PFC Chapter 2807: Demonic Restricted Area (3)
Chapter 2807: Demonic Restricted Area (3)
Chapter 2807: Demonic Restricted Area (Part )
Schiller sat leisurely in his chair. He would not eat the food that others had not finished, but he used his knife and fork to arrange the food on the plate into a specific shape.
Jerome looked back and thought angrily, other people would run three miles away when they saw the food, but he was different. Three people had three meals. If he had more candles, he could bankrupt the entire hotel by himself.
Jerome sat back in his seat. He had to talk to Schiller. He really couldn't go to the kitchen because there were difficulties there that an ordinary person like him could not overcome.
He had no reason to go to the kitchen before, so naturally he tricked Schiller into taking the risk. But now he has a reason to go, and he has to trick Schiller into taking him on the adventure. The difficulty increases exponentially.
To take a step back, even if Schiller was willing to go, there was no need for him to bring a burden like himself. Anyone could see that in this situation, taking an ordinary injured person to explore a dangerous place was basically seeking death.
For the first time in his life, Jerome felt like giving up.
It’s not that he really had no angle to lobby, he was just afraid that as soon as he opened his mouth, Schiller would start talking again. If he shut up, Schiller would shut up, and then he wouldn’t say a word from now on.
But Schiller obviously didn't intend to let him go.
"Actually, I'm a little curious about your relationship with the third person." Schiller propped his head up with his hands and said, "Do you really hate him that much?"
Jerome's face was gloomy, as if he wanted to destroy the world just by thinking about this person, but you could also tell that he had given up on himself and no longer tried to hide his expression.
Schiller didn't intend to ask any more questions when he saw him like this. He said, "Okay, let's talk business. You've discovered that I'm not the kind of person who uses conventional means to solve problems. If you think I can solve the problems in the restaurant, especially help you solve the problems, then you'd better tell me everything."
Jerome pursed his lips, but he quickly pulled them upwards, pulled the corners of his mouth down, made an expression that was almost equivalent to swallowing one's anger, and then said, "Okay, I can tell you who the man in the kitchen is."
"Wrong, this is exactly the least important question." Schiller shook his head and said, "I am not him. I know Gotham better than you do. I already know who the man in the kitchen is."
"Impossible." Jerome denied it instinctively.
"Oswald Cobblepot, you call him the Penguin."
Jerome's eyes widened in an instant.
Schiller went to inquire about this restaurant and said that every corner of the restaurant seemed to be engraved with his name, especially his inferiority and arrogance revealed in the loop game, his simultaneous flattery and hatred of the upper class, and his yearning for completely closed self-satisfaction, all of which tell how he became the Penguin Man.
Schiller rested his elbows on the table, swung the fork in his hand slightly, and then said: "His obsession with the restaurant and his obsession with power are more like a second-best wish that he will never be able to fulfill."
"In his eyes, the restaurant not only feeds the diners, but also feeds himself. He produces and others eat it. What this shows is not his dedication, but his desire to show that the value he produces can be converted into social recognition of him, and then into recognition of himself. He feeds himself without relying on anyone else."
"The same is true for power. He has a different understanding of power. Cobert is not a materialistic person. Although he once came from a wealthy family and then fell into poverty, the material gap is not the fundamental reason why he is so eager for power."
"He is in control of the channels through which he affirms himself and identifies himself. The affirmation of the lower by the higher-ranking provides the most social recognition. If he himself is the higher-ranking person, then the king in his heart can affirm the lower-ranking person in his heart, just like saying to him, 'I have already sat on the throne, I have the right to declare my own nobility, and I don't need anyone else to crown me.'"
"If we go deeper, it's not that he has to satisfy himself, but that he can't accept the recognition of others. The organ that can accept the recognition and praise of others has been removed from his body. Such people always have low self-esteem, but in order to survive, they must have the arrogance to affirm everything."
"If we were to say who caused this tragedy, it was probably the diners in the restaurant, those upper-class people. Not all of them spoke ill of Cobblepot, who was still weak at the time, but that was precisely the problem."
"If they were all violent, like some gangster bosses who ordered Cobblepot around, beat him, abused him, and even wanted to kill him, it wouldn't cause Cobblepot to suffer from other people's identity disorder. On the contrary, most of these upper-class people were kind to Cobblepot, at least on the surface, they wouldn't hurt him."
"This is based on the code of the upper class society, that is, unless the situation is special, one must be compassionate and generous. Compassion for the weak will make one's image look good."
"But Cobert is a man who cannot be tamed by mercy. The first word engraved in his genes is ambition, so these mercies will make him feel confused - the high-ranking people have clearly affirmed me, why am I still so poor?"
"At the moment of being affirmed and treated well, the satisfaction of being recognized by others will make him feel happy instinctively. Even if he knows that they are pretending to be generous, he will have a feeling of 'at least I have received generosity', especially when he is among a group of people of lower status. The person who is chosen will always feel that he is special."
"But after such satisfaction is over, Cobert will feel more empty than others, because he has never been willing to live like this. He thinks that others affirm him because he is special, but in the end, this specialness does not make him feel any better."
"Were all the compliments fake? Were the extra treatment given to me fake? Then what was real? He found it hard not to think so, and fell into deep self-doubt, which made him feel miserable."
"Gradually, the organ for accepting recognition from others is worn out, because as soon as he is recognized by others, he will instinctively think, is this recognition real? Am I the only one who has it? Weren't you chosen randomly? Will recognizing me bring you any benefit?"
"After thinking about it, he finally decided that it wasn't for me. He began to refuse to accept all this, because as long as he didn't get satisfaction from others, he could still endure his current life. The lower class people in Gotham always have to learn to endure."
"Later, this doubt about other people's recognition became a curse that followed him everywhere. Cobblepot could not truly appreciate someone's recognition from the bottom of his heart. There was always a shadow of doubt in his heart. In his immature acting years, this would cause him to miss too many opportunities and even lead him to the bottom."
"What's even more terrifying is that he was always skeptical, instead of just giving up. If he had accepted it with expectation from the beginning to the end, and understood the principle of judging by deeds rather than by heart, then he would definitely not have become a bad person. If he became disappointed early on and didn't care about anyone else's approval at all, then he would definitely be the best bad person."
"But unfortunately, he can't go to extremes. When others agree with him, his first reaction is disbelief. His second reaction is that the other party is profitable. His third reaction is that what he said can't be true. His fourth reaction is that he looks so sincere. He is always disappointed, but always tempted."
"Even in his quest for self-identity, he was putting on layer after layer of the skins of the upper-class people he had met on the king within himself."
"Even if it's through fantasy self-satisfaction, in order to anchor others' recognition of him, he even denies his current self and adds many qualities that society considers worthy of recognition to himself, so as to convince himself that this time they must be sincere."
Jerome rolled his eyes upwards; he had long since noticed that the nerves in the ceiling had stopped moving.
Jerome was almost torn apart by what he heard.
He couldn't believe what he would do if his own heart was dissected like this and laid out on the table for everyone to taste, but the man across from him actually did it, and the other man was a monster that was in the process of devouring an entire restaurant.
Jerome felt waves of cold air from the direction of the kitchen. This is not an adjective, but a description of physics. The restaurant began to become colder and colder.
"I don't think the image of a penguin has any special meaning to him." Schiller even went on to say: "Maybe he looks a bit like a penguin, maybe he walks unsteadily, or someone has laughed at him like that, but it doesn't matter."
"But the image of the iceberg is meaningful. He prefers the cold to the heat, but I don't think it's quite appropriate. Cobblepot's ambition is like a raging fire. Maybe he wants to cool himself down by sealing himself in an iceberg."
"If he is still conscious, he should understand that keeping calm is a cowardly and withdrawn tendency, which cannot solve anyone's ridicule. In the face of bullying, it may be better to let the other party calm down."
Jerome suddenly had a bad feeling.
Schiller snapped his fingers lightly, an action that always seemed frivolous and inconsistent with his temperament. But as a ray of fire appeared, the world became completely different.
Schiller stood up, holding the flame in his hand, and walked straight towards the kitchen. Jerome hurried to follow him, but Schiller stopped in front of the kitchen door. At this time, a layer of ice had formed on the ground.
Schiller threw the flames directly in.
The flame was actually very small, only slightly larger than a lighter, and could probably burn just a piece of paper. But the more troublesome thing was that there was no way to extinguish it. Jerome watched helplessly as the kitchen became frozen, frosted, and rained, but the flame remained motionless.
Schiller leaned against the kitchen door and looked inside. After a while, he heard crackling and banging sounds.
The ceiling finally changed.
Those nerves began to twist and gradually stopped being arranged according to scientific rules. Instead, they became somewhat like capillaries under the skin. The entire ceiling seemed to have turned into a person's pale skin.
A few protrusions began to appear on the skin, and then gradually turned into a face, as if there was a living person trying to struggle out of the skin, making it look particularly hideous and terrifying.
But Schiller and Jerome both noticed the striking hooked nose on the face at first glance. Jerome turned to look at Schiller and said to him silently with his eyes, "You are amazing."
"If you don't study math, physics and chemistry, the world will be full of myths. The same is true if you don't study psychology." Schiller said with disdain. He walked back to the dining table and sat down again, and seemed to be talking to the face on the ceiling.
"Does my behavior remind you of those old friends? They could never really hurt you, but just like that flame, you can't extinguish it no matter how hard you try."
"It just keeps burning, until the end of time when even revenge has lost its meaning. It cannot be destroyed, covered up, or forgotten. It's like chopping the eternal self-eating Ouroboros in half."
Another eight-hour flight. I'm so sleepy.