Typical English manors are usually divided into a front hall and a back hall. Walking in from the symmetrical main entrance, one can see the front hall used for entertaining and receiving guests, with symmetrically placed staircases either on both sides of the front hall or extending from the center of the back of the front hall. The Rodrix Manor is the latter.
The door on the left under the staircase leads to the dining room, which also serves as the location of the garden floor windows. The structure on the right is symmetrical to the left, only upon opening the door, you find a corridor. The corridor on the right side leads to the partition area of the back courtyard, housing the butler's room, the tea room, laundry room, and the kitchen, and so on.
The rooms on the left of the corridor are guest rooms that feature a small fireplace, a sofa, a piano, and a mirror cabinet. If you walk straight ahead, you will come to an office that also has floor-to-ceiling glass windows, completing the structure of the manor hall.
The architectural design of the manor pays great attention to separating the guest area from the private area. In the Rodrix Manor, the active area is the first floor, while the quiet area is the second and third floors.
Although there is also an office and a study on the second floor of the manor, these areas are private and usually do not receive any guests. Shiller often conducts reading activities there during his leisure time, and the office in the back hall on the first floor is more suitable for academic discussions with colleagues and friends.
The trajectory of guests arriving at the Rodrix Manor is roughly as follows: After being led into the manor's main entrance by the butler, they cross the square of the front yard, enter the main building, and wait in the front hall.
If the master of the manor is on the second floor at that time, the butler will choose to make a phone call. Upon obtaining the manor owner's permission, the butler will take the guests to the guest room in the back hall.
When the manor owner comes down from the second floor, he will go to the guest room to meet the guests and lead the guests to the office in the back hall with the butler, or go to the dining room via the corridor in the middle of the partition area.
Of course, not every guest will enter through the front door. Batman's trajectory would be to first land on the roof of the manor, head towards the direction of the back hall, and after jumping down, go directly into the back garden, then walk forward from the back door of the garden.
However, since Merkel's butler's room is in the partition area of the back hall, even if he occasionally gets lucky and is not caught by tree branches, he is likely to be discovered by Merkel on the way to the front hall.
Talya also chooses this route. Therefore, when she jumps down from the roof of the back courtyard, she faces the floor-to-ceiling window of the office on the right. Shiller is standing behind the window, checking his wine cabinet in front of the bookshelf that is missing a bottle of wine.
The front hall of the manor also has a large wine cabinet. Constantine first broke into Rodrix Manor and was stunned there by Mad Liquor. But as the children entering and leaving the manor increased, Shiller moved all the dangerous items to the wine cabinet in the back hall and required Merkel to strictly guard them, prohibiting children from entering this room.
The range of children does not include Batman. Bruce, in order to deal with Talya, directly took a bottle of Mad Liquor from the office in the back hall. And at the moment, Shiller is standing in front of the wine rack, thinking about which bottle of wine to bring from the basement wine cellar to fill the gap.
When Talya sees the figure in front of the wine cabinet, her intuition as an assassin fills her with chills in an instant, her follicles opened in fear, as a cold air blower.
It reminds her of the gorgeous yet dangerous Feathered Serpent God she once saw in her father's collection, which was drawn by the Mayans.
When the man turns his head, his scattered gray eyes slightly focus. And in that moment, Talya feels like she is a prey that has been injected with venom.
Something is very, very wrong!
Talya clenches her fists tightly, her intuitive alarm makes her almost incapable of rational thinking. The scariest thing happened - she met a man whose weaknesses she could not see at first glance.
Disregard for all men by this powerful female assassin is not without reason. She has a very strong instinct for killing the opposite sex. Even as perfect and powerful as Batman, Talya could still find his weaknesses during their first face-to-face encounter.
This makes Talya the most beautiful and lethal scorpion in the world. She believes no man can escape her venomous tail spike.
Until today, until this very moment, Talya finds herself falling into the territory of another dangerous creature. She sees no weaknesses, only a perfect skin woven out of endless brilliant silk threads, its dazzling colors mesmerizing.
Don't listen, don't look, don't be attracted! As Talya admonishes herself in her heart, she sees that the figure has somehow wandered to the window.
When they are looking at each other at close range separated only by a layer of glass, Talya can't help but not look at the grey eyes hidden behind the frosty glass. It's as if it was some kind of antidote to a potent poison sprinkled by Shiller.
Something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong! Talya is like a madwoman roaring in her heart.
With a creak, the door opens, and Shiller only half leans out the door. Talya hears him say: "Please come in."
Infiltrating like an assassin was a foolish decision, Talya thought to herself, inhaling deeply. This makes it difficult for her to know where the garden door is even if she wants to turn around and run. Returning the way she came is even more of a joke, she feels her legs are weak.
Shiller seems to have guessed her thoughts. He turns his head slightly and looks at the big tree in the center of the garden, chuckling to himself: "You're lucky, you wouldn't want to know how many people have been hung on that tree."
He's telling the truth! Talya roared in her heart, for she couldn't detect a hint of lie, while also hinting at a mocking thought, only in the trees? She'd bet that at least twenty human skeletons were buried beneath the soil of this garden.
This was the consequence of being blinded by rage, Talya cursed Bruce ten thousand times in her heart, but she also knew that things had reached this point, and she could only play it by ear.
If she had barged in without permission and then turned around to leave against the host's invitation, even if Shiller was an ordinary Gothamite, the chances of her being hanged in a tree in a few minutes would not be zero. And the Shiller now was not only an ordinary Gothamite, he might not even be Shiller at all.
As Talya moved towards the door, she pondered amid her anger and frantic thoughts. He was not Shiller. The psychology professor who appeared at the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a misconduct investigation wasn't like this. He wasn't so... perfect.
Talya could only use such a word to describe the Shiller she saw now, but it was not a complimentary term, but rather a symbol of terror. The man in front of her seemed human, but he wasn't - he was too perfect.
His appearance, clothing, facial expressions, and mannerisms all emphasized that he was a perfect human being. The point is that he is human, but humans wouldn't emphasize that they are human. The ones who carefully weave a human skin for themselves are monsters.
The tip of Talya's shoe still hit the doorstep of the mansion. The slight "click" seemed to have given her quite a shock, and Talya shrank back imperceptibly.
Shiller stood next to the door opened outwards. The crack of the door left just enough space for Talya to pass through. But now Talya faced a problem - if she walked in with her head held high, her shoulder would inevitably brush against Shiller's chest. However, if she didn't want physical contact with this man, she would have to withdraw her arm, buckle her shoulders inward, and pass through the door in a contracted posture.
Talya had never been troubled by physical contact with any person of the opposite sex. No, it wasn't trouble, it seemed more like fear, akin to reaching out to touch a corrosive liquid. Every cell in Talya's body was screaming for her to resist.
Pulling her arms in front of her, slightly contracting her chest, and passing through the door gap, this posture was not ungraceful. However, Talya had a vague feeling that Shiller seemed to be forcing her to do so, giving her only this option.
What is the meaning of this? Talya hadn't figured it out yet.
Immersed in her thoughts, Talya didn't realise that she had been standing still for quite some time.
Her right foot was on the ground, the tip of her shoe against the threshold, and her left heel just off the ground; her whole body was in a state of shifting weight. So it was no surprise when Shiller reached out and helped steady her left arm, applying some force to help her take her last step and they both stood in the office together.
When Talya came back to her senses, the door had been closed. She felt as if all the remaining oxygen had vanished with the closing door. Her body entered the prison-like room, while her soul was left outside the entrance.
The temperature in the room was even lower than Talya had imagined. She acutely felt the air circulating in some places. The air conditioning was on in the room, and the moisture that had just adhered from the damp garden soon became comfortable and dry.
Talya took a deep breath. She saw Shiller walk towards the sofa near the bay window with his back towards her, and then arrived next to a single sofa, pulled it out and looked at Talya.
This was a rather obvious social hint. Talya knew she had no chance of misunderstanding. She did not hold out any hope that Shiller would consider her an ignorant girl who didn't understand any etiquette. But her intuition was telling her that the only outcome of being rude and playing dumb was becoming a living sacrifice on the table of the Feathered Serpent God.
Talya walked over, came to the gap between the sofa and the coffee table, reached out to adjust her long skirt that hung down to her lower body, and sat down on the sofa.
What she herself hadn't realized was that when she curled her arms around her chest and slipped through the not-so-wide door gap, she had been holding this posture the whole time; even now when she was sitting on the comfortable sofa, her shoulders were still curled up, her whole chest contracted inwardly.
This posture could hardly be called elegant. At various high-society banquets, people would stretch out their chests and necks elegantly, like a swan gliding on a lake. Apart from showing off their faces and neck accessories, they also wanted to convey that they were confident, a social signal.
In contrast, when people are tired, they tend to relax the muscles in their shoulders and neck, letting their bodies sag. This is a relaxed posture displayed by the body for self-protection. And when people lack confidence or want to escape, their body language instinctively imitates this posture, with drooping heads, hugging chests, and hands clutched in front.
Mental activity can shape body posture, and in turn, changing body posture can potentially influence psychology and mood. When people stretch out comfortably, their emotions also relax. But if one maintains a huddled posture for a long time, emotions like irritability, tension, and anxiety will follow.
This is one method of applied psychology: shaping posture through the environment and then influencing psychology through posture.
The usual method is to create a relaxed and comfortable environment for people to lower their guard and receive psychological therapy.
But if it's the other way around, it's also possible to create an uncomfortable, narrow space that forces people to huddle, unknowingly inducing anxiety. By restricting their bodies, it leaves them feeling irritable, tense and avoids.
Importantly, when they are unaware of where this anxiety comes from, they gradually lose confidence in their ability to manage their emotions, leading to a state of confusion in their conscious perception and making them more susceptible to guidance and control.