amaotonovel Chapter 4640 Desperate Escape (2)
Chapter 4640 Desperate Escape (2)
Chapter 4640 A desperate escape (12)
boom!
When the dull thud echoed in the room, both of them looked surprised. It didn't sound like a metal crowbar hitting bricks. Pounding the side wall with a crowbar produced a crisp, clear "clang." This dull thud meant that the material above was different from the wall.
Eric went down to retrieve the crowbar, then turned the ladder horizontally, finding that it fit perfectly above the opening, allowing them to climb to the center. He grabbed the crowbar and tried to pry it up, but still couldn't quite reach it.
“Charles, come here, I’ll carry you up,” Eric said.
Charles seemed a little hesitant. He said, "Isn't this a bit too acrobatic? Are you sure this is how you solve it?"
Eric stood with his legs apart on the two rungs of the ladder, jumped a few times, and said, "No problem. Come here."
Charles decided to trust Eric. He carefully climbed the ladder, swaying slightly as he went, forcing him to slow down. When he reached Eric, he seemed a little flustered. As he put it, the movement was a bit too acrobatic.
Although the ladder could support the weight of two people, and Eric was relatively stable, he still had to lift Charles up. At this point, even carrying him was a problem, let alone lifting him.
However, it's unclear whether Eric actually had any acrobatic training. He simply turned sideways, one foot forward and the other back, leaning forward, and lifted Charles up in one swift motion. Then, he slowly moved his feet back, turned around, and returned to a stable position.
Then he lifted Charles up. Charles held the crowbar, and Eric suddenly yanked him upwards, the crowbar plunging straight into the ceiling. With a whoosh, water poured down. Charles was soaked, but thankfully not much. It seemed water had been trapped on the walls of the passageway above, and once cleared, it all flowed down.
“It’s foam board,” Charles said. “Don’t move it, I’ll enlarge it a little more.”
After saying that, he took the crowbar and kept poking upwards. The foam board above was brittle, and after poking for a while, a circular shape appeared. Then Charles quickly felt his way to the edge of the space, which was just wide enough for one person to pass through.
“My God,” Charles said, “there’s no way we can get up there!”
Eric put him down. The two returned to the room, staring at the hole above, though it was too dark to see anything. There was nowhere to step below the hole.
“There must be a way,” Eric said. “...bricks, just use bricks to raise the ladder.”
Charles was full of questions: "Eric, in your incredibly rich resume of the first half of your life, you didn't happen to be a circus performer, did you? We couldn't even hold those bricks in place!"
"As long as they are all the same height, they won't fall apart. Trust me, I'm a physicist."
“You’re an astrophysicist. And the theoretical part of physics is mainly achieved by manipulating celestial bodies,” Charles said irritably.
“I think it’s about time,” Schiller said, standing to the side of the opening. “You can test if it collapses.”
Now, above the hole is a very complex structure. It consists of three main parts: a wall of bricks built against the wall, a ladder, and a supporting structure that extends from the bottom of the hole.
Now, the ladder is propped diagonally above the opening, meaning the wall is the vertical right-angle side, the opening plane is the horizontal right-angle side, and the ladder is the diagonal side.
To achieve this structure, firstly, a row of bricks needs to be laid on the wall closest to the opening above it; otherwise, there would be nowhere to hold the ladder in place. This isn't difficult, since with a wall to rely on, the probability of it collapsing is very small.
But what follows is more complicated. If the wall is used as a fulcrum, the lower half of the ladder will inevitably fall in the center of the opening and cannot be supported on the floor because it is not long enough.
To support the lower end at this point, the only option is to build up bricks from below. This makes the structure very difficult to stabilize. Even if there are enough bricks at the bottom, without cement for fixation, it requires considerable skill in construction.
Coincidentally, Schiller was very good at building with blocks. To be precise, he was good at building structures without cement. The entire tower was built this way.
Bruce watched the entire process in stunned silence. Schiller hadn't drawn any blueprints or done any calculations; he'd simply started laying bricks together. And the bricks weren't just facing one direction; some were sideways, and some were even vertical. He didn't hesitate at all while laying them; it seemed like he was relying entirely on intuition. Yet, this thing somehow managed to stay upright.
Bruce opened his mouth; the person behind this level was truly a genius. He didn't know much about the others, but giving Schiller a weapon he couldn't detach from right off the bat was definitely not conducive to their communication. This made him hesitant to even question them now.
“Professor,” Bruce said tactfully, “I assume you’ve heard of the fundamentals of mechanics in physics.”
“I think your doubts about this structure don’t stem from mechanics, but from optics. Because if it were bright enough here, you could see the structure I built clearly, and you would find that the stress on each brick is correct,” Schiller said calmly. “I trust your ability in mechanical analysis as much as I trust your ability in behavioral analysis.”
Bruce was speechless. The problem was that Schiller's construction method was unscientific, but it was pitch black here, and he couldn't see the specific structure clearly. Now that he was up there, if it collapsed, he would likely be entirely responsible.
His common sense about science made it impossible for him to believe that something more like a large-scale public art piece than a rigorous engineering structure could support his weight.
“Didn’t you get my childhood memories?” Schiller said, arms crossed, looking at him. “The lighting there should still be pretty good.”
Bruce was slightly taken aback, then remembered that the compressed file Greed had sent him was enormous, and he had only opened a small portion of it so far, focusing on the gossip rather than anything else.
Bruce had to spend a little more time unpacking. Here, he finally found the reason why Schiller could be so confident—he really was good at building blocks.
There is actually a discipline in this world called "balance." There are people who have a more acute sense of the center of gravity of objects than others. This allows them to stack strange things, such as using a stick to support a chair, or even several chairs. It seems to completely defy the laws of mechanics, yet they can maintain balance.
Schiller clearly had this talent; he built blocks quite well, and the structures he created looked very strange, yet always maintained an eerie balance.
Because he was viewing it from a first-person perspective, Bruce could see it quite clearly and was able to perform mechanical analysis. After looking at it for a while, he realized that Schiller was indeed right. Everything he had built made perfect sense after the force analysis.
At this point, Bruce was already convinced. However, because the compressed file was so comprehensive, Bruce discovered some information related to the building blocks while searching for it. For example, the first collapse of the tower.
Bruce was woken up by Schiller. He came to his senses and looked at Schiller's gray eyes, which were almost hidden in the darkness, in a daze.
“It seems that greed has given you a very complete memory,” Schiller said, looking at him.
“Professor,” Bruce called out, “I know you’re going to say that it wasn’t suffering that shaped you, but seeing these things still makes me very sad.”
"I'm glad you still have time to be sad. But have you ever had time to think about what greed gives you that doesn't require payment?"
Bruce suddenly seemed to crack.
He initially thought that greed was simply about sharing gossip with him. In that situation, sharing the background story of gossip in this way was only natural. Any ordinary person with this ability would definitely use it, and would probably spread it far and wide, wanting the whole world to know and understand their current excitement.
However, the memories Greed provided were abnormally numerous and detailed. If Greed were charging its usual fees, Bruce felt he would probably have to work for it until the end of the universe.
Greed didn't ask for anything in return, but that was far more terrifying than if it had. It meant, very likely, that he was preparing to drag the recipient of this gift into an unprecedented, enormous ball of yarn, leaving the recipient with no choice.
Bruce's head was spinning. He didn't even have time for any mechanical analysis; all he wanted to do was ask Greed if he could get a refund. He'd rather go ask the professor directly than gain knowledge this way—now he truly understood Outer God believers.
After a long pause, Bruce sighed deeply. Schiller looked at him, and Bruce clasped his hands together, saying, "I am truly sorry. I triggered the multiverse crisis. It is entirely my fault. To express my remorse, I have decided to personally guard the Origin Wall and will not abandon my post. I will return after completing the instance."
Schiller sneered: "When you discover the intention of greed, you have no other choice."
“I have an idea,” Harley snapped her fingers. “Let’s make a seesaw down there, and you can just lift me up.”
"What?" Pamela was full of questions.
“Lever principle! Lever principle!” Harley said. “Haven’t you seen those big seesaws in circus troupes? They can make people fly super high, and then land on a steel cable after they’re up in the air…”
"The way you're saying it makes me feel like Harley Quinn from the multiverse runs a huge circus in the Battlegrounds," Pamela said, still somewhat puzzled. "What exactly did you learn there?"
“I didn’t learn this from Harley Quinn. I learned it from Dick’s parents,” Harley said. “They’re in the circus business. Gotham Theatre has a big circus show every week now, it’s very popular. I’ve not only learned unicycles and tightrope walking, but I’m also pretty good at ribbon dancing and trampolining.”
Pamela didn't say anything, but walked over and cupped Halle's face in her hands, then said, "You should always try to trust that the people around you will protect you. Halle, you know what? If my friends show a serious lack of security, it makes me feel like a failure in my life. Because it means they've never felt like they've received anything from me. It's so frustrating."
“It’s not your fault,” Harley said. “Endless anxiety is my driving force. Every Harley Quinn is like that. Otherwise, why would we be drawn to the Joker and see his madness as a liberation for us?”
“If falling into chaos makes you feel better, I’d rather you were a madman,” Pamela said. “Madness isn’t evil only when people are saving themselves. Isn’t that right?”
“No.” Harley looked into her eyes and shook her head. “If everyone chose to numb themselves with chaos and madness when they were anxious about what they couldn’t do, Gotham probably wouldn’t have seen the sun by now.”
“You’re insane.” Pamela turned her face away. “Do you know how much you sound like Batman?”
Harley smiled brightly: "Since we lost Batman, we've had countless Batmen."