The Death Knell

"Yes, this is the original manuscript you asked for."

The bookstore owner didn't notice the difference in the old man's expression under the dim light. He carefully picked up the box in the safe, placed it on the table aside, wiped it gently, and made a gesture of invitation:

"All the remaining manuscripts of Mr. Howard Philip Lovecraft, including some of his hand-drawn drawings of creatures, are here, just as you requested."

The old man couldn't wait to take the box, opened it roughly, and took out the yellowed manuscript papers inside and quickly flipped through them.

“How wonderful”

He sighed with such emotion, turning his back to the bookstore owner, the red light in his eyes lit up again.

The fat boss poked his head over from behind him and said with a flattering smile: "Then you must love his works very much, right? To be honest, although these fanciful stories are like the ravings of a madman, in terms of writing and art, the horror is... The shaping of it is a different kind of success."

"Huh? No, actually I was only lucky enough to read one of his stories, his own story." The old man laughed. The thing in his hand was right, it was exactly the 'key' he was looking for.

"Then why are you eager to find these manuscripts? You haven't even paid back the price. This is five million US dollars." The bookstore owner adjusted his glasses, feeling puzzled.

After all, the old man's rapid flipping of the manuscript didn't look like he was reading, but like he was looking for something caught in the manuscript.

It was already too late at this time, and the old man with a white beard turned his head with a ferocious smile: "No, dear Mr. Berryman, I have no interest in occupying these stories. I am only interested in watching them regain their freedom in the stories! "

After saying that, a strange red and purple light arose from the old man's body, and accompanied by a strange intonation that made people sick just hearing it, he sang some short sentences that no one knew.

The manuscript began to glow and began to fly around the old man, as if it had been given life.

No, they should have been alive in the first place, but at this time, someone just awakened them, allowing endless weirdness to return to the universe.

The huge wriggling tentacle, with its inexplicable brilliance, hovered out from the pages of the book. It gently caressed the frightened bookstore owner, as if to convey its huge will.

But the human body is too fragile. This man couldn't bear it at all. His skin, flesh and internal organs melted like running water at the moment of contact. The skeleton stood alone for three seconds before falling to the ground like an afterthought. In a pool of blood.

The old man holding the manuscript shook his head, raised the box, put the manuscript into it again, and closed it.

All the visions disappeared, except for a corpse with separated bones and flesh on the ground, as if nothing had happened.

He raised his hand and snapped his fingers, and huge vultures appeared in the air. These smelly, strange birds with black feathers made a sound like a sinister laugh and began to peck at the flesh and internal organs on the ground.

The vultures were fighting each other, competing for food and the right to be favored, as they do in nature, completing a cycle.

The old man smiled, as if he were watching his children eat, and then used magic to absorb the feathers they shed during the battle and decorate them on his collar.

He put the wooden box under his arm and walked out of the bookstore on crutches. When he passed by the security camera, he looked up.

The power of magic even followed the network cable and burned the computer that stored the surveillance video, and the pathetic machine on the counter exploded into a fireball.

The old mage nodded with satisfaction, and with the sound of the bell on the door ringing again, he disappeared into the night.

No one knows how he left, just like no one knows how he came

Meanwhile, deep in a swamp in South America.

A bald man in the Fortress of Doom was observing his new harvest, which looked like a luminous crystal-like cubehedron.

"The octahedron is composed of 6 vertices and 8 equilateral triangles, and 4 triangles intersect at one vertex. Plato believed that the octahedron was between the tetrahedron (fire) and the icosahedron (water), so he thought it represented the element It's air, but what does the trioctahedron represent? Beyond all elemental concepts?"

Luther was circling the crystal while talking to Brainiac behind him.

The reason why the green-skinned alien robots allied themselves with Luther was to survive. Now that Leopard Girl and the others have abandoned Baldhead, he is the only one who stayed without any reason. He and Luther are really like friends. Get along.

A smart bald man would not reject another smart bald man. Luther knew that Brainiac felt that the crisis had not completely passed, which coincided with his own.

The threat is always there. If the path of destruction fails, then we must try the Justice League's path of transcendence. But Luthor's wish is to follow the path of others, and to go faster and better than others.

He set his sights on that special death knell and reached a certain degree of understanding and cooperation. His initial point of view was right. The death knell had no enmity against him, so naturally he would not kill him.

On the contrary, not long ago, I gained some amazing things from my enthusiastic help.

During these days, Luther was studying the documents he brought back about the Ancient Ones, and was curious about the power described in them.

He knew that contact with this corrosive force would cause people to go crazy and turn into balls of flesh or other unspeakable things, so he was always careful.

Of course, after seeing Deadpool's face, he felt that his willpower resistance had increased rapidly, and now there was nothing on earth that would make him sick.

There are not many things recorded in those documents and materials, and Luther is not sure whether the story that works in another universe will have a corresponding past on his own earth.

But this shining octahedron has undergone some changes. When he first brought it back to the Fortress of Doom, Luther placed it in a lightless environment. This gem summoned a faceless monster with tentacles.

Later, Luther destroyed the monster and placed it under the light. While it absorbed the light, it remained relatively stable.

So Baldhead planned to study it in depth, but just yesterday, it malfunctioned. I don't know why, but it was useless.

No matter you put it in the dark or pick it up and play it as a ball, no more monsters will come out, just like an electric toy that has lost power.

Lex was a little lost. He didn't know why, but his pride made him unwilling to ask Deathstroke for advice. So in the past two days, he had been taking Brainiac around the room, experimenting with this thing again and again. .

But just now, he seemed to see the toy that had run out of power shine again, just for a moment.

So the research continued.

Brainiac didn't know what to say about this. He just thought Luther was crazy. Why would a strange crystal have anything to do with Earth's ancient philosophers? Humans are really inexplicable creatures.