When the night watchman Belt got up early in the morning and opened the door, he found that several rows of undead were squatting at the entrance of the night watch hall.
Belt, who was still sleepy, shuddered and became half awake in an instant.
Thinking about the job he was assigned now, Belt became fully awake.
For people who were used to nocturnal activities and had just been forced to change to a normal schedule... having a skeleton in the face early in the morning was really a very refreshing experience.
The undead did not care whether the night watchman's face was full of rejection. As soon as Belt opened the door, one of them directly shoved the black leather book in Belt's face and shouted at him impatiently and rudely. "We have already handled the "Mist Shadow Forest" incident. Send someone to inspect it quickly and send the next task!!"
Belt: "???"
Half an hour later, night watch captain Lynch Clark was woken up by the phone.
"What?! Those undead spirits found out the truth about the Misty Shadow Forest incident overnight??"
Captain Clark hurriedly dressed and rushed to the Night Watch headquarters.
When Clark arrived, the fat official, who had also been woken up early in the morning, was flipping through a black leather book in a daze.
The event files kept by the Night Watch had red covers, which were related to sealed objects, disaster events, and evil cults, and could only be read by high-ranking church officials; white covers represented ordinary events that had been resolved; and black covers represented events that had not been resolved for various reasons.
"Captain, this is what Belt just sent over," the fat official handed the black leather notebook to Clark, who had just taken off his coat, his short fat fingers trembling slightly.
Clark sat down and quickly turned to the last page of the file to read the conclusion.
When a strange fog appeared in the Misty Forest of Baron Korf's home more than half a year ago, it was Clark who had personally appointed "Mountain Rat" to investigate. Of course, he was well aware of the circumstances of this unresolved case.
"Mountain Rat" was a very promising young man, sharp and careful. He had participated in the investigation of many special events and performed well. In just one week, he found all the people suspected of being related to the incidents and recorded their words and deeds in great detail. If the Korf family was not so poor that they could not afford the cost of purifying and eliminating regional strange phenomena (starting from fifty gold coins), in Clark's opinion, this file should have been replaced with a white cover long ago.
Two of the last few pages of the file book, which were left blank, were filled with text.
That's right...it was all weird block text that looked like pictures, and Clark did not recognize any of it.
The fat official, who seemed a little absent-minded, slapped his head, quickly took off the azalea badge on his chest and handed it to Clark.
After putting on the badge, Clark was finally able to recognize these extremely unfamiliar "ghost fonts"... and then, like the fat official before him, his face was full of confusion.
"Janet? The fourth daughter of the chief of Lanna Village?" Captain Clark suspected that his memory was wrong, and turned a few pages to look at the list of suspected related persons listed by "Mountain Rat".
There was indeed no such name in the directory.
"…The person that Mountain Rat couldn't find in a week, but those undead found him in one night?!" Captain Clark had a puzzled look on his face. "This is too much—the undead didn't turn the Misty Shadow Forest upside down, but went to question the villagers instead? The villagers actually told them the truth that they didn't even want to tell our investigators?"
If Captain Clark had not known clearly that Lanna Village was once the fief of the Korf family and was now the fief of the knights of Viscount Darcy's family, he would have suspected that everyone in the village was a traitor.
As he continued to read on, Captain Clark became even more confused.
Not only did the undead find out the truth, they also solved the fog problem in the Misty Forest.
After learning about Janet's existence from the hunter, the undead savagely demolished the door of the village chief's house and woke up the sleeping old village chief Needham to question him.
Knowing that Janet was hastily buried in the mountains, the undead carried the hunter Ulduar and the old village chief Nidam into the mountains overnight and dug out the bones...
The subsequent behavior of this group of undead shocked Clark even more - the undead who wrote the closing report believed that Janet was resentful because no one even knew about her death. After carrying the woman's body back to the village, they forced the old village chief to gather the villagers and hold a public farewell ceremony for Janet.
Janet's death was certainly not unknown. In fact, most people in the village, including the male servants in Jeff's house, knew about it, but no one took it seriously and no one cared.
She was just a maid whom her master had slept with. Robert Jeff had a lot of mistresses and concubines, and even Mrs. Jeff had never regarded Janet as a "competitor" and only treated her like an ordinary maid. The cook, seamstress and study maid whom Knight Jeff had slept with when he was young all continued to be servants in Jeff's house. Janet, a country girl, was not as important as the people in Lanner Village thought.
But what was incredible was that when all the villagers saw Janet's bones and witnessed her funeral, the strange fog in the Misty Forest really dissipated...
Captain Clark was completely expressionless reading seeing this description.
The gang of undead hadn't actually closed the case completely after the funeral.
They believed that Janet's resentment was more directed at Arnold Hayden, who might have betrayed her. After presiding over Janet's "farewell ceremony", the undead rushed into the city overnight and found Arnold Hayden, the former foreman of the lumberyard, according to the address left in the file by "Mountain Rat".
The Korf family could no longer afford to accommodate all their servants. After the sawmill closed down, the unpopular Hayden was sent away by his housekeeper with only a small amount of money. Hayden, who was arrogant but had no other strengths, had to rent an abandoned house in the worst neighborhood in the south city, where the environment was almost like a garbage dump.
The text left in the archive by the undead who was responsible for writing was described as follows: They found a monster in the old house where Hayden lived. Its skin was festering from head to toe, and it was covered in sewage, but it was still unaware of this fact and moved stiffly in the stinking house as if it thought it was still alive.
The undead destroyed the monster cleanly and efficiently. After searching (plundering) Hayden's house and confirming that the hidden danger had been cleared, they took great pains to carry the body of the monster suspected to be Hayden out of the city before dawn and buried it in a place away from any people. They also drew a stick figure map of the burial site and attached it to the file, asking the night watchman to send someone to see if there was anything else that needed to be remedied...
After reading the case closing report which detailed the truth of the incident, the resolution process and the cleanup work, Lynch Clark's mouth was half open and his eyes were dull.
After a long moment, Clark silently closed the black leather book and put the file down.
After two seconds, Clark reached out and picked up the file again, silently pulling out the black cover of the file.
He could understand the fat official's distracted look when he read the file.
Even as the captain of the Night's Watch, he had nothing to complain about with this case report - if the executor was not an undead, he would immediately have taken this perfect case report to Bishop Gene and asked whether to recruit the person as a formal Night Watchman.
Unfortunately, there was no if, and the solution to this problem was that now one could bump into a Tarantan Undead unexpectedly on the streets of Indhal...
Anyway, Clark was doubting his life now - how come these Tarantan Undead that Yang casually threw into the battlefield were actually more perfect and impeccable in investigation than his Night Watchmen?!
Clark would never have guessed that the reason why players were so eager to solve this case so well was that they hoped to achieve a higher degree of completion and further improve the excellent equipment they selected.
For the sake of quest rewards, players could really do anything.
Captain Clark was just thinking when Morton, the night watchman who was "exiled" to the Xinfeng District to meet the undead together with the unfortunate Belt, ran in hurriedly.
Before Captain Clark could say anything, the fat official gasped, "Could it be that another unsolved case has been solved by those undead?"
Morton, who was taciturn, extremely lonely and unpopular among the night watchmen, handed over a black leather book without saying a word.
The fat official struggled for a moment, then took it reluctantly.
As soon as he turned to the first page, the fat official felt his worldview shattered. His features were distorted: "House of Salmon... this too can this be solved in one night?"
Clark could not stand his colleague's hesitation, so he snatched the "Salmon House" file and stubbornly turned to the last page.
The "Salmon House" incident was an old case that had been pending for fourteen years.
Thomas Salmon, who used to be the head of the Market Section of the City Hall's Commerce Department, disappeared from his home overnight along with his mother, wife, and eldest daughter. His second son was found dead in his garden and his body was discovered by a neighbor's housekeeper who had gotten up early to buy groceries. He immediately informed the police station.
The sheriff's detectives turned the Salmon mansion upside down, but they only found the Salmon family's youngest daughter, six-year-old Ruth, who had escaped by hiding in the attic.
Ruth could not explain what happened at home. She only knew that in the middle of the night Mr. Salmon suddenly ran into the baby room, picked up Ruth and ran to the attic, and told Ruth not to come out of the attic no matter what she heard.
The reason why the sheriff's office transferred the case to the church in the first place was because of Ruth's testimony - she claimed that she heard nothing during the time she was hiding in the attic.
This testimony was confirmed by the neighbors, who all claimed that last night was extremely peaceful and that even the dogs in the yard did not bark at all.
It was impossible for a man-made crime to be silent at all times, and it was even more impossible for three adults and a healthy girl to be kidnapped without making any sound.
Since the missing Thomas Salmon was a middle-class man of a certain status in the city, and Salmon's wife was the daughter of a noble family, the Night Watch paid close attention to this incident and investigated it for almost three years. Even the captain of the Night Watch at the time participated in the investigation.
Unfortunately, even if all the night watchmen were mobilized, they could not find out the truth about the disappearance of the Salmon family, and the situation in the Salmon house gradually deteriorated over time. Even ten years after the incident, if you walked past the door of the house during the day, you could hear terrible noises coming from inside. If you passed by there at night, you could hear the terrifying howling of ghosts from a long distance away.
Captain Clark could not believe that such an unsolved murder case could be solved by the undead overnight. It was absolutely baffling!
And then...he was slapped in the face.
The closing report on the last page of this file was very unprofessional and far less clear than the previous one, but it also clearly described the entire process of the undead solving the case... no, violently destroying the curse of Salmon House:
First of all, the undead who took on this task did not investigate the interpersonal relationships of the Salmon family or care about who harmed them. After receiving the task, they ran to the Salmon house to cause trouble.
Seeing this group of undead rushing straight into the ghost nest, Captain Clark's mouth twitched for a while... Well, these undead have never known what it means to be afraid of death, so it is normal for them to be a little reckless.
Then, this group of undeads stayed in the Salmon House and happily played the ghost hunting game for a whole day and a whole night...