Bang!
When the dull thud echoed in the room, both of them looked surprised. It wasn't the sound of a metal crowbar hitting wall bricks. Hitting the side wall with a crowbar usually made a crisp "clang" sound. This dull thud meant that the material above was different from the wall.
Erik went down to pick up the crowbar, directly turned the ladder across, and then found that the ladder could just span over the hole so they could step onto the ladder to reach the center. He grabbed the crowbar and poked upward, but he was still a bit short.
"Charles, come over, I'll lift you up," Erik said.
Charles looked somewhat hesitant and said, "Isn't this a bit too acrobatic? Are you sure this is the solution?"
Erik spread his legs, standing on two rungs of the ladder. He bounced on the spot and said, "No problem. Come over."
Charles decided to trust Erik. He stepped onto the ladder and carefully walked over. It wobbled a bit, forcing Charles to slow down. When he reached Erik, he felt a bit at a loss. As he said, this position was somewhat too acrobatic.
Although the ladder could bear the weight of two people and Erik was standing relatively stable, Erik was supposed to lift Charles. Now, not even lifting up; just holding him was a problem.
However, it seemed Erik might have really trained in acrobatics. He turned sideways directly, one foot forward, one foot back, leaning his body forward, and lifted Charles in one go. Then, he slowly moved his feet back, turned around, and returned to the most stable state.
Then he lifted Charles high. Holding the crowbar, Erik lifted him sharply upward, and Charles's crowbar pierced directly into the ceiling. With a crash, water poured down. Charles got soaked, but luckily there wasn't too much water. Probably, the water trapped in the wall above flowed down once opened.
"It's a foam panel," Charles said, "don't move, I'll widen it a bit."
After saying so, he kept poking upwards with the crowbar. The foam panel above was brittle, and after poking for a while, a round shape appeared. Then Charles quickly felt the edge of this space, just enough for one person to pass through.
"My God," Charles said, "it's impossible to go up there, right?"
Erik placed him down. They returned to the middle of the room, staring at the hole above, but since the room was too dark, they couldn't see it. There was no foothold below the opening.
"There's definitely a way," Erik said, "…bricks, we just need to stack bricks to elevate the ladder."
Charles was full of question marks, "Erik, in your extremely varied early life experiences, you weren't a circus performer, were you? We can't even secure those bricks!"
"As long as they're stacked evenly, they won't collapse. Trust me, I'm a physicist."
"You're an astrophysicist. And theoretical physics primarily relies on manipulating celestial bodies," Charles said irritably.
"I think it's almost ready," Shiller said, standing beside the hole, "you can try to see if it collapses."
Now, a complex structure appeared above the hole. It mainly consisted of three parts: a part of wall bricks piled against the wall, a part was the ladder, and another part was the supporting structure built from the hole's bottom.
Now, the ladder was angled over the hole, meaning that the wall was the vertical right-angle side, the hole's plane was the horizontal right-angle side, and the ladder was the hypotenuse.
To achieve this structure, a row of bricks must first be piled against the wall closest to the hole above; otherwise, there'd be no place to secure the ladder. This wasn't hard, as the wall provided support, making collapse unlikely.
But what came next was more complicated. Because if the wall was used as a fulcrum, the ladder's lower half would inevitably fall into the hole's center, unable to rest on the floor as it was too short.
At this point, to support the lower endpoint, one could only stack bricks from below. This structure was very challenging to stabilize. Even if the bricks below were enough, without cement to fix them, building skill was crucial.
Coincidentally, Shiller was very good at stacking blocks. More precisely, he specialized in building structures without cement. The whole tower was stacked this way.
Bruce watched the entire process, dumbfounded. Shiller didn't draw any blueprints or perform any calculations; he just kept stacking bricks. Moreover, the bricks weren't all oriented in one direction; some were sideways, some even vertical. And there was no hesitation as he built, seemingly all by intuition. Yet, this structure held firm.
Bruce opened his mouth; the mastermind behind this setup was a genius. Though he wasn't sure about others, giving Shiller an inseparable weapon right away was not conducive to their communication. This made him reluctant to challenge it.
"Professor," Bruce spoke tactfully, "I assume you've heard of the fundamentals of mechanics in physics."
"I believe your skepticism about this structure isn't based on mechanics, but rather optics. Because if it were bright enough to see the structure I've built, you'd realize each brick is appropriately stressed," Shiller said calmly, "I trust your proficiency in behavior analysis as much as your ability to analyze mechanics."
Bruce was completely speechless. The problem now was that Shiller's building process wasn't scientific, but it was too pitch-black here to make out the exact structure. Moreover, if he went up and the thing collapsed, he'd be entirely responsible.
His scientific common sense made it truly hard for him to believe. Compared to a rigorous engineering structure, this seemed more like large-scale public art, capable of supporting his weight.
"Didn't you get my childhood memories?" Shiller looked at him with his arms crossed and said, "The lighting should still be quite good there."
Bruce was slightly taken aback, then he remembered that the compressed file Greed had sent him was enormous, and he had only unpacked a small part, focusing on gossip, not Shiller's childhood.
Bruce had to spend a bit more time unpacking it. Here, he finally found the reason Shiller could be so confident—he indeed was good at building blocks.
In fact, there is a discipline in this world called the "Balancing Technique." There are people who have a more acute perception of the center of gravity of certain things than others. This allows them to stack some peculiar things, like supporting a chair with a stick, or even several chairs. It looks like it defies the laws of physics, but it can maintain balance.
Shiller clearly had this talent. His block buildings were quite well-made, and the architectural structures he built looked bizarre yet always maintained an uncanny balance.
Since it was viewed from the first-person perspective, Bruce saw it quite clearly and could do a mechanical analysis. After watching for a long time, he found that Shiller was right. Everything he stacked up was mechanically reasonable after force analysis.
Seeing this, Bruce had already believed it. However, because this compressed package was very comprehensive, during his search, Bruce discovered some information related to building blocks, such as the first collapse of the high tower.
Bruce was awakened by Shiller. He came to himself, looking somewhat dazed at Shiller's gray eyes, almost hidden in the darkness.
"It seems Greed gave you very complete memories," Shiller said, looking at him.
"Professor," Bruce called out, "I know you'll probably say that it wasn't any hardship that shaped you, but seeing these things still makes me very sad."
"I'm glad you still have the time to feel sad. So, do you have the time to think about what Greed gave you that doesn't require a fee?"
Bruce suddenly felt a bit cracked.
He initially thought Greed was just sharing gossip with him, and under such conditions, sharing the background stories of gossip in this way was human nature. If an ordinary person had this ability, they would definitely use it, and would probably announce it widely, eager for the whole world to understand and appreciate their excitement.
However, the memories Greed gave were both too abundant and unreasonably detailed. According to Greed's usual charging standards, Bruce felt he might have to work for him until the cosmos was destroyed.
Greed hadn't proposed any charge, but this was even scarier than if he had. Because this likely meant he was preparing to rope the recipient of this gift into an unprecedentedly huge entanglement, with no choice whatsoever.
Bruce's head buzzed. He didn't even have the time to do any mechanical analysis; he just wanted to ask if he could return the gift to Greed. Compared to gaining knowledge this way, he'd rather directly ask the Professor—which now truly made him understand Outer God followers.
After a while, Bruce let out a long sigh. Shiller looked at him, and Bruce clasped his hands together and said, "I am truly sorry, I triggered the Multiverse crisis disaster. This is entirely my fault. To express my apology, I've decided to personally guard the Origin Wall and never neglect my duty. I'll return after finishing this mission."
Shiller sneered, "Once you realize Greed's intentions, you have no choice."
"I have an idea," Harley snapped her fingers and said, "Let's make a seesaw at the bottom, and you can launch me up."
"What?" Pamela was bewildered.
"The principle of leverage! The principle of leverage!" Harley said, "Haven't you seen those big seesaws in the circus? They can make people fly super high, and once airborne, they can land on the tightrope..."
"Saying this makes me feel like the Multiverse Harley Quinn started a Grand Circus in the Battleworld," Pamela was still a bit puzzled, "What did you learn there?"
"This wasn't taught by Harley Quinn. I learned a trick from Dick's parents," Harley said, "Their family is all about the circus. Gotham Theatre now has a weekly Grand Circus performance, which is very popular. Not only did I learn unicycle and tightrope walking, but silk dancing and trampolining are also good."
Pamela said nothing, simply walked over and cupped Harley's face, then said, "You should always try to believe that the people around you will protect you. Harley, you know? If my friends show severe insecurity, it makes me feel like I've failed in life. Because it means they never felt they've gained anything from me. It's so frustrating."
"It's not your fault," Harley said, "Endless anxiety is my driving force. Every Harley Quinn is like this. Otherwise, how could we be attracted to the Joker and see his madness as liberation for us?"
"If falling into chaos could make you feel better, I'd rather you be a madman," Pamela said, "Madness is only not evil when people are saving themselves. Isn't it?"
"No." Harley shook her head looking into her eyes, "If everyone chose to numb themselves with chaos and madness when feeling anxious about what they can't achieve, then Gotham probably would never have seen the Sun by now."
"You're insane," Pamela turned her face aside, "You realize how much you sound like Batman, don't you?"
Harley smiled brightly, "Ever since there's been no Batman, we've had countless Batmans."