I Am Your Natural Enemy

Chen Shuxian: ”Found anything? Did you catch the boxer thief? I told you, even ghosts wouldn’t be so perverted as to steal men’s underwear.”

Zhang Li: ”Yeah, found it. It’s a girl who stole them. She has insomnia at night, and even if she manages to fall asleep, she easily has nightmares and her mental state’s bad.”

”Then she went to see a doctor, but she’s afraid of getting hooked on those sleeping pills, so she doesn’t dare take them.”

”Then she heard from someone—who knows where—that if you stick a boy’s worn boxers under your pillow, it’ll do the trick.”

”So she stole a pair once, felt it worked a bit.”

”Then, afraid of getting caught, she started stealing underwear off the line in the middle of the night.”

”In the end, someone saw her, but nobody thought a girl could be stealing underwear, so everyone just assumed they’d seen a ghost.”

”And after a bunch of wild rumors, suddenly there was talk of a female ghost haunting the school.”

”Then people started claiming it was some senior from over a decade ago—so detailed, I actually spent a whole day digging through student records.”

”Who would’ve thought it’d end up like this...”

Huang Zhiji: ”...”

Chen Shuxian: ”...”

Wen Yan, reading Zhang Li’s complaints, was also at a loss, then typed out a string of ellipses.

This is definitely the right place: ”...”

He’d known before that at the grassroots level of the Scorching Sun Department, the stuff you needed to handle was mostly low difficulty—a real Evil-Repelling Talisman could easily fix most of it.

But he never expected that even among these cases, you’d find stuff straight out of ’Into Science’.

Wen Yan now totally agreed with that saying, about why you need to set priorities.

If there weren’t an evaluation system for priorities, the whole Scorching Sun Department could work 24/7 and still never handle all the cases.

No, they’d probably drop dead from exhaustion, and still only clear about a third, maybe even less.

Huang Zhiji: ”So how did you deal with this kind of case?”

Zhang Li: ”What else can you do? Just gave her a verbal warning, since nothing weird turned up. I heard there’s that Meng Family Insomnia Recuperation Clinic in Yu State, supposed to be pretty legit, so I recommended her to go there, told her to return the underwear, but she wasn’t too happy about that.”

Wen Yan glanced at the group chat files—it was full of pending cases.

Hundreds packed together. He looked them over; most were obvious and pretty easy to solve.

Like that zombie case—just chuck them into the Luxury Furnace, and even if it doesn’t solve everything, it’d sort out like 99.99% of situations.

There were also plenty of cases, where just from the description, you still couldn’t pin down what was really going on.

Even reports of ghost activity—might just have been noticed by someone with high spiritual awareness. Most ghosts in these cases are actually harmless.

Just from a glance, Wen Yan could tell: grassroots staff in the Scorching Sun Department really work their butts off. One wrong move and you could be in serious danger—good perks are well deserved.

He put his phone away—didn’t flag any cases requiring backup for now, which meant he didn’t have anything to worry about.

He went back to his room, opened the box, and saw the Gray Cloth he’d tossed in earlier had already folded itself neatly.

When it saw Wen Yan, the Gray Cloth didn’t react, just kept playing dead inside the box.

Wen Yan reached in and touched it—the fabric, which would’ve barely made up a dozen strips before, now felt like it had at least thirty.

It felt much smoother, too. The little fuzzballs you could spot before had thinned out, the threads themselves were way better quality now.

What used to look like ragged scraps now seemed neat and much cleaner.

”First time I’ve ever seen a wondrous item that can eat itself bloated. You really need to pace yourself.

There’ll be plenty of chances in the future—gotta have some sense of sustainability.

You pig out all at once, and there won’t be anything left for tomorrow.

If you cut back a little each day, you get to eat daily, and you’ll end up eating way more overall.”

The Gray Cloth lay obediently in the box, still playing dead. Wen Yan patted it.

”Come on, let’s go again today.

I can feel you’ve improved—high-count cotton’s just around the corner!

No pain, no gain—how else you gonna level up?

Come on, let’s test your limits!”

After Wen Yan hyped it up, the Gray Cloth lazily coiled around his arm, then slithered up onto him.

Wen Yan immediately started complimenting it again, giving the Gray Cloth another motivational boost.

Before heading to the backyard, he grabbed a snack from Grandma, then started today’s cultivation session.

Meanwhile, at the Yu State University gates, a girl with serious dark circles and not much energy was riding the subway to a ramshackle neighborhood in the city.

She checked her location on her phone, then looked at the clinic in front of her—obviously a self-built house.

She hesitated, staring at the sign: ’Meng Family Insomnia Recuperation Clinic’—the vibe was definitely a bit sketchy.

But, since she was already here, she decided to give it a shot.

After all, the guy from that department recommended it, so it was probably at least legit.

As soon as the girl with dark circles entered, the receptionist spotted her and stood right up.

”Hello, welcome! Do you have an appointment?”

”Uh, no, I was just recommended today. Do I need an appointment to come in?”

The receptionist glanced at the schedule, then smiled warmly.

”Doctor Meng is free for the next two hours. Please fill in your details first.”

After filling in the info, the receptionist led the dark-circle girl upstairs, into one of the rooms.

Inside was clean and bright, with just a hospital bed. The receptionist told her to lie down and pulled the blackout curtains.

”You can lie down for now. Doctor Meng will be right with you.”

”Aren’t you going to ask about my symptoms first?”

”We’re focused on recuperation here. Naturally, the aim is to let you sleep soundly without medication. Just close your eyes and relax a bit.”

Once the door shut, the room turned dim and quiet. Strangely, the girl with dark circles didn’t feel scared—she felt a warm sense of security instead.

Like curling up by a campfire on a rainy night, toasting in the warmth, listening to the soft crackle of burning wood, everything outside cut off—letting her sleep in total peace.

After only two minutes, the girl with dark circles was sound asleep.

Meanwhile, the receptionist headed up to a room on the next floor.

A man wearing glasses was slumped over the toilet, vomiting his guts out.

”Doctor Meng, are you okay?” The receptionist jumped, quickly pouring him a glass of water.

”I’m fine. Just, don’t take in any more of those clients. If they ask, tell them she’s recovered, or refer them to a big hospital. We’re just a small clinic; we can’t handle cases like that.”

The man rinsed his mouth, still looking a bit queasy.

”Doctor Meng, was there something wrong with that patient’s dream?”

”You have no idea how big the problem was! Ever seen fish mint mixed with lard? Ugh...”