforward, I don't like to guess. I don't care what others think of me as long as I am clear in my conscience."

Bruce slowly puts down the documents and reaches out to touch Jason's head. The feel of his hand isn't good, Jason's hair is coarse, it feels like touching the shrubs outside, a bit prickly. But it's just like his character, purely wild.

"Go and bring the two of them. I have something I want to talk to you guys about." Bruce tells Jason.

Jason puckers his lips, jumps off the couch, and runs upstairs quickly. On his way, he almost crashes into Alfred who is coming downstairs. Like a reckless young lion, Jason rushes to Dick's door, knocks, and then bursts straight into Tim's room, pulling him out.

From their expressions, looks like they did not get any sleep indeed. Just a second before his door was swung open, Tim even had his ear pressed against the door, listening to the sounds outside.

Dick, dressed in a dark orange striped pajama, hugging a pillow. Tim is wearing a robe that a young master of a rich family typically wears, a slightly larger cap on his head and hugging a teddy bear in his hands.

The two walked down the stairs one after the other to sit next to the couch. Jason pulls Tim, both of them sit across from Bruce. Bruce turns his head, looking at Dick and pats the seat next to him.

Dick sniffles, rubs his mouth and chin with his hand, and drags his slippers across the floor to sit down.

"I want to talk to you about something I've encountered recently." Bruce leans against the back of the chair completely, you can tell from his expression that he seemed defeated, tired, and a bit at a loss.

But when he opens his mouth, he isn't really serious, maybe he just wants to find some listeners, not necessarily wanting any advice.

"Just treat it as tonight's bedtime story." Bruce slows down his tone, using a very hypnotic tone. "The story begins with a piece of broccoli... there is this Professor Shearer Rodriguez that you may have heard of or are quite familiar with. He has a very severe broccoli allergy."

The man's low and slow voice echoes in the empty manor lobby. The moonlight coming in through the Gothic-styled floor-to-ceiling windows lingers for a while.

The terrifying chaos in Gotham caused by the mad virus, the fantastical scenes of the spirit realm, the legendary adventures in hell, the entire bookshop street that was destroyed, the banquet of the Falcone family, the horrible serial killer, and the lamb drained of blood, and the Shepherd who sank into the darkness but omnipresent...

The three kids sitting on the couch were deeply attracted by these set of mysterious adventures. They were more engrossed than attracted to the moonlight. In the cold rainy night of Gotham, nothing is more sedative than a slightly terrifying story to help one sleep.

After the entire story, Bruce sits silently for a while and then says:

"I know you want to ask why I didn't go to Shearer, but came back here instead? But the cunning of this trap lies exactly here."

Bruce puts his hands on his lap, relaxes his shoulders, lifts his chin and leans against the sofa back. He stares directly at the ceiling and says:

"I think, this is a sick conspiracy from the very beginning, not only has he led me, but also Arrogant. Perhaps a long time ago, he told the professor that he was organizing a final examination; the question was, have I learned anything from Arrogant."

"And so, arrogance continuously taught me, even revealing a portion of the questions to me, hoping that I could get a good grade."

"As expected, the unguarded me did not pass the first test, but this was by no means the end, but just the beginning, everything was for the ultimate trap."

"No one admits defeat." Bruce said painfully, closing his eyes. "I'm like this, my teacher is like this, neither of us can accept that after four years of tormenting each other, we've made no progress from each other."

Bruce took a deep breath, paused, and then said: "I had an urgent desire to win, to prove to everyone through this exam that I had made progress in psychology."

"But this is the frightening bait that lures me into a trap. The morbid knows I want to win and knows how I can win."

"In previous exams, my most severe mistake was to follow Schiller's thought, be seduced and make sacrifices to him. Rather than being aware of the danger, I was touched. I was like a tame lamb."

"Thus, when I wanted to prove I could pass the test, I knew I had to rebel and take the initiative to prove that I was not tamed by him, to prove that I am Batman, not anyone's lamb."

"But how can I beat Schiller?"

Bruce asked a question, his eyes deviated somewhat, as if he was returning to that moment of thought, paused a little, then continued.

"Back then, I didn't realize that when I started thinking about this question, I had stepped into a trap, and my desire was the sweet bait."

"But the answer I got at that time was that I needed to deceive Schiller and make him pay."

"There's no other way to defeat a person, to win over them in wisdom, to knock them down with strength, and my cunning plan to punish Schiller would achieve these two goals."

"I did it."

Bruce's voice faltered, obviously, what he was about to say was a painful part of his memories.

"But at that moment, I realized that it was a trap, from beginning to end, and the purpose of the morbid was to make me fall into the state I'm in now."

"In the confrontation with Schiller, I won, but I sacrificed everything that I cared for and believed in."

"Because of my competitiveness, I imposed a non-existent crime on my teacher's head. This is against my moral bottom line and against the law."

"I chose to win, but turned myself into a ruthless criminal, with no difference from my enemies."

Bruce's fingertips began to tremble, Dick looked at him with a very worried gaze, Airick glanced around in some panic, tried to focus his thoughts, and said, "But you can make amends, you can go and save Professor Schiller!"

"I told you, this was the most brilliant part of the trap." Bruce turned his head and said to Dick with somewhat vacant eyes.

"Dick, jailbreaking is also illegal, it's also immoral."

Tim gasped, looking into Bruce's eyes, he said, "You can't possibly mean to say that Professor Schmidt anticipated this day, can you?"

"Schiller knew that you would want to win and take less-than-honorable measures, making you regret it, and causing you pain."

"He also knew you would regret and be tormented. When you wanted to make amends, you found you could only still use less-than-honorable measures, causing more pain."

"He saw through every bit of your desire and turned it into poison."

Tim covered his eyes with his hand, and when he put it down, he looked at Bruce with a bit of sympathy, glanced at Jason, and whispered, "I take back what I previously said, even if he's your enemy, he shouldn't..."

"I once saw his past in Schiller's 'Thought Palace.' Bruce's eyes stared blankly ahead, slowly opening his mouth, "He had been imprisoned for a long time in a dark mental institution before. For him, that was a terrifying memory."

"The morbid knew, when I knew, that Schiller would be trapped in a similar sunless prison, he knew, because of my feelings towards him and my sense of justice, I would definitely want to save him."

"But if I really went, to jailbreak, to destroy public order with illegal and immoral methods, I would fulfill his wishes, using the techniques he taught me, committing the crimes he wanted me to commit. I have become his tame lamb."

"So now, I'm trapped here, trapped in a sunless cell, unable to move forward or back."

"Also trapped in the iron chains that bind the lamb, unable to stay silent, unable to shout."