Chapter 64: The Child

Ren Xinran never knew a person could go five days without sleep.

Not until she lost her child.

Her body was already overloaded, on the verge of shutting down at any moment. But she didn’t dare close her eyes. Every time her consciousness drifted into a hazy state, all sorts of terrifying images would flood her mind.

Sometimes it was her child lying in a stinking ditch, covered in flies. Sometimes her child was held down by traffickers, hands and feet being chopped off, the child’s cries tearing their throat raw. Sometimes her young child was with a blurry-faced old man who claimed to be her husband…

In all these scenes and images, she was blocked by an invisible wall. No matter how she screamed or pounded on it, she couldn’t touch her child in the slightest, forced to watch helplessly as her child suffered.

The child had been lost while out playing with her father. They hadn’t gone far, just near their residential complex.

Her daughter, Feng Huanhuan, was a lively and active child. Ever since she learned to walk, she generally refused to be held by her parents. She wanted to challenge any flat or uneven surface she saw with her own little short legs.

The little girl was amazing, walking with remarkable stability. If she happened to fall, she wouldn’t cry, just get up, pat the dust off, and continue playing.

That day, her father had only turned around to buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner store, and the child by his leg was gone.

At first, they thought the mischievous child was hiding somewhere, playing hide-and-seek. By the time they realized the child was lost, it was already too late.

But it had only been a minute or two.

Later, the police checked the nearby surveillance footage and found that a five or six-year-old girl had led her daughter away. The two of them got into an unlicensed car, which drove straight out of the city, taking a mountain road instead of the highway. That road was a temporary dirt path built for a quarry to transport stone, and it had no surveillance cameras.

Once out of the surveillance range, the car vanished.

The police also checked the dashcam footage from the stone-hauling trucks that day but found no trace of the car.

That kind of place was already remote, with no one around besides the drivers and workers. However, the hardworking people hadn’t noticed the car.

The police were still trying their best to investigate, but the trail had gone cold.

Ren Xinran prayed to every god and Buddha she had ever heard of. She prayed for her child to return to her, even if… even if she was no longer whole.

The police had gently told her that if a child wasn’t found after 48 hours, experience suggested there was basically no hope.

Unless a miracle happened.

No hope?

That one sentence was enough to make a mother break down.

Ren Xinran felt she might be having mental problems. From time to time, she could hear her child calling for “Mama.”

Every child she saw on the street looked like her own, and she would have to go up and take a look. This led to her being pushed and threatened by protective parents, but she couldn’t control herself.

She couldn’t even stand to see pedestrians with large pieces of luggage, always thinking her child was inside.

Ren Xinran’s mother and her husband’s sister stayed with her. They couldn’t help but cry seeing her state, but she herself could no longer cry.

One day, she decided that her way of life was wrong; she couldn’t continue in such a muddle-headed state. To her family’s surprise, she got up early, put on makeup, and dressed up to go to work, just like countless days before.

She tried to immerse herself in her busy work and think of nothing else. When the time came, she left work on the dot and passed by the cake shop, buying her daughter’s favorite strawberry cake. She walked home with a light step, opened the door, and said, just as she had countless times before, “Huanhuan, Mama’s home. Were you a good girl today? Good babies get to eat strawberry cake.”

A group of people sat in the house, shrouded in gloom.

Ren Xinran looked at the corner of the small living room where the toys were piled, but there was no cute little figure rushing towards her.

It’s okay, she must have opened the door the wrong way. She put the bag from the entryway cabinet back on her shoulder, picked up the small cake, and stepped back out the door.

After closing the door, she shut her eyes, then opened the door a second time, calling out in the gentlest tone, “Huanhuan, Mama’s home…”

Still nothing.

It’s okay, close the door.

A third time opening the door.

A fourth time, a fifth time…

How could she not be there?

She should be there!

She couldn’t back out again, because her wailing husband had already run over and knelt on the floor, hugging her legs. “Honey, don’t be like this. Hit me, curse me, it’s my fault…”

Ren Xinran stared blankly at her husband. He was only twenty-five, but she didn’t know when so many white hairs had suddenly appeared on his head.

She said nothing, just looked.

Despair wrung moisture from her withered body, trickling down from her dry eye sockets.

Silent.

Her body could no longer bear it, and she fainted.

Ren Xinran woke up to the distinctive smell of a hospital.

But she didn’t want to open her eyes.

A mother who had lost her child.

For her, the world had already collapsed.

She didn’t want to look at this hateful world anymore.

Her phone was ringing; someone was calling.

She didn’t want to answer.

She felt her husband pick up the phone.

The hospital room was quiet. She heard her husband say in a hushed voice, “Hello.”

He was very close to her. Even without speakerphone, she could easily hear the voice on the other end.

“Tonight, a nest of human traffickers was busted in another region. Two children who hadn’t been sold yet were rescued from them…”

Ren Xinran shot up from the bed as if she’d come back from the dead. The sudden movement made her dizzy, but it didn’t stop her from snatching the phone from her husband’s hand.

She recognized the voice. It was a female police officer she had met at the station.

She heard the officer’s slightly hesitant voice, “One of them looks a lot like your child, but the clothes and hairstyle are different from the photo you provided. I’ll send you a video of the child so you can identify her.”

Ignoring her husband’s anxious questions, Ren Xinran quickly opened her social media app and saw a friend request with the female officer’s name as the note.

She impatiently accepted the request. The other party wasted no time and sent a video directly.

Ren Xinran’s finger hovered over the screen. After a moment’s pause, she tapped it open.

The next instant, it was as if countless springs had suddenly sprouted in her eyes, continuously gushing salty liquid.

She opened her mouth to her husband but couldn’t say anything for a moment. It was as if she had instantly lost the ability to speak, only able to make whimpering, meaningless sounds.

Her husband hugged her, nodding repeatedly.

“It is, it is, it’s Huanhuan!”

Yes, it was their daughter, Feng Huanhuan.

The child in the video was asleep, wearing ill-fitting, poor-quality boy’s clothes, and her hair had been cut short.

Her face was also dirty.

But a mother doesn’t recognize her child by clothes or hairstyle.

The video was only eight seconds long, but she saw her daughter’s small chest rising and falling with each breath.

The child was alive. That was enough.

The child was in Shanyu City.

Two provinces away from where they were.

But what did that matter?

Love can cross mountains and seas; mountains and seas can be leveled.

Ren Xinran pulled out her IV needle directly.

And her husband was looking for her shoes.

It was already 1 a.m.

But their relatives, having received the news, arrived with several cars.

No one said to wait until morning to buy plane tickets. They couldn’t wait a single second.

They set off under the cover of night, heading towards Shanyu City.

–

Qin Qing woke up with her biological clock.

She opened the refrigerator, found two eggs, and put them in water to boil. Then she asked Mumu, who was at her feet.

“What flavor of canned food do you want today?”

She went to where the canned food was stored.

Normally, Mumu would stand up and use its paws to pick a can from the box.

But today, Mumu ran out.

Qin Qing saw it put its paws on the bag of crisps on the coffee table.

Qin Qing looked at the bag, which seemed to be a fifth smaller than last night, and said with a pained heart, “No, you can’t have any more. It’s already noticeable that some are missing.”

The dog looked bewildered.

Qin Qing swallowed.

“Don’t be impatient. I’ll go morally blackmail… oh, I mean, discuss it with him today.”

But during her meal, Qin Qing couldn’t resist. She opened the bag again and took out a few crisps. She crushed them all, sprinkling half on Mumu’s canned food and half on her own congee.

She said to Mumu, who didn’t understand math, “A few crisps don’t count as less.”

Sob, sob, sob, they were so fragrant and crunchy sprinkled on the congee.

The crisps themselves were a bit salty, which went even better with the plain congee.

Qin Qing felt she had already developed the next product for Officer Meng’s stakeouts.

Always running a night market stall wasn’t a long-term solution. What if the target was a health-conscious person who went to bed and woke up early?

Setting up a breakfast stall might be a good option sometimes.

Qin Qing first went to last night’s night market spot to check on the tricycle.

Great, it hadn’t been stolen.

The only regret was that she remembered after she got there that she hadn’t brought the crisps out.

Oh well, she’d deal with it after Officer Meng took over.

Qin Qing then headed over to the Jiangnan Branch Bureau.

After all, this case started because of her. It wasn’t too much for her to check on the progress, right?

The Jiangnan Branch Bureau had interrogated several criminals overnight.

They learned that among these people, the others, including the man in the floral pants, had only been in this line of work for the past few months.

However, one of the middle-aged men was a member of a certain Human Trafficking Organization.

In exchange for leniency, he confessed that he used to be on the periphery of this organization, generally only responsible for abducting children. Once he had a child, he would contact his superior, who would handle the transaction, and he would only get a commission.

He felt the pay was too low, so he gathered a few buddies he had met while traveling around and became self-sufficient. In just a few months, they had already earned nearly a million. Wasn’t that better than working for the organization?

This time, they were just passing through Shanyu. They had originally planned to take the child to the neighboring city to meet a buyer they had contacted beforehand.

But the other party backed out at the last minute, saying they wanted a healthy boy instead, and they forfeited the deposit and bailed.

That’s why they were lingering in Shanyu, only to be caught in one fell swoop.

The middle-aged man was somewhat regretful.

He had worked for the organization for several years without any problems, but as soon as he went solo, he ran into the cops.

But it was too late for regrets.

After hearing Chen Deyu’s account, Qin Qing also felt a bit emotional. The police were preparing to set up surveillance to dismantle this Human Trafficking Organization.

But the middle-aged man’s knowledge was limited, so everything still needed to be planned carefully.

Qin Qing saw Officer Meng again. He looked both exhausted and energized.

Officer Meng thanked her for her quick-witted reminder and highly praised her investigative abilities. He then took the opportunity to ask her for advice on how to quickly identify traffickers.

“It was nothing,” Qin Qing said modestly.

Then she circuitously mentioned how hard she had worked to regroup and reopen after he left, and how much effort she had put into looking after his tricycle, and so on.

She also praised how delicious his crisps were.

Meng Yang was left dumbfounded by her words.

His sharp mind failed to process why they were talking about the case one moment and the stall the next.

Was the stall as important as the case?

Meng Yang saw her looking at him expectantly after she finished speaking.

He ventured, “So… thank you?”

The expectant eyes dimmed. They were filled with disappointment.

Officer Meng was bewildered.

If he wasn’t supposed to say thank you, what was he supposed to say?