No way... Could Mr. Azk be the so-called first Baron Ramde? This is a figure from over 1,400 years ago... No, how can we be sure that the person in the portrait is the first Baron Ramde... Klein stared at the oil painting, his mind in a state of confusion, as if suddenly realizing that all the people around him had turned into monsters, or that the entire world was just a dream of the gods.
He suddenly raised his head, stared at the middle-aged man with yellow hair in front of him, reached into his armpit holster and took out a revolver, and said in a deep voice:
"This is not an antique. If you don't clarify the situation, I will arrest you for fraud and prosecute you!"
He didn't care whether the prosecution belonged to the police department or not. His sole purpose was to intimidate the other party and obtain information!
Meanwhile, Klein tapped his left teeth twice, activated his telepathy, and monitored the emotional color changes of the target.
The yellow-haired middle-aged man was startled and answered in a frightened and muddled voice:
"No, I don't know if it's an antique either. No, I heard it was an antique, but I don't understand this at all. I really don't, I don't even know many words, um, words."
His eyes rolled, he looked around, as if wanting to call for help.
But at this moment, he saw Klein adjust the cylinder and the trigger, putting on a look of wanting to kill the suspect who was resisting.
He straightened his back in one swift movement and dared not look around anymore.
"How did you get this oil painting?" Klein asked seriously in his heart.
The yellow-haired middle-aged man's lips moved and he smiled coquettishly:
"Officer, this is what my grandfather found in the castle. Forty years ago, the exterior walls and the second-floor rooms collapsed, and some items appeared, items that the previous people couldn't find, among them was this oil painting. No, no, no, it's not this oil painting. The original oil painting was already very worn out and couldn't be preserved, so my grandfather asked someone to imitate it. Um, this is the one you just saw. I didn't deceive you. The oil painting from forty years ago can indeed be considered an antique..."
"Then are you sure this is the portrait of the first Baron Ramde?" Klein rubbed the trigger, making the other party's gaze unable to move at all.
The yellow-haired middle-aged man chuckled and said with a rare seriousness: "I'm not sure, but I speculate it is."
"Reason?" Klein almost laughed at the other party's shamelessness.
"Because the oil painting doesn't have a name marked on it." The yellow-haired middle-aged man answered rarely seriously, "Just like someone being called Greer the Scoundrel, my father being called Greer with curly hair, and only my grandfather is truly Greer." ... Klein exhaled silently and said:
"Where is your grandfather?"
"He is in the cemetery. He has been buried there for nearly twenty years. Next to him is my father. He was buried there three years ago." The middle-aged man with yellow hair answered very honestly.
After asking a few more questions from different angles, Klein adjusted the cylinder of the pistol in front of the middle-aged man and put it back into the gun pocket under his armpit.
He put away his police officer's identification and, wearing a black thin windbreaker, turned around and walked towards the hotel position, moving silently in the faint light shining from the houses on both sides.
"I'm not sure if the portrait belongs to the first Baron Ramde... I don't know if there are any exact historical records of the town's castle... "
"But no matter what, the gentleman in the portrait is definitely an ancient person, at least an ancient person from a thousand years ago..."
"He and Mr. Azek are almost identical except for their hairstyles. Is this what is called reincarnation?"
"Perhaps Mr. Azek gave up his positions at other universities in Berkenland and came to Tingen because of residual instincts... "
"Well, there's another possibility. Maybe the gentleman in the portrait is Mr. Azek, and Mr. Azek is him!"
Thinking of this, Klein was startled and almost stumbled over the steps in front of him.
He paced back and forth under the damaged gas lamp, combining his knowledge from the era of information explosion, and made a further analysis based on the previous guess:
"Mr. Azek became a non-dead creature for some reason, like a vampire, so he lived from ancient times until now?"
"No, there's no such thing as a copper-colored vampire..."
"And when I shook hands with Mr. Azek, I could clearly feel his body temperature and sense the blood flowing inside him."
"Although he hated the heat in the south, he wasn't afraid of the sun. Once, under the scorching sun, he teamed up with other teachers to compete in rowing..."
"Well, there's another possibility. Mr. Azek's sequence potion or other factors gave him a long life, but at the cost of losing his memory! Shriek, considering his completely different series of dreams, can we assume that his memory loss is cyclical? Every few decades, he forgets the past and gains a new life, and those series of dreams are the real life he experienced before... Hehe, it seems I've read a similar novel before..."
"To verify this, relying solely on divination is not enough. We must find the traces of Mr. Azek's existence in his various lives, without a childhood or adolescence, only traces starting from adulthood!"
Boldly hypothesizing and carefully verifying, Klein began to lean towards his second guess, but the possibility of "reincarnation" could not be ruled out for the time being.
He suppressed his chaotic thoughts and seriously considered whether to inform Captain Dunn of this matter:
"If Mr. Azek is truly an ancient extraordinary person who has lived for a thousand years, then his strength will be much stronger than I imagined..."
"His previous warning was out of kindness, but after I found the clues to his past, will he still remain kind? "
"But Mr. Azek has always been kind to me. Introducing the night watchman rashly could potentially endanger him..."
"Hehe, conducting a divination on the mist above to eliminate interference is the best choice for a diviner!"
Klein made a decision and accelerated his return to the hotel.
Taking advantage of the fact that Dunn and Fry had not returned yet, he spent one shilling and opened a new room.
Entering the room, Klein used the "Holy Night Powder" to create a spiritual wall, then walked backward four steps, penetrating the crazy raving, and reached the mist above.
The majestic and magnificent palace stood quietly, the ancient and mottled bronze long table and twenty-two high-backed chairs remained unchanged.
Klein sat at the frontmost seat, allowing the yellowish-brown parchment and black round-tipped pen to appear before him.
He picked up the pen and wrote carefully:
"Should I tell Dunn Smith about Mr. Azek's matter." Then, he unfastened the yellow crystal pendant inside the left cuff and performed a divination with the pendulum.
The answer to this divination was counterclockwise rotation, which meant "It should not be told!".
After putting down the yellow crystal pendant, the always intuitive Klein thought for a few seconds and decided to try another method, "Dream divination", to ensure safety.
This time, his divination statement became "The consequences of concealing Mr. Azek's related matters within the night watchmen".
Holding the parchment, he recited it seven times silently, leaned back, and, through meditation, fell into a deep sleep.
In that illusory, hazy, and fragmented world, he saw himself, seeing himself struggling to sink in a sea of blood.
At this moment, a hand reached out and pulled him out of the sea of blood, and the owner of this hand was Azek, with his copper-colored skin and tiny black moles near his ears.
The picture fragmented and reorganized, and Klein saw himself in a dark and cold mausoleum, with the coffins around it all open.
Azek stood beside him, gazing forward, seemingly searching for something.
Just then, Klein suddenly woke up from the dream, seeing the illusory, gray, and boundless fog again.
"The symbolic meaning of the dream just now was that if I concealed the related matters of Mr. Azek for him, when I would be in a crisis in the future, I would receive his help, oh, this crisis might have arisen precisely because of helping to conceal... What does the last picture mean? Will I explore a certain mausoleum with Mr. Azek together? Well, the mausoleum might have another symbolic meaning... " Klein crossed his hands and rested his chin, interpreting the content of the "dream divination" just now.
Combining the results of the pendulum divination method, he had decided not to report his speculation to the captain, only to mention roughly that a local citizen had taken out what was said to be the portrait of the first Lord Ramde, which was quite similar to Azek, the history teacher at Hoy University - Klein couldn't be sure if Dunn would hear about this from somewhere else, so he had to explain it.
Of course, without Azek's account, it was difficult for Dunne, who was not familiar with him, to associate his strange dreams with him. Even Klein suspected that the captain had forgotten the appearance of Azek the teacher.
Thinking of this, he suppressed his thoughts and planned to leave above the gray fog, but at this moment, he noticed that the quiet red star that had been dormant for a long time once again showed slight contraction and expansion.
Curiously, Klein extended his spirituality and saw the young man who spoke in giant language again, seeing him kneeling in front of a pure crystal ball.
This young man still wore black tight clothes that were different from the styles of the countries in the North Continent, his features blurry and distorted, only vaguely showing brownish-yellow hair.
He knelt there, pleading in an extremely painful tone.
Klein listened attentively, relying on his barely mastered giant language to understand what the other was saying:
"Great gods, please turn your gaze back to this place that you abandoned."
"Great gods, please free us, the dark people, from that fatal curse."
"I am willing to dedicate my life to you, using my blood to please you." ...
The abandoned place... The dark folk... The great gods... Klein murmured these key words, and suddenly remembered a place mentioned by "The Hangman":
"The Land Abandoned by the Gods!"
It was also mentioned in Rosel's diary! He even sent out a fleet to search, but there was no result... Klein's eyes narrowed slightly, unsure if his guess was correct.
He tapped the edge of the bronze long table with his fingers. After three taps, he made a decision and extended his right hand, touching the illusory deep red star.
That deep red burst forth immediately, with light flowing like water.