Chapter 930: Amidst the Misty Rain (Part Five) (Patreon)

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"Bam!"

The shotgun fired, and in the blink of an eye, Merkel saw the scene within the Manor clearly. The leaves of all the plants began to sway and stretch, extending towards him.

Realizing that the gun was ineffective against the plants, Merkel remained calm. He quickly grabbed the bag of powder he had just sprinkled and spread it rapidly across the surrounding ground.

As he retreated into the Manor's buildings, he continued to scatter the powder on the ground along the way. Upon re-entering the building, there was a loud "bang" as the shotgun hit the powder in front of the door. The bullet's spark ignited the chemicals meant for incineration, and suddenly, fire erupted.

Standing by the French window, looking at the raging garden fire, Merkel sighed deeply. He then walked into the hall and picked up the telephone, saying, "Hello, Mr. Alfred? I have some very bad news. I just burned down the employer's garden..."

In Wayne Manor, Alfred placed Aisha, whom he had been holding, down and covered his forehead with his hand. He said, "My goodness! You haven't called for so long, I thought you were finally becoming a competent butler!"

"I never expected you to prepare such a big surprise... Reasons? What possible reason could make you burn down the entire garden in Wayne Manor? The garden in Rodriguez Manor is famous among Gotham's private estates circle, and you just burned it down?!"

"Well, listen, Merkel, you are a butler now, just a butler. If you can't adapt to this profession, then I'll have to contact... What? The plants moved first?!"

Alfred raised his voice, "Have you been drinking? This is a serious breach of professional ethics! You can't..."

"Ah!!!"

A scream came from the rear garden of Wayne Manor. Alfred immediately hung up the telephone and rushed towards the rear garden, but Aisha was even quicker. The two of them rushed into the rear garden and saw Dick hanging on the fence.

Alfred hurried over to rescue him and said, "Master Dick, even if you want to practice gymnastics, you can't keep jumping off walls. I've said before that one day you'll be hanging in mid-air because Master Wayne Senior had experienced it before..."

"No..." Dick scratched his head and said, "I didn't jump off the wall. I was rehearsing dance moves for the club, and it felt like someone lifted me onto the wall?"

Dick turned his head in puzzlement and looked at the garden wall. However, there was nothing there except for vines. He said, "This is bizarre. Could it be that I was so focused during rehearsal that I didn't notice climbing onto the wall?"

Alfred's alertness was much higher than Merkel's. He immediately pulled Dick away from the wall. But just as he turned his head, he saw a thick vine on the wall, directly curling around Aisha.

Aisha, not understanding the situation, thought it was a game and raised her hands in excitement. Alfred quickly picked up a nearby gardening shovel, swung it forcefully, and cut the vine. Before Aisha could fall to the ground, he rushed forward and caught her.

He held Aisha with one hand and Dick with the other, returning them to the building of Wayne Manor. He told them to stay by the window and not move, keeping them within his sight.

He walked to the nearby tool shed, picked up a gun, and the same incinerating powder as Merkel's. He fired a shot at the vines, realizing they were completely unaffected. Then, he poured the powder next to the plant's roots and ignited it.

After walking around the garden, just as the plants started to move, the roaring fire engulfed them all. When Alfred returned to the house with the shotgun and gardening shovel, Dick exclaimed, "Goodness, Mr. Alfred, you've burned down Wayne Manor's garden!"

"Master Dick, you can go practice your dance moves in the living room. Oh, don't forget to bring Miss Aisha along. I need to make a few phone calls. Please don't go outside..."

Seeing Alfred's furrowed brows, Dick also sensed that something was amiss. He nodded in understanding, picked up Aisha, went upstairs to the bedroom, closed all the doors and windows, and started playing with building blocks with Aisha.

Downstairs, Alfred approached the telephone and began calling all the butlers he knew.

"Hello? Is this Leuf Manor on Falcon Street, No. 3? I'm Alfred, the butler of Wayne Manor. Have you noticed any mutations in the garden's plants?... Oh, you've seen the vines moving, haven't you? Yes, they've mutated..."

"Do you remember the incinerating powder we used for certain fertilizers? Yes, that stuff works well. Sprinkle it at the base of the plants. Yes, you should use plenty, considering the weather isn't conducive to starting a fire..."

"Hello, Mrs. Titch? It's Alfred. What's wrong? You sound a bit tired. Is there another break-in attempt? It seems they want to take advantage of the situation. Have you dealt with it?..."

"I called to remind you that the plants in the garden may have undergone a mutation. It's best to burn them all, using the incinerating powder I recommended to you earlier. Correct, the one you used to deal with the burglars. No, you're too kind..."

"Hello, I'm Alfred. I need to remind you..."

As one telephone call followed another in the Manor district's southern and western regions, Batman, who had been squatting in his helicopter preparing to land on a rooftop, observed that all the Manors in the South and West Districts were quickly engulfed in flames, one after another.

Almost instantly, the entire South and West Districts were ablaze, and the thick smoke rising from the burning fires was denser than the rain fog that had just formed. Countless columns of smoke rose like swords, tearing through the dark clouds. For a brief moment, the thick rain lines came to a halt.

As Batman landed on the rooftop and saw the once-charred garden, he silently lowered his hand, which held the communication device. He swallowed back his earlier intention to warn Alfred about the possibility of plant mutation, and the effectiveness of fire as a reminder.

After returning to Wayne Manor, Alfred immediately approached Batman. Before Batman could say anything, Alfred smiled and said, "The plant samples and samples after incineration have been sent to the underground laboratory. The power supply is up and running. Hot tea and a towel are placed on the table to the right of the lab table. Dick and Aisha have already gone to sleep..."

Batman slightly opened his mouth but withdrew the questions he had in mind. He nodded and headed towards the underground laboratory.

As he turned his head, he saw Alfred smiling at him. Now he understood what Schiller had said. Stopping the puppeteer behind the scenes and everything he was doing to Gotham might not be for the sake of saving Gotham itself, but rather to save the puppeteer, preventing him from falling into an abyss of self-delusion and addiction.

If the unleashed zombies and plant mutations were in any other city, it would have been a catastrophic disaster, but in Gotham, it felt more like a daily occurrence. The ones dealing with the dangerous and frightening mutated plants weren't the great and wise heroes, but the butler who helped his master handle pests every day.

Entering the underground laboratory, Batman looked up at the ceiling and remembered that when they were constructing this laboratory and excavating the underground layers, he finally understood why, in a city like Gotham, he had never heard of any news about thieves breaking into Wayne Manor.

He also finally realized how terrifying Catwoman, the leader of the Four Felines, who could steal anything in Gotham without any rival, truly was.

As soon as the rain started, Catwoman had just returned from a trip around the North District. She had made a significant haul today, so she was in a good mood. However, when she took her keys out of her pocket to unlock the door, the necklace she had stashed there got caught in the keys. She had to stand by the door and untangle the necklace.

Catwoman was focused on unraveling the necklace when she suddenly felt something move in the shadows to her right. Her movements paused for a moment, and she took a step back, then turned her head to look, but there was nothing there.

"This darn old building..." Catwoman muttered softly. But in the corner of her eye, she saw the moss that had originally grown in the cracks of the bricks extending countless legs and crawling towards the door lock.

"Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!"

A scream pierced the sky above the apartment rooftop. In the next three seconds, the door of Catwoman's apartment received more than a hundred slashes.

In her terrified state, Catwoman's first reaction was not to escape but to launch a frantic attack on the moving moss. Surprisingly, this turned out to be the right move.

The sparks from the blade carving into the iron door forced the moss to retreat. The moss, like a mouse, scurried into the shadows and disappeared.

Catwoman, still shaken, took deep breaths, and only then did she realize that it wasn't a ghost but a mass of moss. She cursed softly and looked at the dark corridor, along with the key she still couldn't untangle. She had no choice but to rush to the window in the hallway after opening it and climb onto the rooftop using the water pipe.

From there, she saw flames erupting from the ground, with three gang members chasing after two walking trees from the south to the north, while a group of children carried torches and chased the vines that were continuously extending from the north to the south.

"What's going on? Why do the plants have legs?" Catwoman squinted in amazement.

Catwoman was somewhat afraid of ghosts, but what she feared were the kind that you could see but not touch, the ones that would jump out from the shadows to startle you. As long as something could be attacked, then it was the attackers who needed to run. Her mentality was shared by the majority of the people in Gotham. They might be afraid of ghosts, but if something could be attacked, then it wasn't considered a ghost.

Once it was discovered that gunfire was effective against these mutated plants, the nature of the situation changed. The people of Gotham's first reaction wasn't, "What kind of ghost is this?" but rather, "This isn't a ghost at all!"

Catwoman, crouching on the rooftop, scratched her head. She couldn't quite figure out the current situation, but she knew someone who might be able to make sense of it all.

Without hesitation, she ran towards Wayne Manor.

[Read at www.patreon.com/shanefreak, and thanks for the invaluable support!]

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Next Chapter>>Chapter 931: Amidst theMisty Rain (Part Six)