Chapter 3

The author would like to say:

Everyone who passes by has loved before. ︿(￣︶￣)︿

Tao Yan stared at Huo Baichuan in shock.

The female police officer, who had been wiping away tears, sniffled and left the station with the officers who had finished taking statements and gone out on the call. A few minutes later, she returned carrying two steaming bowls of shredded chicken noodles. Each bowl was topped with a big chicken leg.

"Go ahead and eat." The female officer set the bowls on the table and said with a warm smile, "You must be starving."

Huo Baichuan accepted a bowl of noodles and thanked her without hesitation. Then he pushed the other bowl in front of Tao Yan. Tao Yan paused, then thanked her too.

The two bent over their bowls and slurped down the noodles. Tao Yan had a small appetite and couldn't finish even half of his chicken leg. Huo Baichuan simply reached into Tao Yan's bowl with his chopsticks, took the remaining noodles and half a chicken leg, and polished them off in no time.

The remaining officers in the station sat around the two boys. Watching Huo Baichuan wolf down his food while still managing to look elegant, and Tao Yan eat slowly and methodically despite being just as hungry, they couldn't help remarking, "Your families must be pretty well-off."

Their clothes were ragged, but one boy was fair and delicate, while the other was tall and sturdy. Both had soft, uncalloused hands—you could tell they'd never done any hard labor. Their bearing and manner of speaking also made it clear to the well-traveled officers that the boys had grown up in comfortable circumstances. They had no idea how those criminals had targeted them, nearly leaving one disabled and the other blind.

Their parents would be frantic if they found out.

Thinking of that, several officers felt a chill of dread. The female officer who had bought the boys their noodles and chicken legs spoke soothingly. "Don't worry. We'll do our best to help you find your families as soon as possible."

Though Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan had repeatedly said they couldn't remember anything while reporting the crime, the officers still wanted to look through recent missing-person reports for clues. Two such outstanding children had gone missing; their families must be frantic. Perhaps they had already reported them missing.

An older officer 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 took the teacups and thanked him again. The older officer patiently waited until they had finished drinking, then asked, "You really don't remember where you live? Or your parents' names? From your accents, you don't sound like you're from around here."

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

The officers exchanged glances. They were, in truth, rather skeptical of the boys' story. They suspected the two had quarreled with their families and run away from home, then encountered criminals on the way and come to the station to report them. They were refusing to talk about their families either because they were afraid their parents would be angry, or because they were still upset and didn't intend to go home.

Either way, the boys were being rather willful.

The officers grumbled to themselves, but the boys had only just escaped danger, and they didn't dare be too harsh. Instead, they gently urged them, "You were brought to Jiangzhou by criminals. Your families must be terribly worried. They probably can't eat or sleep and are crying every day. Do you really not remember how to contact them? Even your parents' work number would do. We can get in touch and send you home as soon as possible, so your families don't have to worry."

Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan were very grateful for the officers' concern. But they truly couldn't give them their parents' names or phone numbers. Based on the time, their parents hadn't even married yet. How could they possibly have sons as old as them?

The officers tried to make conversation and gently probe for information, but Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan had made up their minds to know nothing and wouldn't give in, no matter what they said. The officers were at a loss. The officers who had gone out to arrest the criminals returned with the suspects. When Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan took a closer look, they saw more than the six men. There were also two women, an old man, and four emaciated, disabled children. As it turned out, when the police had arrived at the courtyard, they had caught one of the accomplices bringing the children back. He had been stopped at the entrance by one of Huo Baichuan's traps, and the police had caught him red-handed. Following that lead, they had tracked down and arrested the other two accomplices as well.

The young officer who had gone out on the call said indignantly, "These people are utterly depraved."

According to the suspects, this wasn't the first or second time they'd done this. They had been roaming from province to province, committing crimes across the country for years. Most of the children they abducted were sold off to remote mountain villages. Those no one wanted, or who made too much trouble, had their eyes blinded with quicklime, their voices destroyed with drugs, and their legs broken before they were thrown onto the streets to beg. The women and old man among them posed as the children's mothers and grandfathers, claiming they were taking the children to a big city to get treatment.

People were kindhearted in those days. Begging on the streets and in the alleys, they could always find someone who pitied the poor and vulnerable. In a single day, they could earn dozens or even a hundred yuan in loose change alone. They didn't dare stay in one place for long—three days at most before moving on. They were afraid of arousing suspicion and of being recognized.

According to the gang, Tao Yan and Huo Baichuan weren't children they had abducted. They had found them on the shore. When they pulled the boys from the water, they were unconscious and wearing nothing. The gang had thought the boys were exceptionally good-looking, and planned to blind them, drug them into silence, break their limbs, and take them to another city to beg on the streets. They figured the boys could earn at least a hundred yuan a day.

But the hunters had become the hunted. Huo Baichuan had beaten all six men soundly, and the whole criminal gang had been taken down in one fell swoop.

The officers listened to the gang's horrific crimes as they took their statements, trembling with rage. Since the case involved suspects and victims from many provinces and cities, the station handed it over to the higher-level public security bureau that very night. Tao Yan, Huo Baichuan, and the other children were settled in a guesthouse run by the station. The police investigated the case and tried to contact the children's families at the same time. But several days passed, and finding their parents was like searching for a needle in a haystack. They didn't have the slightest lead. The guesthouse wasn't somewhere the children could stay long-term, so the station had no choice but to temporarily entrust them to a local welfare home: Red Heart Orphanage.