"Alright, I'll wait for you."
Zhu Guangyu's news channels in Sha City were more extensive than Lin Xiao's. Half an hour later, his call came through.
"Brother Xiao, his child has been abducted."
As Zhu Guangyu spoke, Lin Xiao understood why Hu Zhicheng had been looking at all the children with such unusual eyes on the way.
"What happened?"
"I'm not clear on the specifics, even the criminal investigation team is a bit baffled. His child was abducted from home, but none of the surveillance, neither from the residential compound nor the streets, captured anyone entering or leaving. He also tried his best to search at the time, but without any additional information, he couldn't find any trace of his child. We've reviewed all the surveillance footage, and there's no sign of his child leaving Sha City. By the time he realized his child was missing, he had already investigated all possible means of leaving Sha City, and there was no news."
"A month has passed, and they still haven't found the child?"
Lin Xiao frowned. A month had passed, and this person should have left long ago.
After all, one could leave without using highways, trains, planes, or ships.
"Yes, it's quite coincidental, isn't it? A section near the national highway was under lockdown at the time, and traffic was not allowed in the surrounding areas. Therefore, his child should still be within Sha City, but we just don't know where." Zhu Guangyu looked at the information in his hand, his brow furrowed.
To be honest, after a month, if the child hadn't been found, it meant the child was still in Sha City and hadn't left. However, this news was even worse than the child being taken away.
Either the child had already been given to another family, or the child was already gone.
The baby was only a few months old, to be precise, three months old now. Hu Zhicheng had retired early because his wife was about to give birth. He had set his retirement date in advance to return and be with his wife.
But how long had it been since then? The child had vanished into thin air and still couldn't be found.
"It's truly bizarre."
In this era, for a child to disappear just like that, and coincidentally during a period of traffic control that prevented leaving Sha City, Hu Zhicheng would naturally exhaust all efforts to find his child.
"No wonder he looked at me like that," the冥医 (Míng Yī -冥医 could be translated as 'Underworld Doctor' or 'Shadow Doctor' if context allowed, but sticking to Pinyin is preferred per rules) recalled, and then said. Hu Zhicheng's gaze at him at the time was as if he were looking at someone with a deep, bitter hatred. He probably thought he was a child trafficker.
"You were mistaken for a child trafficker, weren't you?" Lin Xiao said. "He probably thought you were following Bing Bing suspiciously and subconsciously decided you weren't a good person."
"You... you encountered him?"
Hearing the conversation from the other end of the phone, Zhu Guangyu asked.
"Of course. He's selling cotton candy in my residential compound. He's probably here to see if he can find anyone with ill intentions. After all, targeting children means either someone wants to buy a child, or they've abducted them for ransom. The people here are quite wealthy, and it's uncertain whether they would even report it if the amount wasn't too large." Lin Xiao analyzed, and roughly understood why Hu Zhicheng was selling cotton candy here.
"How about it, Brother Xiao, shall we help him?"