The collapsed and broken desk, the wall splattered with blood, and the knife marks left on the floor and wall.

Wu Lan squatted on the ground and carefully looked at the traces left behind.

There once was a fierce, but not too fierce, battle in this office.

The people who attacked here are very strong, but the owner of this office is not without the ability to fight back.

"We haven't touched the scene here."

A calm voice sounded behind Wu Lan, coming from West, the person in charge of Moonlight in Newland.

"Thank you,"

Wu Lan stood up and nodded. She glanced at West, "You really didn't see anyone leave here?"

She knew very well that Moonlight must have arranged for someone to monitor the entrance of the branch of the institute.

"At least not as far as we can see."

West replied calmly.

"Um,"

Wu Lan nodded lightly. She took a step forward and stopped in front of the broken desk. "Do you have any clues over there?"

"No,"

West shook his head, "In fact, we are also very curious about how the 'things' or people who attacked here did all this, and what information your people may have left in the information, but you know,

All your computers are automatically encrypted without any operation, and it is impossible for me to remove the hard drive of your computer to crack it."

"Okay, let's leave it to us."

Wu Lan smiled and nodded, "Sorry to trouble you."

This sentence is to send guests off.

She didn't believe that Yueguang hadn't considered cracking these hard drives. After all, this branch stored a lot of internal information of the institute.

If the institute hadn't discovered it quickly and she had arrived quickly, these hard drives would have been cracked, copied and then installed back.

Wu Lan did not come alone this time, but also brought with her the staff of the institute that she had temporarily transferred.

These staff members are currently using authority verification equipment to unlock the locked computers and access the data inside, in order to resume work in this branch as soon as possible.

This process may involve recovering confidential documents, and it may not be appropriate for Moonlight's people to stay here.

"fine,"

West also smiled and waved his hand, "It is our responsibility to maintain the peace of Newland. If you have any questions, please contact us at any time."

The subtext of this sentence is to tell Wu Lan that this is Yueguang's territory, and they will not give up monitoring this area.

Both of them understood the meaning of each other's words and said goodbye to each other with a smile.

Wu Lan sent West out of the door before returning to the hall outside the office.

Looking at the busy staff in the hall, Wu Lan leaned against the door of the office and fell into thought.

Does West really know nothing?

Is it that I don’t know, or that I don’t want to say it? Or that I can’t say it?

Is the force that caused the disappearance of everyone in the branch really some kind of 'weird phenomenon'?

If it is not a strange phenomenon but man-made, why choose a branch of the institute?

Doesn't the other party know that this will attract the attention of the institute, even the eyes of many B-level people?

Judging from the actions of the other party, if it is really man-made, it is some kind of force lurking in the dark. They are operating within Yueguang's sphere of influence and then rashly provoke another big force.

Do you want to muddy the waters and fish in troubled waters?

But with the current state of the institute and Moonlight, it is impossible for a conflict to break out.

Or is there a reason why we have to choose the research institute branch?

Thinking about it, Wu Lan walked into the office again.

She raised her head and glanced at the ceiling.

The light was broken. It was already dark, and the entire office relied on a temporary emergency light source hanging from the ceiling.

The lighting in this building is good, she has been here in the afternoon, and the office hall outside has a good view even if the lights are not turned on during the day.

The time they now speculate that the 'attack' occurred should have been yesterday morning, when everyone was at work.

Why would an attack during the day destroy the lights?

Was it an accidental destruction? Or was it a deliberate destruction?

Wu Lan walked step by step to the broken desk. Some of the desk's original drawers were broken, revealing the torn files inside, while the remaining intact ones were pulled out.

According to Moonlight, these drawers were like this when they came in, and they tried to preserve the scene as much as possible.

It was obvious that the drawers had been rummaged through, but no additional fingerprints were left at the scene.

Wu Lan glanced at the drawer in front of her, but she did not stop at the drawer. Instead, she reached under the tabletop on one side of the desk.

She fumbled with her fingers for a while, found a small hidden button, and then gently pulled it.

Card-

A thin hidden compartment popped out, and inside was a not-so-thick investigation document.

The person in charge of the Newland branch of the institute is named Xia Ye. He is a cautious but strong-willed guy.

As old friends for many years, having visited ruins together, killed monsters together, and solved strange phenomena together, Wu Lan knew the character and habits of her old friend very well.

Xia Ye likes to create this kind of hidden compartment under the desktop, which is used to hide things that cannot be hidden in the safe.

This document may have been hidden by Xia Ye beforehand because he sensed something was wrong.

Wu Lan thought about it and took out the document.

The content of the document appears to be an investigation report by a staff member of the institute branch.

Wu Lan flipped through it, it was an investigation report on an uncontrolled supernatural phenomenon that may exist in the city-state of Newland.

This book is the responsibility of the branch of the research institute. It collects information on some extraordinary phenomena and then reports them to the headquarters. Among them may be mixed the phenomenon of the opening of ruins, or the existence of some powerful extraordinary items.

In principle, this kind of information collection will not be particularly strict, and the branch will not get involved too deeply, otherwise it will arouse Moonlight's hostility.

The report in Wu Lan's hand probably conforms to this principle.

It only contains some simple survey information, and the core conclusion is:

In the past year, a large number of people have disappeared in the city-state of Newland, and the closer the timeline is to the present, the more people have disappeared, even the families of some informants from the institute, and even the informants themselves

, are all suspected to be among these missing persons.

In fact, it was precisely because of the disappearance of these informants that Xia Ye noticed this strange phenomenon.

And from a geographical perspective, these missing people are not located in a few fixed areas, but are evenly distributed throughout the city-state.

Xia Ye believes that there is a high probability that there is a very strong strange phenomenon existing in Newland City-State, and these missing people are ‘preyed’ by this strange phenomenon.

This report was marked just two days ago. Wu Lanshang checked the database of the institute and found no record of this report.

In other words, this report has not been uploaded yet.

According to Xia Ye's habit, this shows that she thinks this report is not the final version yet.

Is she still investigating? Has she got some ‘additional’ clues?

Did she leave this document here because she thought the attackers were related to it?

However, this time the 'mysterious disappearance' situation at the institute branch is really very similar to the situation of the 'missing persons' mentioned in the document.

The investigation by the institute branch led to the attack by the mastermind?

"Witch Club,"

While he was thinking, a young man holding a tablet came in from the door, "The surveillance video has been analyzed."

"Let me see."

Wu Lan turned around and stretched out her hand.

These surveillance videos are installed on the institute's encrypted disk, and Moonlight does not have the ability to parse them.

The young man handed the tablet to Wu Lan.

Wu Lan lowered her head and looked at the screen on the computer. The first thing that caught her eye was the office hall full of staff, with people coming and going. The time displayed in the lower right corner of the monitor was 9:17 in the morning.

But then, in the next second, all the staff in the lobby, whether they were sitting on office chairs or walking between workstations, all disappeared from the screen in an instant.

It's like all the scenes with people in them were taken away and the scenes with no people in them were spliced ​​directly into them.

Immediately after this scene, the entire scene went black and the camera was destroyed.

Wu Lan frowned slightly, dragged the video progress bar forward, and took another look at the video. The people in action disappeared from her eyes again.

This time, she lowered her head and glanced at the time in the lower right corner. It was nine seventeen minutes and sixteen seconds. The time moved smoothly and there was no trace of splicing.
To be continued...