Chapter 1183 The Cry of the Lamb (Four) (Patreon)

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It was another cold rainy night in Gotham. In the transitional season between spring and summer, the rain carried the lingering chill of late spring, and the vibrant and passionate energy of early summer had not yet blended in, but had already been frozen into fine ice shards on the road, condensed in the darkness, and evaporated into a thin mist in the daylight, disappearing without a trace.

The footsteps on the stone pavement stirred up slight splashes. An elderly hand grasped the doorknob and pushed open the heavy door of Wayne Manor, hanging the damp towel on the nearby coat rack.

Alfred carried a kettle in one hand and spread out the newspaper on the round table with the other, placing the steaming kettle on top of the newspaper. He took a cup from the cupboard, rinsed it with the boiling water, and then splashed it out towards the door, the steam rising like the muzzle of a hunting rifle after firing.

After the cup had become warm, Alfred took a bottle of wine from the cabinet above, and the liquid flowed into the cup, the warm cup wall like human lips, teeth and tongue, the aroma of the wine spreading, dense and heavy.

With gloved hands, he firmly grasped the upper half of the cup and placed it on the tray, taking a fresh towel from the side of the cabinet and draping it over his arm. Alfred carried the tray to the sofa.

Bruce was sitting on the sofa, carefully reading a stack of documents. Alfred gently placed the wine glass in front of him, and Bruce, without looking up, said, "Thank you, Alfred."

Alfred nodded and left, and on his way upstairs, he passed by Jason, who looked back at the butler's retreating figure and shook his head slightly before hurrying down the stairs.

"Bruce, it's so late, why aren't you asleep?" Jason sat down across from Bruce and said, "You seem to have something on your mind."

Bruce lowered the documents slightly, revealing his eyes, and looked at Jason, saying, "Aren't you not asleep either? Do you have something on your mind too?"

Jason sighed softly, looking seriously at Bruce, "When you came back, your complexion wasn't good, anyone could see that you must have encountered something. Believe it or not, Dick and Tim haven't slept either, they just didn't want to bother you."

"What about you then?" Bruce asked.

"I don't care about these things," Jason shrugged. "The line between caring and prying is always not clear enough. Tim idolizes you and doesn't want to leave a bad impression, so even though he hasn't slept, he's pretending to be asleep."

"Dick is always anxious, sometimes he thinks he should care about you, sometimes he thinks if he cares too much, you'll think he has no mind of his own, so even though he hasn't slept either, he's also pretending to be asleep."

"As for me..." Jason shook his head, "I like to speak my mind directly, I don't like guessing back and forth, even if everyone suspects I have ulterior motives, as long as I'm clear in my own conscience, I don't care what they think."

Bruce slowly put down the documents, reaching out to stroke Jason's head. The texture was not very good, Jason's hair was a bit coarse, like the bushes outside, a bit prickly, but just like his personality, with a pure wildness.

"Go call the other two down, I have something I want to talk to you all about," Bruce said to Jason.

Jason pursed his lips and jumped off the sofa, hurrying upstairs, nearly colliding with the returning Alfred. He rushed to Dick's door and knocked, then barged into Tim's room and dragged him out. From their expressions, it was clear they hadn't been sleeping either, with Tim even having his ear pressed against the bedroom door just before it opened.

Dick was wearing dark orange striped pajamas, holding a pillow, and Tim was wearing the typical pajamas of a rich family's young master, with an ill-fitting nightcap and a toy bear in his arms. The two of them walked down the stairs one after the other and sat down across from Bruce. Jason tugged at Tim, and the two of them sat down next to Bruce. Bruce turned his head and looked at Dick, patting the spot next to him.

Dick sniffed, rubbed the area under his mouth, and shuffled over in his slippers to sit down.

"I want to tell you all about the things I've been dealing with recently," Bruce leaned back against the chair, his expression somewhat dejected and weary, even a little at a loss.

But when he spoke, his tone was not very serious, as if he just wanted to find some listeners, rather than truly seeking advice.

"You can just think of it as a bedtime story for today," Bruce said in a soothing, hypnotic tone. "The story has to start with a broccoli... You may have heard of or be very familiar with Professor Schiller Rodriguez, who has a severe broccoli allergy."

The man's deep, gentle voice echoed through the vast manor hall, and the moonlight shining through the Gothic-style windows also lingered there for a long time.

The chaotic turmoil caused by the crazy virus in Gotham, the fantastical scenes of the Spirit Realm, the legendary adventures in hell, the destroyed bookstore street, the Falcone Family banquet, the terrible serial killer, the bleeding lamb, and the shepherd who sank into darkness but was omnipresent...

The three children sitting on the sofa were deeply captivated by these mysterious adventures. They listened more intently than the moonlight, and on this cold, rainy night in Gotham, nothing could lull them to sleep better than this slightly ominous story.

After finishing the entire story, Bruce fell silent for a while, then spoke:

"I know you want to ask why I didn't go find Schiller, but instead came back here. But that's the clever part of this trap."

Bruce placed his hands in front of him, relaxed his shoulders, tilted his head back, and stared directly at the ceiling as he said:

"I suspect this has been a pathological conspiracy from the beginning. He not only guided me, but also guided Pride. Perhaps long ago, he told the Professor that he was going to organize a graduation exam, and the test would be whether I had learned anything from Pride."

"So Pride kept teaching me, even revealing some of the test questions to me, hoping I would get a good score."

"Unsurprisingly, I was completely unprepared and failed the first test. But this was not the end, it was only the beginning. Everything was set up for the final trap."

"No one wants to admit defeat." Bruce closed his eyes in pain. "That's how I am, and that's how my teacher is. After four years of tormenting each other, neither of us has made any progress."

Bruce took a deep breath and paused before continuing, "I desperately wanted to win, to prove through this exam that I had made progress in psychology."

"But this is the terrible lure that drew me into the trap. The madman knew I wanted to win, and knew how I would try to win."

"The biggest mistake I made in the previous exams was that I kept following Schiller's line of thinking, being deceived by him, sacrificing to him. In the end, not only did I not realize the danger, but I also self-complacently became a docile lamb."

"So, when I wanted to prove that I could pass the exam, I knew I had to rebel, and I had to take the initiative to prove that I had not been tamed, to prove that I was Batman, not someone else's lamb."

"But how do I defeat Schiller?"

Bruce asked a question, his eye contact seemed a bit scattered, as if he had returned to the thoughts of that moment, and after a slight pause, he continued:

"At the time, I didn't notice at all that when I started thinking about this problem, I had already stepped into the trap, and my desire was the sweet bait on the trap."

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

"The way to defeat a person is not much different, to defeat him in wisdom, to defeat him in strength, I used my own tactics to make Schiller convicted, and I could achieve these two goals at the same time."

"I did it."

Bruce's voice lowered, obviously the following words were part of his painful memories.

"But at that moment, I realized that this was completely a trap, from beginning to end, the pathological purpose was to let me fall into the current state."

"In the confrontation with Schiller, I won, but I sacrificed everything I cared about and persisted in."

"Because of my desire to win, I framed my own teacher with a non-existent crime, which not only violated my moral bottom line, but also violated the law."

"I chose victory, but turned myself into a ruthless criminal, no different from my enemies all along."

Bruce's fingertips began to tremble constantly, Dick looked at him with a very worried gaze, Dick glanced left and right a bit nervously, trying to focus his thoughts, and then said, "But you can still make amends, you can go and rescue Professor Schiller!"

"I said, this is the most ingenious part of this trap." Bruce turned his head and looked at Dick with somewhat vacant eyes:

"Dick, jailbreak is also illegal and unethical."

Tim took a deep breath, staring into Bruce's eyes and said, "You don't mean to say that Professor Schiller had already anticipated this day, do you?"

"Schiller anticipated that you would use unsavory means to win, and that you would feel regret and pain for this. And he also anticipated that when you wanted to make amends, you would find that you could only use equally unsavory means, and become even more painful."

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

Tim covered his eyes with his hand, and when he put his hand down, his gaze at Bruce even had a touch of sympathy, he glanced at Jason and said in a low voice, "I take back what I said before, even if he is your enemy, it's not to the point of..."

"I once saw his past in Schiller's Temple of Thought." Bruce's eyes stared blankly ahead, speaking slowly, "He had been imprisoned in a mental hospital without seeing the light of day for a long time, which was also a terrible memory for him."

"The pathological knows that when I know that Schiller will be locked up in the same dark prison, because of my feelings for him and my sense of justice, I will definitely want to rescue him."

"But if I really go, to jailbreak, to destroy public order and morality in a way that is both illegal and unethical, I will become, as he wishes, his tamed lamb, using the methods he taught me to commit the crime he wants me to commit."

"So now I am trapped here, trapped in the same dark prison, unable to move forward or backward."

"Also trapped in the iron chains that bind the lamb, unable to be silent, and unable to cry out."

[Read at www.patreon.com/shanefreak, and thanks for the invaluable support!]

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Next Chapter>>Chapter 1184 The Cry of the Lamb (Five)