Enforcer Manual
Chapter 270: Literalist Sect - Part 1

Chapter 270: Chapter 270: Literalist Sect - Part 1

"So that means, when you look at the moon now, it’s..."

"Yes, it has turned into an eye."

Lu Xiang nodded.

After nightfall, an eye that hung in the night sky had replaced the moon. It looked like the pupil of a snake, and whenever you looked at it, you’d get the feeling that the moon was watching you.

Oleg and his squad had just arrived in the town that day when two of their members, while studying this full moon, suddenly became mentally unstable. They fought each other in their exoskeleton armor, and one of them even activated the self-destruct mechanism, hugging the other as they both exploded into pieces.

"Those contaminated by psychic pollution will develop strong aggression, believing that the townspeople have been driven mad in the same way."

"It seems this is not a hallucination."

Song Lan suddenly said, but although he had been staring at the moon for quite a while, no other voices had surfaced in his mind.

After a little while, Lu Xiang asked again, "Do you feel anything?"

"My eyes are a bit sore."

"...Let’s go down, Oleg and the others are waiting for us downstairs."

When the two of them put on their exoskeleton armor and returned downstairs, they found that Oleg and his team members had also fully armed themselves, even Oleg had gotten into the "Commander Mark IV."

The atmosphere had become somewhat tense.

Although everyone was working towards a common goal, the scene looked more like a gang fight was about to erupt.

"Don’t get it wrong, these are just some precautionary measures,"

Oleg explained.

This explanation wasn’t much different from saying, "I’m ready to blow you all up."

However, after experiencing his subordinates being mentally contaminated, turning on each other, and attacking one another until they ended up as pieces due to a suicide bombing, Song Lan felt that it wasn’t too much.

This squad had survived for nearly a month in the town that was the source of the infection, with no support, relying entirely on Oleg’s caution.

Under the watchful eye of the medical team members, Song Lan took the lead and stepped out of the gymnasium’s big door into the night.

The cool breeze from outside blew in, and the bright moonlight fell upon them.

He looked up at the "eye" in the night sky, their gazes interacting once more.

"Say something, will you."

Song Lan, in turn, deliberately fostered such a thought in his mind. This sensation of being stared at yet receiving no response made him feel as if he was subject to some kind of cold violence.

Unfortunately, the Wild Devourer still paid him no heed.

The two sides remained in a standoff in the night for a quarter of an hour—according to the record of the first night, it was after ten minutes of studying this strange moon that the two team members started to show symptoms. They deliberately waited another five minutes and found that Song Lan and Lu Xiang were still normal.

"It seems your countermeasures are indeed effective,"

Oleg sighed with relief and said, "Come back, let’s plan how we’ll enter the pit tomorrow."

"We’re going in tonight."

"Tonight?"

Oleg was startled, "The Queen’s Nest is most active at night, and there might be other monsters hidden in the pit—I’ve told you, haven’t I? The armor’s defense is nothing against the acid of those mutated creatures."

"That’s exactly why we’re going into the pit to explore," Song Lan said. "We can only collect more data when it’s awake."

He suspected that the main reason Andrew had ventured half an hour into the pit last time and discovered nothing but murals was that all the mutated creatures in the hole had gone to sleep.

Song Lan didn’t intend to give Oleg the chance to argue and headed directly towards the direction of the pit.

His mood right now was probably more excited than that of the mutated creatures and wild devourers in the hole. The mere fact of hatching flying mutated creatures exceeded his expectations. Aerial troops held extraordinary strategic significance on the frontlines of warfare; in modern conflict, whoever controlled the skies had the upper hand.

Shortly after entering the pit, the two discovered the murals Andrew had mentioned previously. Andrew had only recorded the information he deemed important, bringing back the existence of the "Queen’s Nest."

Yet, in actuality, these murals seemed to be recording a complete story.

"It’s necrosis,"

The well-informed Lu Xiang quickly understood the meaning of the murals. She also grasped why the people in the hole had been living a life akin to that of a primitive tribe, "After contracting necrosis, they were thrown in here by the townspeople and left to perish on their own."

"Is this some kind of contagious disease?"

Song Lan wasn’t very familiar with medical terminology.

"This is a very common infectious disease in the third world, supposedly associated with excessive radiation. Those infected with this disease will see their skin suppurate and ulcerate quickly. Although it won’t cause instant death, it’s highly contagious, so the townspeople threw those afflicted into the pit to die."

The first half of the mural depicted the process of patients infected with necrosis being cast into this place.

The townspeople didn’t even provide them with nutritional injections, clearly wanting them to die quickly in the hole.

"However, what the townspeople didn’t expect was that deep inside the pit lay a devourer. After making contact with the devourer, the patients infected with necrosis miraculously recovered. They saw this as a blessing from a deity, so they founded a sect and remained hidden underground. The being they revered as a deity was a large egg-shaped creature... What’s with that look?"

"I just suddenly feel that you really are incredible, boss."

Song Lan expressed his admiration sincerely. He was genuinely impressed that Lu Xiang could piece together the entire storyline from such rough murals, as expected of someone with a background in criminal investigation.

"Isn’t that obvious?"

Lu Xiang said in a matter-of-fact tone, using the basic lingo of a top student.

Song Lan still remembered asking his desk-mate, a top student, about math problems in high school and college, who would skip some steps he simply couldn’t comprehend by saying "obviously."

This made him begin to doubt his status as an intellectual hero.

"So how did you interpret it?"

Lu Xiang retorted, curious about Song Lan’s thoughts, and surreptitiously considered whether she had missed any details that led her to a completely different conclusion from Song Lan’s.

"I’m a literalist."

"Literalist?"

"Yeah, that’s just analyzing the content depicted on the murals directly."

Song Lan lifted his metal-armored exoskeleton arm, pointing at the mural on the wall, "One day, a group of unlucky adventurers accidentally fell into this cave. The cave was dark and complex; they couldn’t find their way back. Just when the starving adventurers thought they were done for, they discovered a mega egg. So they lit a fire, roasted the egg, and in the end, they all survived."

Is that some kind of children’s book!

Lu Xiang stumbled, regretting her recent self-reflection.

She felt that Song Lan’s storytelling skills were as disastrous as his naming skills.

Before she could correct him, someone else had already done so.

An arrow shot quickly and hit Song Lan in the buttocks with precise accuracy, but under the protection of the exoskeleton armor, the arrow did no harm.

"You must not defame our Old God!"

From the darkness, came the angry shout of the sneak attacker.