People who often play with plastic building blocks should all notice the following guidelines:
First, after reading the instructions, you feel like you've grasped everything, then a second after closing the manual, you've forgotten it all.
Second, you can't find the part while looking at the instructions, but once you gather the parts from all over, you can't find the instructions anymore.
Third, no matter how you look at it, this part seems perfect right here, it creates a beautiful composition and feels right, but the manual just doesn't have it in this spot.
Fourth, no matter how you look at it, this part shouldn't be here, it seems very out of place and it's hard to press on, but according to the manual, it should be exactly there.
Fifth, you never know what you've forgotten to install within a sealed structure until you cap it off, and then a second after sealing the most complex structure, it all comes back to you.
Sixth, and the most tragic, when you take apart this complex structure and re-install the missing part, you'll discover that no matter what, it just won't seal up again.
The Primary Universe Batman, Shiller, and Tim are now gathered around the table looking at the instruction manual, which was actually drawn by the Primary Universe Batman himself. It was designed to be easy to operate for others, and rather than complex structural diagrams, it's been turned into step-by-step illustrations.
Therefore, theoretically speaking, there should be no problem with the instructions; after all, anything produced by Batman must be of high quality, so by following the instructions step by step, building the Owl Ancient City should be flawless.
If there is nothing wrong with the instructions, then the problem must lie with the people.
Hearing that they need to prepare a surprise for the local Batman, or rather, join forces to trick him, Joker and the crazies from Arkham are rubbing their hands in glee.
What could be more fun than crafting a mysterious ancient city adventure to surprise Batman? They can't wait to see the marvelous expression on Batman's face when he discovers the truth.
So, Joker had Clayface disguise himself as another Batman to challenge the local Batman, while the Primary Universe Batman started drawing the blueprints and collecting materials.
This bit of deception was necessary, mainly to let the local Batman think that his current playmate is the Primary Universe Batman he had encountered before, naturally not suspecting that the real Primary Universe Batman is digging a massive pit for him behind his back.
Although this universe's Batman might be a bit slow, he is still Batman, and without some trickery, he could easily notice something is off.
While the Primary Universe Batman was somewhat dissatisfied with Joker's script for Clayface, which was a bit too "Joker-like," he really couldn't have higher expectations for the criminals of this universe.
The Primary Universe Batman drew a design, and then came the construction phase. His primary concern about the whole plan was that he felt this collection of crazies from Arkham Asylum simply wouldn't be able to build the ancient city well and might start fighting halfway through.
But how can you not challenge a hobby with another's profession? These minifigures are natural builders, or rather, in their eyes, building blocks are the most fundamental way to transform and construct their world, a required skill, while subjects like chemistry, physics, and combat are hobbies. So, almost everyone is quite skilled at assembling.
Thus, the issue fell on these three foreigners.
First off, Shiller, or more accurately, Greed. From stereotypes, he should be better at such leisure activities, but in reality, he's mostly too busy to put his feet up, with Texas hold 'em being his best leisure skill. Most other activities are practically unwatchable, and he doesn't even know how to play mahjong.
Of all Shiller's personality traits, Arrogant has the most hobby-related skills because he really had a lot of free time and faced quite a bit of pressure from teaching, needing social entertainment to release stress.
Even in Gotham, even during the city's unstable early years, he never failed to visit the weekend club with his colleagues. They would play cards, smoke, chat, and watch plays, with his usual companions being either Victor or Brand.
Apart from the younger personas, he was one of the few that knew how to assemble building blocks. Initially, it was a professor from his school who gifted him an old-fashioned world map puzzle, which he used to pass time, and he hung the completed puzzle in his office.
Later on, some students saw his puzzles and gifted him some more fashionable ones, but most were illustrations or landscape photos.
However, when there are many students, you will always find some with unusual imagination. A past student was an ardent building block enthusiast, committed to promoting the wonderful world of plastic blocks to everyone. Nearly every person received a simple set of plastic building blocks for their birthdays, Shiller included.
This of course was a bit more interesting than flat puzzles and a better way to kill time. So, Shiller bought many of the more complex sets and spent hours on weekends completing them.
Besides that, Shiller assembled a lot of other things as well. Maybe because he liked playing with blocks since childhood, he found the process of creating order from chaos interesting, including but not limited to complex train track models, roller coaster models, robot figurines, and the like.
But none of this has anything to do with Greed; in his world, the phrase "kill time" doesn't exist. Time is money, so how could he let money slip through his fingers?
So when Primary Universe Batman said he wanted to assemble an entire ancient city, Greed was very disdainful, ready to slack off at the construction site, idle around, and just muddle through.
But the construction team was understaffed, it was a tight schedule with heavy tasks, and Tim, not sure how, just dragged him in and started working.
As for assembling Lego blocks, Greed wasn't fond of it, but his excellent light bulb twisting ability made up for that. Never mind if he twisted it correctly, just consider how tight the twist was.
It was a bit too tight, though, as four superheroes in this Flame Room with no doors decided to fly straight up through the hole above their heads and open the three-story mechanism door.
That mechanism door was actually quite simple; it just required turning the two rings on the door. The left ring turned effortlessly because Tim put it together, but they couldn't for the life of them turn the right ring because Shiller assembled it.
He never considered that the mechanism was meant to move; he just twisted as tightly as possible when assembling it.
Look, isn't this where having the strength level of a former life comes in handy? Wonder Woman has given it a strong twist and couldn't open it.
In the end, Superman had to slightly drop the act of being weak before they finally managed to open the damn mechanism door.
Then the three in the Batcave began to discuss why that room below had no door, which leads us to another figure from the tale of the Sleeping Dragon and Rising Phoenix—Tim.
The "Wayne Family Adventure" comic is very light-hearted and warm, affectionately known as DC's only Prime Universe by fans. Nearly every member here is sunny, cheerful, and humorously vivacious, even including Batman.
This results in them not spending most of their time fighting crime, but they also have plenty of free time for various entertainment, Tim's actual favorite pastime isn't assembling Lego but board games. But Dick is a very enthusiastic big brother who loves to involve others in games, which leads to Tim being influenced and gaining some expertise in Lego assembling.
Based on Tim's character setup, he should be very good at this because he has an excellent memory and would never forget the blueprints, plus he has a good sense of space and could easily understand the instructions.
The only problem was his manual dexterity, which was slightly lacking compared to Jason, who could turn any Lego brick into a firearm, or even to Dick, who could assemble almost anything accurately based on experience without much need for instructions.
So at that time, they worked as a team: Tim was responsible for understanding the instructions, guiding the other two on where to put each piece. The other two took care of the assembly, Cassandra was onlooker, Duke provided some useful tips, and Barbara was there to clean up when they inevitably started fighting.
In other words, Tim was actually the king of strong words; when it actually came to assembling, he couldn't really feel whether it was right or not—he just hammered it on.
The fourth level was a Flame Maze with moving walls, meaning there were many bearings and tracks on the ground. According to Primary Universe Batman's design, out of the four adjoining walls, there must be one with a door. But it just so happened they fell into the room where all four walls were doorless.
After some calculations and inspections, Primary Universe Batman discovered that this might be because the track on the wall they were facing wasn't pressed down firmly, causing it to be knocked askew by another moving wall. The door containing wall didn't come over, and instead, the doorless wall did.
The track not pressed down firmly was likely Tim's handiwork—basically, he just placed the Lego pieces there, perhaps thinking he'd deal with them later or maybe just flat-out forgot. And to their bad luck, they dropped right into this room without any exits.
But upon further investigation, both Tim and Shiller agreed that Primary Universe Batman couldn't escape blame either—so why did he design such a complicated Flame Maze in the first place?
This is where Batman had his issue with assembling Lego; he had no experience with it. He completely transferred his experience of setting up traps and making gadgets into the Lego construction, coming up with numerous contingency plans and predicting every move of those entering.
It's not that his design was faulty, but it was an overkill for the situation—did a stage for a Minifigure performance really require replicating the entirety of Zenith Star?
Moreover, this isn't their real world but a plastic Lego World where the precision of Lego parts doesn't match those produced in the Bat Factory, making it difficult to implement many complex designs effectively.
If they weren't wrong, the Flame Maze below was probably in chaos with everything bumping into each other.
Primary Universe Batman decisively stood up and said, "You guys find a way to hold them off on the third level; I'll go calibrate the fourth level."
"Give the Legos a break," Shiller couldn't help but sigh. "The structure you've created is too much for these plastic pieces."
"I'll try to simplify it," Primary Universe Batman, who was reasonably open to advice, replied. But Shiller was skeptical that the so-called simplification would only downgrade Zenith Star technology to Apocalypse Star technology, questioning how much could actually be achieved.
"I'll go operate the mechanism manually," Tim also stood up and said. "Otherwise, they'd never be able to open that mechanism bookshelf you hammered into place in their lifetimes."