Gotham was another night of cold rain, in the alternating seasons of spring and summer, the rain carried the coldness of late spring that had not yet faded, and the freshness and warmth of early summer had not yet been integrated into it, but it had been frozen into fine ice ballast on the cold stone road, and the cold condensed in the night had been frozen into fine ice ballast, which evaporated into mist in the skylight and disappeared.

Leather shoes stepped on the stone pavement, bringing a slight splash, and a pair of slightly old hands grasped the doorknob, pushed open the heavy door of Wayne Manor, and hung the mist-soaked towel in his hand on the hanger next to it.

Alfred carried the kettle in one hand and spread the newspaper next to him on the round table with the other, put the hot kettle on top of the newspaper, took out the cup from the cupboard, gently soaked it in the cup with boiling water, and then poured it out of the door, the mist of the hot water was like the muzzle of a shotgun after firing.

After the glass became warm, Alfred took out a bottle of wine from the wine cabinet above, and the wine flowed down the rim, the warm wall of the glass was like a mouthpiece of human lips, teeth, and the aroma of the wine spread, which appeared rich and heavy.

The gloved hand pinched the top half of the cup and placed it on the tray, and took a new towel from the side of the cabinet and placed it on his arm, and Alfred carried the tray to the couch.

On the couch, Bruce was holding a stack of papers and looking at it carefully, Alfred gently placed the wine glass in front of him, and Bruce said without raising his head, "Thank you, Alfred." ”

Alfred nodded and left, and on the way upstairs, he passed Jason, who glanced back at the old butler's back, shook his head slightly, and ran down the stairs quickly.

"Bruce, it's so late, why haven't you slept yet?" Jason ran across from Bruce and sat down, looked at him and said, "You seem to have something on your mind?" ”

Bruce lowered the file a little, revealing his eyes, he looked at Jason and said, "Didn't you sleep too?" Do you have something on your mind? ”

Jason sighed softly, looked at Bruce seriously and said, "You didn't look good when you came back, anyone can see that you are afraid that something happened to you, believe it or not, except for me, Dick and Tim didn't sleep, but they were embarrassed to come to you." ”

"What about you?" Bruce asked.

"I don't care about that." Jason shrugged his shoulders and said, "The line between caring and snooping is always not clear enough, Tim adores you and doesn't want to make a bad impression on you, he is afraid that you will think he is snooping on you, so even if he doesn't sleep, he pretends to sleep." ”

"Dick always suffers from gains and losses, and at one moment he feels that he should care about you, and at another time he thinks that if he cares about you too much, it will make you think that he is not assertive, so although he does not sleep, he also pretends to sleep."

"And I ......," Jason shook his head and said, "I like to have something to say, I don't like to guess, even if everyone suspects that I have other plans, as long as I have a clear conscience, I don't care what they think." ”

Bruce slowly put the file down, he reached out and touched Jason's head, it didn't feel very good, Jason's hair was stiff, it felt like a bush outside, a little prickly, but just like his character, with pure wildness.

"Go get the two of them down, I have something I want to talk to you about." Bruce said as he looked at Jason.

Jason pursed his lips, he jumped off the couch, ran upstairs quickly, and almost bumped into Alfred, who turned around and walked downstairs, like a reckless lion cub, first rushed to the door of Dick's room and banged on the door, and then rushed directly into Tim's room and pulled him out.

Judging from the looks of the two of them, they really didn't sleep, and even Tim put his ear to the bedroom door a second before the door opened, listening to the movement outside.

Dick wore a dark orange striped pajamas with a pillow in his hand, and Tim wore a nightgown that was common to wealthy young masters, a nightcap that didn't quite fit, and a teddy bear in his hand.

The two walked down the stairs one after the other to the couch, Jason tugged Tim, and the two sat down opposite Bruce, who turned his head to look up at Dick and patted his hand on the spot next to him.

Dick sniffed, rubbed his hand under his lips, and pulled his slippers over and sat down.

"I'd like to tell you about what happened to me lately." Bruce leaned his back completely back in his chair, and from his expression, he looked a little decadent, tired, and a little overwhelmed.

But when he spoke, he wasn't serious at all, maybe just trying to find a few listeners, rather than really wanting to get any advice.

"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 broccoli...... One of the professors, Schiller Rodriguez, whom you have heard of or are familiar with, has a very serious broccoli allergy. ”

The man's low, soft voice echoed through the empty manor hall, and the moonlight shining through the Gothic floor-to-ceiling windows was also low for a long time.

The terrible chaos of Gotham, which has been caught up in turmoil by the mad virus, the fantastical visions of the spirit world, the legendary adventures of hell, the destroyed bookstore street, the feasts of the Falcone family, the terrible serial murderers, and the lambs who shed their blood, and the shepherds who sink into darkness but are omnipresent......

The three children sitting on the sofa were fascinated by these strange adventures, and they listened more fascinated than the moonlight, and in the cold and rainy night of Gotham, there was nothing like this slightly terrifying story, which could make people sleep peacefully.

After telling the whole story, Bruce was silent for a while, and then spoke:

"I know you want to ask, why didn't I go to Schiller, but came back here? But that's where this trap comes in. ”

Bruce put his hands in front of him, relaxed his shoulders, tilted his head, leaned back on the couch, stared straight at the ceiling and said:

"I think it was a pathological conspiracy from beginning to end, and he led not only me, but also arrogance, and perhaps a long time ago, he told the professor that he was going to organize a graduation exam, and the question was, "Did I learn anything from arrogance?"

"So, Arrogant kept teaching me, and even revealed some of the topics to me, hoping that I could get a good grade."

"Unsurprisingly, I didn't pass the first exam unsuspectingly, but this is not the end at all, but the beginning, all for the ultimate trap."

"No one is going to give up." Bruce closed his eyes in some pain, and he said, "I am like this, and so is my teacher, neither of us can accept the end that after four years of tormenting each other, we have not been able to make any progress from each other. ”

Bruce took a deep breath, paused, and continued, "I desperately want to win, to be able to pass this exam and prove to everyone that I have made progress in this path. ”

"But that's the terrible bait that lured me into the trap, and the sick knew I wanted to win, and I knew that I could figure out how to win."

"The worst mistake I made in the previous exams was to follow Schiller's train of thought, to be bewitched by him, to offer sacrifices to him, and in the end not only did not realize the danger, but also moved myself, like a tame lamb."

"So, when I wanted to prove that I could pass the exam, I knew I had to resist, and I had to take the initiative to prove that I wasn't domesticated by him, that I was Batman, not anyone's lamb."

"But how am I going to beat Schiller?"

Bruce asked a question, his eyes a little glazed, as if he had returned to that moment of thought, and paused slightly before he continued:

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

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

"There is no more way to defeat a man, to defeat him with wisdom and to defeat him with strength, and I will be able to achieve both ends by my own stratagem to subdue Schiller."

"I did."

Bruce's voice was low, and it was clear that the next words were part of his painful memories.

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

"In the confrontation with Schiller, I won, but at the expense of everything I cared about and insisted on."

"Because of my competitive spirit, I planted the non-existent crime on my teacher's head, 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 long-time enemies."

Bruce's fingertips began to tremble, and Dick looked at him with a very worried gaze, Dick glanced his eyes to the left and right in a bit of a panic, trying to concentrate his thoughts, and then said, "But you can save it, you can go and get Professor Schiller back!" ”

"I said, that's the best part of this trap." Bruce turned his head, looked at Dick with somewhat blank eyes, and said:

"Dick, prison robbery is just as illegal as it is immoral."

Tim gasped, he stared into Bruce's eyes and said, "You don't want to say that Professor Schiller had expected this day a long time ago, right?" ”

"Schiller expects that you will use less glamorous means because you want to win, and you will feel regret and pain for it."

"I also expected that you would regret and suffer because of this, and when you want to redeem it, you will find that you can only take less glorious means and become more painful."

"He guessed every hint of your craving and turned it into poison."

Tim covered his eyes with his hand, and when he put his hand 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 be ......"

"I have seen Schiller's past in his temple of thought." Bruce's eyes stared a little dull ahead, and he slowly spoke, "There was a long time when he was imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital that saw the light of day, and that was also a terrible memory for him. ”

"Sick knows, when I know that Schiller will be locked up in the same prison that will not see the light of day, because of my affection for him and my righteous heart, I will definitely want to save him."

"But if I do go, to rob prisons, to destroy public order by means that are neither illegal nor moral, I will do what he wishes, and by the means he has taught me, to carry out the crimes he wants me to commit, and become his meek lamb."

"So now, I'm trapped here, trapped in the same cell that doesn't see the light of day, I can't move forward, I can't go back."

"The same is trapped in the chains that bind the lamb, and cannot be silenced or screamed."

(End of chapter)