The detectives had their own website where they shared the strange cases they encountered.
Most of the cases were well-received by the detectives, who eagerly contributed their wisdom to solve the mysteries.
However, there was a certain type of case that most detectives were reluctant to touch, forming an unspoken rule within the industry—cases involving supernatural occurrences. These cases were known as "hidden cases" on the website, stored at the bottom, and rarely brought up.
The vampire case that Wenwen had previously selected was one of these hidden cases, chosen because it seemed relatively easy to handle.
Now, he was looking for another manageable case to enhance his supernatural abilities.
In his rented room, Wenwen kept scrolling through the website, his eyes moving quickly over the content.
"Hmm, this one looks interesting."
...
At 10 PM, the moonlight was obscured by thick clouds, and the entire city was shrouded in the fog of the dark night.
From the outside, Green Source Middle School's Dormitory Building No. 2 had a faint orange light coming from a room at the far end of the second floor.
The school lights had been turned off, and by this time, the students should have been asleep. Clearly, this dorm room shouldn't have been lit.
Inside the room, three students were gathered around a table, playing cards, with a candle in the middle.
"Haha, a bomb! I win!" a slightly chubby student shouted, clenching his fist in victory.
A skinny, dark-skinned student beside him was startled and quickly covered his mouth.
"Pan Dapeng, keep your voice down! Do you want to bring that old man over here?"
At the mention of the old man, Pan Dapeng quickly shut his mouth. The dormitory's elderly guard was a terrifying figure in their eyes, always appearing out of nowhere and very strict, never showing any mercy.
The three students then deliberately lowered their voices and continued playing cards. Despite their fear of the old man, they were still in the mood to play. At thirteen or fourteen years old, they were at the age where they loved to have fun.
They were so engrossed in their game that they lost track of time, and soon it was midnight. Luckily, the dormitory guard still hadn't found them.
"Alright, that's enough. We have to get up early for class tomorrow," said Li Wenliang, the skinny student, yawning as he got up to go to the bathroom.
As he opened the door, he saw an old man with a face full of wrinkles standing in the doorway, his face pale, staring directly at him. His urge to go to the bathroom vanished instantly.
It was the dormitory's elderly guard!
Li Wenliang awkwardly smiled and closed the door. To his surprise, the guard just stood there, watching him close the door, not stopping him, not even blinking.
He walked back into the room, a strange expression on his face, ready to describe what he had just seen to his roommates.
But he found them all staring at him in terror.
"Strange, how did you guys know the dormitory guard was just outside our door?" Li Wenliang asked in confusion.
But soon he realized they weren't afraid of the dormitory guard.
Two slightly blackened hands rested on Li Wenliang's shoulders, and a head without eyeballs leaned out from his side, staring at him with a blank expression!
It turned out, they were afraid of this figure!
A strange coldness and uncontrollable fear overwhelmed Li Wenliang, making the dormitory guard seem friendly in comparison...
...
"Ah...ahchoo..."
At the train station, Wenwen, dragging a huge suitcase, couldn't help but sneeze. The air smelled too mixed, and he couldn't stand it.
After gaining the vampire's basic abilities, his sense of smell had greatly improved, almost like a dog's, able to distinguish various scents.
Sweat, body odor, even the smell of spoiled underwear, he could smell them all clearly.
"So this is Furonghe City, a big city with millions of people. It looks like I'll need to stay here for a while."
As a big city, Furonghe had a lot of unusual cases, but these cases were usually unknown to the public. Wenwen had learned through an insider on the detective website that Furonghe was the city with the most hidden cases nearby.
And he intended to solve these cases one by one because capturing monsters was a mandatory requirement of the Calamity Containment Unit. Only by catching more monsters could he unlock more abilities of the containment unit.
After finding a clean hotel, Wenwen opened his laptop.
He had solved many difficult cases before, earning quite a bit of reward money from various police departments, so he wasn't short on money at all.
"To be safe, let's start with a simple case. Let me see…"
After some searching, Wenwen locked onto a case.
"Shocking! Three middle school students playing cards late at night led to a major accident. The cause was surprisingly simple!"
"Another one of those clickbait titles, but I can't help clicking on it..."
Wenwen muttered as he browsed through the details of the case.
"Hmm, these three students were so scared they ended up in the hospital, one even suffered frostbite and became mentally unstable. The dormitory guard stood outside their room all night, and his legs were nearly crippled. He's also recovering in the hospital…"
Wenwen rubbed his chin and said to himself, "This does seem like a supernatural case, and it doesn't appear too dangerous. No ordinary people died, so I should be fine now."
He then searched the internet for more information related to the case but found nothing, further confirming his suspicion.
Usually, true supernatural cases couldn't be found on public platforms. Those strange events that went viral online were either too big to cover up or involved someone pretending to be supernatural, which was of no use to Wenwen.
The fact that nothing could be found online about this case only made him more interested.
He then called a friend at the police station and obtained some internal information. After reviewing it, he made up his mind.
"Alright, this will be the first 'hidden case' handled by the great detective Wenwen... or maybe the second, whatever."
...
The next day at noon, the doorbell rang at Pan Dapeng's house.
A haggard-looking middle-aged woman in a cashmere sweater opened the door and was surprised to see the person standing outside.
"May I help you?"
"Hello, I'm an insurance verifier from the Federal Blossom Insurance Company. I heard your son was frightened in the school dormitory a few days ago, and I'm here to discuss the details of the insurance compensation."
Wenwen, dressed in a cheap black suit and wearing black-framed glasses, politely said while holding a briefcase. He handed over a document with a smile.
The document was something Wenwen had casually printed at a roadside copy shop, and the seal was something he had carved out of a radish himself. As a detective, it was normal to have some odd skills.
After reading the document, the woman let Wenwen into the house, where he finally saw the first person involved in a hidden case, a second-year middle school student named Pan Dapeng.
Pan Dapeng sat on the sofa with a cup of hot tea in front of him, wrapped in a thick blanket, but he was still trembling slightly.
"Mr. Pan Dapeng, can you tell me about what you experienced in the dormitory at Green Source Middle School?"
"The dormitory?"
Pan Dapeng shook his head and said, "That night, the three of us went to play near the school's cold storage and accidentally got locked inside for several hours..."
"Is that all? Nothing else, nothing unusual happened?"
Wenwen leaned forward, unable to resist asking, as what Pan Dapeng described didn't match the information he had.
"What do you mean, isn't that enough? Have you no humanity? Poor kids got locked in a cold storage, isn't that pitiful enough? Don't you have any sympathy?"
Pan Dapeng's mother was angered by Wenwen's words and questioned him.
"No, no, I didn't mean that. I just wanted to ask, besides the cold storage, did anything happen in the dormitory? Is this really all caused by the cold storage?" Wenwen frowned and asked.
"What else could have caused it? What else could freeze a child like this?" Pan's mother said, holding Pan Dapeng close, clearly upset with Wenwen.
It was as if Wenwen was downplaying the seriousness of her child's condition.
She suspected that Wenwen was asking these questions to avoid paying the insurance claim. Being on edge because of Pan Dapeng's situation, she naturally showed no goodwill towards Wenwen.
After a few more questions, Wenwen was finally driven out by Pan's mother...
In Pan's mother's view, the facts were crystal clear, but Wenwen kept probing for something else, which was unbearable for her in her agitated state.
After leaving Pan Dapeng's home, Wenwen wasn't upset by Pan's mother's attitude. He had encountered such things often enough as a detective that he was used to it.
But why was Pan Dapeng hiding what had happened in the dormitory? If it was all just an act, then he was performing too well…
"I couldn't even tell he was lying…" Wenwen muttered.
Next, he went to find another student involved, as well as Li Wenliang, who was still in the hospital. Both gave the same account, which was entirely consistent with Pan Dapeng's story.
They all claimed that the three of them had accidentally gone to the school's cold storage and were then frostbitten.
But according to Wenwen's investigation, the school's
cold storage was not somewhere the three students could have accessed.
So, either all the internal information Wenwen had obtained was fake, or these three students were lying together.
"Or maybe neither side is wrong…" Wenwen thought.
Back at the hotel, Wenwen began further investigating, determined to uncover the true identity of whatever was haunting the dormitory.
As a detective who, though still new, had already achieved remarkable results, Wenwen easily obtained some internal information. From one particular piece of information, Wenwen almost confirmed the identity of the entity in the dormitory.
Three years ago, a boy named Qin Shuang was flirting online…
"Wow, so young and already dating? Kids these days…" Wenwen shook his head in disbelief.
He had arranged to meet a young woman and took her to a hotel room, but was caught by the woman's boyfriend. The boy was then dismembered by the couple and stuffed into a refrigerator. The case was only solved a year later because the couple turned themselves in.
"Online dating can be dangerous," Wenwen sighed.
"So, this Qin Shuang probably turned into a ghost and returned to his old dormitory, and Pan Dapeng and the others were just unlucky victims."
That part went smoothly; if not for the difficulties during the home visit, Wenwen would be feeling quite accomplished now.
"So, I'm dealing with a ghost… Containment Unit, how do I handle a ghost?"
The Calamity Containment Unit remained unresponsive.
"Sigh, this plugin is like a sealed jar, I have to figure out its functions on my own. Unlike other systems, which can at least chat with their hosts." Wenwen complained.
Of course, he was only complaining; given his personality, if this thing really had its own intelligence, he would probably imagine all sorts of terrifying scenarios, like possession or some conspiracy involving his body.
His biggest help was still the internet, where he found many seemingly reliable methods for exorcising ghosts through various channels.
Hmm… the most reliable one was learning Taoist rituals, but he had no access to that.
Ox tears, tongue blood, virgin urine, salt, weapons with killing energy, and a Genesis Hymn and cross stolen from the church.
Back when he was dealing with a vampire, he had stolen quite a few things from the church...
He wasn't sure if these items would work against a ghost, but they should have some effect. After all, they had worked when he was dealing with the vampire.
At 9 PM, the sky was completely dark, with the same weather as the day of the incident.
Fully armed, Wenwen left the hotel, carrying a large backpack and wearing a mask, looking like anything but a good person.
When he arrived at Green Source Middle School, the dormitory lights were all off, perfect for him to sneak in.
He didn't use the main gate; dressed like this, the guard would never let him in.
He walked to the wall, grabbed the edge, and with a slight effort, jumped over it.
"The vampire's physical abilities are no joke. It's amazing that I was able to catch a vampire."
After a brief moment of self-praise, Wenwen found Dormitory Building No. 2. Peeking through the door, he saw a young security guard sitting upright in the guardroom.
"This is a bit of a problem. I need to deal with him."
The problem wasn't that the guard would prevent him from getting inside; it was that when dealing with the ghost, he might make some noise, and having the guard around would make things difficult.
He tapped his bracelet, deactivating the Calamity-0001 prison point, and moved it to his middle finger.
Wenwen's body quickly weakened, returning to its normal state, but his eyes turned slightly red, making him feel as if he could control others with his gaze.
He carefully opened the door. Even without the vampire's physical abilities, he easily sneaked up behind the guard.
After all, as a detective, it was normal to have some sneaky skills.
Once he was ready, Wenwen snapped his fingers, instantly catching the guard's attention. The guard turned around and met Wenwen's eyes.
His eyes were narrow yet seemed to contain many mysteries.
The guard was instantly mesmerized.
"You didn't see me… And tonight, no matter what you hear or see, you won't go to the second floor, understood?"
The guard nodded blankly, sitting motionless in his chair as if he hadn't seen Wenwen at all.
Wenwen breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that the basic hypnosis had worked. If it hadn't, he would have had to knock the guard out.
To activate the ring's ability, he needed to snap his fingers. Fortunately, as long as he wore these gloves, making the finger-snapping gesture would produce a sound, so he didn't have to worry about not being able to activate the ability due to not knowing how to snap his fingers.