Anatoli began to observe the environnt of the room. It was an extrely empty cylindrical hall. The first thing he noticed was the torches on the wall. Unlike the torches they found in the previous room, these were larger and brighter, illuminating the entire room as if it were daylight.
"Sothing’s not right," Anatoli said. "Flas of this size shouldn’t emit such intense light."
Since they entered the room, all of their attention had been drawn to the central chanism, and the room was quite large, leaving several ters between their position and the walls, so they had not carefully observed the things on the walls.
Anatoli walked over and stared at the torch, but since the entire hall was very high, even though the torch was fixed in the middle of the wall, it was still much higher than a person, so he couldn’t see the fla clearly from below.
Anatoli reached out his hand, feeling the air for a mont, and then said, "The light and heat from this torch are inconsistent. Could it be electric?"
Lucifer also walked over, looked up, and said, "I don’t know if it’s electric, but it’s definitely not an ordinary fla. It’s very similar to the torches used to illuminate Hell Palace; just a little fla can emit very bright light."
Anatoli lightly patted the wall in front of him: "The walls must be wired. Unfortunately, the wall can’t be smashed."
Saying this, he walked along the wall to the back of the chanism. Behind the chanism was a door, not locked, aning this level was designed to be skipped, regardless of whether blood was offered or not.
After circling the walls and finding nothing, Anatoli looked upward again. The chanism on the other side of the balance was connected to the ceiling, but it was also enclosed with a tal cover, so the detailed situation inside couldn’t be seen, nor could the chanical structure be inferred.
The whole scene was designed like an impeccable turtle shell. The previous levels didn’t provide any useful tools, and now they had nothing in hand except a crowbar with chains and a pry bar; violent destruction seed completely unfeasible.
The wire sh wasn’t completely sealed, but neither the crowbar nor the pry bar was long enough to reach anything inside. Moreover, the wire sh was likely electrified; a careless touch could lead to misfortune.
Lucifer kept following Anatoli but soon stopped because he had run out of strength again. The fact was, humans shouldn’t have wings; it’s like bearing a constant weight, reducing his mobility by more than half.
Anatoli was still unwilling to give up, and he made another counter-clockwise turn. However, after only a few steps, he noticed a problem—the machine’s left side had a few tiles that were slightly sunken.
Anatoli couldn’t quite determine whether he hadn’t noticed before or if the issue had suddenly arisen. But he thought the latter was more likely because Lucifer was quite heavy, nearly equivalent to the weight of two people. The already problematic tiles might have sunken after being stepped on by him.
Anatoli walked over, pried the tiles with his fingers, and found so sand and dirt stuck to his fingertips. He looked at the adjacent tiles, each tightly fitted, as if only those nearby Tiles had beco sowhat loose.
He pressed down on each tile until forming a contiguous sunken mark that stretched to where the machine t the ground. Anatoli realized: soone had pried up the tiles.
This wasn’t entirely impossible. The tiles were indeed tightly joined, but the entire machine was made of tal, so it couldn’t be integrated with stone tiles; there had to be a seam. Soone probably pried along the seam to remove the first tile, then continued to pry piece by piece.
Anatoli arrived at the seam of the first tile and indeed found a gap slightly larger than the others. However, due to the torches’ positioning, a dense shadow surrounded the machine, making such small details nearly impossible to notice.
Anatoli held the crowbar in hand but didn’t pry at the seam since it might cause an electric shock. He inserted the crowbar between the first and second tiles, using the pry bar to hamr it downward before slowly prying it outward.
It didn’t take much effort to pry it open since it had already been dug up. Anatoli successfully removed the tile, and as he examined it, it confird his suspicion: the thod used by whoever pried it up mirrored his own, with another vertical mark on the tile’s side.
Simultaneously, beneath was a deep hole in the earth, roughly the sa thickness as the crowbar, likely created by repeatedly hamring the crowbar downward during the prying.
Anatoli’s expression gradually darkened.
"Hiss..." Lucifer ca over for a look and inhaled sharply, "This strength is trendous. How did anyone manage it?"
"All right. Let’s finish up here and leave," said Shiller.
"Here?" Bruce was a bit puzzled. "Weren’t we going to skip this level?"
"If you choose a brief reason, I don’t need to explain this to you; we could just leave. But now that you know, we can’t simply walk away; we must do sothing," Shiller replied.
Bruce gazed at Shiller, with a vague sense of unease. And when Shiller took out a disposable needle, Bruce tightly pressed his lips and asked, "Are you going to draw blood?"
"I recall I ntioned this before. This instance hasn’t entirely restricted my abilities; even when I’m not in peak condition, I can still exert extraordinary strength."
"What are you planning to do?"
"I understand Anatoli. Faced with this situation, he will certainly want to completely solve this puzzle. No matter what difficulty he encounters, he won’t give up. And I must help him."
"Is hurting yourself the way to do it?" Bruce looked at him and said, "Then we might as well play the ga according to the rules, so that we can also safely pass this level."
"That’s why I said, the environnt you live in has influenced you more deeply than I imagined." Shiller turned to look into Bruce’s eyes, "Even though you’re no longer Batman, you’re still an Arican, and a Gothamite. You’re used to expending all your strength for survival, accustod to only focusing on getting through the next night safely."
"People who do not plan for the future will have imdiate worries." Shiller continued, "With so many imdiate concerns, one also gets used to having no far-sighted thoughts. This is the root of Arica’s problems, and it’s always so clearly reflected in every Arican."
"As you said, we can donate blood, complete the whole ga perfectly, and seemingly avoid more severe consequences. But you can’t let yourself slip into ’accepting an acceptable outco.’ Because that’s how people beco walking corpses step by step."
"When the endlessly exploitative ga rules have consud you to the bone, it’s already too late to think about breaking the rules to resist. Because by then, you have no strength left. If you’re not alert enough, it’s not your fault, Bruce. The mark this country’s temperant has left on you is never that easy to erase."
Bruce’s Adam’s apple moved, and he looked at Shiller with slightly moist eyes and said, "But you said, if I don’t ask for specific reasons, we can leave."
"Between you and Anatoli, I have to make a choice." Shiller’s tone lowered, "If I want to help him, I have to harm myself, which I know will sadden you. And if I don’t help him, he might get hurt. For , this is a very difficult decision. So I decided to use a better thod."
"Let decide?" Bruce’s tone was filled with anger, "But you haven’t told anything! You should have told in advance!"
Shiller shook his head, "This isn’t achieved by telling you. I just want to know whether you’re willing to explore the deeper reasons here or treat this as an ordinary ga and let it pass."
"You know I certainly want to explore." Bruce stepped forward and said, "I am good at thinking, full of curiosity, and I am skilled in exploring anything in this world. And you are my professor, I am used to thinking about the questions you raise. You can’t weave traps against my respect for my teachers and elders!"
"No, that’s not what I ant." Shiller said, "You decided to stay and hear my thoughts because you were doubtful about my decision not to make sacrifices. This indicates that you subconsciously think I’m the kind of person who is willing to sacrifice. As a teacher, I can’t let my students down."
It seed that Bruce collapsed in an instant. He gritted his teeth and said, "I was... I..."
"What’s wrong with you?" Shiller sneered with so sarcasm.
Bruce clenched his fists tightly. Shiller stepped forward, squinting slightly as he stared into Bruce’s blue eyes, "You envisioned the sacrifice to be completely yours, right?"
Shiller then stepped back two steps and laughed, "After all these years, Bruce, you still haven’t made any progress at all. When I said you’re not alert enough, it ant you’re still unaware of how easily I can see through you."
"You thought you could donate blood all by yourself, so you didn’t support my choice to skip over, but wanted to gain a chance to stay back. I only compromised to you, Bruce, every mont you attempted to beco a Batman-like Savior again, I’ve stopped you. Why do you think I wouldn’t this ti?"
Having said this, Shiller reached his arm into the wooden exit. Just as Bruce stepped forward, Shiller’s voice sounded coldly again, "If I were you, I wouldn’t move. You know all this is self-inflicted."
"I’m just making the right choice. It’s the most beneficial for us." Bruce raised his tone, but he imdiately realized he couldn’t fall into a trap of self-justification, so he began attacking others. "It’s clearly you who wants to self-harm but are afraid your doctor will bla you, so you crafted verbal traps to push the responsibility onto !"
Shiller turned his head to look at him and said lightly, "Then what do you plan to do to counter it, Bruce?"
With that said, he turned his head back, attached a disposable needle to the tube, and aid it at the vein on his arm.
In the next second, Bruce rushed over, throwing the two disposable needles, one attached to the tube and the other held in Shiller’s hand, along the hollow iron sh into the chanism inside.
"You can’t do this, Shiller. Don’t even think about it."
Unexpectedly, Shiller was not angry at all. He just smiled at Bruce again, reaching for his own collarbone.
"I said, if I were you, I wouldn’t move. Bruce, you never listen to properly."
As soon as he finished speaking, the pale fingers plunged deeply like a sharp knife into the wound on his collarbone. One second, only one second.
In the mont Bruce pounced over, the collarbone cracked with a sound. Then he flew out as if he had hit a train head-on, his forehead hitting the ground. In the blurry vision with blood seeping into his eyes, he saw Shiller tilt his head slightly, yank the chain, and fiercely pull out the loop from his collarbone. Amidst the splattering blood, he held the detached iron hook and slowly stood up straight.
The fallen Bruce’s eyes ignited with blazing flas. At every mont he tried to beco Batman again, Shiller stopped him, he thought, but he also taught Shiller a lesson—this ti would be no exception.
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