Shiller couldn't be sure that Joker had managed to deal with this family using Electric Shock Aversion Therapy, as there could be some element of imitation involved, but there was no doubt that if someone within the team was to do such a thing, it would definitely be the Joker—Night Owl didn't have this kind of style.
Some might think that a reformed Joker is Batman, and a corrupted Batman is Joker, but in reality, that's not the case at all. Even a corrupted Batman pursues efficiency, being unscrupulous for the sake of gain, but without any benefit, he wouldn't do unnecessary things.
Only the Joker would take pleasure in torturing others.
Moreover, the Joker that Shiller had encountered this time was Heath Ugly, who was particularly fond of such things. His most notorious case was the cruise ship kidnapping, which focused on showing Batman the cruelty of humanity.
However, Shiller felt he might have targeted the wrong person. This trick would work better on Beihan, because at that time Batman had not been in the business very long, and he was not very sick, facing such an issue he would hesitate.
But here now was the Primary Universe Batman. To think he could be hurt by something like this was wishful thinking, for the Joker of the Prime Universe didn't just kidnap strangers—he directly kidnapped Robin. What kind of storms and hardships hadn't the Primary Universe Batman seen?
Nevertheless, Shiller felt that if the goal was to make the Primary Universe Batman lose his composure, then the Joker wouldn't just leave a few corpses here.
"Did you find anything in the Lighthouse?" Shiller asked.
"I was just about to talk to you about this," Universe Batman said, "There's a bedroom of the Lighthouse Guardian upstairs, and deep inside the wardrobe there's a safe. I've noticed that the safe has been recently tampered with, but I don't know the code. Do you?"
Shiller thought about it. If Universe Batman was asking, he probably wasn't shooting in the dark. Could he know the code?
"Take me to it first," Shiller said.
They reached the 8th floor of the Lighthouse, where there indeed was a bedroom decorated quite nicely. Upon opening the door, Shiller saw the wardrobe with its doors ajar.
It was a closet with some clothes in it, and at the very back of the clothes was a safe, not embedded in the wall, but one that could be taken out.
After Shiller took it out and examined it, he didn't know how Batman could tell that the safe had been recently disturbed, but it certainly didn't look like it could be violently cracked.
On their way here, they didn't seem to come across anything related to numbers, including posters on the walls or the quantity of certain items, none of which would be enough to form a code.
"Did you check the crime scene?" Shiller asked.
Batman nodded and said, "I inspected each body carefully, but I couldn't discern anything."
Shiller caught on that Batman meant he had noticed something but couldn't speak openly about it, being a Hunter and wilderness survival expert rather than a Detective. It wouldn't be proper for him to understand these things.
However, since Batman had looked for so long and still hadn't figured out the code, it meant the code wasn't on the bodies, and the fact that Batman was asking him meant Shiller must have come into contact with something Batman couldn't.
Shiller's eyes widened slightly as he took out the gun Greed had given him. He hadn't looked carefully when he received it, but now, close inspection revealed an eight-digit number etched beneath the barrel of the gun.
It was you again! Greed!
Shiller tried inputting the eight digits into the safe. With a crisp click, the safe opened, revealing a hard drive inside.
Even though he already knew the world's setting was modern, seeing such a modern hard drive still made Shiller somewhat unable to contain himself. He could have accepted an old-fashioned videotape common in ghost movies, but it turned out to be a hard drive!
There was indeed a computer in the Lighthouse, just without internet. Led by Batman, Shiller reached the 7th floor, where there was a study. They inserted the hard drive into the computer.
They quickly discovered that the hard drive appeared to be the original one for this computer, storing quite a lot of data, but one folder was particularly conspicuous, for its name was a smiley face composed of symbols.
Shiller had a bad premonition, but Batman resolutely clicked on the folder.
Inside was a video file.
Upon double-clicking to play, the first thing to appear on the screen was Joker's big face, followed by a familiar voice that said, "Okay, it's adjusted. Move away from the camera a bit, or we won't see anything."
That was the voice of Greed.
How could he forget that his original job was a photographer?
The Joker stepped back a bit, and only then did Batman and Shiller see the Hoff family, tied separately to chairs, arranged in a row in a dim room, each wearing an expression of terror.
Shiller looked carefully and realized the little girl was missing. Had Joker changed his ways?
But on closer inspection, the girl was being held by Joker's hand. Good, he had underestimated the extent of his deviance.
Shiller could almost guess what Joker was planning to do.
Seeing her daughter held by this perverted freak, the lady wearing a headscarf, who was also the little girl's mother, continued to wail even though her mouth was sealed with tape.
Hoff glared at Joker with rage in his eyes.
Shiller just needed to briefly observe the expressions of the people present to infer the family dynamics: a virtuous mother, an irresponsible father, selfish brothers, and the powerless her.
There's a saying that poor couples are troubled by endless woes. Although the original implication of this saying may differ from its literal meaning, the literal interpretation isn't wrong either.
Rich families might not always be harmonious, but they have many reasons for discord, whereas in poor families, most often the discord stems from poverty.
One could tell from this family's attire that they were financially struggling, even to the point of having trouble just to eat, and they must have been in this condition for quite some time. It would be quite normal for their affections to have dwindled.
While Shiller was contemplating, Joker on the screen announced his rules, asking the little girl to point out the person she liked the least.
The little girl hesitated, shaking her head as if she didn't want to do this. Joker squatted down, smiled at her, and said, "Really? You don't want to choose? Then how about you close your eyes and randomly point to someone?"
The little girl's expression became even more hesitant, clearly worried about whom she might point to. She first glanced at Hoff with a trace of fear in her eyes, then at her two brothers, and finally at her grandfather with graying hair.
At this point, her two brothers had already reacted, glaring at the little girl. She shivered and did not dare to extend her hand, but eventually, trembling, she stretched out her finger and pointed to her sister-in-law.
Her sister-in-law was the woman who had died in the storage room with a man who had his throat slashed and whose abdomen had exploded.
Soon after, Joker stepped off-camera, and not long after, he came back with an electric cord that he had modified with a device resembling an output limiter, and at the end of the cord was a metal rod twisted from several strands of wire.
Clearly, this was a homemade electrocution device.
"It seems there's indeed a copycat at work," said Shiller after a sigh. "But the details are a bit different, and Hoff doesn't look like the kind of person who would just resign himself to fate."
Batman looked at him, raising an eyebrow as if to prompt an explanation.
"I've heard about a case..." Shiller briefly introduced that case and then said, "However, I've heard professionals analyze that the selection of victims needed to be those with weak characters, craving love but lacking it, and with rather low self-esteem."
Shiller felt that Hoff and his two sons were unlikely to fit that profile. Not to mention Hoff had been a sailor for most of his life and had survived a dangerous maritime disaster alone; the way his sons threatened their sister showed that they were the type of people who would never blame themselves. These types of people were very hard to control.
But next, Shiller understood why Joker dared to do this; the device he'd modified was almost up to par with professional livestock electric stunning equipment. The equipment used by the killer in the other case was practically a toy in comparison.
The woman began to struggle frantically when she saw him approaching, shaking her head and shouting, but Shiller heard something unusual in her cries; she seemed not to be screaming for help but saying something else.
Shiller thought he heard the pronunciation of "Silterk" amongst the broken syllables.
Then it dawned on him. The woman had a fish in her abdomen, which meant she might also be one of Silterk's experimental subjects. Was she hoping Greed would save her?
Sure enough, while everyone else was extremely panicked, only that woman kept watching the camera. But what she was probably looking at wasn't the camera—it was Greed. She was indeed counting on Greed to save her.
But Joker wasn't going to give her that chance. He pressed the electrocution device against the woman's shoulder, and the next second she let out a horrific scream, her body convulsing continuously, with smoke starting to rise from the touched area.
All the others watched this terrifying scene, huddling and trying to move away, but their legs were tied to chairs, off the ground, and they couldn't escape.
After Joker removed the device, the woman's gaze had completely lost focus, as if she had fainted with her eyes open. Joker curled his lip, seemingly bored.
Then he brought the little girl forward again, asking her to identify another person she disliked.
However, this time, he removed the tape from everyone's mouths.
"Jenny! Jenny! I'm your father!!" Hoff immediately roared before lowering his voice to say, "Mr. Silterk has been very generous, he's agreed to re-employ me, and he's going to give me money in advance, enough for your tuition!"
"Shut up, Hoff!!" The middle-aged woman wrapped in a headscarf suddenly exploded, causing everyone to look at her in shock, as if they'd never seen this side of her.
"If it wasn't for you losing Doris's tuition, she would already be at school in town by now! You damn fool! You've ruined everything! You should go to Hell! You should go to Hell!!!"
Hoff turned beet red, apparently completely taken aback by his wife speaking to him that way.
Soon he too burst out, spewing all sorts of vulgar insults, with the two brothers begging Doris relentlessly.
That's when Shiller suddenly remembered a sentence Hoff had written to his daughter on the back of the family portrait—it seemed Hoff was quite fond of his daughter. So how could he have lost her tuition?
Batman seemed to sense Shiller's confusion and said, "He might not love his daughter any less, but he loves himself more."