Mo Qiong inwardly cursed himself for being so muddleheaded. He had been focused on catching wanted criminals and had forgotten that there were people in this world who were even more urgently in need of finding their way back.
That was missing children.
The rewards for wanted criminals were generous, but they were registered in the public security system. Doing it once or twice would be fine, but if he claimed too many rewards, he might attract the police's attention.
Besides, wanted criminals were on the run and could hardly live normal lives. They were constantly on edge, and who knew when they might be caught.
The country's surveillance system was growing more powerful by the day. Even if those fugitives weren't found now, they would eventually be caught. They couldn't hide for long.
Compared with that, finding kidnapped children was much harder.
Many parents might never find their lost children in their entire lives.
"Since I'll be busy anyway, why not start with this?"
Finding lost children might not earn as much as wanted notices, or might not earn anything at all.
But that was fine. He could do it without money; as long as he got paid once in a while, that would be enough.
After all, this was something he could do repeatedly. It didn't matter how many times he did it.
Because the ones offering the rewards were the children's parents, not the State Organs.
Even if he had to be recorded by the police as the key person who found a child, it didn't matter.
The departments he dealt with would definitely be scattered across the country. No one would be bored enough to compile statistics on who had found the most children in the world.
Mo Qiong's thoughts raced. Seeing Qin Ya looking at him in surprise, he hurriedly said, "A missing child is a serious matter. Why don't you tell me about your cousin? I'll write it down and try to help you look for him too."
"After all, the more people who know about a missing child, the better. Many hands make light work. Maybe I'll happen to see him one day?"
Mo Qiong spoke very seriously. Since he was planning to do this anyway, why not start with people around him who needed help?
His words immediately moved Qin Ya deeply.
She had told several other close friends about it before, but their reactions had amounted to nothing more than comforting her and offering words of encouragement.
That was perfectly normal. Few outsiders would take such a vague, directionless matter to heart. Almost no one would proactively ask for a photo and say, "I'll help you look."
Encouragement was already the most normal response a friend could give.
But Mo Qiong's reaction was beyond her expectations.
He actually wanted to help her, and he seriously intended to remember her cousin's details and take the matter to heart.
Perhaps he would merely remember it and tell her if he happened to see him one day. Such help would be a drop in the bucket when it came to finding a child.
But his reaction made Qin Ya feel warm, because that alone was the greatest encouragement—worth a thousand or ten thousand words of consolation.
"Thank you." Qin Ya stared dreamily at Mo Qiong, feeling a warmth in her heart.
"What are you thanking me for? We haven't found him yet. There's still time to thank me after we do." Mo Qiong remained calm.
He sounded as though he were saying, There's no rush to drink this wine until I've slain Hua Xiong.
It gave people the feeling that he wasn't merely saying it casually, but that he absolutely intended to find the child.
Qin Ya softly hummed in agreement and began explaining how her cousin had gone missing, where he had disappeared, and what clues they had found after reporting it to the police.
She also told him which places her family had searched and what methods they had tried.
Mo Qiong listened very seriously, but in truth, none of that was useful to him.
To him, all those clues that others had to study so carefully were inferior to one thing...
"Do you have any photos? Not just of him, but also of the personal belongings he had with him when he went missing."
"Of course. I'll send them to you." Qin Ya opened her phone. It contained a missing-person notice, as well as photos and sketches of various personal belongings. As a family member, she had kept those things on her phone for years.
Mo Qiong handed over his phone. Qin Ya added him on WeChat, helped him save her phone number, and sent over a large number of photos.
"Two years old really was too young. By now, he should be six, right?" Mo Qiong said.
The child had gone missing when Qin Ya was fifteen, and four years had passed since then.
If he had been an adult, the changes would not have been too great, and the photos would still have been useful for reference.
But a two-year-old child would change far too much over four years. His own mother might not even recognize him.
In such circumstances, the photos had lost all reference value. There was no need even to try; imagining it ten thousand times would still get nowhere.
"Did he have a Longevity Lock?" Mo Qiong asked.
"Yes. It even has his name on it. His name is Qin Liang. This is the one." Qin Ya stood up and sat down beside Mo Qiong.
Mo Qiong secretly thought that having an item bearing his name would make things even easier.
"Okay. I'll tell you if I get any news."
"Mm-hmm." Qin Ya nodded with a smile.
In truth, she didn't think Mo Qiong would really go looking. At most, he would keep an eye out.
But his attitude still made her very happy.
After they finished eating, Mo Qiong saw Qin Ya home.
Around the afternoon, the first batch of GPS devices arrived—twenty in total.
"Okay, time to get to work."
After unpacking and assembling them, he studied how to use them.
He had chosen the model with the strongest battery. It used satellite positioning, and once the software was installed, it could locate the GPS's position around the clock, except in extremely remote areas beyond signal coverage.
There was signal coverage even in many deep mountains and old forests nowadays. Even if there was no signal, he could at least know which signal-dead area the GPS had reached. Either way, it could still serve as a tracking device.
After preparing all twenty GPS devices, he packaged them as well.
He simply covered each one with a layer of sponge for protection, then wrapped it in a waterproof sleeve.
Who knew how far these GPS devices would fly? If they were battered by wind and rain along the way and stopped working halfway, all his effort would be wasted.
Once he had covered them all, he took his short bow up to the rooftop...
"First arrow... target, the Longevity Lock."
"Inscription: Qin Liang, Chinese regular script, brass..."
Mo Qiong constantly visualized every detail of the target. With photos to assist him, there would basically be no error.
If it had been an ordinary Longevity Lock bought from a shop, who would take a close-up photo? But this lock was different. It was an antique, one of Qin Ya's father's collectibles, so there were close-up photos of it.
That helped immensely.
Because it was an antique, its surface even had dents and other marks left by history. Those were all unique characteristics.
"Whoosh!" Mo Qiong drew the bow to its full extent and shot out a small, lightweight GPS with all his strength.
If he only wanted speed, he should have found a nail gun.
But this was a device, after all, and hitting the target too quickly wouldn't be good either.
Mo Qiong knew that his bow could give an arrow an initial velocity of fifty meters per second at most.
The GPS was very light, so it would go even faster—around sixty meters per second.
Since its speed wouldn't decrease before reaching the target, he could directly calculate that after twenty-four hours, the GPS could fly 5,184 kilometers.
China stretched only about 5,200 kilometers from east to west. In other words, in one day, a GPS could fly from the easternmost point of the country to the westernmost point.
That speed was sufficient. Although he had made its exterior very soft, going any faster would turn it into an attack.
"Second arrow... target, Xiao Bao's birthmark."
Mo Qiong quickly shot another arrow.
This Xiao Bao was another missing child he had found online.
There were far too many similar cases, but he couldn't help every one of them. The children were too young, and if they had been missing for too long, their old appearances would no longer be useful for reference.
Xiao Bao had a distinctive birthmark on his forehead. It would remain with him for life, and since he had been missing for only a little over two years, it was barely worth trying.
For the others, he could only try if they had something like the Longevity Lock. But if their only personal belongings were clothes and shoes, there was no need to try at all. He definitely wouldn't be able to find them.
Next, he found information on all the children who had been missing for less than a year.
Then, based on their appearances, he shot GPS devices at them one by one.
Before long, he had fired eighteen arrows.
"Nineteenth arrow... target, Yang Fusheng."
He was an A-class wanted criminal who had embezzled bank funds and committed fraud multiple times.
His wanted notice included an ID photo. Anyone who provided clues or helped capture him would be rewarded 100,000 RMB.
Choosing to focus on finding children didn't mean he would stop looking for wanted criminals.
He could still catch one. There was no reason to turn down 100,000 yuan.
However, this time, after Mo Qiong fired the arrow, he saw the GPS vanish into thin air.
Yes, vanish!
"Huh? What's going on?"
If the GPS had torn through the atmosphere and shot into outer space, Mo Qiong could still have accepted that.
But what the hell did it mean for it to simply disappear?
"Could it have been shot into another spacetime? Did this wanted criminal travel through time?"
Mo Qiong thought for a moment, then searched for another wanted criminal.
"Twentieth arrow... target, Zhao Mingjun."
Zhao Mingjun was also an A-class wanted criminal. He had kidnapped and murdered people, with seven lives on his hands. His crimes were heinous.
But the reward was only 50,000 RMB.
There was only one 100,000-yuan reward; all the others were 50,000. Zhao Mingjun was the most dangerous one, so he became Mo Qiong's candidate.
"It flew away. That's normal."
Mo Qiong thought about it. Perhaps Yang Fusheng was dead—and had died in such a way that not even a whole corpse remained.
As a result, the target Mo Qiong had envisioned didn't exist, or at least didn't exist in this world.
Then the nineteenth arrow might have been shot into another world, such as the world after death or a Parallel Universe.
"So, perhaps my arrows can cross spacetime."
"Of course, I can't rule out the possibility that, when the target is completely impossible to match, my ability will simply erase the arrow."
"Tsk. I can't prove it, either. It's not like I can shoot myself."
P.S. The contract has been mailed. I missed a week of recommendations...
Before you continue