Chapter 470: Those Who Were Once Great (Part 3)

Just after the figures of Bruce, Lex, and Clark left this hollow space, Schiller scanned the underground hollow, ignored the half-pound of micro-cameras Bruce had left behind, and prepared to get to work.

Although it was called an experiment, it was actually very simple. Schiller turned directly into Gray Fog and floated above the monster egg. The moment Gray Fog touched the monster egg, the monster egg disappeared.

Immediately after, Schiller focused his attention on the ring on his hand. In an instant, he appeared on the floating island in the familiar gray fog space. He turned his head and saw the giant monster egg placed right beside him.

Schiller circled the monster egg once. He discovered that although the heartbeat inside the egg had become a bit faster, it was still very stable, with no sign of breaking its shell at all.

Since that was the case, Schiller decided to leave it here for now and deal with the matters outside first.

After returning to the manor's basement, Gray Fog let out a happy "Yay!" and then began to feast.

Gray mist permeated, covering the entire hollow space. The sound of "crunch, crunch, crunch" was incessant. In just a few minutes, the Kryptonite on the device had all been gnawed away.

"Hiccup... so full!"

Gray Fog let out a satisfied sigh and then went silent, seemingly focusing on digesting again.

Schiller looked at the empty underground hollow. He had just taken a step to leave when he suddenly remembered something and muttered to himself in a low voice, "Oh, right, did Lex say that the previous me left some things here?"

"Alright, let me see, where should it be hidden?"

He first sized up this hollow, then decisively stepped out of here.

The first reason was that this hollow really didn't have any place to hide things. The second was that if the previous Schiller were an ordinary person, the radiation level here would be enough to kill him; it was unlikely he would hide things in such a place.

Schiller walked out, searched the hall and corridors once, found nothing, and then returned to the cellar they had come down from earlier.

In the cellar and the corridor leading from the cellar to the hall, Schiller checked carefully several times. Finally, he unscrewed a lamp at the top and discovered there seemed to be a secret compartment above it. He reached up, and sure enough, he felt a metal object.

After getting that thing down, Schiller discovered it was a very small safe, so small it could even be held in one's arms. Recalling Lex's description earlier, Schiller guessed that it might contain things related to the Dionysium factor.

Thus, he separated a wisp of Gray Fog, preparing to unlock the safe's door.

On the ground of the snow-covered courtyard, with a "pop" sound, the cellar door opened. The door had been open for quite a while, yet no one walked out from inside.

After a few minutes, Bruce and Lex climbed out of the cellar door one after another. Both looked around with some confusion, seemingly feeling deep doubt about the fact that there were no enemies.

"It seems Clark took care of them all," Lex said, looking at the traces on the snow around them.

"Impossible, Clark doesn't kill."

Lex gave a disdainful "snort" and said, "How long have you known him? Judging by your tone, it sounds like ten years, but in reality, it hasn't even been a day. How do you know he..."

"Hey, guys, I'm back!"

Just then, Clark descended from the sky. He stood with his hands on his hips and landed slowly on the ground. Bruce frowned and asked, "What did you go do?"

Lex saw that Clark was covered in chill, his hair and eyebrows full of snowflakes, looking as if he had been standing in the snow for a long time.

"I got rid of those annoying agents."

"Got rid of them? Where did you get rid of them to?" Lex asked with some confusion, "You didn't really finish them off, did you?"

"Of course not. I wouldn't do such a cruel thing. I just sent them back to their hometown."

"Isn't that just finishing them off?"

Clark waved his hand helplessly and said:

"No, they didn't say they were from the FBI? I tied them together, then lifted them up and flew to the FBI base, and put them down."

"My movements were very fast. No agent saw me. They should be thanking me; otherwise, on such a snowy day, how would they have made it back?"

Bruce and Lex opened their mouths at the same time. The two looked at each other, and Bruce said with some hesitation, "Have you considered that they might not be from the FBI?"

"But they said themselves they were FBI, and even if they weren't, the FBI should send them home, right."

"The FBI might send them 'back to their hometown'."

Bruce glanced at Lex, who was shivering in the snow, and Clark, who was panting after just exercising. He said, "You two should go back to your rooms."

After saying this, he turned and walked forward, stepping through the thick snow, crossing the courtyard, and returning to the banquet hall.

In the banquet hall, it was still a mess. Tablecloths had fallen to the ground, and candlesticks and tableware were scattered everywhere. Bruce stepped over these obstacles and walked straight inside. He still had a score to settle with Benjamin.

According to his deduction, Benjamin should be quietly observing the situation in the courtyard from a higher floor. It could be the high floors of the manor's main building, or it could be the high floors of the adjacent tower. Bruce decided to investigate the high floors of the main building first.

Just as he reached the fourth floor, Bruce discovered some clues. There were almost no ordinary residents here, but there were a large number of traces of human activity.

After going up another floor to the fifth, Bruce was even more confused. It was filled with a bunch of messy things, and he couldn't understand what they were used for at all.

It looked like someone was deliberately guiding someone to go upward, Bruce deduced. But he was certain that the target being guided was not himself, because those traces had already been checked by someone. And Bruce felt that this was not a clever trap; at the very least, he certainly wouldn't fall for it.

Just as he crossed the corridor, turned a corner, and intended to walk into the stairwell, he saw a corpse lying on the floor of the platform in the middle of the stairs—it was Benjamin.

Bruce's eyes narrowed. After walking up the stairs, he began to examine Benjamin's corpse. From the state of the wound and the blood, it looked like Benjamin had died not long ago. The person who acted was very experienced, killing with one shot.

From the situation around, Benjamin might have been besieged. Bruce couldn't quite lock onto a target, because those banquet guests certainly didn't have the ability to kill Benjamin.

But apart from those guests, the only ones with this ability were Bruce's party, or other agents.

Thinking of this, Bruce deduced that perhaps it was internal conflict among the agents that led to Benjamin's death, and the person most likely to have acted was Benjamin's deputy, Kyla.

Thinking this, Bruce continued to walk up while holding a Batarang in his hand. After arriving at the sixth floor, he discovered that only one room's door was open, and the light spilling out shone on the floor and walls, as if cutting off the corridor.

Bruce walked past, sticking to the wall. But just as he poked his head to look into the room, Kyla, who was standing in the center of the room, also saw him. Kyla said, "Come in, Mr. Wei En."

Realizing he had already been discovered, Bruce didn't intend to sneak anymore. He walked in, but still didn't relax his vigilance. Kyla stood opposite him and said to him:

"Mr. Wei En, I have some not-so-good news to tell you."

Bruce was silent, but Kyla didn't care about his attitude and said on her own, "Just a moment ago, for some reason, I finished off that idiot named Benjamin."

"The motive and method are not important..." Kyla said while walking behind the table, took out a document from the drawer, and threw it on the table.

With a "pop" sound, Kyla continued, "I found this in Benjamin's briefcase, personal information about your butler. Do you want to take a look?"

Bruce's gaze fell on the thick stack of documents on the table. Based on the thickness of the paper, he estimated the volume of the information, then stood silently in place without moving.

Kyla waved the pistol in her hand and said:

"I am different from that idiot Benjamin. I have no intention of being an enemy of the Wei En Group. Waiting for you here is just to give you this information as a favor. I hope you don't mind what the agents did before."

"That's it. You can take your time reading it. I'll leave first."

"By the way, it's best not to try to stop me with the darts in your hand. Just a moment ago, communications were restored. The satellite phone in my hand has reconnected. If you make a move, headquarters will know immediately."

Saying this, Kyla strode past Bruce and left the room. After she went down a floor, she came to a room on the fifth floor, where Alfred was looking at her with some helplessness.

About ten minutes ago, Kyla led Alfred to the room where Benjamin kept the materials. Kyla walked behind the table, pulled the information out of the folder, and then carefully sized up the content on it.

"Oh, sorry, I've been a bit curious, but Benjamin was very vigilant, and I didn't find a chance to look. Do you want to see it?"

Alfred shook his head and said, "When you reach my age, you won't want to look back at your own resume. It's full of dark history."

Hearing this, Kyla instinctively glanced at the "Emotions" column in Alfred's personal information, at that long string of names.

"Alright, regardless, let's deal with it as soon as possible, as if none of this ever happened."

Alfred shook his head and said, "No need for such trouble. With Bruce's intelligence, if he really suspected me, he would have investigated this information clearly long ago. Since that's the case, whether or not to destroy these isn't that important."

Kyla put the information back on the table somewhat helplessly and then said:

"Even if you and Bruce have a very good relationship, according to my observation, he is a very typical American, and the kind who instinctively suspects everything."

Seeing Alfred's indifferent expression, Kyla sighed. She came to the opposite side of Alfred and said to him:

"Before, you taught me many things. You really are a good teacher. Whether in public or private, I hope you can continue to live a peaceful life."

Seeing Alfred's appearance of not wanting to discuss this topic, Kyla still insisted:

"I must be sure that young Wei En doesn't suspect you, or rather, that he also has feelings for you, instead of it just being you unilaterally giving. Otherwise, sooner or later, he will hurt you."

Kyla reached out to push Alfred and said, "You go downstairs and wait. I want to see, with this information placed in front of young Wei En, what he will do. If he really dares to betray you, I'll blow his head off with one shot."

Kyla had feelings for Alfred, and Alfred felt the same for her. The fact that he would so carefully teach Kyla was actually pouring a part of his family affection into her. Facing Kyla's good intentions, Alfred also couldn't firmly refuse.

【The Female CEO's All-Powerful Soldier】

Thus, after Kyla handed the information to Bruce, Bruce stood behind the table, looking at the pile of information on the desktop. From his current angle, he could only see the first page of the information, which had Alfred's basic information written on it.

Bruce stepped forward, picked up the information, aligned it on the table, but didn't open it, instead taking out a lighter.

Watching the paper slowly turn into black ash in the burning flame, Bruce turned to look outside the floor-to-ceiling window.

Behind him, the first page of information was soon burned out. The line at the very top, "KGB—MI6 Agent: Alfred Pennyworth," completely disappeared in the flames.

And Bruce stood by the window, looking at the sky-filling snow outside. What he thought of, however, was whether his butler had seen snow bigger and more beautiful than this in the vast snowfields of the northern country.

"But there is one more point I want to confirm." In the room on the fifth floor, Kyla touched her chin and asked with some hesitation. She said, "Of course, if it can't be said, just pretend I didn't ask."

"There's nothing that can't be said. Now your rank is higher than mine."

"Actually, it's nothing important. It's just the 'Philby List'. You know, it's very difficult for me to persuade that bunch of idiots to change their minds. I have to ensure you hid it very tightly; otherwise, if it gets lost, it'll be quite troublesome."

"I did indeed hide it before, but later, I wanted to completely say goodbye to my past identity and return everything to its owner. Thus, I contacted Moscow and let them go to a contact point I specified to retrieve the list."

"After I sent the list over, they sent agents to retrieve it. The list should have already returned to Moscow by now."

"Returned to Moscow?" Kyla frowned and said very seriously, "Impossible. I have been in constant contact with Moscow. If the list had long since returned to Moscow, how could the Philby remains case have caused such a huge stir?"

Alfred also frowned and said, "I am very certain that the communication between Moscow and me is trustworthy, and absolutely no one else intervened. As for the whereabouts of the list..."

He shook his head and said, "... I don't know either."

At this time, in the manor's basement, Schiller successfully used Gray Fog to cheat and pry open the safe.

After opening the safe door, what came into his view was not the Dionysium factor reagent he had expected, but a plain-looking folder.

On the folder, a badge imprinted with a sickle, hammer, and red flag was shining brightly. ===== CHAPTER 471 =====