What bad thoughts can Batman have?

Chapter 957 The Origin of Chen Tao, Part Three (Part 2)
I am Chen Tao.

When I was young, I was a withdrawn and strange child. People who didn't know me often mistook this unusual aloofness for my constant isolation from others, and that was indeed the case. While others were socializing, I was reading books or comics. While others were dating, I was still reading books and comics.

What can you expect from someone who says "No, I want to read" when invited to play basketball?

But that doesn't mean I'm alone; I'm accompanied by stories.

When I was about 11 years old, I first read *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer*. For a long time afterward, I fantasized about finding the entrance to a secret cave. It was hidden behind a dense primeval forest, and to enter that secret realm, one would have to crouch low, head bowed, and pass through a doorway like the rabbit hole in *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland*, and then… suddenly, a breathtaking view appeared. The shadows of the trees cast patterns that snaked beneath my feet like pythons; autumn leaves and shadows nestled together in the warm sunlight; white deer roamed the forest, as holy as gods; and shimmering spirits followed a fantastical mission…

As I grew physically, this imagination gradually reached its peak around the age of 12. One day, I accomplished a feat that still amazes me to this day: using my imagination to turn an eraser into a coin.

Oh, it's not that I "imagined" it to change, but that I used my imagination to "change" it!
The eraser really did slowly flatten before my eyes, then gradually began to shimmer with the bright silver of a coin. I entered some kind of extrasensory world, where the rules of physics were reversed, and things were reshaped like clay, just as Chen Turner sat on the bed and used his imagination to turn the bed into a submarine monitor.

But when my reason loudly proclaimed that the eraser couldn't possibly be a coin, everything naturally returned to normal. The steel coin bounced back, softened, and transformed back into an eraser. From that moment on, it was as if a switch that had been sealed had been flipped. This self-hypnotic behavior of interfering with my senses with my imagination became my passive skill, enabling me to distort the real world at any time with my imagination from that day on.

I imagine standing with Totto-chan by the window, I imagine dancing with Peter Pan under the starlight at night, I imagine the Nautilus bursting out of the water by the pool...

This kind of delusional imagination, which detaches oneself from the real world and leaps into another fantasy world, created an astonishing miracle a few months later:

I created a Batman in my imagination!

A more despicable, shameless, and utterly absurd Batman has become a puppet I can summon at any time, appearing before me whenever and wherever he pleases. He is summoned by my imagination, and I don't care...

What I mean is that he became another side of my personality, another self.

I don't care what others think about all this, but I have to tell you, at least for me, this Batman is a real person, but my friend... that's not a good thing for me.

I've embarked on adventure after adventure with Batman, fighting alongside him across time and space: Bane, General Zod, Brainiac, Darkseid, the Anti-Monitor, the Worldmaker, Perpetua...

What a grand and joyful adventure that was!
I often sit and tap the table, lost in my daydreams. The events in my fantasies unfold according to my own ideas and are under my control, but there are also uncontrollable developments, which is what makes them interesting. So I just keep indulging in them.

My long period of being in a daze meant that even though I was supported by the orphanage, I could barely get into high school.

One day, I excitedly ran back to my lodgings and saw the dean, who had come to visit me, sitting silently on my doghouse-like bed.

After a while, he spoke...

He told me we couldn't go on like this.

Everyone except me noticed the sense of detachment I had.

Although I don't have the support of my family, I have a group of people who will support me.

That day... The future, marriage, employment—these concepts had always floated outside my universe until this day fell into my heart.

I was lost in my own world, and all the people who were important to me confided their worries to me.

From that day on, I realized that I should worry about things that normal people worry about, and be more normal. Even if I can't go to university, I should find a job and learn a skill, even if it's just repairing cars, it would be better than what I am like now.

If things continue like this, I'm afraid the final outcome will be living at 600 Wanping South Road... Shanghai Mental Health Center, alongside schizophrenic patients who keep jumping around in the hospital.

Actually, apart from being completely distracted and having poor grades, I didn't do anything unusual. But my mind had been detached from this world for a long time. I had never realized my own pathological state. Thinking about how much time I had wasted in this void, I experienced anxiety for the first time.

I had many dreams, all nightmares. The next day I tried to concentrate on the lecture, but the bats kept interfering with me, and I couldn't control myself from getting distracted.

So I came up with a plan.

I have always been so rational and ruthless, just like Batman, although Batman's ruthlessness is only directed at himself, especially the scars all over his body.

No one is easier to control than Batman.

I sat down at my desk, closed my eyes, and focused all my imagination on my mind. In the darkness, I constructed a giant bat!

Fluttering wings, open beak—I stared at him, stared at the dripping blood. My imagination surged from my mind, manifesting as certain silvery-white particles. I named these silvery-white particles the Alfred Protocol and issued an instruction to the protocol:
Leave me!
At that moment, those silvery-white particles, like a gentle breeze, enveloped the entire body of the giant bat.

They gradually drifted away from me and wandered around the room. Then, when I opened the window, he shot into the sky!

I imagined Batman leaving me, and then he really did leave me.

Since then, I've become a truly normal person, and a bit too normal. In my senior year of high school, my grades improved by leaps and bounds. My teachers had said privately that they had always thought that suddenly having a breakthrough in the last year of high school was just a legend, but today I proved it—or to put it more bluntly, they felt that my brain had finally been cured.

I was admitted to the drama academy with excellent grades and also obtained a psychology qualification certificate... In my time, the psychology qualification certificate was a nationally recognized certificate.

Then I went back to my original job, acting, and quickly rose to prominence.

All of this is as simple as eating and drinking...

I have finally become Chen Tao, no longer Batman.

Get your wish.

(End of this chapter)