Chapter 4243

This semi-basement space was very large, and there were more than a dozen large iron cages in the entire space. Half of them contained corpses, and they were mummified corpses that could hardly be recognized as human. What was even more terrible was that the limbs of many mummified corpses were scattered around, and they didn't look like they were removed after death.

Kent started to tremble all over. He didn't know whether it was out of fear or anger, because above the abdomen of the corpse in the very center, he saw a small skull and tiny limb fragments that hadn't fully developed—this was the corpse of a pregnant woman who was about to give birth.

Kent felt for the first time what suffocation was. This wasn't because he had lost his superpowers; he felt that even if he were still Superman now, facing this scene, he wouldn't be able to catch his breath.

He instinctively took a few steps back and stood by the wall to calm down for several minutes. Until the dizzy feeling felt a bit better, he walked into the nearest cage with some trepidation.

The light in the semi-basement was a bit dim. He walked closer and discovered that all the corpses were female, and they had suffered very serious abuse before they died, with some wounds deep enough to reach the bone.

Clark Kent was not a great detective, nor had he received training in criminal investigation. However, just based on what he could see, he could also roughly imagine what was going on.

Not everyone is a lamb waiting to be slaughtered. Just like superheroes are mostly stubborn, there are people in this world who are born with strong resistance to brainwashing, and even seamless possession and deception abilities can't fool them.

This type of person is often stubborn and paranoid. If they feel something is wrong, they will definitely investigate to the end. Even if this is an extremely remote and closed town, they might investigate the truth and leave with the truth, then things here would be made public.

You must know that for many years, the population trafficked to this place by the circus was not just ordinary people. Circus tickets were not cheap, and people who had the leisure to come and watch circus performances in that era, or people who followed the trend to join in the fun in the town, mostly had good family backgrounds. Once these things done by the cultists were discovered, the victims they would have to face were not people they could deal with.

Then for these people who couldn't be brainwashed, the evil spirit wouldn't let them leave, because even if they were just suspicious, it might attract more people's attention. And at this time, only violent means could be adopted.

It should have been killed directly, but still the same sentence, the town was already increasingly declining, and there were too few outsiders. If outsiders couldn't be replenished, inbreeding would also destroy this town. So, these victims kidnapped by violent means had other uses, which was to reproduce offspring under the coercion of the cult.

Not to mention whether the cult would let them live too long, just with this kind of hygiene and nutritional conditions, childbirth was murder. Kent found it hard to imagine how many innocent people had died here.

Checking every corpse, Kent collected their personal items as much as possible. The cultists seemed to be certain that they couldn't run out, and didn't confiscate them very strictly. Kent not only found two driver's licenses, a necklace with a grandmother's portrait, a professional cycling watch, but even found a tourist's camera, and even a digital camera that was relatively advanced for this era.

From the style and quality of the camera, one could see that the owner of the camera was quite wealthy. But unfortunately, the operation of a digital camera requires energy, and the camera's battery was already out of power. No matter how Kent fiddled with it, there was no way to make it work again.

Kent knew he had to find a way to charge the camera, so that he could record the photos here and let the world know what kind of tragedy had happened here.

After a while, Kent finally gathered his courage and walked to the side of the pregnant woman's corpse in the very center. He stood in place and panted several times, before touching the tiny skull of the baby with trembling hands.

Then he retracted his hand as if he had been electrocuted, and started panting heavily in place again. He felt something flow onto his chin; he touched his cheek and discovered that he was crying.

Kent tried hard to clench his fists and then loosen them, repeating this several times, before finally picking up the tiny skull with trembling hands. He had to take this child out, immediately, right now, he couldn't wait for even a second.

He didn't know why he wanted to do this either. Perhaps, the yearning for the sun in the nature of Kryptonians made the best way he could think of to comfort the dead now was to take them to see the sun.

Because he had been stimulated too much, Kent walked very slowly. He didn't even dare to look at what he was holding in his hand. He didn't feel fear, but just had a kind of profound despair and powerlessness.

Precisely because of this, he was a step slower and was blocked at the basement entrance by the evil spirit.

The evil spirit seemed to have finally endured to the limit; he didn't want to act anymore. Because he must not give anyone who had seen this scene any chance to escape, otherwise it would really be over.

Kent hadn't reacted yet, when a burst of black energy rushed directly at his face, knocking him flying out. He hit the wall heavily, and then fell face down. His nose hit the ground, and blood flowed out instantly.

He hurried to crawl up from the ground, leaning against the wall and looking at the figure emitting black energy blocking the entrance. He was certain that he must have been knocked flying by some mysterious power just now.

Kent couldn't care about much, and before the black energy spread, he rushed toward the evil spirit fiercely, hitting him against the wall with his head.

But just when he was about to raise his fist, he felt a sharp pain in his chest—the hand of this evil spirit emitting black energy had actually pierced directly into his chest.

"Go to hell!" Kent heard the other party say.

And then, he watched helplessly as the other party's hand pinched his heart and pulled the heart out of his chest cavity.

A huge amount of blood erupted, and Kent fell into a pool of blood. The faint light entering from the basement entrance shone on him, but it didn't make Superman recover his vitality as usual, standing up from the disaster thousands of times, turning into a god, and protecting the weak.

But it seemed someone didn't think so. Just when Kent felt his consciousness slowly fading, he suddenly felt another kind of pain, as if something was biting his fingers.

When he was one step away from death, all pain would dissipate, but this real pain pulled Kent's consciousness back a little. He wanted to raise his hand, but had no strength, only feeling that the thing had changed from biting his fingers to biting his palm. The pain spread up along his arm: forearm, elbow, upper arm, shoulder, and finally his chest.

His chest hurt particularly badly, as if a hand was constantly churning between his flesh and blood, even making Kent feel that it was a good thing for death to come sooner.

"Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!!!!"

The intense pain made Kent unable to help but scream. But just in the second after the pain reached its limit, he discovered that he had actually sat up from the ground.

The pain subsided within a few seconds. Kent looked around somewhat blankly, the sweat on his forehead was soaking into his eyes, which made his vision a bit blurry. He subconsciously raised his hand to wipe the sweat, but discovered that there was really a wound on the palm of his right hand.

The wound was very small, but the edges of the wound had tearing traces, and there were some dense tooth marks, just like something had bitten it out. The wound was very deep, looking like it was about to pierce through, but there was no wound on the back of his hand.

Kent didn't react for a while as to what was going on. He kept looking at his hand, wanting to know what had bitten him, and why he hadn't died.

Suddenly he reacted, and then started looking for it on the surrounding ground. Sure enough, the baby's skull he had been holding in his hand was gone.

Then he looked down at his chest cavity again. This scared him, there was really a big hole in his chest cavity, and the scene of the evil spirit pulling out his heart just now wasn't a hallucination. However, there seemed to be something jumping in that hole. From Kent's own angle, he couldn't see it, but he faintly guessed what it was.

"I am very sorry," Kent said, "I am no match for that devil. I should..."

Before he finished speaking, he suddenly heard some whispering in his ears. This kind of sound was very chaotic, as if many people were talking at the same time, but Kent focused his attention to listen, and could hear the content of every sentence:

"He is an evil spirit..."

"He practices black magic..."

"That's right, he knows how to use witchcraft..."

"He was a wizard when he was alive, he sacrificed many people..."

"This bought him immortality..."

"There are two pastors and two nuns in the town..."

"Only one person died..."

"They are all still alive, and some of them have descendants."

"Beware of nights without a moon."

Most of these voices were women's voices, sounding old and young, and during this period, they were mixed with some children's crying sounds and the low voices of a few men occasionally.

Kent touched his chest, and then looked down in shock—the wound had actually healed, without leaving even a trace. And when he focused his attention to listen, he could still hear that kind of sound.

Just at this time, the camera that had fallen to the side when he was attacked suddenly started working by itself. "Click, click, click..."

Kent walked over and discovered that the digital camera's screen had lit up. And on the photo that was just taken and displayed on the screen, Kent was standing at the entrance of the basement, that ray of faint light was shining on his face, and there were many people standing beside him.

There were young couples together, women wearing cycling clothes, a couple holding a camera, and a family of four with two children. And on Kent's shoulder, sat a baby that couldn't be smaller.

Kent's hand started trembling again. He hugged the camera tightly, as if he had grabbed some life-saving straw, stood in place and panted several times, before slowly relaxing.

He moved to hang the camera on himself, and put the things he had just found on the corpses into his pockets and put them away. He searched the entire room again, took all the odds and ends he could take, including a bone for each person.

Then, he crawled out along the basement entrance. When the sunlight shone on him, he felt the feeling of drawing power from the sunlight after a long absence, even more clearly and profoundly than he had ever felt before.