Two figures, one tall and one small, appeared on the screen. Li Xian studied the television closely-the adult woman in the footage was placing defective toys into a machine one by one to destroy them. A young girl stood beside her, quietly watching the entire process.
The surveillance footage had no sound. Li Xian could only tell from the way they occasionally turned toward each other that they were talking, but he had no idea what they were saying.
A workshop for destroying toys, a woman in her thirties, and a girl around seven or eight years old...
Clearly, the two people in the surveillance footage were the mother and daughter featured in the newspaper.
Li Xian remembered that the mother's surname was Li, and the child was called... Zhou Wenwen.
The process of destroying toys was extremely tedious, but Zhou Wenwen neither cried nor pestered her mother to play with her. At most, she stepped out of the camera's view midway through and brought back a little stool to sit on.
After watching for a while, Li Xian decided to fast-forward the video. But since he couldn't find a remote in the room, he had to move closer to the television and press the buttons beneath the screen.
After he skipped ahead about half an hour, the woman in the footage stopped working. She bent down to give her daughter a few instructions, then disappeared from view.
The defective toys already placed on the conveyor belt continued feeding into the machine. Just half a minute after her mother left, Zhou Wenwen grew restless and rose from the stool. She cautiously approached the machine, watching the dolls get shredded one after another.
Li Xian stood before the television with his arms folded, already sensing the tragedy that was about to