Mystery: When the Lost Homelanders Meet the Lost Homeland Call

On July 12th, the Night Watchers, carrying 2-049, narrowly escaped defeating Riel Bieber, who had transformed into a monster, with the intervention of the Secret Order members.

The explosion when Riel Bieber died caused a massive commotion. Klein, feeling dizzy and nauseous, struggled to his feet and saw the monster Bieber reduced to grotesque, rotting pieces of flesh. He also saw Dunn and Lolota lying several meters away, seemingly unconscious.

Al Hassen, Borgia, and Leonard Mitchell also fell to the ground, all unconscious.

Just as Klein was about to breathe a sigh of relief, he suddenly noticed something familiar about two or three meters away from him.

The dark iron box stopped rolling and turned its cracked side towards the sky.

A thin, brown arm stretched out from there.

The sealed artifact… “2-049”… Damn! Klein’s heart tightened, and he immediately lunged back a few meters away to get out of the range of the sealed artifact “2-049”.

The explosion had actually thrown the black iron box near him!

Just then, Klein's head suddenly buzzed, and his thoughts slowed down.

Oh no! I've been controlled by a puppet!

Just as Klein was getting nervous, a faint but clear voice came from deep inside his breast pocket.

"Master, let me help you."

A completely different force surged from his chest, like a line suddenly taut, spreading along the contours of his chest cavity to his limbs.

In that instant, Klein saw the faint black threads on his body through the senses of the thread doll.

Those lines extended from his spirit body, connecting to the infinite distance of the spirit world, each one connecting to different joints, different organs, and different spiritual nodes.

He sensed that the spiritual fluctuations of 2-049 were gradually bringing his spiritual line under its control.

Then another familiar and comforting spiritual wave countered the pull of 2-049 and gained the upper hand.

Klein's mind immediately returned to normal. The heavy feeling that had been filling him with glue vanished in an instant, and his vision cleared. He saw the brown puppet peeking halfway out of the box, its pure black eyes still fixed on him, but the controlling force had been stripped away from him.

Klein made no unnecessary movements. His body remained in the same stiff posture he had been in when he was controlled, even his breathing was deliberately kept at a near-stopped rhythm. He didn't know if the puppet's actions would be noticed by the puppet itself or the night watchmen around him, but he knew that revealing the puppet's existence under these circumstances was definitely not a good idea.

"What's the next step? My puppets and the sealed artifacts are locked in a struggle on the transcendent level..."

Klein suddenly realized, "I'm a fortune teller!"

He immediately closed his eyes and began to communicate with the spirit of the silk puppet.

In terms of sequence hierarchy, the doll can indeed perform divination, but her intelligence is insufficient to decipher complex information. She can verify Klein's needs using pendulum magic, but she is currently focused on fighting the sealed artifact, and Klein needs to rely on his own divination.

He closed his eyes.

Supported by the spirit of the silken puppet, his consciousness slowly sank into a peculiar semi-conscious state. He could feel his body still standing in place, maintaining the stiff posture it had been in when it was being controlled, but his consciousness was sinking inward, like a stone passing through layer after layer of water.

Then he saw a vision. He saw the clown in the tuxedo appear behind a pile of wooden crates on the left side of the warehouse, moving at incredible speed along the edge of the shadows. The clown was heading towards a figure lying on the ground.

Dunn.

Klein woke up with a start.

In the dream, the clown was heading directly towards Dunn's location. Dunn was already unconscious, lying motionless on the ground, completely unprepared.

Klein's blood seemed to ignite in that instant. He didn't need any more divination. The Joker was going to attack Captain Dunn, to finish them off while they were at their weakest, and then calmly take the notebook.

He can't let the Joker succeed!

Klein's body snapped out of its stalemate. He pushed off the ground and sprinted toward where Dunn had fallen, his right hand gripping the revolver, his eyes fixed on the edge of the shadows near the pile of crates to his left. His heart was pounding, and his breathing was erratic. He knew he had to get to Dunn within seconds, before the Joker could finish his move.

He went to the wrong place.

Klein stood three steps in front of Dunn, his gun still pointed at the shadow of the pile of wooden crates on his left, but he had already caught a glimpse of a black figure on the other side of the warehouse rushing toward the notebook.

The hem of his tuxedo billowed like a raven's wing in the dim light, and his lips beneath the clown's paint were pressed into a tight line. He did not look at Dunn!

His target was the Antigonus family notebook lying amidst the shredded flesh and broken bones!

The dream interpretation hadn't lied to him; the clown had indeed appeared near the pile of wooden crates, and had indeed headed in Dunn's direction. But that was just a detour he took for some unknown reason; his real target was the notebook!

At that moment, Klein felt two completely opposite emotions surge within him. One was relief that Captain Dunn was unharmed, and that his sprint hadn't been in vain; the other was anger, a anger tinged with shame after being tricked. His divination wasn't wrong, but his interpretation was. He saw the Joker's path, but he hadn't understood its destination.

The clown was less than five steps away from the notebook.

Klein had no time to hesitate. He turned abruptly, his left hand reaching into his breast pocket. The tiny fingers of the silken doll were already pressed against his palm, as if they had anticipated his needs.

A dense array of black lines appeared in his field of vision, allowing Klein to easily pinpoint the Joker's location.

Klein picked up the wooden box containing sealed artifact 2-049 and threw it directly towards the clown's location.

The clown in the tuxedo was immediately startled, but quickly realized he could escape before the wooden crate arrived.

"You're bad at marksmanship, and you're bad at throwing things too."

The clown in the tuxedo scoffed, quickening his pace to grab the notebook immediately before dealing with this terrible Sequence Nine.

The Joker's sense of danger told him that Klein was not in danger, but he would be in danger if he didn't run to get the notes immediately.

"Pretend to use Fire Jump later," Klein thought to himself as he comically charged toward the tuxedo clown.

"Understood, Master."

Klein pulled out the silken puppet, threw it forward, and fired his gun with his right hand to attract the clown's attention.

The doll suddenly burst into flames in mid-air, and then its figure disappeared.

The clown immediately stopped in his tracks; he was all too familiar with this ability.

The Magician's "Flame Leap"!

Another sealed artifact?

The clown didn't have time to think about it much and tried his best to carefully observe his surroundings.

However, he miscalculated. The truth was deceiving. Klein had learned the fortune teller's subsequent name from Lynn a long time ago, and then used the silk puppet to determine the abilities at each stage, and confirmed that the tuxedo clown was the magician.

So Klein had the puppet pretend to use fire to jump, but in reality, he was creating an illusion.

The suppression of social status can render the tuxedo clown's sense of crisis ineffective!

High sequences along the same pathway are the most overwhelming against low sequences!

By the time the clown realized what was happening, he was already within five meters of the puppet.

I shouldn't have... stopped... so the divination... it's safer to get the notebook... there's more to it...

The clown in the tuxedo was sluggish and lost in thought.

Klein saw the clown in the tuxedo pause in mid-air with his right leg.

It was a very subtle pause, lasting less than half a beat, like a dancer suddenly stepping on an uneven surface, causing an imperceptible shift in the body's center of gravity.

But this slight deviation caused his straight path toward the notebook to veer off course. His outstretched right hand failed to grasp the notebook directly; instead, his fingertips brushed the cover and swept the notebook half an inch further away.

Then the clown's movements began to become disjointed. His body was like a machine with unlubricated gears, making a sluggish clattering sound with every turn. His left foot was pulled back as soon as he stepped out, and his right hand was pressed down as soon as he raised it. His whole body spun around in a bizarre way, like a puppet whose joints were all pulled, becoming more and more stiff the more he struggled.

Klein didn't waste the opportunity. He raised his revolver, gripped it with both hands, and aimed the muzzle at the figure that was being pulled and pinned to the spot by the silken puppet.

He pulled the trigger.

Pong!

The silver demon-hunting bullet pierced through the dim warehouse light, through the thin black lines floating in the air, and precisely burrowed into the clown in the tuxedo's right shoulder. Blood blossomed beneath his skin like a flower suddenly blooming on fabric, dark red seeping from the tear and trickling down the sleeve of his black tuxedo.

The clown's mouth opened, and he let out a scream.

His left hand instinctively rose to move the wound, but the time it took to move it made his movements sluggish again.

Klein's gunshot broke the control, but the puppet regained control of the tuxedo clown.

His left hand fingers twitched and stretched in vain, but he could not remove them from his right hand no matter what he did.

Klein fired a second shot.

Pong!

The bullet struck the Joker's left knee. He fell forward, his knee hitting the dusty floor with a dull thud, his body twisting unnaturally.

He tried to stand up by pushing himself up with his hands, but the puppet's manipulation was faster than his will. The movements of his right and left hands were disrupted at the same time, like two intertwined threads tied together. When one pushed to the left, the other pulled to the right. As a result, he fell to the ground in an even more awkward way, his oil-painted smile stuck to the dusty ground like a flattened mask.

Klein took two steps closer. His heart was pounding, but his grip on the gun was steady, the muzzle locked on the fallen figure.

He cleverly restrained the Joker by hitting non-vital areas.

"Yeah, it's not about hitting vital areas, it's about luck," Klein reassured himself.

He knew that the Joker had not completely lost his ability to resist. An extraordinary being who could fight against Dunn, El, and Lorota at Sequence 7 would not be so easily killed by two shots, even though he was being continuously restrained by the spirit threads of the Silk Doll.

"Who sent you?" Klein asked, his voice calmer than he had expected. "A member of the Secret Order? Or someone else?"

The clown twisted his body on the ground, making a few muffled, flattened sounds.

"Fine, searching his soul is the same whether he's dead or alive." Klein raised his pistol, aimed at the clown's head, and pulled the trigger.

Pong!

The silver bullet traveled several meters and accurately pierced the clown in the tuxedo's neck, causing large gushes of blood to flow out, staining his skin and bow tie red.

The clown in the tuxedo couldn't scream; he could only make a gurgling sound in his throat. He tried to raise his hand to move away the fatal wound, but his shoulder and elbow joints felt as if they were filled with glue, making his movements stiff and slow.

Pong!

Klein, who was in a semi-meditative state, was not frightened by the blood and pulled the trigger again, as calmly as if he were doing his daily practice.

A grotesque hole suddenly appeared on the clown's forehead, from which crimson blood gushed out, dimming the light in his eyes. The power of that exquisite revolver was much stronger than Klein had anticipated.

With knees bent and arms hanging down, the clown in the tuxedo slowly fell to the ground, his eyes filled with nothing but blankness.

His body twitched a few times, then slowly relaxed, and there was no further movement.

With a single shot, Klein coolly turned around, shook the cylinder, and let the empty cartridge cases fall to the ground one by one.

This also gives the thread doll time to climb back into the pocket.

Then, dressed in a black suit and wearing a top silk hat, he walked toward Al Hassen, taking out the last silver demon hunter bullet from his pocket and inserting the slender bullet into the magazine.

Dunn lay on the ground in the distance, breathing steadily, still unconscious. Al Hassen and Lolota showed no signs of waking either. Borgia was still groaning softly, and Leonard lay peacefully on the ground, though there were signs of struggle on the surrounding earth.

Klein looked away, glancing at the motionless figure on the floor. Then he looked down at his chest. The silken doll peeked half its head out from the edge of the pocket, its azure eyes reflecting the dim warehouse light, before shrinking back like a small animal retreating to its den.

After waking up the captain and Leonard, who seemed to be in good condition, they together woke up everyone else.

Then El Hassen, along with Borgia and Lolota, went to retrieve the sealed artifact. They all turned around and came to the sealed artifact "2-049".

They woke each other up, stuffed the puppet, which had somehow regained its movement, back into the cracked, black iron box, and kept a close watch on it.

"Everything is normal." El's tone was more relaxed.

Dunn, Leonard, and Klein, who was somewhat disgusted by corpses, searched the tuxedo clown's body and found all sorts of strange items, including paper flowers, handkerchiefs, playing cards, and shards of glass.

However, apart from that, the other party did not bring anything of value or that could provide any clues.

Just as the night watchmen breathed a sigh of relief, sounds came from the silent warehouse again.

They all turned to look, and behind the gray-white monster Riel Bieber, another identical monster appeared!

Now that the Antigonus Notebook has been taken, and after Riel Bieber's death, another monster has appeared!

"Goddess..." Captain Dunn pointed to a Crimson Moon, "What on earth is going on?"