Anatoli began to observe the environment of the room. It was an extremely 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.
"Something's not right," Anatoli said. "Flames of this size shouldn't emit such intense light."
Since they entered the room, all of their attention had been drawn to the central mechanism, and the room was quite large, leaving several meters 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 flame clearly from below.
Anatoli reached out his hand, feeling the air for a moment, 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 flame. It's very similar to the torches used to illuminate Hell Palace; just a little flame 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 mechanism. Behind the mechanism was a door, not locked, meaning 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 mechanism on the other side of the balance was connected to the ceiling, but it was also enclosed with a metal cover, so the detailed situation inside couldn't be seen, nor could the mechanical 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 seemed completely unfeasible.
The wire mesh wasn't completely sealed, but neither the crowbar nor the pry bar was long enough to reach anything inside. Moreover, the wire mesh 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 some sand and dirt stuck to his fingertips. He looked at the adjacent tiles, each tightly fitted, as if only those nearby Tiles had become somewhat loose.
He pressed down on each tile until forming a contiguous sunken mark that stretched to where the machine met the ground. Anatoli realized: someone had pried up the tiles.
This wasn't entirely impossible. The tiles were indeed tightly joined, but the entire machine was made of metal, so it couldn't be integrated with stone tiles; there had to be a seam. Someone 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 hammer 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 confirmed his suspicion: the method 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 same thickness as the crowbar, likely created by repeatedly hammering the crowbar downward during the prying.
Anatoli's expression gradually darkened.
"Hiss..." Lucifer came over for a look and inhaled sharply, "This strength is tremendous. 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 something," 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 mentioned 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 game according to the rules, so that we can also safely pass this level."
"That's why I said, the environment 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 American, and a Gothamite. You're used to expending all your strength for survival, accustomed to only focusing on getting through the next night safely."
"People who do not plan for the future will have immediate worries." Shiller continued, "With so many immediate concerns, one also gets used to having no far-sighted thoughts. This is the root of America's problems, and it's always so clearly reflected in every American."
"As you said, we can donate blood, complete the whole game perfectly, and seemingly avoid more severe consequences. But you can't let yourself slip into 'accepting an acceptable outcome.' Because that's how people become walking corpses step by step."
"When the endlessly exploitative game rules have consumed 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 temperament 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 me, this is a very difficult decision. So I decided to use a better method."
"Let me decide?" Bruce's tone was filled with anger, "But you haven't told me anything! You should have told me 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 game 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 meant." 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 seemed that Bruce collapsed in an instant. He gritted his teeth and said, "I was... I..."
"What's wrong with you?" Shiller sneered with some 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 meant 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 moment you attempted to become a Batman-like Savior again, I've stopped you. Why do you think I wouldn't this time?"
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 immediately 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 blame you, so you crafted verbal traps to push the responsibility onto me!"
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 aimed 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 mesh into the mechanism 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 me 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 moment 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 flames. At every moment he tried to become Batman again, Shiller stopped him, he thought, but he also taught Shiller a lesson—this time would be no exception.