Shiller stepped lightly, advancing along the dark corridor. Despite the vastness of the insane asylum, he knew his target should be underground. He went through the courtyard, then entered a building at the back of the asylum, where he found the stairway leading down.
Descending, and then descending further. Two floors down the stairs. Here, there was no light at all. The colorful lines forming illusions swayed like streamers fluttering in the wind and rain. Chasing the colors, Shiller was like a bird flying with the wind.
The surroundings were so quiet that a pin drop could be heard. The previous noises had vanished, and Shiller could only hear his own heartbeat. He counted the beats, walking forward with equally silent steps. His mind was almost entirely fused with the illusions, such that even the darkness didn't know if he truly existed, like a ghost born from suspicion.
On the second underground level, there was a circular corridor. Halfway through, Shiller heard voices coming from a room on the right. The voices were low and intermittent.
"...The Death Angel is already dead. No one will ever know what happened back then... haha..."
"The voice of the Broken Bat." Shiller recognized it, "It turns out he's not dead." However, what surprised Shiller was that, with his brain mashed up, not only did he survive, but he also arrived here at breakneck speed, speaking clearly and being conscious. Could this really be the result of injecting the Joker virus?
Shiller saw a faint light seeping through the door crack. Realizing there was light in the room, he stealthily took two steps forward and peeked inside through the observation window on the door.
There was only one person in the room.
He was a fairly sturdy man, young from the back, definitely not Batman's body type. Under the weak glow of some equipment, Shiller saw he was wearing the jacket Tone had worn. Yet, from his neck oozed a large amount of blood, staining half his clothes dark red.
The man turned around. Shiller's expression faltered.
Batman's head was on Tone's body.
The glass jar that once held his brain and artificial brain fluid had vanished. His head was restored entirely, even the hair on the back of his head looked normal. If not for the glaring blood around the neck and a small exposed segment of black spine, no one would suspect that the head and the body weren't one person's.
Before him was something even more horrifying—a water tank filled with an unknown solution, and in it floated a brain.
Behind the water tank housing the brain was a very complex piece of equipment. Shiller could only recognize that some of the data was monitoring brainwaves, which seemed to be translated into directly understandable information.
"Batman is communicating with a brain?"
Shiller looked around and didn't see any traps or weapons. Batman wasn't holding any weapons either, and his head swayed precariously, as if it might fall off at any moment.
Shiller pushed the door and walked in.
At the moment Batman saw him, his eyes widened too. He hadn't expected Shiller to walk in directly.
But Shiller also hesitated for a moment, as certain thoughts started bouncing around in his head as soon as he stepped in. He couldn't help but say, "Did you two switch brains? Is Joker's brain in your broken body, and the brain in the water tank is Batman's?"
Batman's expression and the data on the panel connected to the brain in the water tank both showed a momentary pause.
"No wonder the Death Angel drilled a hole in your head," Shiller said. "He inserted Joker's brain into Batman's body and then placed Batman's brain into the water tank. Why would he do this? Let me guess..."
"Wait, stop guessing for a moment." Shiller interrupted himself. While Batman was still flustered by this sudden turn of events, Shiller punched him on the cheekbone.
Bam!
Batman's head flew off directly, along with half of the black spine. Tone's body also fell over. Shiller retracted his hand, shaking his fist, not from pain but because he had deliberately withheld his strength to prevent killing the other and caused his muscles to ache a bit.
He then turned to look at the brain in the water tank, glanced at the panel displaying data above, and said: "The Death Angel wouldn't conduct a brain swap for no reason, especially not replacing Batman's brain. That's the most valuable part of Batman. Even if he were to remove Batman's brain, there was no need to put Joker's brain into Batman's body. Why did he do this?"
"The Death Angel's feelings toward Batman are complex. Between them, it's not just hatred. In fact, rather than hate, Death Angel Paul seems more like he's seeking Batman's approval. Defeating and imprisoning him is the perfect way to prove his own capability."
"Up until this point, everything seems normal. But I don't think Death Angel Paul would conduct research on Batman, because he has already fulfilled his wish—proving that he is no less than Batman. In this relationship he has with Batman, he shouldn't have anything more to ask. So the experiment he conducted must have been directed by someone else."
"This is very reasonable. Because Death Angel himself is not some scientist. Even an ordinary scientist couldn't have such god-like technology. This technology was taught to him by someone else. I guess the person is Lady Siwa. Only the Assassin's Union has such grand ambitions and the technology to match."
"For some reason, Death Angel collaborated with them. But he actually didn't want to work with them. He might have tortured Batman day after day during his captivity, seeking his approval. But he wouldn't turn Batman into some humanoid weapon. He would see this as an insult to Batman, and an insult to his own victory."
"Yet somehow, he didn't resist, agreeing to work with the Assassin's Union and perform various experiments on Batman. Although he was very concerned that these painful experiments would drive Batman insane. If Batman succumbed to madness, he would never acknowledge him. So he thought of a solution, which was to swap out Batman's brain."
"The human experience of pain all derives from the brain. As long as the brain is swapped out, Batman wouldn't feel the pain. Therefore, before the experiment began, he placed Joker's brain into Batman's body, while Batman's real brain was placed here."
"Batman's peculiar undying ability doesn't stem from having Joker's blood injected into him, but rather because he possesses Joker's brain—the organ with the highest concentration of Joker virus within him. Hence, his head is indestructible, even if smashed to pieces, it can still recover."
"I'm just very curious, what kind of conditions did the Assassin's Union offer to make Death Angel prefer to swap brains secretly rather than outright refuse? Or was this not a deal at all, but an outright threat?"
"I think, none of the otherworld visitors you've seen have ever reached here. The Batman they saved was actually Joker. The real Batman is this brain stored in the water tank."
"You're wrong." Suddenly, a line of text appeared on the screen above the brain. Shiller looked up, and characters gradually emerged.
"A Batman clad in Metal Armor came here. He placed my brain back into the body. But he still failed."
"He would naturally fail," Shiller said, "because your body has been injected with a solution containing Joker's genes. The Joker virus will pollute your brain. He must have missed the crucial information during his investigation."
Shiller meant perhaps Arkham Batman didn't go to the underground archives of the Cathedral to find the experiment logs. He didn't know the last experiment conducted by Death Angel Paul was injecting Joker's genes into Batman's body.
Not knowing this, he might have simply swapped their brains back. But Batman's brain, returning to his own body, was then polluted by the body already containing Joker's genes. Ultimately, it was Joker who was saved, not Batman.
"He knows." The text on the screen once again overturned Shiller's speculation, "He simply had no choice."
"No choice?" Shiller suddenly sneered and said, "I've only ever made others have no choice..."
Then he suddenly paused, covering his forehead, and lowered his voice to say, "Can you two stay quiet?"
After speaking, he said nothing more and walked over to pick up Batman's head. Batman clearly wanted to say something more, but Shiller began to fiercely bash the back of his skull with a handgun.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Shiller's strength had indeed grown significantly, only taking three hits to break it open. Brain fluids flowed out, and the white brain was visible to the naked eye. Shiller reached into the skull, attempting to retrieve the brain.
No matter how powerful Joker's healing ability might be, if the brain was separated from the body, it should be impossible to grow a full head from just a brain. There was conveniently a water tank capable of holding a brain nearby; wasn't this just perfect?
Shiller's actions were very rough; when the brain was taken out, it wasn't very intact. But he didn't care much, directly tossing it into the water tank nearby. Although the original brain inside the tank couldn't possibly display any expression, with illusion vision activated, Shiller still saw a look of panic on the original brain.
"Sorry, I'm in a hurry," Shiller told him.
He truly was in a hurry. Because if the original brain in the water tank was indeed Batman's, rescuing him would be extremely difficult.
Batman's body had already been polluted by Joker's genes, and certainly couldn't be used. To save Batman's body, a new body would need to be found. Currently, the only usable body seemed to be Death Angel Paul's corpse.
Death Angel Paul hadn't been dead for long; the corpse hadn't started decomposing and should still be usable. But putting a brain back in and reviving a person was utterly beyond Shiller's expertise.
He knew simply forcing it in wouldn't work; there needed to be an extraordinary "sewing agent"—something beyond common knowledge's capability to achieve a resurrection. After contemplating, the answer seemed to lie in nano-equipment.
This meant Shiller had to take Batman's real brain back to the Cathedral underground, retrieve the nano-equipment from Lady Siwa, then go to the Municipal Building, open Paul's skull, install Batman's brain inside, and allow Batman to control the nano-equipment to repair his body, offering a chance to save Batman.