Penguin Man, now endorsed by Spider Man, had mixed feelings.
With a darting glance, Penguin Man turned and walked towards an old house at the back, saying, "Come in."
Peter could clearly detect a change in his attitude. Initially guarded and cautious, he suddenly loosened up. Peter couldn't understand why.
But now he didn't have the luxury of leaning into the earpiece and voicing all of his doubts to Bruce. Opportunities to earn the trust of people like this are rare and fleeting. He had to seize it. By the time Bruce answered his queries, Penguin Man would've already kicked him out.
But Peter had no prior experience with such a situation. He was unsure about how he should behave next to make a further impression on Penguin Man. Even if Peter knew that Penguin Man could never become a good man and had made no preparation for persuading him towards goodness, earning his trust was still not an easy feat.
While Peter was anxious, it suddenly occurred to him that he had another trump card—the great black sun could definitely lend him a hand.
Peter let out a sigh. The gray mist enveloped him in an instant as he once again stood in front of the massive black sun.
Peter didn't know how to pray, so he briefly voiced his confusion, emphasizing,
"In fact, I don't know what kind of person he is, so I don't know how to interact with him. I also don't know what he is currently thinking, so I don't know what to say next. Do you have any advice?"
Peter received the biography of Penguin Man. After carefully reading through it, he scratched his head, still somewhat confused.
He could discern some issues from Penguin Man's origins, but these were clearly irredeemable. Peter didn't have the faith that he could heal Oswald Kolbott's childhood traumas in such a short timeframe. He had always been inept in matters like these.
Peter received some more information.
This batch of information confused him even further because it was emblazoned with the words—"Psychoanalysis Method" on the cover.
"Oh, God," Peter shrieked. "You're not actually expecting me to learn a form of psychological therapy from scratch, are you? That's impossible!"
Then, Peter realized he was trapped.
He could only sigh in resignation, bow his head, and start going through the stack of information. It wasn't a hefty pile, even thinner than Kolbott's life story.
Peter swore that he read through these documents with utmost dedication, yet still felt like the whole thing could be condensed into one word—"guesswork".
But Peter Parker was not Batman. He immediately clasped his hands together in a fervent prayer, his gaze sincere as he looked at the black sun before him and said,
"I will study hard in the future, but for now, please give me the answers. Please, I can't understand any of this without examples!"
Peter tried hard to recall the vocabulary used by his Catholic classmate during prayers, mixing in some scientific terms he was adept at, and improvised a long prayer in an attempt to touch the mysterious god and gain the answer.
Isn't this how gods work? Peter thought. If gaining answers still required studying, why wouldn't he just engage in scientific research?
Other popes could directly receive revelations. Even though he was only a saint heir, should he still need to study for 20 years before asking God for solutions?
Peter thought he heard the black sun sigh, yet he eventually received his answer.
From this answer, Peter learned that the first step in psychoanalysis is to clarify the attributes of the subject of analysis. This is primarily done by identifying their most distinctive personality traits from their past experiences, and by identifying the relevant attribute concerning their present situation.
Undoubtedly, the most important attribute right now was that Penguin Man usually didn't distinguish between good and evil but always weighed his interests. So whether it was a superhero or a supervillain endorsing him, it didn't matter to him.
Upon analyzing this, a significant contradiction arose. Since it didn't matter who endorsed him, why would Penguin Man's attitude change after Spider Man endorsed him?
This led to the question—what was special about Spider Man?
Without a doubt, Spider Man was a good man. But the world was full of good people, so what made Spider Man so special?
While Spider Man observed Gotham, the Gothamites also observed him. They then discovered that this person was an impossibly and outrageously good man, one who they could find no faults with.
He wasn't the type of good man delineated by a myriad of qualifying conditions, with more adjectives than their actual name, only determined under specific circumstances and timeframes.
He was the type of good man who, according to universal values, was completely free of faults, even without a trace of power-hungry attributes, in the eyes of the lunatics in Gotham.
The most unique thing about Spider Man was that he always called himself a hero of the common man. Throughout his stay in Gotham, this was indeed how he behaved.
He didn't go to Arkham Asylum to thrash the inmates, even though he was capable of doing so. Neither did he stake out the buildings Batman frequently visited, intervening in mob activities whenever he spotted them.
The thing he did most frequently was live in the slums—fixing appliances for someone one day, helping another with their pipes the next. He patrolled the streets one after another, not letting any evil forces that bullied and oppressed others slip away. His sense of righteousness was as clear as day, from beginning to end, he adhered to a very simple understanding of good and evil.