"Save it." A low voice rang out inside the Roman Hall.
The black-clad thieves acted as if they hadn't heard the warning, turning sharply and walking swiftly along a wall in the Roman Hall lined with a series of medieval knight armor.
Following that path to the right, they would pass outside the Grand Hall of Columns, enter the Robert Lehman Collection, and then slip away through a small door used by staff.
Dozens of complete suits of armor from the 15th to 17th centuries stood on high pedestals, motionless... of course they were motionless; they were just suits of armor.
But as the black-clad thieves silently and rapidly retreated past these medieval armors, a series of faint metallic scraping sounds suddenly rang out.
The thieves' footsteps froze instantly, and they looked in the direction of the sound.
Inside the pitch-black Roman Hall, everything could only be distinguished by vague outlines, but even so, the thieves' hearts skipped a beat when they saw the sound came from those medieval armors.
The faces of those suits of armor had, at some unknown point, all turned toward their position, "looking" at them without exception.
"Don't look at them! Proceed with the retreat plan!"
The leader of the men in black growled low.
He was a staunch materialist and didn't believe for a second that knight armor could come to life.
If they could really come back to life, they should have done so long ago when the United States snatched these things from other countries.
The leader swept a glance at his three teammates, raising his hand to point in a direction to step forward.
Wait, three teammates?
The leader's heart gave a thud. Counting himself, there should be five people. When did one go missing?
With his heart racing wildly, the leader didn't think twice; he immediately pretended no one was missing from the team, turned around, and walked quickly toward the small door of the Roman Hall.
"You, open the door."
The leader made a gesture, and one of the three remaining subordinates immediately stepped forward, unlocked the small door, and walked in.
The leader followed closely, but just as he was about to cross the threshold... Crash!
The first subordinate to enter was tackled by a massive black shadow. The sound of rushing wind hit his face, and simultaneously, the just-opened small door was slammed shut heavily, locking the remaining two thieves outside.
"Change routes!"
The black-clad leader was blocked by the heavily slammed door. His brows furrowed tight, and without hesitation, he turned to execute Plan C.
But when he turned around, his heartbeat stopped again for a second.
The last remaining teammate had also vanished without a trace, without a single sound, at some unknown moment.
Cold sweat instantly broke out on the leader's forehead.
He looked at the knight armors he had just passed, seeing that their faces were still turned toward him, watching silently.
"Tell me, who do you serve?"
The voice seemed to come from inside the knight armor, drifting eerily into the leader's ears.
"Who are you? Come out!" The black-clad leader held his fists up in front of him, looking around cautiously.
The eerie voice shifted direction, coming from above the leader: "Answer me."
The leader hurriedly looked up, but there was nothing overhead.
"I answer to myself." The leader steadied his nerves, slowly retreating in the direction of Plan C while trying hard to judge where the sound was actually coming from.
"The purpose of stealing the tablet?" This time the voice came from behind the leader, close at hand.
But when the leader turned to look, there was no one behind him.
"I don't know," the man in black said coldly. "Play your tricks all you want, but you'd better not get in my way."
As soon as he finished speaking, a muffled thud sounded at the leader's head. His head tilted, and he collapsed cleanly to the ground, unconscious.
Beside the black-clad leader, Batman unclenched the fist that had knocked the man out with a single punch, squatted down, and retrieved the broken stone tablet from the man's embrace.
The white lenses of the Arkham suit lit up again. Batman recorded the material of the entire broken tablet and the winding patterns upon it, then tossed it toward the distance.
Pa!
Under Batman's precise control of force, the tablet landed steadily back into its original explosion-proof glass case.
Batman did not intend to take this broken tablet with him.
Since someone wanted to obtain it, leaving it here was the best bait.
"The purpose of stealing the tablet? Employer?"
Smack!
"Purpose, employer?"
Bang!
"Tell me everything you know."
Boom!
Five black-clad thieves. Batman interrogated them individually, but in the end, learned nothing other than that they were professional thieves paid to do a job and didn't know who the employer was.
Either this group of thieves were tough nuts to crack who would rather die than yield, or they genuinely knew nothing about the employer's identity or the purpose of stealing the tablet—pure tools whose confessions were worthless.
Batman didn't give them too much trouble. After confirming he couldn't extract useful information, he knocked them out and hung them up inside the Roman Hall, waiting for the police to deal with them after the museum opened tomorrow.
An attempted theft that wasn't exactly major, but wasn't minor either, had actually left Batman with no leads.
Batman did not feel a sense of defeat. Instead, he looked around the Roman Hall with a deep gaze, feeling that things were gradually becoming a bit challenging.
After recording and confiscating the faces of the five men and the window-breaking tools they carried, Batman didn't linger in the Roman Hall. He turned and walked toward the Grand Hall of Columns.
Batman hadn't forgotten what happened while he was tracking the thieves earlier: a gaze inside the Hall of Columns had been fixed on him.
Batman trusted his instincts, even though neither his Spider-Sense nor his eyes had seen anyone in the Hall of Columns.
You could hear a pin drop in the Grand Hall of Columns. Batman stood behind the column from where the gaze had originated, observing the ground and the pillar.
There were no clues here either. That gaze seemed to have been truly just a hallucination of Batman's, leaving behind no physical traces.
The columns were solid; there was no possibility of someone hiding inside. The floorboards fit together seamlessly... Besides, if the owner of that gaze had made any contact with the surrounding environment, Batman would definitely have discovered it.
Just as Batman frowned in thought, that sensation of being watched appeared again.
Almost the instant the gaze appeared, Batman turned his head at extreme speed, looking toward the source of the gaze.
He saw a massive white figure standing at the entrance of the Egyptian Hall, vanishing the very moment Batman saw him.
The doors to the Egyptian Hall, which should have been tightly closed, had been opened at some point. Inside was pitch black, like an abyss, beckoning Batman to come and explore.