Erging from the narrow caves, Shiller landed and found himself in a spacious hall with nurous caves branching off from the walls, making the underground labyrinth much larger than they had imagined.
Shiller speculated that this might be the main reason Siltex Biologics had chosen this small village as its base. The place was perfectly hidden for evading search, known only to the locals who frequented it, otherwise, no one could find the laboratory's hiding spot.
"Which passage should we choose?" Shiller asked.
Bruce seed to suggest looking for Batman's traces, but if he hadn't taken this path, he might not have passed through these passages, and naturally there would be no traces left.
Shiller approached these passages and peered in; they were pitch black, making it hard to see what was actually inside.
"I have a suggestion," Bruce said, "I've spent so ti in caves like this before. Generally, we can use the direction of the wind to determine which way is out, but I don't feel any wind here. Perhaps we could rely on sounds."
"Sounds?"
"The echoes in such structures follow a pattern. We could shout down each path and listen to the echoes to guess the size of the spaces inside."
"You're not turning into a bat, are you?" Greed said half-jokingly, but he knew it made sense since Battleworld Batman's base was in such caves, and Bruce really had lived there for a while.
Before they could try this thod, a peculiar tremor ca from above, accompanied by a booming "hum."
The sound was so loud and distinct that they could tell it ca from the direction they had co without needing to distinguish much further.
Moreover, the sound resembled that of a lighthouse humming.
Most functional lighthouses emit a sound when their lights are on to attract ships' attention. To make the sound carry farther, its frequency and wavelength are controlled strictly, so it has a unique sound that is generally unmistakable.
"Has soone activated the lighthouse?" Shiller said, furrowing his brows.
Logically, there shouldn't have been any living people inside the lighthouse now.
No, wait!
Shiller and Greed exchanged glances.
They had been tricked!
Batman hadn't gone through the underground room's hole back into the caves at all. He'd hidden in another room of the lighthouse, and after they left, he had returned to the top of the lighthouse to activate it—that was his real intention!
Realizing this, Shiller imdiately understood. This was exactly what Batman had wanted them to do. He might even have foreseen this scene when constructing his story.
The most crucial clue that made him believe Batman must have left through the underground caves was that letter claiming Siltex Biologics had a secret lab.
This was a logical conclusion—if Siltex was indeed developing the vaccine from fish, the secret lab couldn't be far from the fish, and such matters would definitely be conducted in secrecy, not likely set up in the village. The only remaining option was the underground caves.
Primary Universe Batman, through that last letter, led them to believe that his feigned severe injury was to make everyone explore the lighthouse while he went to the caves to find the lab and obtain evidence to expose Siltex.
Instead, his goal was to lure everyone into the underground caves while he stayed alone in the lighthouse to activate it.
Shiller rembered seeing the shifted corpse of Jeff, a trace intentionally left by Batman to make him think about how Batman had overco Reed, giving more proof that he went down to the caves and leading them to chase him here.
"Let's head back!" the Pale Knight said, "The lighthouse being activated is probably not a good sign; we need to get back quickly."
"No," Shiller shook his head refusing, and said, "How do you know he isn't just drawing us back out by activating the lighthouse? If we keep following his logic, he'll always have us on a string."
Bruce also nodded and said, "Exactly, that cunning Hunter must have so secrets we are unaware of. I don't want to be played by him anymore."
"You're still not going to talk, even now?" Shiller stared intently at Greed. He and Batman were definitely the ones who had put the most effort into the storytelling part.
"I've said all I needed to say..."
"Have you? Including about the sheep's hoof prints made from wood ashes?"
The other two's gazes now rested on Greed's face.
Shiller gently pinched his fingertip and said, "Don't tell the traces left by the Demon just happened to match the color of the ashes left when wood in the fireplace burns out."
Greed's eyes flickered, and he said, "What do you an? Are you suggesting that the footprints of the Wandering we saw were fake?"
"If I hadn't gotten a bit of ash on my hand after burning down the house when I went to check the ruins, I still wouldn't have understood how those footprints appeared."
"What do you think?"
"That footprint was drawn by you, Mr. Photographer," Shiller said, staring at him with icy eyes. "You deliberately threw out what Madeline wanted, led her around in the snow, and had her leave footprints to confuse our judgnt and lead us to attribute everything to supernatural events."
"But you all saw, I never made any movents to bend down and draw the footprints."
"That's because those footprints weren't drawn on your feet but on Madeline's hands," Shiller explained. "Madeline moved on her hands only, and after she took a step, we saw a black hoof print appear where she had moved."
"And from beginning to end, you were the only one who touched the gun that Madeline held," Shiller added. "You picking up the gun was no accident, as if she had shapes drawn with ashes on her hands, there would definitely be traces on the gun. You kept holding that gun because you were afraid soone would discover that."
"Otherwise, why didn't you just throw the gun to one of us if we are all strangers to you? Aren't you just escaping the monster's pursuit by doing that, or just throwing it on the ground? What does the monster's fate have to do with you?"
Pale Knight's eyelids twitched, and recalling now, Greed's behavior at that ti was indeed strange, especially when he picked up the gun and then threw it downstairs.
"But I've been right under your eyes the whole ti; how could I have had ti to draw patterns on Madeline's hands?"
"You managed to kill soone in advance and move the body; is drawing a pattern with the ash from the fireplace wood that hard?"
"But Madeline was alive, how could she just sit there and let draw?"
"That indicates that she wasn't fully capable of moving at that ti," Shiller said with conviction. "When we saw Madeline, her condition was very abnormal, no different from being insane."
"Are you saying I drove her mad? I'm just a photographer, I don't have such skills."
Shiller could tell that Greed was actually saying that although in reality he was a psychiatrist who could perform hypnosis, in the ga he was just a photographer, incapable of using such skills.
Madeline's body showed no wounds of significance; she probably wasn't knocked out either. Judging by so of her movents before her death, it didn't seem like she was drugged. Greed must have subdued her through so other thod.
Shiller suddenly thought of Madeline's continuous screams of "He's coming."
He squinted at Greed, guessing his motives, since from the beginning Greed seed to be leading them towards thinking about the Wandering, and as soon as the footprints appeared, it validated their speculation, sending their thoughts irreversibly down the path of Wandering's characteristics.
In the ga, their thinking seed to be limited, just like Universe Batman had said at the beginning, it's like they could only think about one thing at a ti.
They were busy reasoning about the features of the Wandering, naturally overlooking many things. Shiller began to understand why Joker wanted to return to the cabin; he probably wanted to search for missing clues.
"Should we continue exploring the cave or go back and find Batman?" asked Pale Knight.
Shiller knew very well that if they continued to explore the cave now, it would take days to make sense of it due to the number of cave paths, and they were ill-equipped with enough supplies. Turning around now, getting lost would be troubleso.
So that wasn't an option. Shiller hesitated whether to walk upstream or return to the Lighthouse.
Just then, a faint sound ca from the path they had climbed in from, "Are you still there? I've found sothing, want to co look..."
That was Night Owl's voice. Shiller didn't delay any longer and climbed back into that cave path and returned to the spot where they had parted ways with Night Owl.
The flashlight flickered, and Night Owl said, "I walked upstream, and I found a big door there, I think we should go check it out."
Without delay, they all headed upstream, walked for about twenty to thirty minutes, took several turns, and arrived at the big door ntioned by Night Owl, which was also the source of the river.
Shiller saw that the river wasn't naturally ford but flowed from dozens of water pipes embedded in the cave wall. The fish also jumped out from there; this was indeed a breeding farm.
Shiller then looked at the door, a very tall security door with three rings entangled together, intersected by a cross, and below it was written in English letters "Siltex Biologics."
Well, that was to ensure that agents didn't go through the wrong door when they ca.
But being so confident also just demonstrated the strength of the person behind it, Shiller thought, wondering what was inside the laboratory.
Just as Shiller contemplated how to open the door, to their shock, a rumbling sound of gears shing ca through, and the door slowly opened.
Behind the door appeared a row of automatic machine guns, which turned their barrels and aid them at the people at the door.
The only thing Shiller could be certain of was that none of them had the ability to instantly sprint out of the firing range.
At that mont, a figure stepped out from behind him.
Greed stood in the center of the doorway, with the light from inside the door shining on his back, as if trying to slice him out of this world, yet he just stood there, smiling and said.
"Welco ho."
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