Chapter 2310: Gotham Music Festival (58)

Before the cruise ship Da Xizhou restarted, several figures jumped onto the ship. The leader Constantine shook the water on his hair, the detective ape Bob jumped onto the Night Master's shoulder, Zatanna organized the tools in her pocket, and confirmed with Black Orchid next to her that there was nothing missing.

The appearance of this group of people made Oliver very surprised. Although he didn't have much contact with the magic world, he had heard of the major event of vampire invasion of London before, and had also asked the Night Master for advice when dealing with local indigenous wizards in Mexico.

"Jim, why are you here?" Oliver walked up and shook hands with Jim. Jim smiled and patted his arm, saying: "So you've already returned. I thought I'd have to wait for a while. How have you been lately?"

"Not bad. Are you here to help Shiler?" Oliver immediately realized something.

"Of course, but to be precise, he is helping us," the Night Master revealed a trace of worry between his brows.

Oliver put his arm around his shoulder, took him to the place where the crowd gathered on the deck, and said: "I heard that the situation in the magic world is not very good. Has it improved lately?"

"It might improve later." The Night Master shook his head and began to tell about the situation in the magic world recently.

Before, Shiler arranged a plan to harvest a wave of the famous black box of the magic world, Constantine, which caused many mid-to-high-level demons who had invested quite a few chips in Constantine to lose their pants.

The influence of the vampire invasion of London event has spread to this day. Mages died and were injured, and the magic world was lacking in talent. And the Gotham Magic Academy had just been founded, and most students hadn't read for two years, completely unable to be of much use.

This has led to the current magic world of the universe where Shiler is located being unable to connect the old with the new. Demons have become much more cautious when lending power, the number of mages has dropped sharply, and fewer people borrow power. Without power, everyone doesn't like to consume. For a time, the mystery world's economy was declining and there was deflation.

But the DC universe actually needs magic, because besides angels and demons, there are many magical creatures mixed in between. Their attitudes toward humans are mixed, and mages are the backbone to deal with such biological invasions. The Earth magic defense network proposed by Strange also needs to be built. If everyone is so stingy, then don't do anything.

If this continues for a long time, the development of the magic world in this universe might lag far behind other universes. If any major magic-side events occur in the future, it might collapse at the first touch, which is something no one wants to see.

To break this situation, what needs to be used is still economic laws. Normally speaking, when the economy is declining, for enterprises, the government should give preferential measures in all aspects to help slow down the pressure and stabilize production; for consumers, increase investment in consumer welfare to stimulate consumption. Shiler naturally did the same.

Since the mid-to-high-level demons who lend power have no money in their hands, they must find ways to promote their development. Only when they have money in their hands will they have money to lend out.

It might sound very absurd, but Hell has developed for so many years, and the vast majority of demons still make money by earning the price difference. Even the generals under the demon princes rely on this path, and they don't think about innovation for tens of thousands of years.

The general process is to give a human a little power, and then recycle their soul after death. For demons, the value of mages' souls is slightly greater than power. What they earn is this price difference.

And for demon princes, they are nothing more than giving more power to cheat more precious souls and earn more price differences.

Of course, if they could, they would also want to engage in massacres and secretly collect souls for their own use, but unfortunately, on one hand, Heaven is watching, and on the other hand, the Destiny family couldn't possibly let them mess around like this, so it's not incomprehensible that Hell has long been at the level of small-scale peasant economy.

After discovering the need to revive the magic world, Shiler went to study a plan with the other three of the 'Evil to the Fourth Power' and found Azazel and Beelzebub, who are currently in charge of Hell. This sheep and fly studied it and found that it actually seemed to work.

The method of trading between demons and mages before was a bit like slash-and-burn cultivation. Roughly, demons induce humans to contact magic through some loopholes, and then lend power to humans. Humans take the power and squander it wantonly, and after death, they turn into food for demons.

This transaction looks fair, but in reality, humans are creatures without much self-control. Basically, one temptation is one accurate hit. It's just like the truth that one should never test human nature.

So humans don't have much initiative in this regard, but in order to obtain powerful power, they usually compromise with demons without a bottom line.

In the past, no matter whether you sacrifice other things or not, yourself definitely can't run away. Demons don't accept contracts with pure external objects as trading conditions, because the vast majority of demons aren't that strong. Except for marked souls, they don't have 100% certainty that they can take back external objects.

But after the demons' leeks were harvested, they also had to lower their proud heads and think of ways to get some funds to turn around first, which gave humans a lot of room for negotiation. The most critical point is that the price to be paid can be changed to things other than oneself.

General external objects can't move demons. What they like most is actually human souls, but in their eyes, human souls also have high and low distinctions. The best ones are the souls of sinners.

Sin will add a lot of weight to the soul. The heavier the soul, the more mellow the taste, and the greater the power it can provide. This is also the reason why many demons knew the chance wasn't big but still had to bet on Constantine before.

But wanting to add a stroke of sin to the soul isn't that simple. In a world with God, if you are a quite devout believer, conscientiously observing the doctrine, then it is actually possible to wash away many sins.

Even if you are not a believer, you don't believe in anything, you haven't done many bad things, or the bad things you did aren't serious, you won't be engraved if you don't reach the sin starting point, or even if you did evil, you sincerely repent, this stroke won't be added.

Some villains, although they don't do good things outside, are very good to their families and friends, and sin will also be reduced, or some people do evil behind their backs and do some good things on the surface to cover up, and sin will also be reduced.

So accumulating a soul weight of more than 21 grams is very difficult. Although there are many humans, there aren't many such villains, and they often must be carefully distinguished and investigated before getting one or two.

And if these sinners' souls come to Hell through ordinary ways, there will also be loss. They must go through the sacrifice of the execution ritual, and the loss can be minimized.

"We just drew a magic circle on the seabed." Constantine opened his mouth to explain to Oliver: "After all, the sinner souls on this ship are very heavy, and the execution ritual is a bit like a fast-delivery packaging method. It must be rigorous enough for the express delivery not to be damaged, but the magic circle that collects the souls is a bit like the airplanes and trucks during transportation. If the quality isn't good and it's too bumpy, it will also cause loss."

"So you transported all their souls to Hell?" Oliver asked.

"Yes, as the first batch of trading materials, a full 99 sinner souls, with an average weight reaching 25 grams. This is a big gift that even demon princes have to look sideways at..."

"Wait, 99? But there are more than 99 people on this ship."

"Yes, there are only 99 perfect sinner souls. Others are gifts that are lower than this standard, and there are some souls that are completely insufficient for 21 grams of defective products, which will be sent back in a while."

Oliver slapped his forehead.

Although it sounds very strange, if you do good things, even if you do good things for your own interests, you will wash your soul, leading to the soul weight not being heavy enough, being disliked by demons who love sin, and even becoming a defective product.

At this time, Amanda walked to the scale. She wanted to know how heavy her soul was. Perhaps it should also be 25 grams? After all, she didn't kill few people.

The goat demon sitting there looked Amanda up and down, clicked its tongue, and shook its head, seeming not to think highly of her. Amanda walked onto the scale and weighed it, exactly 21 grams.

"Don't dawdle, Madam. From the state of your soul, you aren't suitable to stay here. Why don't you turn left and ask those angels if they accept you." The goat demon said with quite a bit of disgust.

"This is impossible." Amanda said somewhat incredulously: "I am the head of the agents. I let my subordinates kill quite a few people, and I have done all kinds of stealing secrets, peeping at privacy, and even breaking in."

The goat demon saw that it really couldn't convince her, so it had to flip through the sheepskin scroll in its hand, even took off the glasses next to it, flipped its eyelids, and said: "Last June, you caught two murderers. One indiscriminately killed 15 people, one tortured and killed a family of four, right?"

Amanda recalled and said: "That's right, the Michigan Ripper, the other one should be called Garden Gnome or Family Killer, I forgot, he isn't very famous."

"This reduced your soul weight by at least 0.2 grams. And this summer, you presided over the trial and execution of a killer who specifically trapped children in cars and burned them to death."

"'Firewood Worker', I remember him, that damn bastard, he didn't even admit his guilt until the end!" Amanda gritted her teeth and said.

The goat demon's face became better and better, even revealing a little smile, saying: "I remember this guy's soul seemed to have gone to our side. Old Grandmother likes his taste very much."

"This lady, it's an honor to meet such a righteous law enforcer like you. Look, why don't you go down and drink tea over there first? Wait for our boss to finish chatting, and I'll take you to the depths of the Fire Abyss to see our grandmother?"

Amanda looked at the goat demon's enthusiastic smile in a daze, but was still squeezed off the scale by the later souls.

At this time, the black man wearing an eyepatch walked over, waved at Amanda, and said: "Ms. Waller, follow me. Your family has been waiting for you for a long time."

Amanda was stunned, but as soon as she turned her head, she saw her mother's slightly old but unchanged face, and then she heard the familiar scream.

"Amanda! Amanda!! My little Mandy!"

She felt herself slamming into the embrace, her mom cupped her face and said: "God, it's really you."

Amanda just wanted to speak, her dad came over, hugged both of them, and said: "You don't know how much we two rejoiced that you weren't there that day. We were thinking about this in the last second before we died. Fortunately, you weren't there!"

Amanda finally couldn't bear it anymore, tears gushing out from her eye sockets like a broken levee. ===== CHAPTER 2311 =====