After Lex brought out that huge pile of computers and servers, almost all the young people were attracted to them, even the Robins who had always looked at Lex unfavorably were now shouting and crowding around the computers to play games.
Lex himself, carrying fishing gear, headed to the riverside. He was about to open the package when he heard footsteps behind him, and turning around, he saw a very nervous-looking Clark.
"I don't know why you're doing this. Aren't you afraid of being discovered?" Clark was clearly extremely nervous as he said, "I think I should take back what I said about not discussing the culture of respecting corpses, you're really out of line."
"Relax, there's no one around." Lex took out a red bag and tossed it into the river, adding, "No one will think I'm cheating at fishing."
"Is it about fishing?! You're disposing of bodies at your godfather's housewarming party!"
"He would be proud of me."
Clark was almost infuriated to death.
Diana, standing in the distance, waved at him and said, "Come on over, we need to help with the barbeque, you're the only one who knows how to divide the meat."
"I don't want to see any kind of meat right now, are there any vegetables?"
"Chief Gordon brought some, come on over."
Standing in front of the Joker, or not really in front of him, Clark considered the possibility of knocking this madman unconscious. Although he was the farthest person from the Joker around, he was still Superman, and this short distance meant nothing to him.
Although Lex was the one who killed the man, Clark felt he was also responsible. Being Superman and not realizing that so many drug dealers had infiltrated his city, and even let one of them get close to his friends and girlfriend, almost causing a big disaster.
So, Clark's actions towards the drug dealer weren't completely rational, containing an element of venting his anger, which only aggravated his guilt. Spending years with these lunatics, he was becoming increasingly abnormal, to the point of using heat vision to attack a corpse.
When Clark heard the Joker mention something about a corpse, he knew something was off; Lois was right next to him, he absolutely couldn't let this madman spout nonsense.
As the heat vision in Clark's eyes was charging, a vine suddenly wrapped itself around the Joker's ankle.
The Joker was immediately tripped up, his movements stopped in an instant, and countless vines emerged from the ground, pinning him to the earth, and more importantly, binding his mouth shut.
Everyone turned their heads to look at Pamela.
Pamela smiled and said softly, "Who wants to play poker?"
Everyone relaxed and started moving over there with laughter and chatter, while the Joker wailed in distress.
When everyone else had walked away, Pamela's gaze turned cold. She steadied herself with a vine and walked across the uneven river bank mud to the Joker, whispering low, "Whatever you've seen, don't get in the way of my making money."
In the botany laboratory, Pamela hung up the phone and left the lab where she'd spent several days, driving towards Wayne Manor.
However, the car didn't stop at the main entrance of Wayne Manor, but instead made a round to the back door, where Pamela got out of the car to see Alfred standing inside the courtyard wall.
"Good morning, Butler, did we have another uninvited guest climbing into the yard?"
"Yes, two of them came yesterday. I guess there's trouble over at Bruce's place; they know he has children at home."
"What happened then?"
"I fired one shot, and the other was lucky, Aisha headbutted him and knocked him out cold. I'm afraid I'll need your help dealing with this."
"No problem at all, guaranteed to be cleanly processed, after all, nurturing a large number of plants certainly requires plenty of fertilizer."
"Has your debt collection agency been established?"
"I found a fairly good middleman—yes, that's right, Harley. She's very interested in this business, but I think she made a good point. Being able to fight isn't the only thing plants need for debt collection, they also need to look terrifying, and that requires good fertilizer."
"I wish you success, Miss, and by the way, we've run out of chili peppers in the mansion. If possible, bring some spicy seasoning to the housewarming party; it should be quite popular."
"Thank you very much, Butler. Hand me the box, please."
As Pamela carried the box back to the lab, Harley was already waiting. Inside the lab, Pamela looked at her and asked, "What's wrong, why the long face?"
"Shiller's estate is definitely unsellable now," Harley sighed.
"Why?"
"Today, I took people to renovate the house, and guess what I found?"
"It's not a corpse, is it?"
Harley snorted and said, "A corpse, you underestimate our Professor. Do you know how many people he buried in his garden?"
"I don't know, but it's not hard to imagine."
"He's actually trying to sell a house like that." Harley heaved a sigh and said, "Gothamites have a high level of tolerance, but there's a limit. The repairman dug up seven or eight bones with a shovel, including half a skull, and nearly died of fright."
"You didn't let this get out, did you?"
"No, I didn't." Harley made a morbid joke, "I'm planning to get them a psychologist to see if they're suffering from any stress disorders."
Pamela laughed and said, "So what are you planning to do?"
"To maintain a garden looking so well with so much fertilizer, one can only say that Professor Shearer's butler has an extraordinary talent," Harley sighed. "But since these people can be used as fertilizer, it shows Shearer doesn't value them much. To make the house easier to sell, I have to figure out a way to remove the stuff underneath."
"You want my help? First off, I might have a way to scoop them out, but where to dump them? Surely not down the sewer, right?"
"Most of them are just bones now, we could toss them into the Gotham River." Harley scratched her head and said, "But your place is way too far from the river."
Harley looked at the box Pamela was holding and asked, "Where do you usually chuck the leftovers from your fertilizer?"
"By Shiller's front door, there's a really big lake behind his new house, teeming with fish. It's a great place to dump bodies."
"Then let's dump them there." Harley said, "We're going to his housewarming party anyway. Let's stop by the Manor first, tidy up the garden, and then get rid of all that waste in one go."
"I've accumulated a bunch of leftovers myself." Pamela started to rummage through the refrigerator and added, "Let's just dump them all together, shouldn't be a big issue."
Pamela knocked out the Joker, who was sprawled on the ground, stretched, and gave Alfred a "you can trust me with the job, let's cooperate again when needed" look.
Instead of playing poker, Pamela and Alfred went to the barbecue and started preparing the ingredients.
The poker players naturally split into 5 groups, some playing Texas Hold'em, some playing the local Gotham poker, older kids were all playing video games, the younger ones were frantically running around in the water by the riverbank, completely ignoring the unconscious Joker.
Only Jack slowly walked over, muttering beside Joker, but was soon dragged away by Killer Croc to play poker.
The scent of grilled meat swiftly wafted over, and Harley handed out skewers to everyone to try. Some said it was too salty, others said it was too bland, but unanimously, everyone said it wasn't spicy enough.
"Professor Shearer's taste is too mild." Harley complained, "He's even stingy with the pepper. It's that high-end restaurant taste, always after authenticity."
"If you want to add chili peppers, you don't need to disparage my taste." Shiller rotated the skewer in his hand and said, "Spicy food affects my mental state, I usually don't..."
"Well, your taste is fabulous," Clark interrupted Shiller's sentence and said, "Besides, I had no idea your mental state could get any worse."
The others all laughed, and Shiller, with no other choice, shook his head and asked, "Does anyone have chili peppers? Maybe we can..."
"Ahhhhhhhhhh!"
A scream came from the riverbank, and everyone turned to look.
Clark rubbed his eyes and said, "Is my mental state off too? What is that thing?!"
On the riverbank, a terrifying behemoth was emerging from the water, flailing countless human arms.
It was a Stitched Monster created from various human tissues—a long centipede made of bones, organs, torn skin, and limbs not fully dismembered, lying half-collapsed as if brandishing its claws.
It seemed not to comprehend the specific functions of different human parts, clustering all the eyeballs on its head while concentrating the viscera, skeleton, and skin in the middle, and the countless centipede legs were formed of dense fingers and toes.
The children were terrified, running back in frenzy. Everyone screamed and rushed towards the woods, except for a group of people who stayed still.
Unsurprisingly, it was all those who had contributed a little "extra" to the lake.
Their first reaction was, damn, did I do this?! The second reaction was, damn, did you do this?! And the third was, damn, did we do this together?!
Pamela reacted quickly, stretching out her hand, and myriad vines coalesced into a large mouth that yanked the corpse-centipede monster back into the water, holding it firmly below with the vines so it couldn't resurface.
Clearly, she had adopted the strategy of trying to drown the monster, but no one knew why she thought the monster could be drowned.
Clark, without any hesitation, shot into the sky, his heat vision churning the clear water. Red torrents swirled in the middle of the lake, and the giant monster had chunks sliced off by the heat vision every time it showed its head.
Superman didn't hold back against non-human monsters, conveniently ignoring the fact that the creature was made entirely of human parts.
Gordon immediately grabbed his walkie-talkie and shouted towards it, "Attention, everyone! Attention, everyone! Emergency assembly, another monster's appeared in the lake, send the choppers over quickly!"
As for where the monster came from, he kept his lips sealed.
Victor and Nora each held a Freeze Gun, firing continuously, quickly freezing several of the monster's arms.
The aim wasn't very accurate though, with many shots hitting the lake beside the monster and solidly icing the surface as if intending to seal the monster within.
Lex operated a server beside him, appearing to look up information on the monster, but suddenly, everyone around lost cell signal, and even taking pictures became impossible.
The unluckiest was Amanda; just as the monster appeared, she was by the riverbank and felt a shadow behind her, followed by getting kicked into the lake.
As she fell into the water, Amanda saw something she would never forget—a myriad of faces she had seen in Clone devices before, heads atop heads, ears connected to ears, forming a blanket of human heads that undulated on the luminous lake floor, sinking and rising.
They all opened their mouths, calling Amanda's name, rising, rising, and then pulling Amanda into their midst.
When Amanda was pulled out of the water and came to, she looked dazed. She saw the figure who had kicked her into the lake standing next to another figure she knew even better.
"Well done, Martin."
Then that familiar figure turned to look at her.
"You wanted to know where your subordinates went, didn't you?"
Amanda heard a vile laugh.
"Wish me a happy housewarming, Amanda."