"Have you seen Schiller too?" Peter asked.
Bruce nodded and said, "Yes, but he's elusive. I don't know what he's up to. He was one of the first among us to arrive, but he doesn't seem to want to be noticed by the evil spirits, so he's been avoiding them."
Peter knew more about Schiller than Bruce did, because the Shadow Spider-man had traveled through the Marvel Universe for years. Nick often hired him at a high price to do dirty work, and the number of top officials of the Three Great Empires who died at his hands was easily in the triple digits. He had a deep understanding of all the major Marvel heroes, but of course, he didn't know the full story, and like other heroes, he thought Schiller was a counterpart from a different universe.
"Schiller is a professional. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't evade passively unless being noticed by the evil spirits is an even more terrifying prospect."
"Does being discovered mean death?" Bruce speculated.
Peter shook his head and said, "It shouldn't. Schiller told me I've been discovered, but I haven't died. There might be some more troublesome consequences. But none of that matters; we need to figure out what's going on in this world."
"Have you gathered any intelligence on your side?" Bruce asked.
"This town was controlled by Mormons a long time ago. We found their scriptures in the church. Additionally, Kate and I suspect that it might have been a force opposing the Mormons that wiped out the people in the town."
Peter briefly shared the intelligence and conjectures he knew with Bruce, and Bruce said, "The reanimated Joker actor we encountered earlier was a member of the circus, and this circus was likely involved in the evil act of human trafficking..."
As soon as they exchanged information, they immediately connected the dots. Bruce thought for a moment and said, "The circus period might have been the time when the Mormon church in town started and developed. I estimated it was some decades ago, based on the age of the youngest in town, Linda. It's something from her grandfather's era."
"This town might have developed this way," Peter said. "Big Creek Town doesn't have a good geographic location, and there's no decent big city nearby, but from various clues, this town was bustling for a while. To support tourism and the service industry, a sufficient population is needed. The town's original population was too small, and inbreeding would result in a low birth rate. Abducting people through the circus and forcing them to reproduce could have caused the town's population to explode."
"That does seem like the most likely theory. However, as far as I know, not everyone supported this, especially those missionaries who had traveled outside. Take Linda's father, for instance. He might not have fully agreed with the doctrine and even wanted to escape."
"What's the deal with Aunt Kane?" Peter said. "Since Linda's father didn't agree, and her mother is an outsider, how could an outsider agree with such a doctrine more than the locals do, and even accompany him back to this place?"
Then suddenly, Peter seemed to realize something, and he said, "That might not be Aunt Kane."
"What do you mean?"
"I know this might be shocking, but I have to say, Kate and I once saw Aunt Kane's dead body in the bathroom."
"What?!"
Peter recalled, "At that time, we already suspected that Aunt Kane might be dead, but we thought she was just an evil spirit resurrected. But what if it was someone else controlling her body?"
"The clown we encountered in the circus warehouse also suddenly came alive in a corpse state. Now it seems like it could also be the work of evil spirits. It may be the same evil spirit controlling these bodies."
"But there are things that don't add up," Peter continued, "If Aunt Kane was originally a good person and was only controlled by an evil spirit after death, how could she have allowed her own daughter to have children so early before?"
"Maybe she was already controlled before that," Bruce proposed an astounding possibility. He said, "A rich girl like Aunt Kane, once she's not under control or escapes, the consequences could be disastrous. If you were the head of a heresy, would you let her live? It seems like from the moment she stepped into the town, she was already dead and possessed. That way, she could never escape or expose what's going on here.
"But I don't understand; if the evil spirit was from the town, how could it mimic Aunt Kane so perfectly? Even Kate didn't notice anything was wrong."
Peter was implying here that Kate is Batwoman and also trained as police personnel. Her ability to observe details was also very strong, not to mention Batman himself had seen Aunt Kane and didn't notice anything amiss. Controlling a completely unfamiliar person isn't that simple. If this evil spirit were poor, it wouldn't mimic the habits of the wealthy, and Batman would definitely spot the discrepancies at once.
"This just proves that the evil spirit might be able to peer into people's memories, so it can imitate them so accurately," Bruce said, "Or, this might be its special skill. If it didn't have this ability, how could it have fooled so many people into this memory world?"
Bruce briefly explained to Peter his speculation about this psychic battlefield, namely that the people here might not only be townsfolk but also tourists who have come to Big Creek Town over the years.
"It seems to be exactly like that." Peter said, stroking his chin, "Now the town's history has roughly become clear: from the end of the last century to the beginning of this one, the Big Creek Town circus toured All America, causing a sensation and attracting many tourists. However, the so-called circus was merely a tool for human trafficking, and the religious forces entrenched in this isolated town took advantage of this tourism boom to kill or imprison tourists and further develop the population. But one day, there were some accidents, leading to a massive population decline in the town, and the small town was almost unable to develop further. By today, it has become a ghost town, and the only living people left might also just be puppets controlled by evil spirits."
Bruce nodded, affirming this conjecture, then said, "We can't directly assume that evil spirits must be Mormons, after all, as you said, the destruction of the town doesn't benefit Mormonism, it actually seems more like the work of their enemies. As for them continuing to pull others down after revenge, it might be because they have already lost their humanity and reason. This psychic battlefield might have emerged from that, as a means of self-rescue by those Mormons because they can no longer survive in the real world, so they created such a psychic battlefield, and set it up in the way Mormons prefer: there's no tea or coffee, no music or art, no foreign information, not even hospitals, all you need to do is pray when sick, and the only activities are religious gatherings—that's exactly what those top Mormons most want to see, isn't it?"
"Indeed, they've even roped in tourists they previously persecuted just to expand their population. Their desire for breeding is truly perverse."
Bruce paused for a moment and then continued, "So now it seems that evil spirits control the real world, while Mormonism controls the psychic battlefield. But judging by their irreconcilable situation, they're unlikely to settle for that; they must want to completely destroy each other and seize the other's domain. Our presence here is proof of that."
"How did you come here?" Peter asked.
"I went to the waterfall, found some clues, but also got soaked, and on the way back, I caught a fever, and then blacked out, and found myself here."
"Same here, after the car accident, the wound on my head never got treated, I lost a lot of blood, and probably showed symptoms of excessive blood loss. I lost consciousness while looking for clues in the cemetery."
"This isn't a coincidence." Bruce said, "It appears we can only enter the psychic battlefield under conditions of extreme physical weakness. If our bodies aren't weak enough, the owner of the psychic battlefield might find a way to interfere with the real world, causing various accidents to injure us, forcing us to enter here. Many tourists might have come in the same way."
After pausing, he asked, "So how did the car accident that injured your head happen exactly?"
"Honestly, I don't know." Peter said, "I only remember seeing something, and then when I came to my senses, the car had already flipped."
"You don't have any memory from that time?"
Peter nodded and said, "Recently, my mental state hasn't been good, and I had an argument with Kate, so it happened like that."
"Something's off," Bruce said, "This might be caused by someone behind the scenes, just like me. In fact, my condition was quite good, but after entering the town, I started having frequent nightmares, and after staying a night in that abandoned house, I caught a cold, and if not for that, I wouldn't have had a fever."
"Your suspicion makes a lot of sense," Peter said, "If the real and psychic worlds are indeed in conflict, then they must be trying to win over people from each other's worlds. The owner of the psychic battlefield might have used tricks to make us injured and weak, so that they could drag us in."
"No, it could have been an involuntary pull," Bruce said, "Shiller told me that he hadn't been discovered by the evil spirit and cautioned me to be careful, suggesting that this might be a passive mechanism. Once someone becomes very weak within the town's boundaries, their spirit might be drawn into this small town. If they get lost here, they might never be able to leave."
"Wait a minute," Peter said, "Shiller said he already found me. I thought he meant he saw me when I entered the psychic battlefield. But could it be that he had his eye on me from the moment I entered the town?"
Bruce quickly caught on and said, "That car accident, he might have intended to drag you in directly through it. It's just that the accident didn't cause enough damage, and your willpower was strong enough that he couldn't succeed."
"But what's so special about me?" Peter asked.
Bruce recalled seeing a police-issued handgun at Peter's waist while helping with the overturned car and said, "Because you're a police officer, and a police officer from Siv City at that."
"You mean, because I'm a police officer, if I disappear here, many people will come looking for me, and he'll use that to bring people from the city here, and then figure out a way to pull them into the psychic battlefield?"
"Probably worse than that," Bruce seemed more pessimistic, saying, "You said that you had no memory of the moment the car accident happened, is there any chance you were already possessed by the evil spirit then?"
Peter broke out in a cold sweat, suddenly realizing why Shiller was warning him that way. He said, "If my spirit body is here, then who is controlling my body out there?"