Chapter 121: The Bride

This kind of team-building activity was unusual for Qin Qing, but for the Action Team members who were usually buried in missions, it was something they truly cherished.

They had a good time.

In the end, the group was sprawled across the hillside, drinking until they could barely stand, with no intention of calling it a night.

Qin Qing grew bored of waiting and left early with Shi Jiang.

Instead of heading straight to the garage, the car dropped her off at a nearby street corner. She wanted to grab a yogurt.

By the time she walked out of the convenience store, it was nearly eleven. The late spring night breeze carried a slight chill. The street was quiet, nearly deserted, so still that even the rustling of willow leaves could be heard.

She took a few sips of the yogurt. The coldness cleared her drowsiness a bit, and she regretted not wearing a thicker jacket.

Suddenly, a chill ran down her spine. She stopped in her tracks.

Her fingers instinctively tightened around the yogurt carton.

She turned to look behind her.

The streetlamp cast their shadows long and distorted.

The street was empty. Behind them, the old willow tree’s gnarled branches swayed. The newly sprouted twigs danced wildly in the wind under the streetlight, clawing at the air in a blur.

Only the convenience store they’d just left remained brightly lit, a glaring beacon in the dim night.

At the zebra crossing in front of the store, a lone car waited for the light to change.

Farther down, a barbecue stall billowed with smoke. There were no customers. The owner sat dozing in front of the charcoal fire.

Everything looked normal.

Shi Jiang quickly picked up on her unease. “What are you looking at?”

Qin Qing lowered her voice. “I’ve got the creeps. Feels like someone’s following us.”

Shi Jiang’s expression turned serious. Her hand silently moved toward her waist, and her body instinctively shifted into a perfect defensive stance. They stood back to back. Qin Qing could feel the tension in Shi Jiang’s muscles.

Shi Jiang flared her nostrils a few times, then relaxed slightly, though she remained alert.

“I always stay sharp when walking at night. Haven’t noticed anything unusual.”

She added, “My nose is sensitive. We’re downwind right now. Within fifty meters, there’s no one.”

Yet that feeling of being watched clung to her like a shadow that wouldn’t let go.

Qin Qing quickly typed a few tags into the System Panel. The search returned nothing. There were no danger alerts from the System Panel either.

She trusted Shi Jiang’s training, and she trusted the System Panel’s capabilities.

But her heart still raced with unease.

Grabbing Shi Jiang’s hand, she broke into a run toward their unit’s dormitory.

Their footsteps echoed loudly through the silent street.

Qin Qing could still feel something chasing them in the dark—not footsteps, but a formless pressure, like a tide surging in from all directions. The pools of light from the streetlamps became their only sanctuary. They fled from one circle of light to the next, as if the darkness behind them had taken on a life of its own, hungrily devouring the traces they left behind.

Only after they rounded the security booth and the oppressive feeling vanished did she dare to look back.

The darkness they left behind seemed to crouch like a giant beast, waiting for the perfect moment to sink its teeth into her neck.

Shi Jiang said, “I’ll notify the others to keep an eye out.”

The investigation, of course, turned up nothing.

Still, Qin Qing stayed within the unit compound for several days out of caution.

She only went out again when a new mission came up.

This time, the strange feeling was gone.

Her coworkers comforted her when they heard about it. “If some idiot really dares to come after us, one punch from each of us would be enough to turn him into a squash.”

Maybe it was just the alcohol from the team-building night making her overly sensitive.

She pushed the thought aside and asked about the new mission.

“This one’s pretty straightforward,” the Captain explained. “The team leader didn’t even call for an analysis meeting. During the bust of a transnational human trafficking ring, frontline officers stumbled upon some leads. Whether it falls under the Special Investigation Team’s jurisdiction is still under review. Overall, it’s a simple task—just confirming whether it should be archived as a special case.”

Qin Qing said, “…Get to the point.”

“What’s the rush?” The Captain glanced at her.

He continued, “According to the suspects involved in the trafficking case, aside from smuggling Chinese women abroad, they more often arrange marriages by introducing girls from poor Southeast Asian regions to Chinese men under the guise of matchmaking.

Then they collect the bride price from these men who are marrying foreign wives. The bulk of the money goes to the matchmaker, with a smaller portion going to the girl’s family.”

Qin Qing said, “That kind of thing is hard to prosecute, isn’t it? All three parties are consenting. It’s probably still a legal gray area.”

Then she asked, “So what does this have to do with us?”

“Prosecution isn’t our job… What we’re investigating is the lead that came from this vine.”

“Matchmaking businesses like this usually operate sporadically, with low volume per batch. But a couple of years ago, there were a few months when business suddenly boomed. Dozens of matches were made in a single quarter.

The police found that most of the couples matched this way were still living normal lives. But those specific matches from that busy period? Without exception, all the women returned to their home countries.”

At that, one of the team members said, “That’s clearly not normal. After spending so much money to get a wife, who’d just let her go like that?”

The Captain said, “Do you know why those women went back?”

Qin Qing realized the Captain had a bit of a flair for storytelling. He made a case sound like a suspenseful tale.

Meng Yuan grumbled, gave him a playful kick on the shin, and cupped her face. “Come on, spill it already!”

The Captain glanced at his shin but didn’t move.

He said, “Because all of their Chinese husbands died after the wedding. Some within a few months, others after a year.”

The team reacted dramatically.

“No way!”

“Black widows!”

“A whole organization of black widows!”

The Captain said, “If that were the case, it wouldn’t fall to us. All the men died of natural causes. No matter how you investigate, everything checks out.”

He stopped holding back and laid it all out.

“In fact, these men were already terminally ill before they even contacted the matchmakers. They’d long been diagnosed with only a short time left to live. After getting married, most of their wives became pregnant. Up to that point, it all seemed understandable—men facing death wanting to leave behind hope and a legacy for their aging parents.”

However, after digging deeper, they discovered that these men didn’t just leave behind posthumous children. There was also a suspicious sum of money deposited into their family members’ accounts—an amount that, given their income levels, was definitely a fortune.

Even more absurdly, in some cases, the money was transferred into the accounts of their ex-wives. These men had gone through matchmakers to find a foreign woman they liked while still legally married. Then, after finalizing the divorce with their wives one day, they married the foreign women the very next.

The foreign women, who didn’t speak Chinese, only made a few brief appearances after the wedding before vanishing completely. In the end, it was the ex-wife who stayed by the man’s side, caring for him on his deathbed.

Starting to sound interesting? What’s even more baffling is that after giving birth to these posthumous children, the foreign women received generous compensation and returned to their home countries—without taking the children with them. And the men’s families didn’t seem particularly interested in claiming custody either.

Meng Yuan was completely absorbed in the story, her mouth slightly open, eyes wide in disbelief.

She pressed on, “So what happened to the children?”

“Exactly, what about the kids?” the Captain echoed.

“That’s where the real issue lies. These children all have birth records in the hospital, but there’s no record of them being registered in the household system. It’s as if they vanished into thin air—or never existed at all.”

Qin Qing frowned. “What did the men’s families say?”

“They all insist the women took the children with them. But that’s impossible. You don’t even need to check exit records to know that the paperwork alone wouldn’t allow it. If this were a normal situation, how could so many children not be registered and all conveniently taken away by their mothers?

If that matchmaking ring hadn’t been completely taken down, no one would’ve ever known these children even existed.”

Qin Qing asked, “How many children are we talking about?”

“There were 48 families involved. Among the foreign brides, 45 became pregnant. Nine had miscarriages. In the end, 36 children were born.”

“That’s not a small number. This whole thing is layered, like a meticulously planned conspiracy.” Qin Qing continued, “Have the accounts that sent the money been traced?”

“Offshore accounts. Untraceable.”

Meng Yuan suggested, “Couldn’t it be an anonymous philanthropist?”

Qin Qing snorted. “What kind of philanthropist pays the wife during end-of-life care, then sends her away, and takes the child she gave birth to?”

She paused. “Don’t tell me the entire scheme was designed just to collect these children?”

One of the team members muttered, “What would they want so many kids for? The mastermind has a baby-raising fetish? Or wants to secretly train an army? You don’t need to start from toddlers for that.”

Another chimed in, “Maybe it’s some twisted Hannibal type, raising his own food supply…”

He didn’t finish before someone smacked him hard, making him clutch his head and yelp in pain.

Even after all they’d seen, that theory was too disturbing.

Meng Yuan swallowed hard. “Are we… are we investigating some kind of… baby farm?”

Just saying the words made her physically nauseous. She turned to the side and started dry heaving.

“If that’s really what it is, please don’t make me go to the scene. I’ll have to go vegetarian for life.”

Her eyes were red from retching, tears clinging to the corners.

The way she looked when she spoke—utterly pitiful.

The team member who’d mentioned Hannibal got smacked again. This time, even the Captain joined in.

Qin Qing handed Meng Yuan a bottle of vitamin C water. “Don’t scare yourself.”

She stood up, a cold smile playing on her lips as she cracked her knuckles. “Whether they’re raising kids or cooking them, we’ll find out soon enough.”

Meng Yuan tugged at Qin Qing’s sleeve, her voice weak. “…Sis, can you not say that word?”

Qin Qing: “…”

The team member who’d been smacked whimpered, trying to defend himself, “Yeah, once we find them, I’ll be the first to beat the guy into a squash.”

No one responded.

The Captain placed a hand on Meng Yuan’s back, gently patting to soothe her.

That didn’t stop him from continuing the briefing. “Right now, our only lead is that all these missing children were born in the same hospital. Well, not exactly the same hospital—the same hospital brand. Qingteng Hospital.”

Qingteng Hospital was a privately-owned general hospital chain with branches across the country.

It was a brand known for its charitable reputation. At the mention of it, not a single person in the room hadn’t heard of it.

Qingteng Hospital was backed by the massive Chengfeng Group, part of the conglomerate’s philanthropic portfolio.

Every year, Chengfeng Group poured a significant budget into Qingteng Hospital.

Qingteng Hospital, in turn, brought good public relations and purchasing power to the group’s other product lines.

There was more than one Qingteng Hospital in Beifu alone. They planned to start by checking those out.