The evil spirit was leaning against the wall, panting heavily. Clearly, using the power far beyond ordinary humans comes at a cost—he needs to consume his soul's strength. But fortunately, he dealt with that troublesome reporter; as long as he doesn't escape, he won't be discovered.
He glanced down at the left half of his body. His balance with the curse's power is constantly shifting: as he consumes his soul energy, the curse's power can advance further. The evil spirit's control over this body is weakening.
And the good news is that the curse on this body seems to counteract the spikes driven into him by that guy who attacked him earlier. These black magic spells don't mix well and will compete against each other.
In other words, as long as he waits a little longer, until the curse on the left arm spreads to the chest, the evil magic tool with the curse might become ineffective. By then, he can switch bodies.
He wants that big guy's body; it should increase his strength. But now he has one more thing to do, and that's to replenish his soul energy to prevent the curse on the left arm from killing him before it kills the spikes.
That's right, it's not that the evil spirit doesn't want to guard the corpse, but after using that move, he's weaker than the enhanced curse on the left arm. If he doesn't strengthen himself soon, he'll be devoured.
The method to replenish soul energy is quite simple, which is to kill. And the person doesn't necessarily have to be alive, those in the Psychic_Battlefield will work too. He's already summoned them to the real world, so even if the evil spirit can't go back now, he can find those dried corpses and kill them again to absorb a certain amount of strength.
The evil spirit controlled the body, searching for scattered dried corpses in the town. As he was swaying and staggering out of this street, he suddenly saw a somewhat familiar doll walking on the street.
The evil spirit was shocked: wasn't this the possessed doll he made? If he's here, who is controlling the doll?!
But just as he stared at the doll, the doll seemed to instinctively sense something, suddenly turned its head to stare at him, then bolted away.
Would the evil spirit let it run? He finally understood that these outsiders who came this time were each more difficult to deal with than the other. Now one of them must be controlling the doll; if he doesn't catch them, he will lose the doll!
Moreover, he needs a backup plan: what if that big guy is all show and no substance? He can't hang himself on this tree. In the end, the doll is still the most useful.
He rushed forward. But the doll wasn't running at an average speed, and its agility was impressive, using a shop's sign to leap onto the roof in a few swift moves, then started jumping back and forth between signs.
The evil spirit was stunned: even a circus performer didn't have such balance, right? Plus, he knows that although the doll is small and inconspicuous and seems easy to control, controlling it is fundamentally different from controlling a human body; not anyone can use it.
The most absurd thing is, this doll somehow got a grapple and used it skillfully. Places it couldn't reach were simply swung over using the grapple. The evil spirit chased an entire street but couldn't catch up.
Landing on a rooftop, Peter stood with his hands on his hips and shook his head at the panting evil spirit, "Why do they say reading is beneficial? The consequences of opposing modern education are evident now, aren't they?"
The first thing Peter did when he controlled the doll to return to the real world was to create a low-quality version of a Spider Silk Launcher.
Actually, it's not a Spider Silk Launcher; it's just a grapple that can shoot out and catch onto something.
If it were to lift a grown man, this grapple would have quite the technical complexity: the shape of the hook needs repeated adjustments, the rope must be sturdy enough, and the launching mechanism design isn't that simple either.
But now Peter is controlling a wooden doll weighing less than two pounds combined. Lifting this little thing is very simple. Moreover, it must be said that the dolls made by the evil spirit are quite sturdy, not falling apart even from several meters high. What else is there to say? I've swung hundreds and thousands of times in New York, surely it's no problem to swing around Big Creek Town, right?
After shaking off the evil spirit's chase, Peter's first task was to sneak into a house. Aunt Cain's old house definitely has some secrets yet to be uncovered. For instance, where is Old Berg researching black magic? He must have a base, right?
Although among the clues found earlier there was something like an air-raid shelter, presumably under the mountain by the waterfall, but that's a bit far, so Peter decided to search the house first.
Being small has its advantages. Even if Linda is still living in the house, Peter can waltz in openly. When Linda comes out to move around, he just hides in a corner—this girl hasn't received professional training and doesn't sense anything amiss.
Just like that, Peter sneaked into the tool room again. With the lowered perspective, he saw more things. He keenly noticed that a brick under the black box seemed loose.
He was too weak to move the box, but he could squeeze through a pile of tools to get to the bottom of the box.
This box was quite old, and wasn't assembled using any sophisticated method; it was just nailed together with some wooden planks. Peter directly applied the lever principle, pried off all the nails, and the box collapsed. The commotion successfully attracted Linda over.
Linda saw: the wooden board on the side of the box had fallen off, tools scattered everywhere, so she could only tidy up. And the box was completely broken and unusable, so she simply moved the box to another corner and stacked the tools on the table.
After cleaning up, she left. Peter also successfully returned to the original location of the box, carefully inspecting the bricks here. He found that these bricks were indeed newer than those in other places, but they seemed unused for a long time.
Digging was definitely not feasible, even if he could dig, he wouldn't be able to move the bricks. Peter thought: If he were Old Borg, it was impossible for him to prepare only one entrance to his secret room, maybe not even just two, at least three.
Shadow Spider-man was born and lived in an earlier era, thus he could understand the atmosphere of earlier times better. Although the witch hunt occurred earlier, in many remote rural areas in the past century, everyone was very secretive about black magic, and even until the end of the 20th century—the 1990s—similar hunts for so-called "Black Wizards" happened.
Though Old Berg was the head of the sect, he probably wouldn't dare to engage in such activities openly, let alone let others know. The best way was "a sly rabbit has three burrows" to avoid being blocked at home one day.
These three entrances should be placed in different places, and the difficulty of entry should vary—otherwise, if chased and unable to open the door and run inside, it would be ridiculous.
The entrance in the tool room should be the most secure because it's Old Borg's own home where he has the time to open the door slowly and then close it again slowly—this door is hard to open from the inside and outside.
The entrance outside the city, which is around the air-raid shelter, should be the easiest to open from the inside because if escaping from the base, one definitely runs from inside the town outwards, and the most likely used exit would be the one outside the city. So, that door should be easiest to open from the inside out.
Then the other entrance should be in between these two doors, in other houses within the town. This entrance would be easier to enter from outside because that way one could quickly reach the other two entrances, acting as a transit station.
Peter immediately thought of the burnt warehouse. The place stored things used by the Circus, so people generally wouldn't go there, and Old Borg appearing there as a circus performer wouldn't raise suspicion. And the warehouse's location was conveniently between Aunt Cain's house and the waterfall, forming a line through the three points.
This is very important—even for evil spirits, digging a tunnel would be quite painstaking. If you can't dig in a straight line, it becomes troublesome. Even if this evil spirit can always live on, continually possessing different people and digging, over these years, he'd probably only have tunneled through this line.
"Once again, this is the consequence of opposing modern education. If he'd attended school for a few days, he wouldn't resort to such a stupid method."
Thinking of this, Peter headed towards the warehouse. The warehouse had completely collapsed, but fortunately burned cleanly, so Peter didn't have to move anything here. After wandering around, he found a cellar cover.
Though it's a manhole cover, being enclosed within the building was already a bit strange. And the holes on this cover had very obvious signs of wear—definitely not left by regular maintenance activities, but showing someone frequently pried this cover over a period, leaving such marks.
Thus, Peter found a branch and used the lever principle to pry open the cover. Upon descending, he realized he had overestimated this evil spirit. "Finally, let me say again, humans really need to read more"—the underground passage the evil spirit excavated had completely collapsed.
Peter hadn't been in this town long, but after seeing the waterfall, he was able to deduce: Big Creek Town's underground water system was extremely rich, with the whole town built upon water veins, making the underground conditions very complex. Even if this were a big city, a subway might not be built here. And this evil spirit actually tried to conceal his base through underground transportation.
Examining around the area, sure enough, he found several skeletal remains. It seemed the evil spirit used his infinite possession capability to forcibly dig here: did neither waterproofing, nor support. Yet, he managed to dig through. "Indeed, superpowers are still too formidable."
However, it ends there. Though the underground passages were dug, frequent collapses and leaks turned the passage into an underground dark river by the time Peter observed it.
Although evil spirits don't need air, this place wouldn't drown him, the leaks causing collapses meant he couldn't use an adult's body to traverse. Otherwise, after acquiring an agent's body, he would have immediately used this route—since he hasn't, it simply means he can't.
But for Peter, it was no issue because the place wasn't entirely blocked, still leaving some gaps, enough for him as a small puppet to pass through, plus he didn't need air, allowing him to swim slowly and even make small flippers out of wooden planks, speeding up his swim.
Peter calculated the direction in his mind, swimming toward Aunt Cain's house, quickly feeling the water's flow—this proved there should be an air chamber above. Upon emerging at the water's surface, he realized he was in a water-filled cellar.