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Chapter 261: No Bat Incident (1)

The lightning flashed, accompanied by the sound of rain. The night in Gotham was always dark and terrifying. A bolt of lightning crossed the sky, illuminating the Arkham Asylum in the darkness. In the only lit room, two people were facing each other.

When Hugo regained consciousness from dizziness, he saw a figure wearing a white coat sitting across from him, looking at him with concern.

Hugo closed his eyes again, making an effort to move his eyeballs and clear the hazy halo in his vision. He saw that the doctor sitting across from him had green hair and a face painted like a clown.

The doctor with green hair, known as Jack, took out a medical record from the nearby bookshelf and looked at Hugo, saying, "Hugo Strange, suffering from severe delusions, admitted for three months. This is your second follow-up visit this month. Has your condition improved?"

Hugo opened his mouth and said, "Jack, what are you doing here?"

Hugo lowered his head and saw himself wearing the restraints of a psychiatric patient. He struggled and twisted his body, saying, "Stop your prank! Jack, what are you trying to do? Let me go!"

The doctor known as Jack, showed a helpless expression and said, "It seems that your condition has worsened again. Are you still imagining yourself as a psychologist and treating all doctors as patients?"

"What are you talking about?" Hugo widened his eyes in astonishment. "I am a psychologist, and you are the mental patient who likes to call himself the Joker. We were working together before... wait!"

Hugo shook his head vigorously, and fragments of memories floated up from his consciousness. He said, "No, I should be in Schiller's mental world right now. How did I end up here?"

"Listen, Mr. Hugo, I don't know where you heard about those high school and college experiences, or if you made them up, but even if you describe them in detail, you are not the renowned master of psychology that you imagine yourself to be."

"I really don't want to spend another 20 minutes repeating your life story, but if that's what it takes to make you more lucid, then so be it."

"Hugo Strange, you are a truck driver working for a gang on Elizabeth Street. You are not an outsider but a local in Gotham..."

"On a rainy night, you laughed and attacked Bruce Wayne, the heir of the Wayne family, with a knife. But young Master Wayne is a good person. He realized that you had a mental illness and not only didn't hold you responsible but also sent you here."

"Listen, Hugo, you have to cooperate with the treatment. My time is precious, and if it weren't for the Wayne Family's funding, I wouldn't be treating you here..."

"What?! I am... What nonsense are you talking about?" Hugo said incredulously. "The background you mentioned is clearly yours, Jack. Stop joking around. It's not funny at all. Let me go!"

"You see, that's how you are. Honestly, your symptoms are quite rare. Whenever you hear someone else's background, you imagine it as your own. And you are also the most uncooperative patient I've ever encountered."

Jack on the opposite side sighed and pressed a button on the table. After a while, another doctor wearing a white coat walked in. He pushed up his glasses and waved to Victor, saying, "Doctor Victor, I have a headache now."

Jack stood up from his chair and pointed at Hugo, saying to Victor, "I know he has reached the limit of his medication dosage, but his condition hasn't improved at all..."

Hugo on the other side had already started swaying and struggling to free himself from the restraint. He looked at Victor and said, "Victor, have you gone mad too? The mental space... where is this?"

"Where is this?"

Along with Victor's voice, the room where Hugo was located transformed into a square box. It gradually shrank, and the four walls that supported the box unfolded and flattened. Piece by piece, wooden planks rose from the original walls, constructing a wooden stage. Two heavy red curtains "swooshed" down from both sides of the stage.

Looking down from the stage, there were rows and rows of audience seats below, and Victor was sitting in the audience, asking questions. Schiller, the consciousness of Earth, answered, "This is the 'Inverted Tower.'"

"The Inverted Tower? What is that?"

"You can think of it as an area in my realm of thought, just like a theater."

"The Inverted Tower is located on the 7th, 8th, and 9th floors of my realm of thought. Of course, as you saw before, I had the Elevator Administrator open a backdoor for Hugo; otherwise, he wouldn't even be able to climb the first step."

"Why did you teleport him here? What's special about this place?"

"The teleportation is random; I didn't specify. He was just lucky."

"What does 'lucky' mean?"

"I've mentioned before that each area in my realm of thought has special rules."

"So what are the special rules of the Inverted Tower?"

"The Inverted Tower is where I go to think from a different perspective. When I treat patients, I need to put myself in their shoes and understand their current mental state to determine if their stress threshold can handle my next question..."

"So, the Inverted Tower is where you turn yourself into a patient and think from their perspective when treating them?"

"That's right. That's why I said he's lucky. The rule in the realm of consciousness is 'what you believe is true.' But here, it's inverted, and what you believe is the opposite is true. Hugo, who firmly believes he is a psychologist, becomes a patient here, while the patients he remembers become doctors."

"So how can he leave this place?" asked Victor, puzzled.

"There was a madman who passed through here while climbing the floors. He provided quite an accurate demonstration."

"What was it?"

"When you believe you're a doctor, you become a patient. Conversely, if you believe you're a patient, you become a doctor."

"Similarly, if you believe there is a staircase leading to the upper floors, then there isn't. But if you believe there will never be a staircase to the upper floors here, then there is."

"It's not that difficult, really. Perhaps for an ordinary person, convincing themselves to believe something completely opposite is challenging. But for someone who has made progress in psychology, it's not too difficult. That's why I said he's somewhat lucky."

"The only question is, how long will it take for Hugo to understand the rules, find the pattern, and leave this place?"

Victor turned his head back, his gaze once again on the stage. Meanwhile, Hugo, wearing a straitjacket, had returned to the hospital room. Clearly, he was immersed in shock and confusion.

His first question of doubt, of course, was about why Schiller's realm of thought was so elaborate.

It wasn't just a question of manifestation. Everything and everyone here, every item and detail, was identical to the real world. For a moment, Hugo began to doubt.

Then came the strangeness of this space. Generally, something appearing in the realm of consciousness represents an aspect of one's personality. For example, a pink room could represent love or contemplation of gender, while a pencil could represent the pursuit of education or childhood memories.

But now Hugo was a bit lost. What did a mental hospital with inverted identities represent?

Everything appearing here was indistinguishable from the real world, but precisely because of that, it seemed strange.

Nevertheless, Hugo, in deep contemplation, began his career as a mental patient.

After all, he was a psychologist, so he had some understanding of what mental patients would do in a mental hospital. He had tried secretly spitting out his medication, finding a way to remove the straitjacket, and even jumping off a building. But none of it was successful because there were too many doctors keeping an eye on him—Jack, the one with the clown makeup, as well as Victor, Copperpot, and Alberto.

Day after day, the rain outside Gotham's windows never ceased. Hugo couldn't escape the surveillance of these doctors. While he was trying to think and decipher the secrets, he suddenly realized that his seemingly peaceful life was slipping into an unpredictable horror.

When he attempted to spit out his medication again, the doctor with the clown makeup had a nurse bring a funnel and poured an entire bottle of pills into Hugo's mouth. And when he tried to remove the straitjacket once more, they brought huge iron chains to bind him, coil by coil.

Their treatment methods became increasingly dangerous—from forcefully medicating Hugo to using iron chains to restrain him, and then tying him to a treatment chair and subjecting him to electric shocks...

The rain outside the psychiatric hospital grew heavier, and the night in Gotham grew darker until one evening, a figure holding a knife entered Hugo's hospital room. Lightning flashed outside, illuminating the face of the figure—a Joker with a crazed smile.

He approached Hugo with a knife, and Hugo screamed in agony, trying to retreat, but his hands were bound by iron chains, leaving him with nowhere to escape.

The Joker, holding the knife, sliced open Hugo's face and peeled off his skin. Hugo screamed in excruciating pain, and in the shadows cast by the lightning on the wall, the knife fell repeatedly, splattering blood, while the maniacal laughter echoed and grew more distant...

Amidst the laughter and the sound of rain, the curtain slowly closed. Victor, sitting in the audience, rubbed his arm and said, "You know, this film will definitely be classified as suitable for viewers aged 21 and above..."

"Things have spiraled out of control. Why?" Copperpot asked.

"As I mentioned before, the lower the floor level, the more chaotic it becomes. And as you go higher, there is more order. Within the Thought Citadel on the 330th floor, the 7th, 8th, and 9th floors are considered very low, so the rate of loss of control is incredibly fast."

"The longer you stay there, the more severe the world's loss of control becomes. After all, this is the realm of consciousness and dreams, where all sorts of terrifying things can happen, just like when people have nightmares."

Jenkins shivered and said, "This is truly a terrifying nightmare, where a doctor dreams of becoming a patient and is tormented by the former patients..."

"To be honest, he disappoints me a bit. The madman who climbed the Staircase last time resolved everything in less than a day. He even made the Staircase appear right in front of him and had the time to blow a few kisses to the people on this floor..."

Speaking, Schiller tilted his head towards Jack, who was dozing off next to him, but Jack acted as if he hadn't noticed, not responding in the slightest.

"If this is indeed a nightmare, he should have woken up by now. What will happen next?"

"If he wakes up, it means he has failed the challenge and will return to the first floor."

"Well then, let's see where the Elevator will take him next."

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