Chapter 4512

"That's not right." A female voice came from the laboratory. "The power of death is returning to the spiritual realm. Shiler might be in danger!"

Everyone in the laboratory looked at him. Victor stood up with a start and said, "What's going on? Why is it returning?!"

"There is some kind of force pulling it." The Super-Body frowned deeply. "It seems... it seems to be this child's primary consciousness..."

She placed her hand on the ice surface, felt it carefully, and then said, "Something is constantly calling out to death. The power of death is being guided, flowing back toward the brain..."

"What do we do now?!" Victor said, somewhat anxiously. "Once Shiler comes into contact with the power of death, he might face the mastermind directly!"

"Don't panic." The Super-Body took a deep breath and said, "I can use the power of life to provide a slight obstruction, but it won't last long."

"But isn't your power of life a restraint against the power of death?"

"It is precisely because it is a restraint that I cannot output too much. Once the power of death is completely dispersed, this child will lose his life. If I output only a small amount, I can only delay it."

Victor was about to say something else when Brainiac said, "Trust Shiler; he will think of a way."

A white light flashed on the Super-Body's hand, which then enveloped the entire ice sculpture. Then he spoke, "Alright, this can help him drag it out for a while longer."

With a 'whoosh', the fireplace flame suddenly surged upward, and the entire hall became bright again. Shiler understood immediately that someone must be helping him from the outside.

However, the firelight dimmed much faster than he had imagined. Shiler estimated that after the final three cycles, the flames would be completely extinguished. And the power of death, which was invading the spiritual realm, would completely swallow this place. He would be taken into the realm of the Black Death Emperor.

Shiler already knew what Hugo had done. Hugo knew that he would definitely come into this memory to look for clues, so he had set a trap: isolating Shiler while trapping him in a cycle. And this cycle was special, because every time it cycled, Novi had to experience the pain of death once.

And every one of her deaths would call out to the power of death, so the power of death that had originally been expelled from the spiritual realm would return here. By that time, Shiler, trapped here, would be swallowed by the power of death.

One had to admit that Hugo was indeed quite capable. Setting aside the technology used to create the cycle, he had successfully utilized Shiler's weakness—his teacher's morality.

Because he knew that his student Bruce had always felt guilty about this matter, Shiler would definitely want to lift Novi's hypnosis so that she could comfort Bruce. To find the key to lifting the hypnosis, one had to view her memories before death. Once inside, one would be trapped and then swallowed by the returning power of death.

Shiler sighed softly; now was not the time to use his trump cards. He had to first think about how to break this cycle. And to break the cycle, he had to first be able to break the isolation so that he could influence the memory.

Shiler scanned the area, his gaze suddenly fixing on one figure.

This cycle began with Novi entering Wei En Manor and ended with Novi's death. The main characters during this period were Bruce and Novi, but there were more than just those two present. There was also an outsider, and that was Dick.

That was the time when the relationship between the two of them was at its least harmonious. Bruce was still too young and had not fully transformed into a father. Dick was right in the middle of his rebellious phase, and because he hadn't experienced the death of his parents, he hadn't become that mature yet and was still a bit childish. It was perfectly normal for the two of them to argue over some things.

Hugo would overlook Dick—Shiler realized this immediately. Because at least from this memory, Dick was just a rebellious teenager. The things he said to Bruce were also of no substance and played no major role in pushing the development of events.

Hugo had always been a very conceited person. He hated mediocre people, hated dull and boring daily conversations, and only liked those madmen who were worth studying, focusing only on those abnormal places.

In the whole affair, Dick acted too normally. His spirit and personality were also too healthy; even his rebellion couldn't stir up any big waves, at most just throwing a temper tantrum or talking back a couple of times. Hugo was destined to ignore him.

Dick must be the breakthrough point. Shiler walked toward him, and Dick didn't react at all. Shiler stood there, staring at him intently, without blinking.

No, the flaw was not in Dick himself. Shiler realized. His appearance and internal personality had no problems. And at this moment, the time for the first cycle was up.

The memory shattered again. Shiler returned to the hall. He looked up at the place where Dick had walked over. As far as Shiler knew, Dick's room was on the second floor, and it still was to this day.

Back when Brainiac was dividing up the rooms, he had originally intended to give away more than half of them, which would have meant that the children's rooms would all have to be moved. For this, Bruce and Brainiac had fought more than one free-for-all match, but in the end, Brainiac didn't get his way, and the children's rooms didn't move.

Dick's room should be on the far right of the second floor. Although this room was on the edge, it had one more window than the other rooms that weren't on the edge, and the lighting was better, so he had chosen this room.

Shiler didn't continue to stare at the people in the hall, but instead walked toward the right side of the second floor. He didn't find anything unusual in the corridor, but when he arrived in front of Dick's door, he realized something was wrong.

Dick didn't lock his door. This habit might be because his biological parents respected him very much and would knock regardless of whether he locked the door or not. Bruce wasn't the type to barge into a room either, and the only one who liked to barge directly into rooms, Jason, could pick three door locks within five seconds, so locking them was useless.

But now, Shiler couldn't open the door to Dick's room. He twisted the doorknob and there was no reaction; he pushed and couldn't push it open either. This didn't look like the door was locked, but rather like "the map ahead will be explored later."

Zatanna looked at the address and said: "That mysterious Pen Pal Society again? Will they know the clues?"

Based on Hugo's professional standards, let alone being able to understand what Wei En Manor looked like in Novi's spiritual world, even if he couldn't, he could guess and cobble together something similar. This was the basic competence of a master of psychology.

And as for the layout of the hall or the layout of Bruce's room, he could also guess it with reasonable accuracy based on personality analysis. But the problem was that Hugo just didn't like analyzing ordinary people.

Dick was just too normal. Hugo had no interest in walking into his inner world, so naturally, he wouldn't guess what Dick's room looked like, and he certainly wouldn't insist on adding such an ordinary person's room into his exquisitely designed trap. He would feel that this was a "flaw" that polluted his creation.

However, the structure of the entire Wei En Manor house was complete. Shiler had already seen it from the backyard; the window to Dick's room existed, which meant that the external modeling had been done. It was just that the content inside hadn't been filled in; it was possible that it was just a texture, and the inside was empty. This meant that this might be the only void in the entire memory fragment, and also the only way for him to leave this place.

"Bang!" Shiler crashed directly into this door. To his surprise, this texture was even more fragile than he had thought. Sometimes he really didn't know who was more arrogant, Hugo or him.

Hugo was clearly projecting his own thoughts onto others. He himself wasn't interested in the inner world of ordinary people, so he felt that Shiler must be the same. He felt that Shiler wouldn't be able to see Dick at all, nor would he be able to study his room, so this texture was really just a thin layer pasted on, and it was very easy to pass through the model.

Just as Shiler was preparing to crash inside, the time for the second cycle was up. Returning to the hall, Shiler wanted to head straight for the second floor, but when he turned his head, he stopped in his tracks.

Bruce and Novi, who appeared at the doorway, had both turned into the appearance of living corpses, with large patches of corpse spots appearing on their skin, yet they themselves seemed unaware and continued to talk to themselves.

Shiler took two steps back and turned to walk upstairs. But the Dick that appeared had also turned into the appearance of a corpse, with veins rotting and skin peeling off. The moment Shiler brushed past him, Dick suddenly made a movement that didn't match the content of the memory—he turned his head.

Shiler seemed to have sensed something; he also turned his head to look, and the moment he met Dick's gaze, Shiler understood: he had been discovered.

The hand holding the doorknob slowly loosened, and the posture of preparing to crash into the door also returned to a standing position. Shiler turned around and looked at Dick, who was standing by the stairs, the last trace of firelight receding from his gray pupils.

The next second, the memory fragment collapsed. Endless power of death submerged this place, and everything turned into extreme darkness. Silent, lightless, the world fell into eternal night.

Shiler stood in the void of darkness and said in a low voice, "I just didn't want my friends to worry, so I let them see me all the time. You shouldn't have made them unable to see me."

Suddenly, a pale continent floated up beneath Shiler's feet, almost boundless at a glance. But when that incomparably huge figure appeared in the darkness, it was discovered that that continent was merely the top of its head. A skull as huge as a planet appeared before Shiler.

"Convert to death." His voice sounded like some kind of ballad. "Life is short, eternal night lasts forever; serving death is the only answer to eternity."

"What is eternity? It is not light, nor is it darkness." Shiler's voice connected incomparably naturally, just like the second half of a song. "Anything that cannot define me, anything that cannot write me, cannot be called eternal. Everyone you have ever seen eventually returns to death. But you have never seen clearly that my death is not death, but the beginning of another story."

That huge skull went still. He seemed to have seen something: a crashing airplane, the raging firelight, the suddenly shattering shell fragments, and that morning in Gotham that was neither warm nor bright.

"You escaped death." He seemed to suddenly become angry. "You are a shameful cheater! You are not worthy of serving death!"

Shiler merely lifted one of his hands gently: "I said, you shouldn't have made everyone unable to see me."

Suddenly, in this incomparably silent darkness, a low humming sound came from afar. The ring on Shiler's hand diffused a rich gray mist until it diluted the darkness. On the distant horizon, the figure of a giant dragon was faintly visible.

The mist around Shiler gradually condensed into substance, and several gray rings with ancient patterns appeared beside him, and then were swallowed by the rich gray mist, each flying toward the distance to find their masters.