Chapter 26 "Fear Syndrome

The temperature inside the building plummeted, and faced with an unknown fear, these rookie investigators weren't too terrified.

They strictly followed the rules of the investigation bureau, assembling various pieces of equipment from their backpacks with the greatest speed.

The equipment all had corresponding numbers, and the bureau was constantly trying various means to combat the Abnormal Event; the gear the rookies brought in was their "weapon."

"Is this stuff of any use?" Gao Ming asked with some curiosity.

"Ninety-nine percent useless, but as long as there's a one percent chance, we'll keep trying, until we find something that can influence the unknown," the burly driver clenched his fist: "It's because we can use tools that we became human."

"Communication was interrupted when we opened the door to room 405, where that child and his parents once lived," Bai Qiao picked up a flashlight and headed towards room 405.

Without any weapons to counter the horror, nor any effective protective measures, Bai Qiao knew the dangers but still headed for room 405.

"Let me do it," Gao Ming stepped forward before her: "You're the core of the team; leave the scouting to me."

In response to the shadow's stimulation, tiny chains like moving tattoos appeared on Gao Ming's wrist; he extended his left hand and gently pushed open the door to room 405.

A strange smell wafted through the ninety-square-meter rental apartment, and by the living room door were five huge black plastic bags filled with some yellowed bedding and children's clothing.

"Be careful," Bai Qiao raised her flashlight to light the way for Gao Ming.

It seemed like a struggle had occurred in the living room - the dining table was overturned, chairs lay on the floor, and there were clumps of solidified food and broken pieces of porcelain bowls on the cement floor.

"It wasn't one-sided domestic violence; both parties lost their minds during the fight." Gao Ming saw a small patch of scalp with short hair in the corner of the wall, likely belonging to some man: "The situation is worse than I thought."

As his fingers grazed the wall, Gao Ming touched the mold there; looking around, the room was extremely damp even with the doors and windows shut tight - the wardrobe, beneath the couch, behind the television, all were covered with large patches of mold.

"If I rented a place like this, I'd probably feel crappy too," the burly driver split the rookies into three teams - one followed Gao Ming inside, one stood guard at the door, and a third was ready for support.

"Feeling down is normal, but it's not right to hurt those close to you to vent your anger," Gao Ming walked to the other side of the living room; the room couldn't even be called a home - dirty, messy, filled with the stench of rot.

This family was broken, just like the various pieces of ruined furniture scattered throughout the apartment.

"Both the father and mother had violent tendencies, quarreling and fighting; they were like two monsters hysterically attacking each other." Gao Ming picked up a broken flower vase from the floor, its edges still with a trace of blood and a few strands of long hair: "Did the Abnormal Event turn them like this, or were they always like this in their hearts?"

"According to the elderly people in the building, they often fought even before the Abnormal Event arrived," Bai Qiao did not interrupt Gao Ming; she too wanted to see what this ordinary person, who had solved a third-grade Abnormal Event, was capable of.

"Even without the Abnormal Event, a tragedy could still happen…" Gao Ming sought to understand the relationship between the game and reality: "So it's not that the Abnormal Event found them, but rather, this family was attracting the Abnormal Event."

Passing through the living room, Gao Ming arrived at the only relatively clean room, which seemed to be the child's bedroom.

The small room contained a desk, a wardrobe, and a single bed; interestingly, it wasn't even autumn yet, but the bed was laid with thick winter duvets and various blankets.

The bedding was arranged around the bed like a fortress in the child's mind.

Upon opening the wardrobe, a few pieces of children's clothing hung inside, and the bottom was layered with newspapers, holding a flashlight and a crayon box.

"The space under the wardrobe could just about fit a small child," Gao Ming squatted down. "An enclosed environment can give a child a sense of safety, almost as if they were back inside their mother's womb."

Gao Ming had just grabbed the crayon box when suddenly a cloth arm pressed down on it.

Bai Qiao and another rookie next to him tensed up, but Gao Ming showed no reaction as he pulled out both the crayon box and the attached arm.

"What an ugly stuffed toy."

A handmade stuffed toy was hidden in the depths of the wardrobe, barely discernible as human-shaped, its body covered in patches and stained with various paints.

"The neighbors didn't see the parents taking the child away, and the police didn't find the kid on the 4th floor, so what do you think, could the child have turned into this stuffed toy?" Gao Ming secured the doll's neck and bound its arms together.

"Now is not the time for ghost stories." Bai Qiao frowned slightly. Gao Ming hadn't undergone the internal training of the investigation agency and was not following protocol at all.

As Gao Ming's fingers pressed over each inch of the doll's fabric skin, he felt nothing strange hidden inside. He opened the crayon box to find a sentence scrawled on the lid—wishing to hide somewhere no one could find.

"Looks like the Abnormal Event helped this child's wish come true." Gao Ming thought of his own birthday wishes and suddenly felt that Abnormal Events seemed very eager, desperately filling the loopholes in people's hearts, even though their methods were somewhat bloody and terrifying.

The initial investigation of Unit 405 was more or less complete. The rookies following Gao Ming took out devices to collect items from the room, even scraping mold from the walls for inspection.

"Be careful, the Abnormal Event we've stumbled into might not be a Level One." Gao Ming muttered a warning before sitting on the child's bed, lost in thought.

He had played a game about finding lost children called "Hide and Seek," where seven ghosts and a child played the game, and finding the real child meant winning. However, the game didn't match up with the Abnormal Event here—what shadowed the child wasn't ghosts, but their parents.

"Frequent conflicts and fights between the parents, sometimes even venting their anger on the child. Growing up in such a family, it's inevitable for the child to develop various psychological issues."

Gao Ming had encountered such cases when he was providing psychological counseling in a high-security prison, where some of the inmates had suffered brutal treatment by their parents since childhood.

"In such a family atmosphere, a child's personality can go to one of two extremes, either becoming extremely insecure, timid, or unusually irritable, aggressive. From what we've seen at the scene, the kid from Unit 405 seems to fall into the former category."

Everyone loves an obedient child, but obedience comes in different forms. If a child is forced to appear docile, then their inner self will gradually become twisted.

The most direct manifestation is timidity, being afraid to make mistakes in anything they do for fear of provoking others, leading them to want to hide themselves.

Gao Ming, looking at the "quilt castle" around the edge of the bed, curled up his body and tried lying on the child's bed.

"With parents throwing and smashing things in the living room, hitting each other, and filled with obscenities, the child not only fails to receive protection from either parent but must also constantly be careful not to become a tool for their venting."

"In such circumstances, the easiest emotion to arise is—fear."

Gao Ming thought of the graffiti on the hallway walls. When the figure representing the dad and mom began to argue, many red figures would crawl out of them. These figures would dismantle their own body parts, all running towards the child.

"Perhaps those red figures are the child's way of expressing fear," Gao Ming's mind gradually conjured up another game, a game with an ominous level called "Fear Syndrome."

It didn't have specific ghosts or overly gory scenes, but the destructiveness and threat level of this game were even greater than the typical horror stories!

The game was straightforward: one day, "Fear Syndrome" suddenly breaks out, spreading contagiously throughout the city, plunging everyone into fear.