By the time the soldiers arrived after receiving the reports, the men who had barged into the houses earlier were no longer anywhere to be seen.
After ransacking the houses and delivering a stern warning to the residents, those men had hurried off as suddenly as they had come, leaving the residents sobbing pitifully at the scene.
Faced with such a pitiful sight, all the soldiers could do was to gather whatever information they could from the residents, though most of whom had little information to offer anyway.
But while the soldiers were embarrassed to hand in seemingly useless reports, their superior did not nearly treat these reports as lightly as the soldiers.
