When Bane came back on the third day, he didn't have any surprise when he heard Bruce say good morning in that low tone, he just crouched in front of Bruce's cell door and said.

"I don't know if you're pretending to be driven crazy by the torture Amanda inflicted on you, maybe it's your trick or revenge on her, but I'm not here to hear that."

"And what do you want to hear?"

"I just want to know about you, about Batman, about ......" Bane's tone gradually sank, and after a long time, he spat out a single word: "About Gotham." ”

"I don't know exactly what you're referring to."

"A long time ago, I asked a colleague if there were any good places to go on vacation, and he told me that Gotham would be a good choice, and I thought it was interesting, and maybe the best place for us criminals to relax was Sin City."

"So about five years ago, I went on an East Coast trip with some good colleague and the first stop was the bustling metropolis and then Gotham, and it felt pretty good, like coming home."

"What's your home like?"

Bane fell silent again, and after a while, his low, trilled voice came from outside the door, "You're smarter than I thought, Batman." ”

"Thank you for the compliment."

"You have a deeper darkness in your heart than I do, but you seem more straightforward than I am, and you use this bluntness as a weapon, you are indeed beyond my assessment of your level, and now I am more interested in you."

"My pleasure."

"Tell me, Batman, what happened to the city I saw a month ago?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean, why is it that in just five years, the legendary Dark City is gone, and Gotham has not only sunshine, but also hope?"

Bane knocked on the door with his hand and let out a "winter" sound, his tone tinged with a slightly morbid curiosity.

"Tell me, Batman, what did you do to make this city what it is today, tell me, how the hell did you save Gotham? That's exactly what I followed you here to ask you. ”

"Why do you ask?"

"Because Gotham cannot be saved." There was finally a fluctuation in Bane's tone, and his breathing became heavier and faster: "Because five years ago, when I saw this city, I judged that even if I took your place, I would not be able to cure it, and I believed that you would not be able to, so I left. ”

"That peer once asked me why I didn't kill you, because when I saw you from afar, I thought you were too young and immature, and I didn't think you were worthy of being my opponent."

"If I must take your life, it is better to make your despair worthy of this city, then I called it a miracle, and you are not worthy, then you are far from it."

"Thank you for the compliment."

"Batman......" Bane whispered, "I revisited a few months ago out of curiosity—I can't believe what I saw, you, a boy indulging in his own childish fantasies and games, have carved a rift in Gotham's dark barrier that never sees the light of day in just a few years." ”

"Now the miracle is yours, and I want to know, what is the true face of the miracle?"

"Why do you ask?"

Bane was silent for a moment, shorter than his previous silence, and he asked, "Truth for truth, right?" ”

"What's your home like?"

"A prison, it sounds ridiculous, but my mother was captured in the war, and the captors of my mother decided that if she had a boy in her belly, then she would pay for his father's crimes, and I was born."

"Sounds bad."

"Yes, but there's something worse, I was born and raised in prison, I didn't grow up healthy, I wasn't physically fit as strong as the new inmates, I grew up being beaten and abused."

"And one day, a prisoner tried to take advantage of me to escape from prison and pushed me down the tunnel and left me unconscious, maybe the brain blow changed my mind, and I couldn't take it anymore, so I killed him."

"I don't know exactly what you're referring to."

"In a very cruel way, I removed his mandible, injected rat bait into his stomach, and then stuffed a bunch of hungry live rats into his esophagus and let him be gnawed off from the inside out."

"The warden thought I was cruel, so he threw me to the bottom of the cell, a dark and narrow place where the tide could rise at any moment, and where I lived by eating rats."

"But it trained my will and body, and when I really grew up, I took the power of the prison and ran rampant here, and they took a fancy to my strong willpower and chose me to be a member of the biochemical experiment."

"The experience in the lab was boring, as you said, the experimental projects were not taken seriously, the doctors were not professional enough, they injected me with a toxin to make me stronger, so I killed them, and everyone escaped from prison, and from then on, became a freelance mercenary."

Bane's tone became deeper and deeper, and after a moment of silence, he still asked, "In exchange, aren't you going to reveal some truth about Gotham?" ”

"I don't know exactly what you're referring to."

"What do you think Gotham is?"

"Gotham is a city located on the east coast of the United States, bordering the Atlantic Ocean, with a humid temperate continental climate, under four districts, with a total population of nearly 10 million......"

"Looks like I won't be able to get an answer today." Bane stood up, leaned one hand on the door and said, "I took Amanda's order and lured you here, not only to complete the mission, but also to create a secret enough avenue of communication for us. ”

"It's not glorious, so I owe it to you, but I'll have to figure it out, and you'll always answer me, bye, Batman."

"Goodbye, Bane."

An hour later, Bruce woke up again, he blinked a little confused, trying to dispel the illusion in front of him, feeling the silence in his ears, he said to himself, "...... He's gone? There shouldn't be anything wrong with the autoresponder, right? ”

Soon, he was quiet again, apparently diving headlong into the-mountain code, trying to dig for again and again with great perseverance, as every Gotham has ever done.

On the second, third, and fourth days, Bane would appear outside Bruce's cell door every day, talking to him about many things, but rarely getting a response.

Bane of course sensed that Bruce's short, repetitive answer was wrong, but he thought that if he helped Amanda trick Bruce here, Bruce would think that he and Amanda were in a group, so it was normal for him to act out a scene driven crazy by sensory deprivation in front of him.

Bane knew that he had to break through this layer of defense before he could get a real answer.

But to his first surprise, then shock, and finally helplessness, for a whole week, the Batman did not say a word to the only person he could communicate with, in the midst of the harsh punishment of sensory deprivation.

Bane was almost feeling admiration.

It is well known that the harshest thing about sensory deprivation is that in a completely dark space, people do not feel the flow of time, and this state of complete loneliness seems to last until they die, a deep despair that almost no one can resist.

In most cases, sensory deprivation is not very tight, but Amanda naturally went to great lengths to build this prison for the final punishment, and the cells used for this punishment are surrounded by labyrinthine soundproofing devices, which are tightly blacked out, and even the ventilation devices are absolutely silent.

The offender is very tightly confined to a chair, with no room to move other than to address personal needs from time to time, and if it weren't for the possibility of physical illness caused by long-term immobility, Amanda even considered direct intubation to solve the problem of feeding and excretion.

It's a great setting for nurturing the Stockholm plot, and Bane knows that.

In this case, with a person to communicate with, a way to experience the passage of time, the imprisoned object must go crazy to find security in it, to alleviate the terrible loneliness and despair that destroy the will.

Bane wanted to kill Batman, but after he looked at Gotham's situation again, he thought that Batman was a miracle, so he, like all the villains in Gotham, did not want to destroy Batman's body, but wanted to completely destroy his spirit, or go further, manipulate his spirit.

Bane's admiration for Batman's rescue of Gotham is not admiration, it's just a pathological curiosity, this is malicious for no reason, and Bane doesn't need any reason to cross the moral bottom line, his birth and upbringing itself is distorted, and pathology is the norm for him.

But now, he really has an admiration for Batman, who has almost completely surpassed the limits of the human spirit, and the two weeks and fourteen days of sensory deprivation added up to the mental feeling can be longer and more painful than decades of imprisonment, and it has not made the tough guy say more than half a word.

It is because Bain spent his childhood and adolescence in a completely closed space that he understands how this pain can bend the human spirit and drive people crazy.

He also knew better that if he had a partner at that time, he didn't have to do anything else, just came to accompany him every day, he would definitely be grateful, and he would do whatever the other party asked him to do.

Loneliness is the greatest enemy of mankind, and the human being in solitude is the greatest enemy of order.

But for so many days, Bane got nothing but a few repetitive answers—he obeyed.

Finally, Bane said to Bruce as he stood in the dark hallway, feeling the boundless silence that had terrified him and the loneliness that would still flood his mind after years of reminiscing about the past.

"I once thought of breaking your spine and seeing you lying helplessly on the ground, unable to do anything, abandoned in the rainy night, because it would make you feel the pain I had suffered, not the pain in the limbs, but the loneliness and despair brought about by powerlessness."

"No matter how you look at it, I'm going to defend myself, I don't like dynamic bloodshed and conflict."

"I prefer to deprive people of their power, to see them die in silence, to make them understand that in the last moments of their lives, what they fear most is not death, but the loneliness of abandonment."

"From the moment I was born, I was abandoned by the world like this."

"But it's not a revenge, I couldn't overcome loneliness in solitude, I chose to get out of loneliness, go back to the crowd, and resist violently, which proves that I lost to it."

"I searched the world and killed countless people in this way, just to prove that I was right that no one can overcome loneliness itself in solitude."

"Until I met you, Batman."

Bane lifted his hand on the door, withdrew his arm and hung it at his side, as if he were saluting something, and sighed softly as if he were doing so.

"You have conquered loneliness, and you have conquered me."

Then he put his hands on the door again, gritted his teeth, and said, "And I just want to know what sustained you to overcome it, and you must tell me, Batman...... Answer me! ”

He was answered only by a deeper silence.

At the same time, Bruce's mental world echoed with his angry and confused voice—

"Why can't Schiller do it, I can't do it???"

Pen Fun School