Zatanna walked up to Constantine, knelt down, looked into his eyes and said, "I know that you are not as evil and ruthless as you appear, so your soul is feeling extremely sad.
"
After saying that, she gently reached out her hand, touched Constantine's eyebrows with her fingertips, and then said: "But you need to rest now. There will be no more devils to haunt your dreams. Go to sleep, John..."
Along with her soft murmur, Constantine slowly closed his eyes, his breathing rhythm gradually became even, Zatanna sighed and whispered: "Okay, now, I have to do everything.
"
"The most evil curse, Gotham's chaos, hell and heaven..." Zatanna whispered as she stood up, turned around, and planned to leave.
But the moment she turned her back, Constantine jumped up, strangled her neck from behind, and pushed her to the ground.
Zatanna struggled desperately and shouted: "Constantine!! You madman!! Let me go!!!"
While she was struggling, she saw Constantine's eyes, and the madness there told Zatanna that she was wrong.
She always thought that Constantine became so evil and crazy because of magic. It was the curses imposed on him by the devil that confused his thinking, and it was the endless nightmares that drove him crazy.
But now, the fire burning in his eyes told Zatanna that magic was by no means the dye of his madness, or even the firewood. He was first a madman, and then a magician.
The lack of oxygen made Zatanna gradually lose consciousness. When she stopped resisting, Constantine stood up panting. Although he had a young and strong body and the pain was far away from him, he still
I feel very weak, as if a piece of my soul is forever missing.
He reached out and touched Zatanna's prop belt. After opening it, there were only some gadgets used by magicians, but for Constantine, it was enough.
He did not choose to perform magic in the Batcave, but staggered away from here, as if being urged by something, as quickly as possible, he came to the basement where he lived before.
This is the so-called "spiritual gap", which can provide the magician with the best environment for casting spells. Constantine placed the cards on the ground, drew the pattern with chalk, and then used a lighter to light the wheat ears.
He knelt down on one knee and began to whisper incantations in the magic circle. This was his best method of summoning demons.
Halfway through the incantation, Constantine did not notice any demonic aura, so he gave up reciting the incantation and stood up. In the corner of the room, he found the fragments of the wine bottle that he had broken before and took it.
Hold it in your hand and return to the center of the magic circle.
Then, he cut his palm with a fragment of the wine bottle, and blood dripped on the burnt black wheat ears. Constantine chanted the incantation again, but still no one responded.
Originally, he could still hear some distant whispers, but after adding his own blood, the surroundings became eerily quiet.
Constantine fell to the ground. He should have thought that no matter whether it was an angel or a demon, he would not be fooled a second time.
Before, the reason why he could borrow power from various people again and again without repaying the debt was simply because of four words - sunk cost.
In the beginning, when Constantine had not entered the occult world, all magicians paid their debts honestly. Therefore, the demons were completely unprepared. They never thought that a weak human would dare to not repay their debts.
.
The demons are very emboldened, because they know that human willpower is very fragile. If humans dare not to repay their debts, just harass them in their dreams or leave them with some painful curses, they will definitely cry.
Call your mother to pay off your debt.
The demons did not expect that Constantine was not only not afraid of this kind of pain, but also expected that this kind of pain would alleviate his inner guilt. He wished that the devil would come more often and he would accept all the pain.
As a result, some demons fell into his trap and lent their power to him, only to be rejected. But at this time, other demons who were not well-informed also lent their power to him.
Constantine found the first group of demons and told them, if you don't lend me any more power, I will give my soul to the people on the other side to repay the debt.
The demons felt sorry for the power they had invested, but they didn't want those competitors competing for his soul to have Constantine's soul all to themselves, so they lent him some more power.
After accumulating more power, Constantine can summon more powerful demons, borrow more power, and then use the same method to continue snowballing until he becomes one of the most powerful magicians in the occult world.
Later, almost all angels and demons were borrowed from him.
The sins on his body are increasing, and he is becoming more and more desirable. Everyone wants his soul, but they don’t want his soul to fall into the hands of others, so whenever he is in danger, they
Everyone will come to the rescue.
If they don't save Constantine, or don't lend him power when he's in trouble, not only will all the early investment be in vain, but they won't get his soul in return in the later period, and more importantly, they won't get his soul in return.
No one wants to suffer a loss after funding a competitor in vain, which is why Constantine borrowed money from Bailing.
However, Schiller paid off all debts for Constantine. In other words, when Constantine's company went through bankruptcy liquidation, all assets offset all liabilities, and all creditors recovered their costs and even paid back their debts.
There is some surplus.
So at this time, Constantine opened a company in his own name and wanted to seek investment. Who else would invest?
In the past, they kept investing in it, but they were afraid that they would not be able to recoup their costs and would have to go all the way. But now, after going through many difficulties and hardships, they finally have a good result.
All the investors are thankful that they are lucky enough to have met a liar and can recover their costs. No matter how stupid they are, they will not make a second investment in a liar whose credibility has been completely lost.
Constantine tried countless magic circles to summon demons or angels in the basement room, but did not get any response.
All the magical power in his body disappeared as the scars healed. Now, he has nothing but a healthy body and a head full of occult theoretical knowledge.
Constantine sat on the floor of the messy basement he painted, took out a cigarette from the pocket of his windbreaker, lit it, and just took a puff, he choked and coughed twice.
Then he discovered that not only magic, cigarette addiction, alcohol addiction, and drug addiction were all gone from him, he completely returned to the ignorant state he was in when he was 17 years old, and he truly gained a new life.
Constantine wanted to continue smoking, but as if he thought of something again, he showed a smile that was uglier than crying, then threw the cigarette aside and looked at the thin smoke rising from the slowly burning cigarette butt on the ground.
Constantine sat there and covered his face with his hands again. When he calmed down, the fearful emotion he had been avoiding invaded him again, which made him begin to breathe quickly and tremble all over.
"No... no... don't think about it, don't think about them... don't think about anything, empty your mind..." Constantine mumbled while holding his head, and then instinctively began to groping on the ground.
Next to the mattress where he slept, he touched a small pill bottle, which contained his usual snacks, which could bring him a good night's sleep. He unscrewed the lid with trembling arms and poured out a lot of pills.
In the palm of your hand.
Just when he instinctively wanted to put the pill into his mouth, he threw the pill out as if he had been burned, started shaking his hands wildly, and then yelled:
"No! John! What are you doing?! You can't do this! You can't smoke, drink or take drugs anymore...think about what gave you a new life!"
Soon, his voice became weak again, and then he said: "But I want to divert my attention, I want to sleep, I can't think about them..."
"You deserve this, you deserve it... John, you have killed so many people, innocent children, reliable friends, but you want to use physical pain to escape this guilt, and you can't do it now.
, you deserve it all..."
Like a suffocating fish, Constantine kept squeezing out short "cough" sounds from his throat. Then, as if he had seen some hallucination, he stood up and said to the air:
"Astra, is it you? I can explain that incident. It wasn't me... I didn't mean it... I really didn't..." Constantine's breathing rate became faster and faster, and his voice was full of emotion.
pain.
Then he became irritable again and said: "Devil! It's all the good deeds of you devils! It was you who took away the souls of innocent people!"
Standing in the dark basement room, Constantine heard whispers in his ears.
"It's you! Constantine! Don't try to blame it on us..."
"It was your abuse of magic that caused the tragedy..."
"It was your arrogance and exaggeration that caused all of this..."
Suddenly, Constantine turned his head sharply and looked to his side, but there was nothing there, but he suddenly shouted crazily: "No! This is all your conspiracy! It's your plan to take revenge on me!
!!”
"Thomas!! I know it's you! You have never died. You have always been with me, trying to torture me in various ways. All of this is a conspiracy made by you to make me collapse!!
!”
Constantine kept waving his arms and shouted into the air: "I killed you in my mother's belly! But so what? This world is inherently unfair!!!"
"After your father learned that your mother was pregnant with twins, he only gave you a name!!! He gave you his name!!!" Constantine almost broke his voice: "Only your name is Thomas!
And I can only call him John!"
"John... John... it was a name he heard at the gambling table, so he threw it to me!"
"Every time I hear him calling your name, I feel the flames of jealousy burning my soul! So. I must kill you! Otherwise, he will never love me!"
When Constantine kept swinging at the air, he seemed to be dancing, always accompanied by the dance of evil curses, crazy, cruel and dangerous, like a puppet at the mercy of fate.
Soon, he stopped, like a toy whose clockwork stopped spinning. He stopped suddenly, put his hands on his knees and kept breathing, and then whispered:
"What if I really did something wrong? Maybe..." Maybe...
As he muttered, he began to search in the room. Then, he found a piece of wire used to fix the mattress next to the mattress. He held the wire and looked up at the ceiling.
Countless blood seeped out from the gaps in the walls of the room, dyeing the floor and ceiling dark red. Water poured in from the stairs until the entire room was submerged in warm amniotic fluid.
Across the fetal wall and the current of amniotic fluid, Constantine heard another heartbeat. He heard a vague voice coming from outside the mother's belly:
"Little Thomas...little Thomas..."
This voice is so soft and gentle, carrying endless expectations and love.
In a trance, Constantine saw an umbilical cord dangling above his head, and another person, standing opposite him, put his ear to the fetal wall, listened to his father's gentle call, and felt the blessings of his relatives for his birth.
expectations.
Constantine stretched out his shaky arms and pulled the umbilical cord over. In his chaotic thoughts, he thought that if he really did something wrong, it was that he should have understood earlier that someone who was not expected to
His life should not have come into this world.
The umbilical cord gradually enlarged in Constantine's field of vision, and when it touched his cheek, it felt suddenly hard and cold.
Then he felt a heavy falling feeling. He thought that maybe his mother was giving birth, and the pressure made him feel suffocated.
But soon, he felt warmth again. After the amniotic fluid drained away, the fetal wall wrapped around him, like a mother's gentle embrace.
In such warmth, Constantine felt very relaxed and peaceful, and just like that, he slowly fell into sleep.