Schiller had no desire to waste effort thinking about it. He nodded perfunctorily, but Jason said eagerly, "It may sound like a classic rumor, but that doesn't mean it has no basis."
"I believe Gotham cursed General Arkham. Edmund Wayne killed him and inherited that curse."
"And then?"
"Maybe he didn't know about the curse at first, so he chose to kill General Arkham and inherit Gotham Village. But one day, he discovered the curse. To escape it, he chose to leave and establish a new city."
"But that conflicts with your earlier conclusion."
"It doesn't," Jason said. "More precisely, it actually supports my previous view. The Order Cult was using Edmund Wayne completely—using him to take Gotham Village and using him to bear the curse."
Jason drew a circle on the table with his finger, then said, "I don't know much about the British aristocratic system, but for the Order Cult to openly hijack a carriage and successfully bring Edmund Wayne to the New World, they must have had some real capabilities."
"Why ignore so many British nobles and insist on using a fraud believed to be an impostor?"
"Exactly. In that era, only nobles could become lords. Why not find a noble with a more certain identity and a better reputation?"
"Of course, it was because more influential nobles had families. Every other member of the Wayne Family Edmund Wayne belonged to had died in the plague, leaving only him."
"The Order Cult planned to discard him once they were done. If they used nobles whose families were still around, killing them afterward would inevitably require an explanation to their families. But if they used Wayne, they wouldn't need one. That was the most important reason they chose Wayne."
"I even suspect the other members of the Wayne