The days of being a spiritual mentor in Meiman.

Chapter 4253 Possession by an Evil Spirit (Thirty-Three)

After getting off the cellar and walking further down the passage, sure enough, the basement appeared before him. And this place seemed incredibly eerie.

The walls of the house were covered with bones, and they were all human bones: one wall was made up of adult men, another wall of adult women, and yet another wall was made up of children and infants.

Peter knew perfectly well that not all the deaths were caused by evil spirits, and there weren't that many people he could kill; after all, the disappearance of thousands of people from a small town was a bit too exaggerated. This place might have existed for a long time, only to be discovered by old Berg. It's possible that this room inspired him to embark on the path of dark magic.

After investigating, Peter's suspicions were further confirmed, because the artifacts in this place were incredibly old. Many were from the Middle Ages, and some might even have been left behind by ancient tribes.

Here, Peter found a notebook, seemingly old Berg's experimental notes. He couldn't bear to read more than a couple of pages, because this guy was clearly illiterate and not a proper scholar at all. It was less a research notebook and more a rambling diary, filled with all sorts of random thoughts. If there were a university in the dark magic world, he wouldn't have graduated.

Some research manuscripts were even worse: the drawings were anything but precise, and the annotations were completely haphazard. Even more outrageous, this guy didn't know Latin. Peter couldn't help but ask: "If you don't know Latin, what kind of academic research are you doing?"

Although English is a hybrid language, many professional terms originate from Latin. Knowing Latin is a prerequisite for many majors in Europe and America; without it, you can't even write a thesis. Some majors also require knowledge of German and French, neither of which Old Berger knew.

Therefore, his research notes were completely useless. Peter sighed. He knew it; if this guy were truly a powerful master of dark magic, he wouldn't have ended up like this.

Judging from the situation in this small town, black magic is real. If he could figure it out, he could go to those big cities, find wealthy people to be his advisors, and even if he only used curses to harm people, he would have been financially independent long ago. Why would he need to run this run-down town? He might not earn as much in a hundred years here as he would in a single operation in a big city.

Even if he does have some religious beliefs, it would definitely be better for him to preach in a big city. If he were truly capable, he could persuade a few wealthy people to use their connections and influence to spread his faith, wouldn't that be hundreds or even thousands of times more efficient than doing it here?
This guy is a complete academic failure; he hasn't really figured out black magic. He was just lucky to stumble upon this secret chamber. If Bing had been here, the Berg family would have been rich long ago.

Peter mentally grumbled a bit, but he continued flipping through the manuscripts anyway, eventually finding even older ones in a nearby cabinet. These manuscripts were somewhat more advanced, but perhaps due to the limitations of the era, the experiments weren't very scientific, and the summaries lacked academic rigor, leaving the reader somewhat confused.

After looking at it for ages, Peter finally had enough. You still can't figure it out? I'll do it!

Just as Peter rolled up his sleeves, ready to give the dark magic a little modern educational shock, the agents also found clues related to the dark magic in the mental world.

“This thing doesn’t look like something that could be created with stimulants.” In the underground of the cathedral, the agent looked at a floating point of light in a dark room and said, “This mental world is definitely not just a hallucination caused by stimulants; it is definitely a creation of black magic.”

"What exactly is that?" Bing asked, looking up at the point of light. "Could it be that the evil spirits use it to stabilize this world?"

"I'm afraid so. But we can't destroy it now, or we might be in danger. But if we return to the real world, we can't access it or destroy the spiritual world. That's a bit of a problem."

"Do you think this thing exists in the real world?" Bing asked. "I think it might exist in the real world, like that tool room. It can exist in both the real and the spiritual world at the same time."

“Possibly,” the agent nodded, “but I’ve been to the basement of a church in the real world, and there was nothing like this there. Could it be deeper inside?”

“I suspect that the evil spirit may not have come into contact with this thing either. Or perhaps it has seen it, but doesn’t understand how it works.”

“I don’t understand these magics either,” the agent waved his hand and said. “I don’t have time to figure them out. Here’s what we’ll do: once Bruce brings Kate back, we’ll go out first, and then I’ll go look under the church and if I find anything, I’ll destroy it.”

Bing nodded and said, "But your bodies should already be dead. How are you going to get out?"

"That depends on Peter. We'll see if he can find a way for the evil spirits to make puppets. If all else fails, we can just send them out as puppets."

“You give me a strange feeling,” Bing said. “I’ve met some outsiders before who weren’t yet corrupted by evil spirits, but they were either terrified or furious. You’re too rational.”

“Because among the adversaries we’ve encountered, this evil spirit is far from terrifying,” the agent said, shaking his head. “And don’t think he’s that scary either. If he were truly that powerful, why would he kill you out of fear?”

Did he kill me out of fear?

"Otherwise what? Of course, you might think he's making an example of you because you didn't follow the sect's rules. But that also shows his fear of someone breaking the rules and even escaping his surveillance. The key is the latter."

Bing thought for a moment, then nodded and said, "Indeed, some people have broken the rules before, but none of them have gone this far. He was probably really angry because I had kept it from him."

"Let's go find Bruce."

They had just come out of the church when Bruce arrived with Kate. Kate looked unwell. She said, "Do you know why Aunt Kane only let me come back after she found out I was pregnant?"

"why?"

"This evil spirit wants to get out."

"What do you mean?"

“He wanted to leave the town and go to a bigger place to continue his evil plans. And I came from New York and was pregnant, so my baby was his best target.”

The agent immediately understood: the evil spirit's possession of someone was conditional—it had to be connected to the town of Great Valley, and the person had to be weakened. If he could get Kate, who was pregnant, to come here, he naturally had a way to achieve both. Whether possessing Kate or her unborn child, he could successfully leave this place.

“No,” the detective said again, “then why didn’t he possess other people and leave before?”

"It's not that simple. He's been to big cities before, so how could he not know? It's not easy to survive in a big city. If you're an undocumented person, you'll be taken advantage of in no time. Even outsiders have a hard time. It's best to be a local, and preferably from a well-off family."

“But many of the people he kidnapped before were wealthy,” the agent said, shaking his head. “Those who go to the trouble of traveling to such a remote town can’t be poor. Even if there just happens to be no big city nearby, these people could easily afford to live in New York or Los Angeles, right?”

Kate said, "If he were to possess an adult's body, he would have to pretend to be that person all the time. If the difference is too great, he might be suspected, or even sent to a mental hospital. In that case, he cannot be himself. Only by possessing an infant and growing up with his own personality can he be truly free."

“I don’t think that’s the real reason,” the agent said. “If he were truly confident, he would think that people becoming more like him is a sign of improvement, and he wouldn’t imagine that the victims’ families would reject him because of his personality change—becoming more and more like Berger. He would only imagine that people around him would love him more because of his transformation.”

Bruce frowned as well. The agent glanced back at him, and the two exchanged a look, but said nothing.

Bruce had seen old Berg before in his memory. He was a very handsome man, never shy on stage, and even more so in love, with girls going crazy for him.

Although he comes from a small town, people with good looks and talent are popular everywhere. Take Clark Kent, for example. Although the glasses he wears cover part of his handsome face, his temperament cannot be hidden. Almost no one will bring up his background because he is outstanding enough on his own.

Old Berg was the same; with his face alone, he wouldn't be ostracized. Even if he joined the high society of a big city, he would definitely stand out.

A rather harsh truth is that good-looking people do indeed enjoy many advantages and are liked wherever they go. Everyone has emotional senses; even if some are a little oblivious, they can still sense good and bad. Therefore, the idea of ​​being handsome without realizing it is simply not true. Great-looking men and women are definitely aware of their popularity.

In this environment, it's difficult for them to develop an inferiority complex: they receive praise and applause wherever they go, and whatever they do is praised and encouraged. Even if they mess things up, people will at most call them a "pretty face." But if someone who isn't as good-looking does the same thing, the criticism will be much harsher.

Could someone as dashing and handsome as Berg be an insecure person who has no confidence in his own popularity?

“He told me himself,” Kate said. “He was furious when he found out I wasn’t pregnant. He’s also a very irritable and emotionally unstable person. I made a sarcastic remark, and he got really angry.”

What did you say to mock him?

"It was nothing. He made some very arrogant and conceited remarks about female fertility, and I just casually said something like, 'Even female birds have to choose a male bird with brightly colored feathers to lay eggs. If someone is blind enough to take a liking to you, you're not even as good as a sparrow.' And that's when he broke down."

"To be honest, you were pretty harsh with your words," the agent said. He then looked at Bruce, because in Bruce's description, old Berg was a very handsome man. Generally, truly good-looking people wouldn't be so easily offended by such comments.

Bruce frowned in thought. The unfolding events didn't match their profile of the killer. So now there were only two possibilities: one was that the memories he saw were old Berger's self-deception, and that the handsome face was just something he imagined; the other possibility was more troublesome—this evil spirit wasn't old Berger at all, but someone else entirely.