Enforcer Manual
Chapter 426: Remnants of Imagination_1

Chapter 426: Chapter 426: Remnants of Imagination_1

For an ordinary office worker, being called up at one in the morning is extremely painful.

Since being woken up by Medea, Song Lan had been lying in bed in a daze, but for some reason, he, who usually enjoyed high-quality sleep, suffered from insomnia tonight.

Perhaps it was the sudden drop in temperature after the beginning of winter; even wrapped in his blanket, he could feel the room getting colder and colder, so cold that every time he was about to fall asleep, a chill seemed to come from nowhere, dispersing his drowsiness.

He had been holding a standoff with sleeplessness for the better part of the night, until after an indeterminate amount of time, other noises suddenly emerged in the room.

In a state between dreaming and wakefulness, he thought he heard the sound of moving a stool.

The noise came closer and closer to him, eventually seeming to stop right in front of his bed.

Song Lan’s eyes irritably squinted open a crack.

It seemed to be a woman dressed in white, now less than half a meter away from him, sitting on the chair with her straw-like withered hair hanging down, a pair of crimson pupils flickering in and out of view amidst her bangs.

At that moment, the woman was staring at him with a resentful gaze.

The fingers she rested on her leg appeared to be making a gouging motion, looking very aggressive.

Waking in the middle of the night to such a sight could terrify anyone’s soul into scattering, but Song Lan in the bed did not scream. He steadied his spirit, and locked eyes with the white-clothed woman for a long while.

He was no longer the person he had been in the past.

Instead, he was an office worker who had been tormented by insomnia for half the night and was well aware that he had to get up early the next morning to check the differences at the neighboring farm.

The white-clothed woman stared at him for a while longer, then suddenly, with a horrifying grin, revealed a mouthful of sharp teeth and reached out with both hands towards Song Lan’s neck.

"It’s really too cold today, so I’m going to give you a suggestion,"

Song Lan pulled the blanket tighter around himself, "Before I twist your head off, I suggest you go back to wherever you came from."

The white-clothed woman’s ferocious smile instantly froze on her face, the hands that were stretching towards Song Lan’s neck paused, and quickly retracted the way they had come.

The chill receded, and a warm sensation returned to the room.

The white-clothed woman seemed to take Song Lan’s advice, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

He slept through to the next day, when Fengling came to visit. She had been actively traveling back and forth between the town and the farm every day lately because she was recording the process of sardines evolving into great white sharks.

When the two of them arrived at the hotel lobby downstairs, they found Big Radish Head and others already waiting there. The seven people looked much haggard, and upon seeing Song Lan and Fengling emerge, they crowded around them, nervously saying, "There’s trouble, the hotel is haunted!"

Last night, none of them slept soundly. After nightfall, the rooms became exceptionally cold. Despite being exhausted, they couldn’t fall asleep, and in that half-dreaming, half-awake state, they heard sounds of objects moving in the room, followed by the appearance of a snarling white-clothed woman at the side of their beds, glaring at them with eyes full of resentment.

Big Radish Head had thought it was just a nightmare he had, but after discussing it with the others this morning, they discovered they all had the same nightmare, seeing the same white-clothed woman. Spicy Chicken even mentioned that he attempted to resist, but his body was out of his control, immobile.

Even though they were still conscious, their bodies wouldn’t move as if they were in hibernation.

After much hesitation, Emily then spoke to them about her private communication with the director of Starfish Technology, who also specifically mentioned a white-clothed woman in their communication.

That very night, they all saw each other.

Song Lan tallied up the times when everyone saw the woman in white, which was almost between 4 and 5 in the morning. Afterward, the woman in white disappeared, and only then were they finally able to sleep through the night, waking up at 7 o’clock.

If it weren’t for the fact that everyone else had seen the same ghostly apparition, they would have thought it was just a nightmare.

This realization made Song Lan’s eyes go wide with a surge of fear in his heart.

That would mean he likely also encountered the woman in white around 4 am, which meant...

He had slept for less than three hours!?

This terrifying discovery immediately left him feeling weak, with a headache and feverish sensation setting in, and the torturous drowsiness was magnified immensely.

Today was a day overshadowed by the specter of the woman in white.

But life had to go on. Despite having slept for less than three hours the night before, the working class still had to punch in on time the next day. After leaving behind a message, "Leave the investigation to us," Song Lan, accompanied by Fengling, set off toward the neighboring farm.

After leaving the small town, he asked, "So, you saw that woman in white last night too?"

"I didn’t see her."

Fengling shook her head.

She had slept as soundly as ever, not waking until daylight. "However, Xiao He (Guardian Spirit) mentioned it. She had just appeared when Xiao He devoured her."

This short conversation made Song Lan recognize the power of a Summoner’s profession firsthand—they were able to efficiently clear out monsters even while asleep.

To ensure his own sleep quality, he even considered changing his profession to become a Summoner.

However, Song Lan also quickly confirmed something else: the woman in white was likely not just one ghost, and she might not even exist in reality.

Subsequently, he voiced strong criticism toward the Devourer.

Trying to increase the town’s terror atmosphere was commendable, but not at the expense of disrupting people’s dreams. However, the Devourer expressed its grievance, stating that the white figure wasn’t its doing, and others in the scrapyard were also ignorant about it. Dr. Bai Zhu further clarified that the apparitions seen by the employees of Starfish Technology were synthesized by a virus. When they conducted observations, this virus program would display some of the horrific images she had created.

With the current level of technology, it was impossible to make something fictional real.

It wasn’t until Father Bruno became aware of the situation that another theory was proposed.

He believed that the woman in white originally did not exist but, like the Void and the fog, was a monster brought into existence by the growing belief of the people.

Even the Lunar Eclipse Sect had many unexplored areas, and inadvertently produced some byproducts while obtaining Spiritual Energy through belief.

Noble wishes empower people, while evil thoughts also breed corresponding twisted monsters.

In the Neutral Country, the Lunar Eclipse Sect established the "Confession Room," which, in reality, was an unfathomably deep abandoned mine. One of the priests’ daily tasks was to incarcerate some of the unkillable monsters into the mine shaft. As of now, the shaft had become a death zone uninhabitable by ordinary people, where anyone who wandered in would be tortured to death by the monsters.

And this woman in white was very likely the first uncontrollable monster born from the virus created by Dr. Bai Zhu and beyond the control of the Bug Swarm.

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