Chapter 1666

The three people who jumped down along the door on the floor did not feel the pain of falling to the floor as they had imagined. They fell into a pile of something, and that thing had hard edges and corners, so the situation was no better than if they had fallen heavily to the ground.

"God!"

Barry let out a cry of pain. He tried hard to push away the things beside him with his arms, like a drowning person struggling in vain, and it wasn't until Harley and Bruce both fell down that the pile of hard objects, which were piled high like a mountain, slid down a little, allowing Barry to free himself.

He moved forward in the room in the dark, almost tripped by some things on the ground again, but fortunately, he felt the door and opened it, and then found lighting equipment in another room with a candlestick.

When Barry walked back to this room with the candlestick, he realized that they had fallen onto a pile of books. That could truly be called a mountain of books. Probably thousands or tens of thousands of books were piled in the center of a room, and the exit of that passage was right on the top of the mountain.

Harley rolled down from the mountain of books. She still felt it was very interesting, and even rolled a few times on the spot, doing an agent landing move. Little Bruce was much more elegant and reserved. He stabilized his center of gravity and then walked down along the path Barry had rolled down.

"I hope you are not moved by your own sacrifice, because we have long known that this is a trial that will not put people in life-threatening danger." But little Bruce's words were still as stinging as ever.

Barry pursed his lips and puffed out a breath from his nose. He shook the candlestick in his hand and said, "There are still quite a few books scattered on the ground. If you keep talking like this, I'll put out the light and let you fall on your face."

"Childish."

"You too."

"So where are we? Some bookstore's stocking area?" Harley looked back at the high mountain of books. She picked up a book from her feet at random, and then covered her forehead as if she were about to faint, saying, "God, what kind of script is this?"

Little Bruce walked over, took a look at the strange runes carved on the book she was holding, and then picked up a book from the side, dusted off the dust on it, and opened that page, seeing the same completely unreadable script, and it was even stranger and more complex.

"This shouldn't be a script used by humans." Little Bruce touched his chin and speculated: "I didn't see any repeated phrases in it, which shows that it doesn't use human word-formation methods."

"Look at this, look at this logo." Harley pointed to a logo that looked like a sheep's head on one of the books and said, "I suspect this might be demonic language, or at least some kind of script from hell."

"Are all the books here like this?" Barry looked up at the mountain of books and asked.

The three of them rummaged for a long time among the books that were like a mountain. Little Bruce pulled out a fragment of a bookshelf from among the books. He felt the runes carved on the side of the fragment whose magic power had not completely dissipated, and said, "This looks like someone smashed a demon's library and then threw all the books inside here."

"Isn't this the pile of books you got from Beelzebub's palace?" Constantine turned to look at Bruce and asked: "Why did you throw them here?"

"In fact, he threw that pile of books to me." Schiller lit his cigar, leaned on the sofa, and said: "I haven't read even half a book since I brought them back, and I'm not interested in deciphering demonic script, so after the academy was built, I piled all these books in the basement."

"There is no valuable information in there." Bruce shook his head and said: "Demons, these creatures that act on instinctive powerful forces, will not record history carefully like humans. Most of the people who wrote these books are servants of demons, and the complex demonic script in their pens is just to show that they have obtained enough knowledge from demons. Besides being complex, there are no advantages."

"When your professor says you don't read books, you'd better listen honestly." Zatanna smiled and said: "Even if you have already graduated and don't need to write papers anymore, you still have to set an example for the students in your academy."

"I've been particularly worried about this recently." The young magician flicked her hand and said: "I don't know what kind of preaching I should use to get this group of little bastards to hand in their homework on time. I understand you more and more now, Professor Rodriguez."

"Then you don't understand enough." Schiller snorted, but not at Zatanna, but implying someone who was present and whom everyone knew. He said: "When one of your students attempts to use a paper shredder to compensate for the fact that he has never handed in his homework on time for the past four years, you should understand that any other teacher in this world is lucky."

"And there's a limited edition Batman doll." Bruce emphasized.

"Yes, and a Batman doll, I haven't found a place to put it yet."

"So what kind of puzzle is this again?" Little Bruce asked somewhat confusedly. Harley walked to the side room where Barry had taken the candlestick. He opened the door, poked his head in to look, and found that it was just a very ordinary lounge with nothing in it.

The only door that looked like it could leave this suite was on one wall of the lounge. There were no traces of a lock, but the door could not be pushed open. An extremely complex rune was drawn on the door. At least little Bruce, Harley, and Barry couldn't understand this rune at all, and didn't even recognize one part of them.

"I guess we might need to find the meaning of this rune in those books, and then find the key according to the guidance of the rune." Barry sighed and said: "If I'm not mistaken, it should be a puzzle set by Professor Rodriguez."

"God, spare me!" Harley let out a miserable scream, stuck to the wall like a puddle of mud and slowly slid down, staring somewhat desperately at the mountain-like books, and said: "I'm going to die of old age here!"

Little Bruce was silent for a long time, walked to the side of the mountain of books, and began to flip through the books one by one. Barry also seemed a bit discouraged. He also didn't think he could finish reading this pile of books alive.

It's not that there are many books, it's just that all the books within their sight are not something humans can understand. This means that if they want to find clues, it is not feasible to infer from the content. Either read all the books, or find another way.

"I bet that finishing the books is not the normal solution." Barry began to grope and knock along the walls, seemingly looking for a mechanism.

Bruce was still looking at the books in silence. Harley finally chose to join Barry's team, because although she was indeed a quick-witted genius, she was not good at code-breaking.

"What kind of rune is that? Why have I never seen it before?" Constantine outside the screen stared at the complex pattern on the door with some confusion. After looking at it for a long time, he spoke somewhat cautiously: "The features look chaotic, with some Phoenician elements, but those also look like patterns used by the Israelites..."

"I drew it randomly."

As soon as Schiller said this, everyone turned to look at him. Schiller revealed a slightly mysterious smile again, and then said: "Remember the purpose of this trial? Don't respect power too much, and don't think that the knowledge of demons and angels is noble."

"So the key..."

"You can see it if you dig open the mountain of books."

Constantine slapped his forehead and said: "So it's purely manual labor?"

"What we are pursuing now is to make dealing with angels and demons a manual labor, isn't it?"

Strange nodded in agreement immediately.

"The purpose of learning magic theory is not to really understand the obscure knowledge of angels and demons. I prefer to see this as a guide to preventing fraud. Your brain must have enough truth to distinguish which of the words spoken by angels and demons are true and which are false."

"But all this is based on the premise that angels and demons cannot forcibly control you." Strange touched his chin and said: "If they cannot use force, and mages are becoming harder to deceive through education, then they really can only choose to talk to us."

Barry and Harley groped almost every wall in the room, but found nothing. Harley detonated a grenade in the smaller lounge and also shot the door lock with a gun, but it was useless. Obviously, this was completely different from the building on the ground.

Then Barry somewhat desperately believed that they really had to finish reading those books. He came to little Bruce's side dejectedly and asked him: "How far have you read? Is there anything I can help with?"

"In fact, I haven't read anything." Little Bruce shook his head and said: "If given enough time, I think I could decipher these mysterious languages, but I don't think it makes any sense at all."

"But if we can't understand it, what should we do about that mysterious rune?"

Little Bruce snorted, threw the book in his hand, watched it roll twice on the ground, and then hugged his arms and said: "As you said, this is a puzzle designed by Professor Rodriguez, so don't forget, besides being a professor at Gotham Magic Academy, he is also a world-renowned master of psychology, at least renowned in your world."

"So?"

"Have you heard of the 'elephant in the room' theory?"

Barry shook his head blankly. Harley frowned and said: "Heard of it slightly, does it refer to something in a space that is very eye-catching but is ignored?"

"It's more like 'something we all know exists, but deliberately ignore'." Little Bruce looked up at the high mountain and said: "This is the reverse application of this theory. This professor created something that we absolutely cannot ignore and must pay attention to, which just shows that the answer has nothing to do with the nature of the thing itself."

Outside the screen, the hand Schiller was holding the cigar with paused slightly, and everyone cast their eyes on him again. Schiller slowly exhaled a puff of cigar smoke and said: "I wouldn't have found the only Bruce Wei En in all the universes who is not good at psychology, would I?"

And Bruce Wei En immediately looked away.

"Obviously, this room was deliberately arranged to have nothing but this mountain of books, and it must have had something before. If it were just to move this pile of books in, there would be no need to move all the furniture away."

Little Bruce began to pace in place and speculated: "If the person who set up this puzzle did this, it shows that this step obviously has its meaning, perhaps it's a hint."

"The puzzle in the previous room was too simple, perhaps it was just a foreshadowing for the puzzle in this room. There were only those bottles and jars in that room, and they happened to be the key to solving the puzzle, which would make people have a kind of thinking inertia, thinking that these books that the room uniquely possesses are writing the answer to the puzzle."

"But if the person who set all this up is a master of psychology, we might as well think in reverse. These books are the only things in the room that have nothing to do with the puzzle, they just confused us and wanted us to pay attention to all this."

"This makes a lot of sense." Little Bruce stopped pacing and touched his chin, saying: "Perhaps angels and demons are manipulating us in this way. When we seek answers from demons, they give us those forbidden knowledge, but say nothing, as if as long as we learn this knowledge, we can naturally find the answers we want."

"But the answer might be everywhere, just not in the knowledge. When mages are finally driven crazy by this forbidden knowledge, they jump out and say, we never said there were answers in the knowledge."

"I can already imagine mages being deceived like this." Harley walked to little Bruce's side, stood side by side with him, and asked: "Then where do you think the key is?"

"I think Professor Rodriguez would be the kind of person who has a purpose for every action. Since the knowledge comes from hell, perhaps... the key also comes from there."

After speaking, little Bruce's gaze looked toward the bottom of the mountain of books.