Open Up! We're Here to Check Your Water Meter, No, Find Your Child!

Shen Le picked up the puppet's head, examining it carefully from top to bottom. The crack at the back of the head was about a finger's length, with the widest point exceeding a centimeter. As for the depth, his probing during the cleaning process revealed it to be over three centimeters—meaning it reached nearly halfway through the puppet's head.

"Hmm... this crack isn't too bad... but I have to prevent it from spreading further until it eventually splits in two..."

Shen Le muttered to himself, drawing a butterfly-shaped pattern on the back of the puppet's head—or rather, two trapezoids with their tops facing each other. Then, securing the back of the head, he took a woodworking chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other, tapping away with a rhythmic bang, bang, bang:

"One, two, three, four, five. Perfect. Now for the other side—one, two, three, four, five!"

He first chiseled a few small holes inside the trapezoid, then, following the edges, he cut straight down, stroke by stroke.

In less than ten minutes, a hole three centimeters long, one centimeter wide, 0.7 centimeters at its narrowest, and two centimeters deep appeared on the back of the puppet's head. Shen Le pumped his right fist to cheer himself on, then picked up a piece of miscellaneous wood he had found in the kitchen and began to carve:

"Swish, swish, swish... swish, swish, swish... I saw, I saw, I saw, I saw, I plane, I plane... Beautiful! Done!"

A wooden block, identical in size and shape to the hole—flat on one side and arched on the other—landed in Shen Le's palm, which he tossed lightly into the air.

"A dovetail tenon! This thing is wide at both ends and narrow in the middle; once it locks into the sides of the crack, it'll pull the split together and keep it from widening!"

Shen Le measured the newly finished dovetail tenon against the back of the puppet's head, applied woodworking glue into the mortise, and grabbed the rubber hammer, tapping the tenon into place with a series of sharp strikes. The hole wasn't deep, so it seated quickly, fitting perfectly. Shen Le stroked the now-protruding back of the puppet's head and sighed:

"Well, next is to shave the excess into an arc to match the curve of the head... but no rush, there's still more to do..."

He pulled out a tube of woodworking glue and squeezed it into the crack. It bonded everything—wood, air, and everything in between; woodworking glue was a miracle for all kinds of wooden cracks, especially the fine ones.

Seeing the crack filled, he selected some wood dust of a similar color and packed it in. For ordinary miscellaneous wood, wood dust wasn't particularly useful, but when repairing rosewood, filling it with glue followed by rosewood dust and sanding it smooth made it nearly invisible to the naked eye, as if it were a single, solid piece of wood!

"Hey, I've given you a special precision treatment! You'd better repay me well once you come to life!"

Shen Le stroked the filled crack on the puppet's head and quickly switched to fast-drying woodworking glue to thoroughly cure the wood dust. Once it had set, he leveled it off with a scraping knife and let out a mournful groan:

"Ah..."

Next came the hell of sanding... sanding, color matching, painting wood grain, spraying lacquer, polishing—every single step was a time-consuming and meticulous chore...

Forget it, forget it. He'd wait until the sander he ordered arrived...

Shen Le shrugged his shoulders and shook out his wrists as he walked toward the door, intending to go out and find some food. Before he even reached the entrance, his phone chimed with a WeChat message from the young police officer he'd met yesterday, Shi Guangbing:

"Are you there? Could you open the door? Some children have gone missing, and they were last seen running toward the Old Street area!"

What?

Running toward the Old Street?

They couldn't have run into his mansion, could they? Then again, none of the doors in his house were open, and there were no dog holes; surely children couldn't get in?

Shen Le thought to himself while walking briskly to open the door. As the door swung open, the young officer, Shi Guangbing, stood there with a face full of exhaustion and bloodshot eyes, clutching a tablet and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with a thirty-something auxiliary officer carrying a long pole. Seeing him open the door, Shi Guangbing let out a long sigh of relief:

"Surveillance shows these three kids ran toward the Old Street, but we haven't been able to find them. We've checked everywhere else in the area; your place is the only one left. Have you seen these children or heard any strange noises from last night until this morning?"

"I haven't, actually..."

Shen Le's expression turned serious. Between last night and this morning, he had been entirely occupied with the puppet and hadn't heard any unusual sounds.

However, the house had three courtyards on both the left and right wings, and the area was vast. While it wasn't quite like the Rongguo Mansion, where Aunt Xue's family lived in the Pear Fragrance Courtyard and Jia Zheng might not see his sister-in-law for months at a time, it certainly wasn't a place where every little sound could be heard.

Not to mention, the left wing of the mansion had rockeries, a pond, and a well. If someone fell into those, it would be a disaster!

"But I can't be certain that children couldn't have climbed in from somewhere. How about this, officers? Why don't you come in and help me look?"

He let the two officers in, locked the door, and accompanied them inside. As soon as they entered the courtyard, Shi Guangbing swept his gaze across the area, his eyes widening instinctively:

"This—you live here alone?"

This was too extravagant!

He was still living with his parents, and most of his classmates from the police academy hadn't even started buying their own homes yet! This guy had a mansion this big?

"Yeah, I live alone." Shen Le's smile turned into a wry grimace as he pulled a massive ring of keys from his backpack, accompanying them to open doors one by one—the main hall, the side rooms—checking them one after another:

"I just inherited it. I'd just graduated and didn't have a place to stay, so I moved in."

As a local patrol officer, he was supposed to be familiar with the situation in his jurisdiction. But seeing it on a map, a blueprint, or a satellite image was completely different from stepping foot into the actual mansion. Shi Guangbing followed Shen Le from room to room, then another, and another. His initial surprise turned to a desire to sigh, which quickly shifted into worry:

"You live in a mansion this big all by yourself? No tenants? No one watching the place?"

It was an easy target for thieves!

"Look at this furniture... who could I possibly rent it to?"

"Ah... I suppose so." Shi Guangbing scratched his head. He was just a patrol officer, not a detective or an economic crimes investigator; he hadn't seen much high-end furniture, only enough to tell that these pieces "looked like rosewood" and "seemed very expensive." By the time they reached the third room, he couldn't help but offer a warning:

"You really should find someone to watch the place. No, with an area this big, one person wouldn't be enough. Or if that's not possible, install more surveillance and alarm systems. If something happens, call us—my phone number is my WeChat ID, got it?"

"Got it!"

"You must call if anything happens! If you don't know how to install surveillance or get it connected to the network, ask me later, and I'll give you some recommendations. You have to be careful! I don't want to come here one day only to hear you reporting a crime, or hear others reporting that a crime happened here!"