Chapter 4258: Spirit Possession (Part 40)

Malos was very shocked at first. He raised his hands and retreated into the house, shouting, "Don't! I can give you whatever you want, and there are police patrolling all day nearby, you can't..."

"The police won't come." Kent pointed at the gun with his finger. Malos glanced in the direction of his finger, his pupils shrinking; this was exactly the standard equipment of the police, this bastard wouldn't kill a cop to steal a gun, would he?

"I ask, you answer." Kent said, "Who are you?"

"Me? I... I..." Malos didn't know how to answer for a moment, because this question was too strange. Kent had already come once before; at that time, he knew he was a councilman. Whether he came to seek money or kill, this question had no meaning.

Kent, however, stared fixedly at him. He had a premonition, and a very strong one, that he hadn't found the wrong person; this guy was Old Borger he was looking for.

Unfortunately, he wasn't Batman and couldn't point out the problems in the details of the other party's words and actions; he just had a vague feeling. And this obviously couldn't be used as evidence.

Kent took a deep breath. The situation now was too complicated; if he couldn't find key evidence to expose the other party, the other party certainly wouldn't reveal his true colors. If he intended to pretend to the end, then if Kent fired, the one who would be unlucky would be Kent.

Because in the eyes of outsiders, Malos was a councilman. If Kent fired at him, he would definitely become a criminal that everyone shouted to beat; after all, it was impossible for so many people to believe in theories like evil spirit possession, and Kent couldn't produce decent evidence to prove the existence of ghosts.

And even if he killed Malos, the evil spirit wouldn't die with him; bullets couldn't kill ghosts, he could completely change into another body.

Kent's purpose in coming here wasn't to kill the evil spirit's body, but to force him to reveal himself. Because now there was a group of ghosts following him, as long as Old Borger revealed himself, he could use the power of the ghosts to kill him.

So how exactly could he force Old Borger to reveal himself?

Kent had to start thinking: what would Batman do?

He must have a lot of experience in this regard, because the ones he was facing were all a bunch of lunatics wearing human skin. To defeat such people, firing at them was useless; he had to carry out mental strikes.

At this moment, Kent understood Batman even more. Facing such cunning monsters every day, a super brain might not even be enough.

Kent forced himself to calm down. He thought about the matter from beginning to end at the fastest speed, and then found that there was still the most difficult puzzle to solve: since it was Old Borger who changed the rules of the spiritual world, why did he run?

He certainly changed the rules in a direction favorable to himself, shaping the heaven he wanted, so why didn't he lie in his heaven and enjoy it, running out to be a councilman?

Still the same sentence, the job of a councilman wasn't easy to do, it couldn't be said to be working from dawn to dusk, but the daily work and socializing certainly wouldn't be less. Compared to the spiritual world that didn't need to worry about survival at all and completely conformed to Old Borger's concept of an ideal heaven, the real world simply didn't have any redeeming qualities. But he still came, which proved that something must have gone wrong there.

Kent didn't know what went wrong there, but he knew this must be Old Borger's sad matter. And whether it was the kind of problem he thought of, he would know by asking.

"You don't have to pretend anymore." Kent said, "Borger, I know who you are, and I know what you did, I just didn't expect you to run here. What, you can't stand that set yourself either?"

Kent revealed a cold smile, looked into Malos's eyes, and said, "The ancestor of the Borger family killed the Flying Angel's family, framed the animal trainer, stole the circus from their hands, all for the sake of building the heaven in your ideals. But what was the result? You went around in such a big circle and finally realized your dream, but you found that this was just a pile of shit. You couldn't stand it yourself, so like a coward, you abandoned your so-called heaven and ran here."

"If I were to say, the circus finding you to perform as clowns was really finding the right people. From beginning to end, everything the Borger family did was completely to make people laugh—killing families, practicing black magic, going through generations, and finally realizing the wish, but in the end, you only created a joke. I must thank you, this is the funniest joke I've heard recently."

"Enough!" Malos darkened his face, staring at Kent with a look like he was going to kill someone. Kent knew he had guessed right.

Old Borger went through so much trouble, created a spiritual world that completely conformed to the doctrine, but he ran to Westview City to be a councilman, the reason might be very simple, which was that he couldn't stand that set himself either.

That's right, even if he was the leader of the sect, all the believers centered on him, and he didn't have to follow the doctrine to give birth to a bunch of children, just the world attributes he constructed were already enough to make him unable to stand it.

For example, in the spiritual world, there were no drinks like tea and coffee, nor industrial drinks like cola, and certainly no alcohol, and no modern food, not even some modern, legal, harmless seasonings, so although one could taste the flavor of food, that thing couldn't possibly be delicious.

Secondly, no books other than the scriptures were allowed, no novels, no magazines, not even those world classics, and no artistic creation was allowed, at most one could only sing hymns.

And then, there were no modern entertainment facilities. Even when Old Borger was young, there were radios and black-and-white televisions, movie theaters, and videotapes, but there was nothing in the spiritual world, no modern facilities.

So, this spiritual world completely composed of sect rules, all people could do was gather together to chat, and the topics they could chat about were also very limited, which was praising God, praising the sect leader, and praising this kind of church life.

And because children couldn't be born in the spiritual world, even things like cultivating and educating children to pass the time couldn't be done; besides church activities, they just sat there.

If one was born in such an environment, then it might be barely tolerable, but who was Old Borger? He used to be a star actor in a circus, traveled north and south with the circus, had been to every big city, witnessed the debauchery of the upper class, and had also been exposed to the most advanced modern equipment.

It is said that it is easy to go from frugality to luxury, but difficult to go from luxury to frugality. He still thought he was a very pure believer, and in the real world, he couldn't achieve complete isolation from modern society, so he built such an ideal country in the spiritual world, but after building it, he found: this is a fart of an ideal country, this is purely sitting in jail.

Sitting in jail at least allowed one to watch TV and newspapers and such. After witnessing the entertainment methods of the information-exploding modern society, no one could accept this kind of primitive society life anymore.

What's more, the people in the spiritual world didn't change, it was always those same people coming and going. This kind of performance-based socializing, no matter how interesting it was, would soon get boring. Then Old Borger couldn't help but run away, could he?

"What do you know!" Malos gritted his teeth and said, "You don't understand at all what modern society has brought to people—suffering, hunger, death, these shouldn't have happened!"

Kent didn't understand what he meant for a moment. Malos looked at him and said, "I know, you are from a big city, you might have been born in a very wealthy family. You have never been to the bottom-level community, don't know what it looks like there, how painful people are, and you don't care at all."

"Those homeless people, those junkies, those prostitutes and their children, they blindly broke into this kind of advanced society, which was simply suicide. Those rich people took everything from them, they sacrificed everything they had to those bastards in office buildings for the sake of that illusory big-city dream in their hearts. They abandoned their hometowns, gave up their originally simple lives, just to become a piece of fuel in the rich man's fireplace, I am saving them!"

"What's wrong with town life? What's wrong with church life? There are no gunfights here, no homeless people, no one will freeze or starve to death, everyone lives in a warm big family. They won't run to that kind of place that eats people without spitting out bones because of the propaganda of those unscrupulous media, they can spend their lives stably in the town!"

"If you didn't say it like this, I wouldn't think you were so ridiculous." Kent looked at Malos and said, "If you didn't have this set of theories, I would only think you were doing things on a whim, occasionally having a flash of inspiration, and only then messed up the situation to what it is now. But unfortunately, you are systematically stupid."

"You call this state stable, but I would rather call it stable backwardness and poverty. There is a viewpoint that you are fundamentally wrong about, which is: rich people depriving poor people of everything is not divided into cities and the countryside. It's not that rich people in big cities only exploit poor people in big cities, it's not that as long as you hide in the countryside, this kind of harm has nothing to do with you."

"Let me give you an example, is the farm in Kansas not rural enough? Farm owners can't leave their land for a lifetime, and they live the kind of very stable rural life you mentioned. But do you know how much money grain buyers, farm machinery merchants, and seed merchants took from them? At least 85%."

"Grain buyers sign long-term contracts, specifying the crops to be planted, and once the crop market is bad, they tear up the contracts and demand to sign lower-priced contracts. If you don't sign, all the crops will rot in the fields. Farm machinery merchants sell every piece of farm machinery at a sky-high price, add all kinds of locks to them, ensure that you absolutely cannot repair them yourself, and force you to buy expensive parts and pay the labor costs of repair workers. Seed merchants will genetically improve seeds; if you don't pay enough money, you absolutely cannot get good seeds; even the Agricultural Protection Association will formulate a bunch of industry standards for farmers, and if you don't meet the standards, you can't even sell a single grain of wheat."

"Farm owners' lives are very stable because they don't have that much cash in their hands. After finally completing a year's work and getting the money in their hands, they immediately have to invest it in the second year's production; when the market is bad, the whole family might only have 20 dollars left, and they will eat bean paste for three consecutive months. They live a stable religious life because they have no other choice, struggling in poverty. But if they had money, the warm seawater of Xia Weiyi and the beautiful scenery of the Alps could give them more comfort."

"Pushing people into the quagmire of big cities and trapping people in the poverty of small cities are the same. You are no different from the unscrupulous media you claim to hate the most that trick people into big cities."

But no matter which one it was, the quality was quite "stable"—the other plane also had two stabilizers missing, and they were also on the same side. This proved that the mistake the other party made in the airframe structure was the same.

After getting off the plane, several scientists started a comprehensive inspection of the plane, and after checking, they discovered that it shouldn't have been human sabotage; it was just pure incompetence.

"This company's development thinking has problems," Stark said, "They believe that to surpass traditional planes, they must make big improvements in speed, so they started crazily stacking speed. The wings are made thin and light, the circuits are simplified as much as possible, and the airframe materials selected are all that kind of light and thin but not sturdy material; the strength is a big problem."

"You think it's a speed problem, but I think this company wanted to free up more cabin space, solving the problem of traditional planes having narrow space and limiting human activity, so they selected light and thin materials as much as possible, and seemed to trust the anti-gravity system too much, didn't arrange any redundant safety modules, and then it became like this."

"Which country's company is this?" Peter couldn't help asking.

"Russia."

"Ugh... it's not that I can't understand," Gwen said, "People over there might really not be afraid of this."

"There is bad news," Jarvis suddenly said, "A tropical storm is coming. Let's find a place to hide. I detected that there is an unfinished artificial island over there; let's take the ordinary people to hide there for a while to avoid the rain."

"If I were to say, just take them to Xia Weiyi," Wanda said with her hands on her hips, "Anyway, it's not too far from Xia Weiyi anymore."

"That, our destination is not Xia Weiyi..." someone raised their hand and said, "We are going to Singapore, those few are going to Thailand..."

Wanda rubbed her forehead and said: "I didn't ask you to stay in Xia Weiyi forever, just go over and stay for a while..."

"Better not," Jarvis said in a low voice, "Going to Xia Weiyi belongs to being safe and out of danger. The Xia Weiyi route is very busy; rescue planes might come very slowly, and consumption on the island isn't low either. Moreover, if the matter isn't made serious enough, the insurance might not pay."

Wanda suddenly realized; she isn't a rich person either, of course she understands the twists and turns in this. If they sent people to Xia Weiyi so easily, then there would be a lot of arguing.

Logically speaking, it should be the parent company of this plane sending people to rescue, but the other party is far away in Russia, and looking at their behavior, I'm afraid they can't be counted on either.

Following the humanitarian rescue process, then other airlines must send people to pick them up, but the Xia Weiyi route is very precious, and it is also a tourist destination to some extent; airlines won't be willing to sacrifice the route to save people, and even if they come, they will come very slowly.

The most troublesome thing is insurance. Once they are rescued by superheroes, the insurance has sufficient reasons to refuse payment. Regardless of whether these people need this money or not, Wanda really needs the insurance company to lose this money.

And the passengers on the other plane obviously thought so too; they said: "Better not go to Xia Weiyi. After going there, they definitely won't send a plane; I have very important things to do in Singapore, I really can't be delayed."

"That's right, better go to that island to avoid it first, and wait for others to come and rescue."

"Exactly, air crash insurance will pay a lot of money. It doesn't matter whether I take this money or not, but I absolutely cannot let the insurance company take advantage of this!"

This last sentence resonated with most people, even including the superheroes—because even superheroes have all been refused payment by insurance companies, without exception.

Thus, everyone worked together, with the help of Wanda and Iceman, and set off toward that artificial island that hadn't been completely built yet. And when they arrived, they discovered that it didn't look like it hadn't been built yet; the whole island was lush with trees, with white sand and blue sea.

Stark stood in front of the island, touched his chin and said: "I think vacationing here is also not bad, what do you think?"