Investigation Abroad

Xia Tianhuo said nervously into the phone, "Mom! It's... it's Huohuo! I'm calling so late because I have something important to tell you... um... we've been kidnapped. I'm in Myanmar right now..."

Halfway through his sentence, Xia Tianhuo was struck on the head, nearly dropping his phone. He quickly said, "I've been kidnapped. The kidnappers want five million US dollars in cash. Oh, and I can't call the police... Wait, gentlemen, do you mean the police here or the police back home?"

Xia Tianhuo's phone was taken by the man in the Pigsy mask, who said in heavily accented Mandarin, "Prepare the money within three days. If you dare to call the police, I'll kill him."

The person on the other end of the phone finally spoke, "Where are you planning to hand over the funds? If it's in China, we can't possibly prepare that much US dollars within three days..."

But before she could finish speaking, the call was cut off.

Xia Tianhuo quickly said, "None of you told her whether the ransom is domestic or foreign, so she has no way to prepare!"

"Stop talking nonsense!" The Pigsy mask slapped him on the head again.

"Bajie, go and prepare to leave," Tang Sanzang said in his mask.

"Okay, Brother Kui... uh, okay, Master." The Pigsy mask let slip the secret, and he subconsciously shrank his neck.

The Tang Monk mask cursed, then took off its own mask and threw it at the Pigsy mask, kicked it, and walked out of the room.

The Pigsy mask that had been kicked was annoyed. After looking at Xia Tianhuo, who was tied to a chair, it stuffed the rag back into his mouth, kicked him and the chair to the ground, then helped him up, put the mask back on, and left satisfied.

Xia Tianhuo was kicked so hard he almost lost his breath, but he didn't have time to be angry with the kidnapper. He was thinking back to what he had just said to Lao Xia, wondering if he had conveyed his message.

But now that things have come to this, we can only trust Lao Xia.

When Xiang Kun rushed back to the rented house in Chongyun Village, he saw Xia Libing sitting in the living room on the first floor, looking exhausted. In front of her were one "Napoleon cake" after another, some of which remained, while others disappeared as a new cake appeared.

Hearing the door open and turning around to see Xiang Kun still barefoot, carrying a bag of shoes and clothes, Xia Libing stopped her "Fantasy Manifestation." All the cakes disappeared, and the overwhelming fatigue almost made her fall asleep.

However, after closing her eyes for a second, she quickly opened them again, took out her phone, and played a recording for Xiang Kun, which was the recording of Xia Tianhuo's phone call earlier.

Upon receiving Xia Tianhuo's call and hearing him abruptly call out "Mom," Xia Libing immediately realized something was wrong and pressed the record button to record the entire call.

So, apart from the first sentence, all the other parts of the conversation are included. Of course, Xia Libing also dictated the additional content of the first sentence to Xiang Kun.

After listening to the recording, Xiang Kun naturally understood what Lao Xia's emergency situation was.

However, he did not immediately offer any opinion, but instead continued to listen to Lao Xia of the situation:

"Judging from my cousin's personality and consistent behavior, the fact that he didn't call my uncle and aunt, but shamelessly called me 'Mom' on the phone, means he must have realized something was wrong and thought that only I could sense it and save him."

Xia Libing played the recording again and said, "He calls himself 'Huohuo,' but his nickname is actually 'Tiantian,' and he was only called that when he was a child. He doesn't want to be called that anymore. If he just wanted me to know who he was, it would be more appropriate to just give me his name. So those two characters must have some kind of message they want to convey, but it shouldn't be too complicated. I guess it might be related to 'extremely urgent.' He must have realized through some detail that his kidnappers are very ruthless and might kill him regardless of whether a ransom is paid."

"And listen here, he said 'a very important thing,' and then he said 'we were kidnapped.' Although he said the word 'we' very quickly and softly, it was obviously meant to emphasize something. It might be implying that he wasn't alone when he was kidnapped, or that the person who kidnapped him had some prior contact with him."

"He said 'called at the last minute,' which was a strange word. This 'last minute' was probably a hint. The fact that he dared to use my number instead of my aunt's showed that he knew the kidnappers didn't know much about him or our family, so the kidnapping was likely a last-minute decision."

"My cousin was kidnapped in Myanmar and was still Myanmar at the time. But when the kidnappers demanded the ransom, they only asked us to prepare it, but didn't specify whether the ransom should be paid in China or Myanmar. It's very likely that they hadn't considered this beforehand."

"The kidnappers spoke Mandarin, but with a heavy accent. Judging from their accents, they were probably from Guihai."

"I already called my third uncle to tell him about the situation. He will decide how to contact the police, whether to ask Interpol for help, when to tell my eldest uncle and aunt, and how to raise the ransom. I also told them my assessment, because the kidnappers might continue to call my phone number, so I need to go to Citong immediately to meet up with my third uncle and the others. Can you give me a ride? I'm very tired right now and can't drive."

"Okay." Xiang Kun nodded, took a quick shower, changed his clothes, got into the pickup truck, and drove Lao Xia out of the village.

Sensing that Lao Xia, the passenger, was about to fall asleep, Xiang Kun quickly said, "Send me that recording file. Also, do you know which city in Myanmar your cousin was kidnapped in?"

While sending the audio file, Xia Libing said, "According to the entry information and spending records that my third uncle found, he arrived in Mengtamila City, Myanmar yesterday."

Xiang Kun nodded, and after a few seconds said, "Take a look at the flights from Jianzhou City to Nande City. What's the earliest departure time?" Nande City is a city very close to the Myanmar border.

Xia Libing was taken aback for a moment, then asked, "Are you going to Myanmar?"

"Yes, based on your analysis, your cousin is indeed in great danger. Those kidnappers are likely vicious criminals, and even if they pay the ransom, they are very likely to kill him. The most crucial point is that he was kidnapped in Myanmar, so the assistance that the domestic police can provide will be relatively limited, and there will be delays, which further increases the danger to him. Since he asked you for help and believes that you have the ability to save him, then we must do everything we can to save him," Xiang Kun said.

Xia Libing said, "I remember you don't have a passport, and your blood-drinking period starts the day after tomorrow... Are you planning to enter the country by unconventional means?"

Yes, Xiang Kun, this country bumpkin, has never even been to Hong Kong, let alone abroad, so he doesn't have a passport. Although passports are easy to obtain now and tourist visas to Myanmar aren't difficult to get, he simply doesn't have the time to apply for one.

"I should still have 40 hours until my normal blood-drinking period. If everything goes smoothly, I should have enough time. Besides, I can suppress your violence by sensing your rationality through 'Emotion-Infused Object,' so holding out for another 20 hours shouldn't be a problem," Xiang Kun said.

If a complete stranger were kidnapped in Myanmar, or if one of Lao Xia's distant relatives whom Xiang Kun didn't know were kidnapped, Xiang Kun would certainly not hesitate to rescue them if it were easy to do so within China, but he might not be willing to risk traveling thousands of miles to another country to rescue them.

He had met Xia Tianhuo before, and he actually had a pretty good impression of his Lao Xia cousin, who was half a head taller than him; he seemed like a big kid. Moreover, since Xia Tianhuo had directly called Lao Xia's cell phone to subtly "ask for help" about the ransom, Lao Xia was already deeply involved in this matter, so he had no reason to stand idly by.

Xia Libing hadn't expected Xiang Kun to plan his own trip to Myanmar to rescue people. She had only wanted his perspective to offer advice, to help her identify any oversights or misjudgments, Xiang Kun's superhuman analytical and computational abilities. But precisely because of this, she knew Xiang Kun's decision must have been carefully considered and planned. So she nodded and said:

"Is there anything I can help you with?"

Xiang Kun said, "Keep me informed of any new information you receive, including details about the kidnappers and your cousin."

"Good."

Xiang Kun originally wanted to give Lao Xia a brief account of what they had encountered in the northern mountainous area of Wushu Mountain that evening, but when he noticed that she was indeed very tired and haggard, and after not saying a word for two seconds, she fell asleep in the passenger seat, so he didn't say anything more.

When they arrived in Jianzhou City, it was already past 7 a. m. Xiang Kun took Lao Xia directly to the bus station, bought her a ticket for the next bus to Citong, said goodbye to her, and headed to the airport.

Having booked the next flight, while waiting to check in, Xiang Kun asked Alice to process the call log Lao Xia had sent him, trying to discern the background noise. Unfortunately, the background was very quiet, and there were no special sounds that could help him pinpoint the location.

Then he instructed Alice to use the internet to search extensively for information about Xia Tianhuo's itinerary in Montamira, Myanmar, yesterday, to see who he had contacted, what services he had used, how his location had changed, and to try to investigate the number that dialed Lao Xia's mobile phone to see if there was any information that could be found.

At this time, Xiang Kun naturally granted Alice the highest level of authority and freedom. In any case, based on previous experience, Alice was basically invincible on the internet and in the data world.

They arrived at a city on the southwestern border at noon. Then, carrying a backpack, Xiang Kun began to walk off the paved road, took off his shoes, and went barefoot, heading towards the rugged and difficult terrain.

He had done his research before and knew that there were places separated by cliffs and deep mountains that were easier to enter the country. Those places would be insurmountable barriers for ordinary people, but they were no obstacle for him and he felt no pressure at all.

With his exceptional senses, he was able to evade others in the mountains and quickly entered Myanmar.

He traveled at full speed through the mountains, moving extremely fast. However, once he left the mountains, he could no longer run openly on the road, so he put on his shoes and hitched a ride.

He changed his appearance slightly for this trip; he wasn't wearing glasses and was wearing a dark baseball cap, making him look like an ordinary tourist.

To make things easier for tourists, people from all walks of life in Myanmar can directly accept RMB, so Xiang Kun doesn't need to exchange for Myanmar Kyat.

In order to maintain contact with Lao Xia and obtain information support from Alice, Xiang Kun also activated international roaming on his mobile phone.

When they arrived in Montamira, the city where Xia Tianhuo had appeared before his kidnapping, in the evening, Xiang Kun also received some new information from Lao Xia.

Xia Tianhuo made the last-minute decision to go to Montamira yesterday to meet with a client named Teng Li and discuss some unforeseen business issues.

This client was the son of a wealthy Myanmar businessman, but according to the latest news, Teng Li died in a car accident last night.

Xiang Kun then asked Alice to translate some relevant news articles and online discussions from Myanmar for him to see. He found that some people mentioned that when Teng Li left his usual casino last night, he seemed to be with a very large man, and that the same large man was in the passenger seat of his two-door sports car. However, after the car accident, the large man was nowhere to be found. Therefore, Teng Li suspected that the large man might have killed Tengri, perhaps some kind of assassin, who deliberately caused the accident.

Xiang Kun didn't need to guess the authenticity of this information, because Alice had actually obtained the casino's surveillance footage. It turned out that the big guy who left the casino with Teng Li was Xia Tianhuo.

The two seemed to be having a pleasant conversation, and neither appeared to be drinking, as they both seemed quite sober.

However, the video footage from outside the casino shows that the young Myanmar man Teng Li, was driving quite fast.

Xiang Kun looked at the photos of the accident again. It happened on a relatively narrow road, so even if Teng Li was extremely violent, it would be difficult for him to drive very fast.

Indeed, judging from the photos, his car crashed into a wall next to a small open space. The deformation was not severe, and under normal circumstances, with the deployed airbags providing protection, the person would not be injured.

Unfortunately, there were many steel pipes for setting up sheds nearby. After the car crashed into the pipes, one of them bounced onto the hood, one end of which braced against the wall and briefly lay horizontally, while the other end pierced the driver's cab and into Teng Li's head, killing him instantly.

Judging from the news reports and photos from the scene, it looked just like a scene from "Final Destination".

There were no surveillance cameras in the alley, and no witnesses could be found. However, the tire tracks at the scene indicated that Teng Li's car braked suddenly just before exiting the intersection, then reversed, and then turned into the open space, resulting in a fatal crash into the wall.

Xiang Kun discovered in the accident scene photos that before the body was removed from the car, the passenger door was open while the driver's side door was still closed.

He speculated that Xia Tianhuo was kidnapped by the kidnappers in this very place after the car accident.

Xiang Kun arrived at the scene of the car accident and quickly surveyed the area. Although the vehicle involved in the accident had been moved, many traces were still visible.

However, Xiang Kun didn't stay there for long and left quickly. He noticed that there were many strong young Myanmar men there, like him, observing and wandering around, obviously looking for something. There were also Myanmar police checking tourists' documents, and one of the police even noticed him and walked towards him, but he managed to get away by using the terrain.

It seems that even without the Xia family reporting it to the police, the Myanmar police and some local forces have already taken action.

This could increase the difficulty of his investigation.

Based on what Alice collected and what he observed in Montamira, Xia Tianhuo was likely just an unlucky victim caught in the crossfire.

The kidnappers' real target was most likely not him, but Teng Li, the son of a wealthy Myanmar businessman who was driving the car and died.

Xia Tianhuo's arrival in Montamira yesterday was a last-minute decision, and his meeting with Teng Li was also unplanned. His appearance in Teng Li's car and in that alley was unpredictable before last night.

The choice of that alley to carry out the operation was clearly the result of careful planning and scouting.

Not only is it remote and deserted, but the terrain is also convenient for them to carry out their plan. If they block both ends of the alley, there is no way they can escape. It is also a route that Teng Li often takes after leaving the casino. Those kidnappers are obviously after Teng Li.

Xiang Kun appeared to be wandering aimlessly in Montamira, but in reality, he was using his extraordinary hearing and sense of smell to search for Xia Tianhuo, while also looking for Mandarin with Guihai accent, trying to find the kidnappers' trail.

Alice was also using her skills to search through the surrounding surveillance footage, trying to find the car that had kidnapped Xia Tianhuo and driven away.

Judging from the timeline, the car accident occurred around 12:50 last night, while the kidnapper called Lao Xia at 4:11 in the morning, which is about three hours apart.

In other words, the place Xia Tianhuo was taken to was no more than a three-hour drive from that alley.

Moreover, according to Xiang Kun's speculation, since their original kidnapping target died unexpectedly and they temporarily kidnapped Xia Tianhuo, they probably wouldn't make a decision so quickly after arriving at the destination. Therefore, the actual distance was definitely far less than a three-hour drive.

Xiang Kun speculated that there was a high probability that the kidnappers were still in Montamira last night, and there was a certain probability that they had gone to a nearby city.

However, this only applies up to the time they called Lao Xia last night. After most of the day has passed, they might have moved to another place.

For Xiang Kun, as long as he finds a clue or a connection, he can use his various methods to deduce the current location of Xia Tianhuo and the kidnappers.

If we can find the place where Xia Tianhuo was kidnapped last night, even if they are no longer there, it will greatly help in tracking him down.

Around 9 p. m., Xiang Kun walked into a small restaurant on the street, pretending to be a backpacker. After ordering a few dishes, he chatted with the owner in his imitation of Guihai- accented Mandarin.

Just now, Xiang Kun discovered through auditory information search that the owner of this small restaurant is a fellow countryman, and speaks Mandarin with Guihai accent as well as some Guihai dialect.

Of course, this boss was not the kidnapper who had spoken to Lao Xia.

However, Xiang Kun still planned to obtain some information through him.

The boss didn't need to go to the kitchen himself; there were chefs watching over things. So Xiang Kun asked him to chat, he didn't refuse. After all, Xiang Kun was not only a fellow countryman but also a fellow townsman from Guihai. Moreover, Xiang Kun was very skilled at speaking and always managed to hit the boss's sweet spot, making the boss very talkative and unable to stop talking.

Xiang Kun doesn't actually speak the Guihai dialect; he's just imitating the accent. So when the boss is in a good mood and occasionally blurts out a few words in pure Guihai dialect, Xiang Kun can't understand them at all.

But it doesn't matter if he doesn't understand. Xiang Kun can make inferences based on the context and the boss's personality and expression, and make appropriate responses. He can even use the Guihai he just learned to deal with the situation naturally.

Because Xiang Kun's imitation of the accent was so authentic and his responses were so perfect, the boss completely took Xiang Kun for someone from his hometown of Guihai and had no doubts whatsoever.

The information Xiang Kun obtained from his boss was about where the Guihai people in Montamira gathered. His boss had been in Myanmar for ten years and was naturally quite familiar with the situation of his compatriots and fellow villagers.

Those kidnappers are very likely not people who have been living in Myanmar for a long time; they may not have been in Myanmar or in Montamira for very long.

However, Chinese people have a characteristic: when they go out, they like to stick together, find friends and helpers, and they usually start by finding fellow villagers and relatives.

Xiang Kun asked which Guihai people Guihai in the catering business at Montamira, which were in the construction business, and which were involved in gray-area businesses.

Recently, due to Myanmar's relatively relaxed policies, many people from China have gone to Montamira to engage in underground online casinos or borderline live streaming businesses. They have moved some gray industries that have been severely cracked down on and have no room to survive in China to this place, forming a circle of interests.

Overall, the conversation with the restaurant owner was very fruitful; it was worth it for him to force himself to eat a lot despite the pebbles in his stomach.

After leaving the hotel, Alice's search yielded some results, providing video screenshots of four possible suspect vehicles, three of which were vans and one was a minivan.

Alice's work efficiency was so high that Xiang Kun hesitated, because he knew very well that the server resources he configured for Alice were not enough to support such a large amount of data processing.

However, now was not the time to consider those issues; he decided to focus on finding Xia Tianhuo first.

Xiang Kun went to the area in Montamira where some Guihai people without legal status lived, as the restaurant owner had told him. The owner was warning him not to go to those places, saying that although those people were also from the same hometown, they were more ruthless than the locals when it came to ripping off and cheating their fellow villagers.

However, for Xiang Kun, that was the place he wanted to focus his search on.

After Xiang Kun arrived at the area, a young man with dark skin and wearing flip-flops approached him shortly afterward. Speaking in heavily accented Guihai Mandarin, he said, "Handsome! You're Chinese, right? Come on, follow me! We have fun things here, cheap and safe! Don't be fooled by the shabby exterior, the interiors are nicely decorated! Baccarat, Texas Hold'em, all kinds of games, and pretty girls to keep you company!"

Xiang Kun was about to say a few words, the young man was pulled aside by one of his companions and left.

After walking a distance, Xiang Kun heard the man who had pulled the young man away say in a low voice, "That guy doesn't look like someone to mess with. He's clearly not here to play around. Something's been up lately, be careful."

These words served as a reminder to Xiang Kun, so he hunched his back slightly to be more discreet when observing his surroundings, making himself appear more sleazy and cautious, and also began to try his best to avoid those obvious eyes on the street.

Xiang Kun didn't investigate those underground casinos first because he judged that these places that made money in the gray areas were already extremely profitable and had intricate connections with local forces, so they were unlikely to directly get involved in such a scandalous affair.

As Xiang Kun used his senses to investigate for a while, because he found that this was a good place to process and prepare vehicles for crimes. Moreover, a large part of the conversations in the auto repair shops were in Guihai dialect or Guihai Mandarin.

After standing in a dark corner of the street for more than twenty minutes, Xiang Kun was unable to find any useful information through his senses, so he continued walking in.

Just as Xiang Kun thought he had gone in the wrong direction and was about to leave to start from another direction, he made a discovery at a scrap metal yard not far from a group of car repair shops.

According to Xiang Kun's sensory investigation, although Xia Tianhuo was not inside, some of Xia Tianhuo's scent remained. It can be basically determined that this is a transit point for the kidnappers, and they may have even been here when they called Lao Xia yesterday.