No way... Could Mr. Azik be the so-called first Baron Ramud? That's a figure from fourteen or fifteen hundred years ago... No, how can I be sure the person in the portrait is the first Baron Ramud... Klein stared at the oil painting, his mind in chaos, as if he had suddenly discovered that everyone around him had turned into monsters, or the entire world was just a dream of a deity.
He abruptly raised his head, stared at the middle-aged man with yellow hair in front of him, reached under his armpit to his gun holster, and took out a revolver, saying in a deep voice:
"This is not an antique. If you don't explain the situation clearly, I will arrest you for fraud and prosecute you!"
He didn't care whether prosecution fell under the police department's jurisdiction; his only goal was to intimidate the other party and obtain information!
At the same time, Klein lightly tapped his left teeth twice, activated his spiritual vision, and monitored the color changes of the target's emotions.
The yellow-haired middle-aged man was startled and answered fearfully and vaguely:
"No, I don't know if it's an antique either. No, I heard it was an antique, but I don't understand these things, really don't understand. I don't even know many words, um, words."
His eyes moved, looking around, seeming to want to call for help.
But at that moment, he saw Klein adjust the cylinder and trigger, posing as if he was about to execute a resisting suspect.
He immediately straightened his back and dared not look around anymore.
"Where did you get this oil painting?" Klein asked with a heavy heart.
The yellow-haired middle-aged man's lips moved, and he smiled ingratiatingly:
"Officer, my grandfather found it from an ancient castle. More than forty years ago, the outer wall and the second-floor rooms there collapsed, and some items appeared, items that previous people hadn't been able to find. Among them was this oil painting. No, no, not this oil painting. The original oil painting was already very tattered and couldn't be preserved at all. So my grandfather had someone imitate it and paint one, um, that's the one you just saw. I'm not lying to you. An oil painting from more than forty years ago can indeed be considered an antique..."
"Then are you sure this is the portrait of the first Baron Ramud?" Klein rubbed the trigger, making sure the other's gaze didn't dare to move at all.
The yellow-haired middle-aged man chuckled: "I'm not sure, but I inferred it."
"Reason?" Klein was almost amused by the other's shamelessness.
"Because the oil painting isn't labeled with a name," the yellow-haired middle-aged man answered in a rare serious tone, "Just like I'm called Rogue Grey, my father is called Curly Grey, and only my grandfather is the real Grey."
...Klein silently exhaled and said:
"Where is your grandfather?"
"In the cemetery. He's been buried there for almost twenty years. Next to him is my father, who was buried three years ago," the yellow-haired middle-aged man answered very honestly.
After asking from other angles for a while, Klein adjusted the revolver's cylinder in front of the yellow-haired middle-aged man and put it back into the holster under his arm.
Putting away his police officer ID, wearing a thin black overcoat, he turned around, walked toward the hotel with his hands in his pockets, moving silently in the faint light seeping from the houses on both sides.
"Uncertain whether the portrait belongs to the first Baron Ramud... I wonder if the town has any accurate historical records about the castle..."
"But in any case, the gentleman in the painting is definitely an ancient person, at least a thousand years old..."
"Apart from the hairstyle, he and Mr. Azik are almost identical. Is this what they call reincarnation?"
"Back then, Mr. Azik gave up positions at other universities in
"Hmm, there's another possibility. For example, the person in the portrait is Mr. Azik, Mr. Azik is him!"
Thinking of this, Klein shuddered, nearly tripping over the steps ahead.
He paced back and forth a few steps under the broken gas lamp, combining his knowledge from the era of information explosion and making further analysis based on his previous guesses:
"Could it be that Mr. Azik became an undead being for some reason, like a vampire, and thus lived from ancient times to the present?"
"No, where would you find a bronze-skinned vampire..."
"Moreover, when I shook hands with Mr. Azik, I could clearly feel his body temperature, feel that blood was flowing in his body."
"Although he hates the heat in the south, he isn't afraid of the sun. He once, under the scorching sun, formed a team with other teachers for a rowing race..."
"Hmm, there's another possibility. Mr. Azik's Sequence potion or other factors gave him a long life, at the cost of losing his memory! Hiss, considering his completely different dreams, can I assume that his memory loss is cyclical? Every few decades, he forgets the past and gains a new life, and those dreams are the real lives he has experienced one after another... Heh, I've read similar novels..."
"To verify this, divination alone won't work. I must find traces of Mr. Azik's successive lives, traces that start from adulthood without childhood or adolescence!"
Bold in hypothesis, cautious in verification, Klein began to lean towards his latter guess, but the possibility of "reincarnation" could not be ruled out for now.
He reined in his chaotic thoughts and seriously considered whether to report this to Captain Dunn:
"If Mr. Azik is truly an ancient Beyonders who has lived for over a thousand years, then his strength will be far greater than I imagined..."