"After the judgement took effect, I was sent to a special prison. Of course, it might not be special to you all. The rest of the world calls this prison Gotham Prison, while you refer to it as 'Blackgate Prison'. Yes, that was when I arrived in Gotham."
"There, I discovered something. All the locals in this prison never had to pay any price for what they had done. Meanwhile, every outsider who was brought here was there because someone outside this city wished to silence them forever."
"What a brilliant idea." The pig head in the screen slightly elevated, revealing a densely packed set of teeth belonging to a pig, overlapped with human ones, inducing a fear and disgust of density in the viewers.
"At that time, I realized our lives, all our striving and thinking, our entire being, meant nothing to some people, for we were nothing more than pigs they were rearing."
"I studied hard, took exams seriously, worked tirelessly in the lab, solely to be able to walk with my heads held high to the slaughterhouse. To tell those greedy, ruthless butchers face-to-face that I would be very delicious when displayed on a plate."
There was a clanging sound as Professor Pig chopped his sharp knife onto the cutting board. Then, as if nothing happened, he picked up his knife again and continued, "I realized I could choose not to be a pig but a butcher, slaughtering and dissecting them, peeling those soft organs from their bodies and hanging them on hooks. Then, I could confidently stand in front of the table, selecting the ingredients for tonight's dinner."
"Some lucky ones could be assigned an important mission." The audience saw a smile suddenly appear on the pig face in the TV, making its long nose wrinkle, carrying an unnerving inhuman terror.
"As a chemist, I created a drug that can infiltrate and control the human mind. Therefore, I started to assemble the organs I obtained into a new form of life, allowing them to have value beyond my kitchen, just like someone once told me that my value was not limited to the laboratory."
The camera switched back to the side of Professor Pig's workstation, where a giant X-shaped rack held various organs. Two feet and one hand were hanging there. At that moment, Professor Pig lifted another skinless hand onto the hook.
Then, he took out a head from a table behind him. The moment this head appeared, most people in front of the TV shivered, for the eyes on this head were still moving.
"My God, is he still alive?!" A lady covered her mouth tremblingly and raised her voice, "How could this be?!"
Gordon's face grew darker and darker, he gritted his teeth and said, "That damned madman, he must have killed more than a hundred people!"
"He has set his sights on us." Said a mob boss seated at the end of the table. His voice was calm but shook slightly.
Every human being possesses an instinctual fear towards a thing that resembles a human but greatly differs from one. This is in fact the subconscious reminding the human race not to be deceived by a monster disguised as one of their own.
Professor Pig exemplified this phenomenon perfectly. Everyone who was present knew that facing them was a man, their kind, who although not particularly burly among men, did not express any threat as a ferocious beast would do.
But they feared him more than they feared a beast, because under the skin of a beast lies a beast's soul, but under the skin of these murderers, who knows what monsters lurk.
At that moment, two soft sounds came from the table's edge, like a startled bird, people turned around and found that it was Shiller putting down his knife and fork, wiping his mouth with a napkin.
The pig-faced man in the screen suddenly stopped, seemed to be waiting for Shiller to speak. Shiller glanced at the scene in the TV before speaking, "Your views, opinions, and methods are all quite intriguing, but there's one problem."
"I got interrupted in the middle of sharing certain conclusions, I suppose, you wouldn't mind if I repeated."
Shiller put the napkin back on the table, sat up straight against the back of the chair, hands placed in front of him, looking at the meat on the plate, shared, "The reason this dish is poorly made isn't because of your inferior culinary skills, but your attempt to mask the difference between pork and human flesh."
"You fear that before your act of manipulating these ordinary people even begins, the truth would be revealed. Hence, you've taken all precautions to ensure that absolutely no one could discern what kind of meat this really is."
"But this is actually unnecessary because ordinary people almost always lean towards making judgement based on common knowledge, rather than indulge in whimsical speculations. Even if you serve them a complete human rib, they will always lean towards thinking this is some sort of mutated animal or a model."
"No ordinary person would inspect their food repeatedly before eating, observing the thickness of the bones and the direction of the fibers, to suspect whether they are consuming human flesh or not. Only some special paranoia sufferers would do so."
"So, what's your point?" asked Professor Pig. He added, "I admit I might have been overly cautious, but being cautious is not a bad thing, is it?"
Shiller shook his head, tightening his suit jacket as he looked at the scene on the screen. "This actually illustrates one point—that despite all your proclamations of considering the elites as pigs to be easily butchered, deep down, you still think of them as human beings."
Professor Pig's gesture of lifting the knife halted. He picked up the knife and returned to the chopping board. Behind the pig's eye sockets were a pair of cold and cruel eyes. He stared at the camera, telling Shiller, "I possess the power to kill them at will and manipulate their organs as I please. Naturally, I am different than these pigs. I am the butcher who slaughters them."
"But I can see that you feel very happy during the act of butchering. Why do you feel that joy?" Shiller asked.
However, he did not expect anyone to respond. Instead, he answered his question: "That joy stems from your sense of revenge. You have transformed from a pig being butchered at their hands to the butcher who slaughters them at will. All the injustices you suffered have been avenged a thousandfold upon them. Your happiness flows from the success of your revenge."
Shiller placed his hands on the table, his fingers interlocked, addressing Lazlo as if speaking to a patient: "Lazlo, answer me, when they blatantly abused their power to oppress you and your family, toyed with you at will, deprived you of your rights to live and to self-determination, did you hate them?"
Professor Pig was silent for a long while before his deep voice arose again, "… Can I not hate them? Are you suggesting that I should forgive them?"
"No, you misunderstand," Shiller shook his head, "Because you hate them, you feel great joy when you kill them. Revenge is a process of ending fear and releasing pressure. It is human nature, and no one can escape it."
Bruce's hand clenched slightly, but Shiller did not give him time for a response. Instead, he continued:
"But all these actions only verify my point. You still regard them as humans, so you feel a sense of joy for having killed them, for having successfully taken revenge against them."
"In your subconscious, you do not treat them as helpless pigs, otherwise, you wouldn't intentionally burn the food because humans do not guard against pigs."
"Humans have no expectations of a pig's intelligence. They would never expect a pig to think, to resist, to do anything unexpected that would require humans to come up with a countermeasure, to prepare for it in advance."
"A human would never harbor hatred towards a pig, let alone seek revenge against one. Butchers derive no pleasure from killing pigs and certainly wouldn't make a fuss in front of many spectators at the chopping board about the reason why they wanted to kill the pig."
"Clang!"
The sharp sound and vibration emerged again from the television, the long butcher knife struck the chopping board, splitting it in two. Professor Pig's tone trembled a bit.
"You simply don't understand, I am trying to…."
"Humans wouldn't try to make pigs comprehend anything," Shiller replied calmly yet persistently, as if patiently comforting an old friend.
As Shiller spoke, everyone's gaze shifted from the grotesque and terrifying pig head mask to him, but quickly returned.
For some reason, at this moment, they preferred to look at something grotesque rather than a too-calm expression, which left no room for their attention to be drawn elsewhere.
Shiller turned his head away again, and said to the TV, "Mr. Lazlo, I suggest you visit my office."
"Because, if one harbors hatred towards a pig, desires revenge against them, and even implements a grandiose revenge plan, it could be an early symptom of a delusion."
Shiller slowly stood up, buttoning his suit jacket, turned around, and walked towards the door.
Bruce looked up, staring at his back. His arm hairs stood on end, and as Shiller left the room, only his placid tone echoed in the room.
"Humans would not expend any effort on pigs. They would not take revenge on them, would not boast to them, hate them, or educate them."
"In fact, they would not even differentiate between them."