Chapter 2349: Gotham Music Festival (51)_1

"Shiller is a patient with mental illness, but he cured himself in a special way," Bruce said. "He split himself into normal and morbid states, and most of the time, his normal state appears no different from an ordinary person."

Beihan reflected for a moment. He had not had many interactions with the normal state Shiller, but he could indeed sense that sometimes Shiller seemed more vibrant, emanating a kind of vitality rather than an oppressive sense of fear; this seemed to be the dividing line between his normal and morbid states.

"However, his morbid state still exists and is difficult to cure due to the nature of the disease."

"Schizophrenia?"

"Schizoid."

Bruce continued to explain, "The high-functioning aspects of schizoid brought him an unparalleled talent, as if he could judge and analyze people's psychology with a special vision."

Beihan frowned and said, "That doesn't sound like a conventional treatment process."

"It's not, it's just a lunatic's illusion. But his special talent makes his illusions reflect his mental state with an accuracy rate of up to 80%."

"Incredible," Beihan commented.

"I think so too," Bruce nodded and then continued, "Once Shiller has attained a normal state, the morbid state usually doesn't manifest and if it does, it doesn't linger for long. It just occasionally comes out for a breath of air, which is completely within controllable limits."

"But there is one exception, that is, when Shiller is in a very bad state, to be precise, if he feels severe pain, then it will inevitably be the morbid state that controls his body."

"Why?"

"There is no why. It's like most people's minds get very chaotic when they are in pain. Physical suffering makes a person lose their rationality; even the strongest human will has its limits."

"So Shiller loses control because of pain?"

"I told you, he gets seasick."

Beihan's features all scrunched together; he really couldn't understand. Seasickness was indeed uncomfortable, but shouldn't that be within the scope of willpower to control?

Then he heard Bruce say, "Shiller's seasickness isn't what we think of as being due to the motion of the ship causing issues with the body's balance organs, which then makes one feel dizzy and nauseous."

"Shiller has a symbiont inside him, which you can understand as a type of parasitic creature that can completely change physiological properties, allowing Shiller to turn into a mist—without even a balance organ. How could he get seasick then?"

"So what's the deal with Shiller getting seasick?"

"He was also investigating this problem. Then he found out he wasn't seasick but seasick—he would exhibit various symptoms of discomfort whenever he approached the sea."

"To elaborate, those symptoms of discomfort clearly were not happening to his body, but seemed to be directly affecting his soul; otherwise, it is inexplicable why the symbiont could not be immune to this kind of pain."

"In any case, pain makes Shiller's mental state deteriorate, and then just like a mental illness patient during an episode, the morbid state takes the initiative to control the body. The reason it's called a morbid state is precisely because they are all sick."

Suddenly, Beihan remembered something and said, "Pain causes Shiller to gradually lose his sanity and have an outbreak, so wasn't what he inhaled from that aerosol can tranquilizers? Where's his medication?"

"If a mental illness patient who has had an episode would obediently take their medication, then why would every psychiatric hospital need to hire nurses?"

Beihan had no response. Bruce made a good point. Shiller did carry medication, but he himself was insane. If an insane person would take their medication voluntarily, then they wouldn't be insane.

"Then what's with him getting stronger and stronger?"

"The greater the pain, the more unstable the mental state, the more control the morbid personality traits have over the body. They can even utilize the excitement of the mind to unlock muscle restrictions, gaining explosive power and great strength."

Beihan recalled that the first time Shiller's strength increased was after he got shot. Following the gunshot, Shiller's speed had noticeably increased, which aligned perfectly with what Bruce said about stronger pain leading to a more morbid state and enhanced attributes.

Although the increased speed and strength didn't seem humanly possible, Shiller didn't show any magical abilities or superpowers; he was just a fast and immensely strong human.

Beihan believed he had dealt with many strongmen and had faced top assassins with full points in agility and strength, but no one had been as difficult to deal with as Shiller. He felt something was still missing.

"Is that all?" Beihan questioned.

"Of course not," Bruce denied and said, "Remember I mentioned that Shiller has a special vision when he experiences illusions? I suspect that might be the key."

Beihan was reminded again of the illusion he had seen before, which showed the first-person perspective of a hunting chase. However, it only showed the initial part of the process, where the hunter followed the woman to the bathroom, and then the scene jumped to the end, with the woman turning into a lively redfish.

What happened in between was not shown at all. Beihan had initially assumed it might be merely a simple ambush and subdual, but if it were that simple, why not play the whole scene through? It surely couldn't be that Shiller preferred fast-paced editing, could it?

The omitted part might just be the key. Beihan and Bruce reached a consensus on this; they both wanted to know what the hunting in Shiller's perspective really looked like.

Bruce's eyes wandered as he said, "What do you think I can see from the Dreamworld to Shiller's Psychic_Battlefield now?"

"You want to enter a madman's brain, have you gone mad too?"

"I'm mostly curious," Bruce explained. "As long as I tell the Professor that I just want to experience the allure of psychoanalysis firsthand, he might let me take a look."

Beihan pressed a hand to his forehead and said, "Sometimes I really wonder if you're Bruce Wayne. Are we really the same person? Such a risky and insane idea would never occur to me."

Bang! Bang Bang!

Gunshots came from above, and the people in the room immediately stopped what they were doing and looked up. The experienced Christopher said, "No blank shots, by the sound of it, something was hit."

Beihan and Bruce exchanged a glance, saying in unison, "Shiller."

"Shiller got hit?" Beihan frowned, then he immediately remembered what Bruce had said before and added, "If Shiller's condition worsens, he becomes more powerful, so no matter where he got hit by those three shots, he would certainly be seriously injured. How much more powerful will he become?"

"Seeing is believing." Bruce pulled out a small spray bottle from his pocket and, dragging Beihan with him, exited the room to another enclosed employee dormitory.

"What's this?" Beihan asked.

"An auxiliary tool we'll need next," Bruce indicated the lower bunk and said, "Lie down here, I'll go up, and let's see what kind of world Shiller sees."

Beihan had no intention of lying down. He planned to sit and watch what Bruce would do, but Bruce quickly climbed to the upper bunk and sprayed something from the bottle into the air, filling the room with a strong scent of alcohol.

When he came to, he found himself standing on a grassland. Bruce was waving at him from a distance, saying, "This is the Dreamworld. The dream god who used to govern this place has temporarily left, and now the Professor has some of the permissions, so as long as we come here, he should be able to find us."

Indeed, after a short wait, they saw Shiller coming toward them with an umbrella in hand.

Shiller didn't seem surprised by their arrival and pointed in another direction, saying, "Follow me; don't expect to go up there to look. All the Morbid ones are in the High Tower now; it's turned into their wild party, too noisy."

"Are you okay?" Beihan asked. He had always found some of Shiller's self-descriptions hard to comprehend, since slicing oneself up into so many pieces was a bit too abstract; it's hard for a normal person to understand the relationship between different personality traits.

"I'm not about to die," Shiller's answer was both aggressive and conservative, then he added, "But a lot of people are going to."

Beihan swallowed hard. That didn't sound like a metaphor, and if anyone knew him best, it was himself. It was hard to imagine what would happen next.

As expected, they didn't enter the High Tower but arrived at a screen on an open space in the Dreamworld instead.

At that moment, a quarter of the screen's edge was blood red, the next quarter inward was blurry with ripples, and the central half was surprisingly clear—much clearer than the Illusion of the Hunting process Beihan had seen before.

However, the scene within the clear portion was somewhat incomprehensible to both Beihan and Bruce. It didn't display a single layer of vision but seemed to have several layers of paper stacked together, through which they could see what was drawn on the papers behind the first one.

All the colors and lines on each sheet of paper were crisp. When stacked together, at first glance it looked chaotic, but the layers were distinct and clear. With focused attention, one could accurately determine which color patch and line belonged to which layer.

Yet what was most incomprehensible were the color patches and lines themselves: they were very different from the real world. Beihan took a long while to spot the concentric blue patches on the front-most layer that kept rippling in and out, resembling a wall on the second-floor corridor.

This was deduced because of the missing circle in the patches that matched the observation window of a room on the second floor.

The rectangle on the second layer seemed to be a wardrobe, but the wardrobe should have been positioned in the lower right corner of the wall. Instead, here was an endless purple square bouncing around an oblong area, containing a small coat of colors and a mess of lines that looked like clothes.

All these color patches were moving within their bounds, expanding and contracting dizzyingly.

Yet what was even more frightening was the layer behind the wardrobe, where a bunch of completely irregular shapes smeared like watercolor paintings were constantly changing, with patterns much more complex than the walls and clothes.

As Shiller's view shifted, all these shapes moved in unison, and when this kaleidoscope of colors was centered in the field of vision, it began to grow brighter, its light gradually piercing through all the layers in front of it.

Once the light passed through the wall layer and reached its brightest peak, all the patterns and colors encased in that mass were released, flooding the field of vision.

Beihan was dazzled by this abrupt shift in patterns and colors, making him feel distinctly dizzy. When he regained his focus, the light had gone out in a swish.

Beihan looked bewildered.

Shiller's voice came from beside his ear.

"She's dead."

Beihan felt as if he'd plunged into an ice cave.