Layers of Fear (Part 2)

The wind howled through Gotham City, but even faster than the wind was Bruce, who was desperately fleeing through the black, rainy night.

A deformed monster was chasing after him. It was a creature with incredibly long limbs, like a spider. More importantly, this monster had the face of Alfred, and it was holding a cup of hot milk on One Hand.

Alfred's voice, growing eerie and shrill, came from behind. "Young Master, you need to drink milk to sleep, have you forgotten?!"

"You're not a good boy!!" Alfred's face contorted more and more as he swung his several-meter-long limbs, crawling on the ground like a giant arthropod. His head rotated 180 degrees as he shouted repeatedly, "Good boys must finish their milk before they can sleep!!!"

As Bruce ran forward, he recalled what had happened a few minutes earlier.

After discovering the globe and the note, he was attacked by the Joker under the bed again, and then sat up in bed once more.

Undoubtedly, he had more clues. A globe? Bruce wondered, what could a spinning globe represent?

But the guy under the bed was very difficult to deal with. No matter which angle Bruce tried to reach for the globe, he would be hit by the guy's dagger and then wake up again.

Unable to achieve anything in this regard, Bruce could only venture out of his room once again to explore the hallways and other rooms. But just like the traps in his bedroom, Bruce was killed time and time again by the Joker in the other rooms.

Bruce quickly stopped in the middle of the hallway and looked back at his bedroom door.

Every time he woke up, he would open the bedroom door from the inside out, be killed by the Joker outside, and then go back to bed and open the door from the inside again.

But he never stood in the hallway and then opened the door from the outside in.

As Bruce stood in the dark hallway, gripping the bedroom doorknob, he pondered for a long time before deducing the rule here—he had to confront his own fears.

In his bedroom, his greatest fear was the story he had heard in his childhood. He may have thought he had long forgotten it all, but clearly, he hadn't forgotten it in his dream. This fear was etched into his deeper consciousness and had only been unearthed now, becoming a huge obstacle preventing him from finding the Truth.

In the hallway, what he feared most was opening his bedroom door, because he knew that it not only meant the end of one day of despair, but also the beginning of another.

Bruce recalled that for a long time, he was terrified of going back to his room to sleep. Whenever he opened his bedroom door to rest, he felt a strong sense of guilt and remorse because he felt there were more important things to do than sleep.

Now, as he gripped the bedroom doorknob again, that familiar feeling surged back, just like the fear he had felt when he looked under the bed earlier.

But he still pushed the door open, and on the other side of the door was the second floor of the Wayne Manor.

When he stepped onto the second floor, the door behind him disappeared, but Bruce knew that something even more terrible was about to happen, because there were more rooms on the second floor than on the third floor, and more importantly, this was where Alfred rested.

As he walked into the second-floor corridor, he ran into Alfred, who was carrying a tray with a cup of hot milk on it. Alfred looked at Bruce and asked with concern, "Young master, did you have another nightmare? Here's some milk."

Bruce didn't move, and then suddenly, the glass of milk turned into a comical bomb, exploding with a "bang," blowing Alfred to pieces, and Bruce woke up from the bed again.

The second time, he tried to pick up the glass of milk, but the milk would still turn into a bomb, killing him and forcing him to start over.

"Face Fear ..." Bruce murmured to himself.

What was he afraid of? Was he afraid of Alfred? Or was he afraid to face Alfred's concern?

He woke up again and again, no matter how Bruce reached for the glass of milk or what he said.

But soon, Bruce's thoughts cleared, and when he faced Alfred again, he said, "Thank you, Alfred, but could you please bring the milk to my room?"

This time, the milk didn't explode, and neither Alfred nor Bruce were killed. Alfred simply smiled and nodded, saying, "Yes, sir."

Bruce is currently on the second floor, and his instruction is for Alfred to deliver the milk to his bedroom on the third floor. So he must now go back to the third floor, but there are no stairs for him to climb.

The quickest way is to wake up again and find himself in bed in the bedroom on the third floor. But Bruce is surprised to find that the entire second floor is perfectly normal. There is no scary Joker with a dagger, and no stairs that could cause him to fall.

Bruce discovered that he could not proceed to the next loop.

What do you do when you realize you're dreaming and want to wake up?

Most people would choose to jump off a building, as the sensation of falling would quickly wake them from their dreams. But there is another way: to generate enough pain, or in other words, to commit suicide.

"Face Fear ..." Bruce repeated the word again, and then he thought that as long as one is human, one cannot avoid the fear of death, so suicide should be the best way to Face Fear.

He retrieved a screwdriver from one of the rooms. The tool was sharp enough to pierce his heart, but when Bruce held it to his chest, he realized that besides Power of Death, another kind of fear surrounded him, causing his hands to tremble uncontrollably.

What if this isn't a dream?

What if he was deceived?

What if this whole process—from waking up in a fright to leaving his bedroom, going upstairs, meeting Alfred, and having him bring the milk upstairs—had actually happened in real life?

What if, after the screwdriver was inserted into his heart, he didn't wake up but instead collapsed to the ground in agony, only able to wait in despair for death to come?

That would be the biggest joke of the century.

Bruce had no doubt that some madman would set up one trap after another to create this joke, until he was led to willingly plunge a weapon into his own heart and then face death.

Bruce suddenly realized that he understood all the madmen in the world, whether they laughed wildly, shouted, self-harmed, or attacked others. Perhaps they were just like Bruce now.

Perhaps they attack themselves simply to escape from some terrible dream, and when they attack others, they are also attacking some kind of monster in the dream.

If you were to observe Bruce's actions during this period from an outsider's perspective, anyone would think he was a madman.

He jumped around in his bedroom, lifting the mattress, moving the desk, repeatedly going into the bathroom, and constantly turning the doorknob, checking every single thing in the room without stopping, just like a person with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, endlessly repeating those stereotyped behaviors.

To onlookers, he seemed to have an inexplicable fear of stairs, preferring to jump down from the courtyard rather than step onto the stairs. He lay on the ground, crawled under the bed, took out a perfectly normal globe, and then stood there thinking for a long time.

He stood there blankly in front of his door, not pushing it open. Facing the butler who brought him milk, he suddenly showed a look of sadness and terror. He held the milk cup as if it were a bomb, then swung his arm and threw the milk cup away...

The instant the screwdriver struck Bruce's chest, he suddenly understood the Joker.

The Joker kept laughing, and others called him a madman, but perhaps he was just seeing a funny joke in his own hallucination. In his own dream, the choices he made were perfectly normal.

Every madman is a normal person in his own world.

Just as Bruce was slowly tightening his grip on the screwdriver, drawing a gash in his chest, he suddenly heard a piercing scream. Immediately afterward, a monster with Alfred's face appeared behind Bruce, turning its head and shouting, "Master! Why aren't you in your room?!"

"You actually ran here to avoid drinking milk! Come back with me now, you can only sleep after you finish your milk!!"

Regardless, seeing his butler transformed into a long-limbed arthropod with its head constantly turning was quite a shock for Bruce, so his first reaction was to avoid the attack.

He rolled to the right, and then, taking advantage of the moment Alfred turned around, he made his escape.

There were no stairs on the entire second floor, but the moment Bruce rushed into the corridor, the window at the end of the corridor slammed open, letting in a blast of cold air. Bruce had no choice.

When he jumped out of the window, he thought the feeling of weightlessness and dizziness would wake him up again, but it didn't. He landed hard on the ground, and intense pain came from his back and shoulders.

The pain was so real that Bruce began to doubt whether he had really returned to reality, but clearly, the monster that defied common sense was reminding him that this was still a dream.

The rain began to fall harder and harder, and the monster's roars behind them grew more and more shrill. Everything seemed to become more chaotic, as if it had suddenly turned from a puzzle game into a horror game, and one with an extreme chase.

Bruce quickened his pace, unsure if he would ever wake up again if he were caught by the monster.

Bruce knew the roads outside the Wayne Manor very well, having walked them countless times. But now, he found that the area around his home seemed to have turned into an endless maze.

The monster kept chasing, Bruce kept running. Just like the nightmare of being chased that people often experience, as time went on, his mental and physical strength were constantly being depleted.

What are the rules? Bruce wondered, Face Fear?

Fear...

Suddenly, he stopped at a familiar intersection, one he had passed by several times but had overlooked.

It was an intersection he knew very well. He knew exactly how many rubble stones were piled up there and how many power lines were there, because it was there that a gunshot changed his life.