Chapter 3

Author's note:

Everyone who passed by loved us.

Chapter 3

Tao Yan stared at Huo Baichuan in shock.

The policewoman who had been constantly wiping away tears sniffed, then left the station with the officers who had finished taking their statements and immediately gone out on the call. A few minutes later, she came back carrying two steaming bowls of shredded chicken noodles. Each bowl was topped with a huge chicken drumstick.

"Eat." The policewoman set the noodles on the table and said kindly, "You must be starving, right?"

Huo Baichuan accepted the noodles and thanked her openly. Then he pushed one of the bowls toward Tao Yan. Tao Yan froze for a moment before thanking her as well.

The two lowered their heads and slurped down the shredded chicken noodles. Tao Yan had a small appetite. He ate less than half of one drumstick before he could not eat anymore. Huo Baichuan directly reached his chopsticks into Tao Yan's bowl, took the remaining noodles and half a drumstick, and swept them clean in no time.

The remaining officers at the station sat around the two of them. Watching Huo Baichuan wolf down his food with elegant movements and Tao Yan eat slowly and methodically despite clearly being hungry, they could not help remarking, "Your families must be quite well-off."

Though they wore tattered clothes, one child was fair and delicate while the other was tall and sturdy. Their hands were both soft and smooth, making it obvious that neither had done hard labor. Combined with their bearing and manner of speaking, the experienced officers immediately concluded that the two children must have grown up in excellent environments. They had no idea how the children had caught the attention of those criminals and nearly ended up crippled and blind.

If their parents found out, they had no idea how worried they would be.

At that thought, several officers felt lingering fear in unison. The policewoman who had bought them the shredded chicken noodles and drumsticks comforted them gently, "Don't worry. Uncle and Auntie will help you find your families as soon as possible."

Although Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan had repeatedly claimed during the report that they could not remember anything, the officers still wanted to search for clues in the missing-person case files from recent months. The families of two such outstanding children must be frantic over their disappearance. Perhaps they had reported them missing long ago.

An older officer, well past fifty, poured two cups of water into white porcelain teacups and handed them to Huo Baichuan and Tao Yan. "The noodles are a little salty. Have some water to quench your thirst."

Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan accepted the teacups and thanked him again. The old officer patiently waited until they had finished drinking before asking, "You really don't remember where you live? Or your parents' names? From your accents, you don't sound like locals."

Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan nodded. "We really don't remember."

The officers exchanged glances. In truth, they only half believed them. They all felt that the two children had probably argued with their families and run away from home, only to encounter bad people along the way and come to the station to file a report. The reason they refused to honestly explain their family situation was either because they were afraid their families would be angry, or because they were still angry themselves and did not intend to go home.

Either way, these two children were quite willful.

The officers grumbled inwardly, but considering that the children had just escaped danger, they did not dare speak too harshly. They could only persuade them tactfully, "You were kidnapped and brought to Jiangzhou. Your families must be terribly worried. They probably can't eat or sleep and cry every day. Do you really not remember any contact information for home? Your parents' work phone numbers would do too. We can contact them and send you home as soon as possible, so your families won't have to worry."

Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan were deeply grateful for the officers' concern. But they truly could not provide their parents' names or phone numbers—going by the timeline, their parents had not even gotten married yet. How could they possibly have sons as old as them?

The officers showed concern and probed indirectly, but Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan had made up their minds to know nothing. No matter what was said, they would not budge. The officers had no choice. The officers who had gone out to arrest the criminals also returned with the suspects. Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan took a close look and found that there were not just the six burly men. There were also two women, an old man, and four emaciated disabled children. It turned out that when the police arrived at the crowded courtyard, they happened to encounter one accomplice returning with the children. He had been stopped at the entrance by the trap Huo Baichuan had set, allowing the police to catch him red-handed. They then followed the trail and arrested the remaining two accomplices as well.

The young officer in charge of the operation said indignantly, "These people are utterly insane."

According to the suspects' confessions, this was far from their first time doing such things. For years, they had drifted through provinces and cities across the country committing crimes. Most of the children they abducted were sold into remote mountain villages. Those nobody wanted, or those who caused too much trouble, had their eyes blinded with quicklime, were drugged mute, had their legs broken, and were thrown onto the streets to beg. The women and old men in their group would pretend to be the children's mothers and grandfathers, claiming they were begging for money to take the children to big cities for medical treatment.

People were simple and kind-hearted in those days. Begging in streets and alleys every day, they would always encounter people who pitied the poor and weak. In a single day, even the loose change could amount to dozens or over a hundred yuan. They did not dare stay in one place for long, changing locations after three days at most. They feared arousing suspicion and being recognized.

According to the group, Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan were not children they had abducted, but children they had picked up by the sea. When they pulled them from the water, the two children had been naked and unconscious. Seeing how exceptionally beautiful they were, the criminals had planned to blind them, drug them mute, and break their limbs before taking them to another city and throwing them onto the streets to beg. They estimated the boys could earn at least a hundred yuan a day.

But they had not expected that those who hunted geese all day would eventually be pecked blind by sparrows. Huo Baichuan had beaten all six men soundly, and their entire criminal ring had been wiped out in one sweep.

As the police took statements and listened to the group's deranged crimes, they trembled with rage. Since the case involved too many people and provinces, the station transferred it to the higher-level Public Security Bureau that very night. Tao Yan, Huo Baichuan, and the other children were placed in a guesthouse affiliated with the station. The police investigated the case while helping the children contact their families. Yet several days passed, and finding the children's parents was like searching for a needle in the sea; there was not the slightest news. The guesthouse was not somewhere the children could stay indefinitely. With no other option, the station temporarily entrusted the children to a welfare home in its district—Red Heart Orphanage.