The incident had concluded so quietly not because the opponent lacked skill but because it signaled merely the appetizer to a rising tsunami that would attempt to drown everyone in its wake.
Indeed, less than half an hour after the murder case had ended, the Mercury Base terminal received an alarm from a detector that an alien spaceship was fast approaching Mercury.
The base terminal hadn't received any communication from the spaceship nor could it identify the identity code of the spaceship. Therefore, it sent out defense drones to keep the spaceship beyond the safety line, not allowing it to approach Mercury.
Clark went to check out the situation and the spaceship exploded. Although it didn't injure him at all, it still gave him quite a shock.
Now the human race in the DC Universe had not developed interstellar capabilities, meaning they had no means of space defense, relying entirely on the safety measures at Mercury Base. Had the defense drones not stopped the spaceship and allowed it to rush to Mercury and explode, it would likely have caused substantial casualties.
This incident nearly alarmed all the senior management at the base, so the professor team that had just disbanded less than half an hour ago gathered again.
The drones sent back footage they had recorded, which clearly showed that the spaceship was not a product of the Solar System. The characters engraved on the fragments of the explosion were unfamiliar, and nobody knew where this spaceship came from at the moment.
Fortunately, the Justice League in this universe had ample interstellar intelligence support. They sent all the videos to Green Lantern Hal, who was working at the Green Lantern Headquarters.
Hal quickly recognized that the information code on the spaceship came from Sector 1601's Exo Planet, a civilian spaceship whose code had long expired and the specific identity could not be identified temporarily.
The name Exo sounded unfamiliar, but when it was mentioned by Hal, everyone fell silent, because the Magic Twins hailed from Exo Planet.
The civilization on this planet was highly Earth-like, and not everyone possessed superpower; although their physical fitness was many times better than that of the human race, the Magic Twins who had superpowers were also considered anomalies.
Years before, a plague had killed many of the residents on Exo Planet, including the parents of the Magic Twins, who then wandered into a circus. The sister used her ability to transform into animals to work for the circus owner.
Later, after falling out with the circus, the siblings stole the circus's spaceship and eventually came to Earth.
Clark had closely inspected the spaceship; he was sure there were no weapons on it. It didn't look like a space combat weapon, and it even appeared somewhat dilapidated. If not for the large explosion at the end, Clark would have thought it was just some space junk.
The professors then had to call over the Magic Twins, Zan and Jenna, who were completely stunned when they saw the fragments.
This was indeed the spaceship they had stolen. According to them, they had hidden this spaceship deep in the Rocky Mountains when they first arrived on Earth because it was already in poor condition, and by the time they had adjusted to life on Earth, the old spaceship was no longer operable.
Once all the spaceship fragments were dragged back by the drones, Bruce conducted an inspection. Together with the analysis from the smart Butler, they confirmed the siblings' story was true—the spaceship was so old that only its shell remained. It was difficult to even exit the Earth's atmosphere.
Furthermore, cautious Jenna had removed and completely destroyed the engine, which was the only part capable of causing an explosion. With the engine gone, what was left was harmless metal; so the explosion was very peculiar.
The professors watched the explosion on video for a long time in the room before Bruce concluded that the explosion definitely wasn't caused by some machinery; the flow of energy was too strange.
He then sent the video back to Earth, where several professors from Gotham Magic Academy watched it. Lady Shangdu confirmed his view and said, "I can confirm, the flow of energy from the source of the explosion is more akin to magic, with a large amount of Magic Energy compressed and forced into something, making it lose control and explode at a designated time, like a failed creation of a Divine Artifact. This was a deliberately caused magical experiment accident."
Diana also sent the video to the Fire God, who agreed that this was a magical accident.
However, things were complicated by the fact that the siblings had modified the already ancient spaceship before they came to Earth with it, otherwise it wouldn't have made it to Earth.
The spaceship bore some traces of their modifications, and after it was completely destroyed, it was hard to explain what the modifications were for. It was said to make it able to take off again, although it was possible that it exploded on Mercury.
"Don't block the news," Shiller immediately said.
Everyone looked at him because this was a counterintuitive answer. After all, the exploded spaceship had been intercepted outside the safety line, and no one had suffered any loss, so they could have kept the students from knowing.
But quickly they realized that if someone was up to something, even if they blocked the news, someone would spread the news among the student groups.
The so-called official denial is definitely true; the professors coming together to block the news would easily cause students' discontent, and if they let them know the spaceship came from the Magic Twins and combined this with the brother's role in the teacher murder case, it would inevitably lead to speculation.
It definitely was a series of connected plots, aiming to sow doubt among the students. Doubt, like a virus, would ultimately lead to a panic outbreak.
"What do you think we should do, Professor?" Diana immediately asked.
"The other party is clearly from the Magic Side, and we don't have enough people on the Magic Side; try to get Zatanna and Lady Shangdu here. I'll also call a friend of mine."
Diana nodded, went to make a phone call, and the friend Shiller was going to call was Brand, who could fill the vacancy for a psychiatrist at the school infirmary, the position offering much better pay than working at Arkham Asylum as Nya's human form also needed to eat.
"How can we calm the students' opinions?" Shiller turned to Clark and asked, "This is an old trick for journalists."
Clark thought for a moment. The few tricks the kind and powerful superhero had were mainly used in his journalism career, and he immediately said,
"Make it big before they do, and it definitely has to be Zan and Jenna who stir it up."
He looked at Jenna and said, "When you guys head back later, start crying on the way, saying your spaceship exploded by accident and now you can't go home anymore."
Jenna widened her eyes and said, "We couldn't have driven that broken ship home in the first place, that would be suicide!"
"Does anyone else know?"
The siblings glanced at each other and shook their heads; they had forgotten about the old spaceship long ago and therefore hadn't mentioned it to anyone.
"Then pretend it never broke," Clark firmly said, "Not only did it not break, but it is also incredibly advanced, several levels beyond human technology. Use every high-tech term you can think of on it, and emphasize that it cost you all your fortunes, and now that it's broken, your loss is substantial."
Jenna quickly understood, they had to portray themselves as victims before the behind-the-scenes manipulator framed them as malicious perpetrators, emphasizing they had no motive to use their spaceship as a bomb.
Naturally, the better and more expensive the spaceship, the less the motive.
"No," Jenna raised another issue, "We're not the only aliens among the student body, some aliens who know the real situation of Exo Planet won't believe what we say."
"He is familiar with Exo Planet of the past, not the present."
"But the present is not much more advanced..."
"Maybe not advanced now, but don't forget who holds the power of interstellar public opinion."
Jenna was even more confused. She looked at Clark and said, "You can't mean Earth, right?"
"Of course not, it's the Green Lantern Corps." Clark texted Hal while speaking, "We'll coordinate inside and out, letting Hal modify the recorded history of Exo Planet at the Green Lantern Headquarters terminal."
"I'll write a few news reports about epoch-making spaceships and stuff them into their tech development history, roughly around the same time you bought your ship. That will naturally validate your claims."
"The aliens who come here don't hold high positions on their own planets and won't be able to access deeper information, so they can't expose you."
"You guys can even manipulate the Green Lantern Corps," Zan exclaimed, "The Justice League really is a powerful organization."
Then they started arranging tasks, Clark went with Oliver to write news, Diana went to get help from the Magic Side, Bruce stayed at headquarters to monitor any unexpected incidents, and Arthur took the siblings out to spread the news.
The other professors went about their regular classes, as maintaining order during a crisis helps disperse the atmosphere of panic to the greatest extent.
As for Shiller, no one assigned him any tasks because everyone knew that this professor, constantly disturbed, wouldn't rest until he had retaliated.
Shiller first called Brand, who was initially reluctant to come, but immediately agreed when he saw the string of zeros at the end of the salary, stating there was no one more suitable for extraterrestrial psychiatric work than him.
Brand arrived quickly, accurately speaking, in a flash. When he arrived, Shiller was drawing and writing, seemingly sorting through the sequence of events.
Brand leaned over to take a look at Shiller's notes and discovered that according to Shiller, the starting point of the Mercury affairs was neither the security checkpoint nor the classroom murder, but the Scarecrow serial murder case.
This case had been some time ago and seemed to have no connection with Mercury from the killer to the victims, its only presence being in Bruce's teaching materials.
But next to this case was another one, the Nigma serial murder case.
Comparing these two cases, besides both having three victims, another critical coincidence was the totemic nature of the crime scenes.
In the Scarecrow murder case, the scarecrow standing on the flat ground itself was a totem, while in the Nigma serial murder case, the last victim was arranged by the killer to create a totem with their body.
The state of these two victims was actually quite similar, both impaled on a stake and positioned prominently on flat ground, tracing back to their connection with totems.
In fact, totemic body states are not uncommon in serial killer cases; the vertical totem represents a more primitive form of fertility worship, highlighting male power, a format many serial killers prefer to use.
However, the issue was that the suspected killers of these two cases didn't seem like individuals who would employ this method.