Chapter 306: The Three Detectives (10)

For many years, the nights in Wayne Manor have been very quiet, because there is only one male master and his old butler. After the night falls in Gotham, the only light on will soon go out, A huge manor will be completely engulfed in darkness until dawn comes again.

But this night, the lights in Wayne Manor were always on, and the sound of the ladder rubbing against the bookshelf broke the silence in the room. Dick wrinkled his face and coughed twice, waving his hand in front of his nose, trying to drive away the people in front of him. of dust.

He looked up at the rows and rows of thick books on the bookshelf, and ran his fingers across their ridges. Suddenly, he stopped on a book called "Top Ten Mysterious Legends You Don't Know."

Dick stretched out his hand and took out the book from the tightly packed pile, then climbed down a few ladders and threw the book down. Elsa on the ground jumped up and threw the book She caught it, then swung her short legs and put the tome that she couldn't hold in her arms into the pile of books next to her.

Dick climbed up the ladder in three steps and began to search in the bookshelf. As he searched, he said to himself: "The lives of rich people are richer than I imagined..."

He looked up at the reading room. This is the library of Wayne Manor. It is located in the westmost tower of the manor. The entire reading room occupies the entire floor of the tower. There are hundreds of rows of books in it, layer upon layer. The stacked ones are arranged outward in a ring shape.

The entire reading room retains a strong British style, with red-brown bookshelves depicting naturalistic decoration. In the center of the reading room is a row of ring-shaped sofas and several semicircular desks.

"Before, if I could live in a house like this, I would have been so happy, but this is just a place to put books."

Dick muttered in a low voice. He took out another book from the bookshelf, then climbed down the ladder, put the book on top of the pile of books that Elsa had stacked, and then picked up the big pile of books. Books, walking towards the center of the reading room.

There, Bruce was looking down at one of the books. Dick walked over and put a thick stack of books on the table. He patted the top book and said, "Mr. Wayne, this is Area B." All the books with occult keywords, I arranged them in chronological order, the ones at the top are older.”

Bruce took a sip of water and nodded. Dick took Aisha to another area and continued to find books for Bruce.

Even Batman has to admit that having such a little assistant can really save a lot of things, and Dick and him have a very tacit understanding. Bruce is indeed reading these books in chronological order. He never said this, Dick I sorted out all the books with a clear conscience.

To talk about why he is reading here, we have to start from the last time he and Constantine parted ways.

Batman learned from Constantine that Mrs. Sanchez might be using children all over Gotham to practice cultivation. He couldn't just sit idly by and ignore this matter. However, Batman had almost no research on the occult, and Constantine seemed completely unreliable. , Batman didn’t want to point fingers at others, so he planned to study this knowledge himself.

But it is very difficult for a complete outsider to practice on his own without a mentor to lead him in. Batman could only find the old priest of Gotham Cathedral.

Batman has not forgotten that when the priest stays in the church, he can use the mysterious wine pool under the church to obtain some special abilities. He thinks that this may be helpful to his research on occult science?

He came to the church at dusk, and the priest was not surprised by his appearance. After hearing his purpose, the old priest shook his head and said: "As a clergyman, of course I know that such a circle exists, but I advise you not to deal with them, because most of them trade with demons in exchange for special powers."

"This will not end well. Maybe for a while, they can gain extremely powerful power, just like in those fantasy novels, but they will definitely pay an unimaginable price for this power. That will It will be a pain worse than death.”

"You misunderstood. I don't want to gain power through this method, but I hope to find a way to deal with this power."

Standing in the shadows of the church, Batman tells the priest: "There are so many people in danger right now because of this terrible power, and I know nothing about it."

The priest paused while wiping the cross in his hand and said, "If you just want to know this knowledge, then you shouldn't come to me."

"Who am I going to find?"

"You should know that the heyday of occultism has passed. Most people today do not respect ghosts or believe in gods, especially in Gotham. But in the last era, there was a trend of black magic on the entire East Coast. If If you want to know this kind of knowledge, it’s best to look for it from history.”

"There are not many ancient families in Gotham, but there are always one or two. Ancient families are all the same. They like to record history and collect collections. Maybe you can find some traces of that era among these things... …”

Therefore, Bruce began to search for the hidden waves of that era in the Wayne family's book collection.

Anything related to occultism has a kind of obscure and weird beauty. They are good at using some words and word order that ordinary people don't use to describe one thing. The lines are full of all kinds of code words, as if they are rejecting every ordinary person. man’s exploration of it.

But if you look at these stories with a rational attitude, you will find that they are just stories. The logic of the stories themselves is no different from those children's books written in fairy tale books, and many of the concepts mentioned in them are , are just ordinary people’s conjectures about this mysterious circle, with no evidence at all.

The clouds outside the window were flying faster and faster, and Bruce was flipping through the books faster and faster. Dick walked back and forth again and again. Bruce read more and more books, and left fewer and fewer books unread. By the end, Dick had found all the books with occult keywords, sat down opposite Bruce, and started reading.

He reads much slower than Bruce, because Bruce only reads these stories to find information, while Dick is really attracted by these mysterious stories. Elsa sits next to him and pretends to read, but every time After a while, a piece of paper would fall out of the book, and it would all be swallowed by Elsa.

Dick was looking fascinated until the soft sound of Bruce putting down the water glass alerted him. He raised his head and found that the pile of books in Bruce's hand had all been read. He also closed the book and asked Bruce: "Did you find anything? Wei “Mr.

Bruce's eyes fell on the book that Dick was reading. Dick saw his eyes and glanced down at the book in front of him. He said, "Oh, this is the 'Top Ten Mysteries' I just got." "Legend" is quite beautiful..."

"What's in it?"

"Well..." Dick hesitated for a moment, not sure how to answer. Bruce took a sip of water and said, "This is not a test, nor is it an assignment to study and take notes. I just want to try a different perspective and see if I can find something. New ideas.”

"Okay, there are ten stories recorded here. I just saw the end of the second one. The first legend is about werewolves, and the second story is about a suicide town. I think the second story is more interesting. Some……"

"Do you think there are any clues there that might be useful?"

"Clue?" Dick asked very puzzledly: "Isn't this just a ghost story? Where can there be any clues?"

Bruce withdrew his gaze from Dick and turned to the book in his hand, which introduced various magic circles and boasted the functions of these magic circles, but most of them looked like It's a child's graffiti, and the examples cited are inconsistent with reality.

Bruce said to Dick, "If you're sleepy, go to bed. I'm going to keep watching for a while."

As he spoke, he walked to the bookshelf and began to look through some books on history. This kind of fantasy story could not provide detailed and reliable clues, so maybe some traces could be found in the history of the development of Gotham City.

After Bruce found the book, he sat down again, but neither Dick nor Elsa left. Dick raised his head and asked him: "Is the legend of the witch true? The souls of children who have eaten candy have been sold to the devil?"

Dick held his face with his hands and said, "I feel a little strange. If Mrs. Sanchez is really a witch, why did she come to Gotham?"

"When my parents came to Gotham, they had no choice but to find another job on the entire East Coast except for the circus here that was willing to accept them, so we had to come here."

"If we had any other choice, we would definitely not come to this city. The weather here is bad, it is very dangerous, and the people have bad tempers and are difficult to get along with. We would not come here if we were desperate."

"But, since Mrs. Sanchez is a witch, she should be much stronger than us, right? Why does she have to come to Gotham?"

"There's nothing special about the children here compared to other children, right? If anything, the children here are more violent and more difficult to deal with..."

Bruce stopped flipping through the pages. Dick saw this action and said, "Oh, sorry, did I disturb you? It's just that I'm still a little sleepy. How about I go sit at the desk on the other side?"

"No, go on."

"say what?"

"The part about Gotham."

"I've already said it. This is actually a pretty simple truth. If outsiders weren't desperate, they wouldn't come here, right?"

"Of course, I know that there have been a lot of outsiders coming here recently, but that's because Gotham has suddenly been very cool recently, but Mrs. Sanchez has been here for a long time. Gotham should be more dangerous when she was here, right?"

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"Indeed." The frequency of Bruce's voice was always stable, and his tone did not fluctuate when he spoke, making him sound drowsy.

"Laurena Sanchez had no reason to choose a city like Gotham as her home base, but if she did, there must be a reason."

Bruce lowered his eyes and looked at the cover of the book in his hand which read: "Notes of Solomon Wayne".