The Death Knell

Along with the bullet casings, pearls were scattered on the ground.

In the dark crime alley, the gangster quickly ran away with his wallet, leaving only the young Bruce Wayne, standing alone in a pool of blood of his parents.

A bat flew across the beam of light under the street lamp, flapping its wings silently. It was not a butterfly, but the little boy still noticed its presence by accident.

"Why?!" The boy's head turned 180 degrees, and he looked into the darkness at the entrance of the alley: "You obviously have a way, Deathstroke told you that he can help you, why are you unwilling to save our parents? !”

The man in the darkness slowly approached the crime scene. His pointed ears and black cloak gradually appeared under the street lights. A large group of bats surrounded him, as if he were the largest moth.

"You are not me, this is a dream."

He didn't answer the boy's question, and he didn't bother to answer. But when he saw this scene repeated, Batman was still a little bit shocked in his heart. This was the reason why he was willing to waste time to say a word.

"I am you, I am Bruce Wayne." The boy still kept the posture of twisting his neck, his expression was very ferocious, like an evil ghost: "You can obviously save our parents, but if you don't do it, you Your pride has failed us!"

"You are nobody, not Bruce Wayne." Batman said with certainty. He had realized that the person talking to him in the dream was not his other personality, but an unknown existence.

As for why he knew?

Because he is not the standard answer this time.

This is not the first time he has dreamed of this scene. He has had the same nightmare countless times. Since his parents died, he has basically never slept normally at night. Once he closes his eyes, this scene will happen again.

Sometimes he's little Bruce in his dreams, sometimes he's a bystander like today, sometimes he's a bat in flight, sometimes he's the villain shooting the gun.

He has experienced it countless times from different angles and different ideas.

So when the number of pearls, the angle of the bat flying under the streetlight, the smell of smoke, the villain's steps as he leaves, all appear nuanced, Batman knows the scene is fake.

Who can put a scene directly into their head? Do you still know your memories of the recent period?

Deathstroke can do it, and so can a few lunatics who are good at psychology.

But Deathstroke is certainly not that boring, first of all.

The only ones left are his 'old friends' in Gotham. Could it be them?

No, because this is not hypnosis or brainwashing.

I am very guarded against those things, and I will not even look at pocket watches or coins for a long time in my life, let alone let others touch me, and use verbal suggestions to hypnotize me.

After ruling out these possibilities, the only explanation is that this is a dream, a dream of being manipulated by someone, and the other party is hostile and is directed at me.

After thinking about all this, the purpose of Batman's conversation with the boy became to obtain intelligence. He needed to understand the other party's motives and purposes, and these could be analyzed from the enemy's words.

At present, it seems that the other party is planning to affect his mood and use the proposal made shortly before the death knell to make him regret it.

Regret is a negative emotion, and the enemy Lantern or Nightmare can take advantage of negative emotions?

Looking at the boy's fingers, Batman ruled out the former's suspicion, and got the answer:

"You're a nightmare."

This is not a question, he said it with certainty. Batman has always been so confident. It is better to believe in his own reasoning than to believe in what others say.

All this thinking happened in just one second. When he said his answer, the boy was immediately silenced.

Obviously, this nightmare didn't expect Batman to deduce his identity so quickly, so how would he perform the next scene? How should I make Batman have a mental breakdown and fall into a nightmare that he can't wake up from?

What should I do if I don’t talk about insomnia?

And the hesitant look it showed in that moment naturally fell into Batman's eyes, which made him more certain of his judgment.

The other person turned into what Bruce looked like when he was young, and the boy is a human. Humans have eyes, mouth and nose, so micro-expression analysis can come in handy.

According to Batman's experience, any shape-shifting creature cannot effectively control its expression after turning into a human form. They copy the facial nerve distribution of humans, but often ignore that this is also one of their weaknesses.

"you"

"This is not against me alone, you are just a follower." Batman blocked what the other party was about to say and continued his reasoning: "You can't make the decision at all, you are just assigned a task, and now you are being taken care of by me. After seeing through it, I don’t know what to do next.”

Because this was the final reasoning, Batman said a few more words, and he was ready to leave the dream.

"You can't escape. Even though you guessed it right, it's not over yet!" The little boy swelled up, and his originally cute body suddenly swelled several times, as if someone was using a pump to pump a piece of shit. When he was pumped inside, he turned into a monster that looked like a wax melting demon along with a large number of sticky bubbles.

"I can."

Batman is not angry. There is no need for him to be angry with an out-of-control nightmare. If he confronts them in a dream, he will undoubtedly fall into the enemy's trap.

The correct thing to do is to wake up immediately and leave the nightmare alone in the dream. The main material world is the territory of mankind. Leaving this dream means abolishing the opponent's home field advantage.

Maybe it was someone else who might not be able to escape from the dream on his own, but Batman was not one of them. He had experienced ghosts in the past, so he specially prepared a backup plan and conducted special training.

The Sleepless Knight rushed towards him angrily, seemingly intending to use other means to keep him in the nightmare, but the bat had no intention of fighting it. He just closed his eyes and opened them suddenly.

He woke up, in the bedroom of Wayne Mansion. The sunshine outside the window was not bright, but the sound of rain hitting the glass was very refreshing.

After getting rid of the dream, Batman showed no joy, as if it was not worth mentioning. He immediately walked to the closet, entered the Batcave through the secret passage in the closet, put on his uniform, and took out the X metal from the Bat belt. , take one piece in each hand, and collide them together.

Dreams are a subconscious activity of the brain, and all information in the brain is essentially the transmission of electrical signals. The wavelength of the X metal resonance is more powerful and will affect the transmission of human brain waves. After one tap like this, you can determine yourself Have you woken up?

The fact is that he did wake up and was now in the physical world.

Batman pinched a small piece of X metal and stuck it on the back of his head. This was a method he learned from Deathstroke before. Then he walked towards the Brother Eye host expressionlessly, preparing to contact the Justice League.

I slept for two hours and had to catch up on the information during this period.