Enforcer Manual
Chapter 408: The Void is Not Responsible for This Matter_1

Chapter 408: Chapter 408: The Void is Not Responsible for This Matter_1

The next morning, the chief of Sheep Village woke up.

If his sleepwalking time were included, he had slept for more than ten hours.

When he realized he was lying in bed shirtless, covered with a blanket, his pupils abruptly shrank, and he hastily lifted the blanket to check his pants.

Someone had changed his pants, and the soreness throughout his body gave rise to an ominous thought—it felt like the aftermath of a fight.

But this was his room, where beer cans from the previous night still lay on the floor, and among the lingering scent of alcohol seemed to mix other odors.

This was definitely not a good sign.

In an educational film he had once seen, the protagonist, A-Wei, met with misfortune after drinking.

"You’re finally awake. Do you remember what happened last night?"

The sight of Big Radish Head, yawning as he walked out of the bathroom, made his eyes bulge. He glared angrily and demanded, "What did you all do?"

"What we did is not important, what matters is what you did."

Relieved, Big Radish Head cursed, "Damn, I thought you’d never wake up! Look at the mess you’ve made."

He pointed to the floor of the inn.

Following his gesture, the chief of Sheep Village looked and saw a pile of blood-soaked clothes in the corner of the room. The strange smell in the room was coming from those clothes.

They were his, now so tattered and torn they were clearly unwearable.

"Where is Spicy Chicken?"

"He went to sleep next door."

To prevent the chief of Sheep Village from sleepwalking again in the middle of the night and possibly getting killed by monsters outside the inn, he and Spicy Chicken had agreed to stay by his side—Spicy Chicken through the first half of the night, and he through the second half. But the chief had slept soundly throughout the night without anyone stepping outside.

Through Big Radish Head’s account, the chief of Sheep Village learned about the harrowing experiences of the previous day. He checked his body more than once; all his wounds had healed, which made him feel unreal, yet the bloodstained clothes in the corner served as ironclad proof.

"You really don’t remember?"

Unconvinced, Big Radish Head asked again.

He had not slept well in the first half of the night, always dreaming that he woke up to find himself sleepwalking into an unknown area, where monsters swarmed him and tore him to pieces, and then the dream would end. He woke up startled four times in just half a night, to the point where he even considered buying a hug-bug for himself from the mysterious merchant that evening.

Only then did he realize that to live in the Void for an extended period, he needed something to ensure his sleep quality.

"I don’t remember, and I’ve never had a habit of sleepwalking before."

The chief of Sheep Village said with certainty.

Being attacked was a fact, but he had no recollection whatsoever of who might have attacked him. If not for Big Radish Head’s reminder, he wouldn’t have even been aware that he had been so severely injured.

"Did you dream at all? Did you see anything strange in your dreams?"

Big Radish Head felt increasingly creepy as the chief of Sheep Village was sure he had no allies, which meant these bizarre symptoms had started after coming to the town.

That also meant perhaps he and Spicy Chicken could also be affected, possibly sleepwalking out of the inn without any awareness, with the potential of dying mysteriously in the end.

You should know that even the two Adventurers guarding the first floor didn’t notice how the chief of Sheep Village had left.

"Now that you mention it, I remember dreaming about a corridor, with cages on both ends, holding crazed people, and some faceless figures guarding them."

"And then what?"

"Then I heard someone telling me to run, so I ran."

After that, he couldn’t remember anything, just a vague recollection of starting to run. As for where he ran to or whom he might have seen, he couldn’t recall a single detail now.

Dreams are, after all, ethereal and illusory; it’s unrealistic to remember every detail of a dream.

The two discussed it but got nowhere, so they hastily went online to go through the entries of all Void creatures, but never found any mention of a monster that controlled them through dreams. They stubbornly reached out to Father Bruno, but he had set his account to reject private messages. Posting in the forums for help also yielded no useful information.

In the end, they could only report these findings to Song Lan and Fengling.

They suspected someone was controlling the village chief through his dreams, but all they got in return was a "believe in science" response.

However, they felt...

That the town’s very existence on the border of the Void and reality was unscientific to begin with; they couldn’t understand why an Adventurer who often explored the Void would say "believe in science."

Indeed, after returning yesterday, Song Lan had come up with many theories, like the United Government injecting mechanical Worms into the body of Sheep Village’s chief or him being affected by some sort of illusion similar to those created by the Lunar Eclipse Sect. However, as they investigated step by step, all of these theories were debunked.

The Devourers even conducted an on-site investigation while the chief was asleep, certain that there were no parasitic worms inside his body, and Dr. Bai Zhu helped run a full poison check from head to toe but found no suspicious viruses or programs.

If neither biology nor science could explain this bizarre phenomenon, could it be that a Psychic was controlling him?

In the end, Song Lan had no choice but to seek external help, turning to Comrade Lu Xiang, the most famous expert in psychology and criminal investigation in District 17. The expert took it very seriously and sent over the findings the very next morning.

Initially, Song Lan approached the expert with the intent of "Walk Close to Science," but the result of the investigation only made the atmosphere in the town grow even more bizarre and terrifying.

Lu Xiang soon found out that the chief of Sheep Village was not the first to exhibit these symptoms.

Over the decades, such strange phenomena had never ceased. For instance, a town resident once reported to the Law Enforcers that she had taken a nap at home in the morning, only to wake up and find herself in a hotel room in the city center, which scared her half to death as she suspected she had been kidnapped.

However, further investigation by the Law Enforcers revealed that the woman had not been kidnapped at all; surveillance footage showed that she had left her home on her own, arrived in the city by car, booked a room, and checked in.

Since then, the town has been rife with endless urban legends, but not all the protagonists in these stories were as lucky as the woman who reported her case; some were seen leaving the town with an abnormal demeanor, and then they were never seen again.

A vendor once recounted a disappearance he had witnessed; the missing person was a regular customer at his stall. He saw the person leaving in a hurry that day, calling out several times with no response. He thought the person had an emergency and didn’t take it to heart, but a few days later, he unexpectedly saw a missing person notice for the individual in the town.

According to the vendor’s later recollection, the last time he saw the missing person, they were hurrying as if something was chasing them.

Looking at the dozens of disappearance cases sent by Lu Xiang, Song Lan finally understood why the town’s residents had fled the area en masse not long ago.

It wasn’t out of fear of the Void itself, but rather, they wrongfully attributed the strange events that had occurred in the town over the years to the Void.

This realization weighed heavily on Song Lan’s mind.

He has always adhered to the principle that every debt has a debtor and every wrong a claimant. Although the town’s long-standing disappearance cases indeed bore the hallmarks of the Void, and according to their "propaganda," those who strayed into the Void indeed became part of District 17’s missing population without explanation.

But he was confident that these decades’ worth of disappearance cases had nothing to do with them.

The Void stated that they couldn’t be held responsible for these missing people.

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