Bruce listened to the agent's account of what he saw in the real world and frowned slightly in confusion, then said, "If this is your brother's plan, how can he be sure to lock the evil spirit in one body? Does he have research on mysticism?"
"He naturally has his ways," the agent said, "You can imagine, he has been in the psychic battlefield for so long, he couldn't possibly just be hiding from that evil spirit, he must have done something else. That's what we need to find out in the psychic battlefield."
"You said he has the ability of spirit tracking, is there a possibility that he tracked something else here?"
"What do you think is here?"
Bruce shook his head and said, "It can already be seen that the evil spirit controlling Joker actors and Aunt Cain, as well as all the mummified bodies, should be the high level of Mormonism. However, as I said, Mormonism won't destroy the town. The person who caused the town's decline overnight back then was someone else. I don't know exactly who this person is. But I think we should check the waterfall."
The agent nodded, and they walked out of the church together. On the way, Bruce told the agent about the memories he saw in the cave behind the waterfall.
"I see," the agent said, "The evil spirit weaved many lies, but there's one thing he likely wasn't lying about, and that's that the one who seems like Linda Titi's Binger Berg is actually his son. This boy must be incredibly smart, and precisely because he's smart enough, he aroused the suspicion of the Mormon leadership. Such a cult that controls others through brainwashing and hypnosis fears nothing more than a naturally bad seed."
Bruce could deeply understand this. Moral education in itself is a form of brainwashing. So, can evil geniuses whose natures can't be overturned by normal social moral education be brainwashed by evil?
Perhaps those with only a bit of cleverness or not sufficiently evil tendencies would choose to join and climb up. But like the evil geniuses of Gotham City, there's a type of person who inherently cannot integrate into any society.
If they live in a normal society, they oppose it; if they live in a cult society, they naturally oppose it as well. They are isolated islands among mountains, hungry wolves among sheep. Their evil and cruelty never stem from the need for profit but from the satisfaction of their spiritual enjoyment. This mode of gaining pleasure is innate. If brainwashing worked, they wouldn't be unable to integrate into normal society.
And if such people happen to have extremely high intelligence, they are a disaster for any society. Every society needs stability, and a society led by a cult, being anti-human, needs extreme stability and order even more, to firmly control the believers. Once such a society sees the emergence of a similar evil genius, the consequences are disastrous.
Think about what would happen if the Joker fell into a cult? Do you expect the cult to brainwash him? Do you expect him to follow the doctrines and persecute others in a religious way? Or would he turn into a great hero, point out the cult's errors, and liberate all the believers?
Of course, he wouldn't do that; he would only find this buzzing group of people annoying and boring. And then, when his anger reached a certain point, he would send these annoying insects to meet Satan.
And judging by the town's final result, someone surely did this. He destroyed almost the entire town, killed off those cultists and believers who had controlled it for hundreds of years, forcing the Mormon leadership to create a self-deceptive perfect society in the psychic battlefield.
From all the clues, this person was most likely the little Binger hiding in the cave roasting fish.
However, there are some questions. The agent and Linda had more contact; he knows that the child bones dug up from the cemetery were indeed around four years old, no older. How did this four-year-old child destroy the entire town?
Even something like the Scarecrow, a master of poison, was probably still playing in the mud at four. Even a bomb maniac like the Joker couldn't have gotten his hands on a big bomb at that age.
The agent felt that this evil spirit might not be so easily eliminated, given his ability to possess bodies. If he can't beat you, he can escape; if he can't escape, he can hide. And to completely eradicate this evil spirit, he must figure out how the culprit who destroyed the town achieved it back then.
The two of them arrived near the waterfall in the psychic battlefield. As soon as the agent approached, he smelled a bloody scent. Bruce shook his head at him, saying, "Peter killed someone who attacked him here, and we put the body in the cave."
The agent didn't let down his guard, looking around, and found that there was no difference from the waterfall in the real world. But as Bruce led him near the cave entrance, he seemed to hear some sounds faintly.
"Did you hear anything?" the agent asked.
Bruce shook his head and said, "No, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, let's go in."
As soon as they entered, they saw a very bloody scene. The human fragments that Peter had carried in before were just piled there. However, Bruce immediately noticed something unusual and said, "This thing has been tampered with."
He began searching around for footprints or similar traces, but found nothing. The agent held his breath, saying, "I really heard something, it sounded like bird calls."
"Bird calls?" Bruce frowned and listened carefully. He wanted to say that hearing bird calls in the forest was normal, but then he remembered his previous experiences in the forest. It seemed like there were no birds in this forest. Whether in the real world or the Psychic_Battlefield, he had never heard bird calls.
The agent walked out, climbed to the top of the waterfall, and then descended to the bottom. He stared at the lake and said, "It seems to be underwater."
"Underwater?!" Bruce frowned deeply.
The agent quickly took off his jacket and jumped into the water. Bruce stayed on the shore to provide support. He watched as the agent's silhouette quickly disappeared underwater.
The agent swam downwards, but as he swam, he realized he didn't need to breathe anymore, as if he had turned into a fish, able to move freely underwater.
Soon after, he felt his body lighten, as if he had landed on the ground. He looked around; it was dark, so he couldn't see anything clearly, but there was a light spot ahead, so he walked in that direction.
As he approached the light, he found it was a pink sphere, about the height of a person. The agent reached out and gently touched the sphere, feeling a massive pull, his consciousness going blank for a moment.
When he awoke again, he suddenly found himself in a pink room. The walls around him were semi-transparent pink, and through them, he could see countless circular, pale pink rooms, like fish eggs crowded together.
He heard some noise behind him and turned around to see a little boy sitting quietly behind a table, watching him.
Despite his age, the little boy's face bore a strong resemblance to Linda. The agent tentatively called out, "Binger?"
"It's me. Your brother told me you don't like wasting time; I'm the same, so I'll tell you the truth as briefly as possible."
"The destruction of the town was indeed my doing. I can't say it was out of righteousness, probably just revenge. Because they killed me, so I had to kill them. It's as simple as that."
"Those bastards forced my mother, ultimately leading to my birth. Unfortunately, my mother was a foolish and awkward woman. She felt she should hate this child, yet the maternal instincts from hormonal changes made her unable to completely abandon the child. And because I wasn't liked by my biological father, my grandmother loathed both of us deeply. We could only rely on each other, which forged a strong bond."
"After giving birth to me, because I was the elder's 13th child, my brothers and sisters spread rumors that I was the Son of Satan, fabricating various lies to make the elders dislike me even more. My grandmother, acting on their expressions, incessantly abused me and my mother. For a long time, we didn't even have enough food to fill our bellies."
"But it's not entirely a rumor. My grandfather, my nominal father Berg, was a well-educated and quite intelligent man. He taught me how to use modern equipment, allowing me to learn a lot from the radio. To obtain food, I made some small tools for fishing, which worked very well. I would eat part of the catch myself and bring the rest back for my mother. That's how we survived."
"However, when they saw that couldn't break us, they found a way to separate me from my mother. They sent her to work on a farm, doing the dirtiest and hardest work, leaving me to be cared for by my grandmother, who only abused me."
"Although I had ways to get food, without my mother to cover for me, I was once caught when I went to the waterfall. They found me catching fish, and it was one of those roe-bearing salmons. They claimed it was an extremely vile demonic act and planned to burn me at the stake."
"At that time, I learned from radio news about an incident of illegal discharges and water pollution in Siv City industrial area. A year before I died, the mayor of Big Creek Town accepted a bribe from a Siv City councilor to connect factory pipes to nearby water systems, releasing a large amount of untested factory wastewater. Besides various excessive heavy metals, it also contained a very special stimulant neurotransmitter, commonly known as a stimulant. For a year, the town's residents and tourists had been drinking this wastewater."
"So, posing as a tourist, I wrote a letter exposing this matter but deliberately delivered it to the mayor's desk. When this news reached Siv City, the councilors, to preserve their careers, orchestrated an unprecedented tragedy, manipulating the water supply system to poison the entire town with a chemical agent that caused chronic poisoning. In the end, within a month, everyone died."
The agent frowned slightly and said, "This sounds too crazy."
"Nothing crazy about it. The councilors, factory owners, mayor, and heretics were colluding with each other but were also at odds. When there was a common interest, they could collaborate; in case of conflict, they would be the first to push each other off a cliff."
"Most of the city council members have strong political backgrounds, factory owners have money, and the mayor has the guards, while the heretics are merely tools for profiteering. They overestimated their importance, and when it was time to be discarded, they were discarded without hesitation."
"As for the ordinary people brainwashed by the cult, in this game, they weren't even considered as foils, just fools caught in the crossfire."