Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 356 "Zhao Xuan"

How should I describe that smile... It doesn't seem like an expression that a human could make...

If Sun Hang had to describe it, it would probably be like integrating a highly distorted digital photo into a human skin mask. The key point is that when his attention is focused on this distorted photo, the content of the photo will gradually seep into his consciousness... He can never see the appearance of the face clearly, but the terrifying feeling brought by that face will be deeply imprinted in his mind.

Of course, for others it was a shudder, but for Sun Hang, it was a very disgusting feeling... as if a slug had crawled into his nostrils and was constantly wriggling inside.

Sun Hang wanted to pull the slug out of his nostril, but it kept burrowing deeper and deeper...

"My day!"

Sun Hang cursed and forcibly stopped the memory recall.

"What's wrong?" Song Yarong, who had been standing aside and staring at Sun Hang, asked worriedly, "You look...very ugly."

"If you eat a slug while eating, your face won't look much better." Sun Hang said casually. He took two deep breaths, trying his best to put the disgusting feeling behind him, and then began to recall his memories again.

There must be something wrong with this little girl, but how did this engineer become infected and become a latent agent? There is no clue in the memory fragments...

Could it be that the time when he became a "lurker" was before this memory?

No, that's not right... Sun Hang's intuition told him that the problem was caused by this night...

Sun Hang watched the scene of lighting and blowing out the candles over a dozen times. What puzzled him was that the engineer didn't feel anything wrong even though the little girl's smile was so weird and scary. He continued to smile at his daughter, his eyes full of the kindness of an old father...

Fatherly love will not make a person a fool, unless the father's perception of reality has been distorted.

"Wait a moment."

Sun Hang's mind moved, and the playing picture suddenly paused.

At this moment, the little girl in the picture was bending down and gently blowing out the nine candles on the cake.

Everything in the picture stopped, except for the candle on the cake... the flame on the top was still swaying.

"The cake! The problem is the cake!"

After blowing out the candles, the engineer cut the not-so-big cake into three portions - one for his daughter, one for himself, and the remaining portion he placed in front of a black-and-white photo of a young woman on the cabinet.

When Sun Hang saw this before, his attention was all focused on the engineer and his daughter beside him. This time, when he turned around and looked again, he realized that the cake on the table behind was not a cake at all, but a whole piece of ochre-red rotten meat. There were many tiny tentacles like potato sprouts on the surface of the meat, which were slightly rhythmically moving.

After placing the third piece of cake in front of the photo of his deceased wife, the engineer turned around… In the past, the cake would return to its original state at this point in time, but this time, after being noticed by Sun Hang, the "cake" seemed to have been "seen through" and it always looked like rotten meat.

The engineer unknowingly picked up the plate of rotten meat, and under the "hopeful" eyes of his "daughter", he picked up a small piece with a fork and put it into his mouth...

"Get the family information of this engineer!" Sun Hang suddenly opened his eyes and said to Song Yarong.

"This man's name is Zhao Ming, he is 37 years old, he is an only child in his family, he has no brothers or sisters, his parents both died when he was young, he grew up in a welfare institution in Tianfu City, and he doesn't have much contact with distant relatives on weekdays. Twelve years ago, he married Yan Lili, a woman who also grew up in an welfare institution. In the third year of their marriage, they had a daughter, named Zhao Xuan."

As if she had already looked up Zhao Ming's information, Song Yarong recited it fluently: "But not long after giving birth to Zhao Xuan, Yan Lili was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and died a month later. Zhao Ming did not remarry, but raised Yan Lili alone..."

"Isn't that right?" Sun Hang suddenly interrupted, "Zhao Ming is an engineer at the Weird Things Research Institute. His job isn't so busy that he can raise a child who has no ability to take care of himself at the same time, right? He and Yan Lili both grew up in an orphanage, neither of them have parents. You also said that he never interacts with relatives... Then what's the matter with this child? Is he sent to full-time care?"

Seeing Sun Hang paying so much attention to Zhao Xuan, Song Yarong couldn't help but frowned: "What's wrong, do you suspect that there is something wrong with this Zhao Xuan? But it's true... Zhao Ming is a loner. Apart from work, he has almost no personal relationship with his colleagues... Many of us say that his world only has his daughter... When he is in a good mood, he will show us photos of his daughter when she was a child..."

"A photo of you when you were a child? How young were you?" Sun Hang asked, "Do you still have the photo?"

"Probably from the infancy period... As for the photos, they should be in Zhao Ming's mobile phone and personal computer. We have to wait for the technicians to crack them..."

"Back to the question just now, how did he, a busy engineer, raise his daughter alone?"

"I heard him say he found a nanny, but we don't know the details..."

"He only showed you photos of his daughter when she was a baby? No photos of her when she grew up?" Sun Hang asked again.

Song Yarong shook her head. For some reason, she suddenly felt a chill that quietly crawled up along her heels and all the way to the back of her neck.

She couldn't help but shudder and shrank her neck.

"Her daughter should have a citizenship record, right?"

“This is true…”

"Are there any records of your attendance at school?"

"Let me check..." Song Yarong picked up her mobile phone and started operating it. Gradually, her expression became strange.

"Have you found it?"

"Zhao Ming has never sent his daughter to kindergarten... Although this is a bit strange, it does not violate the federal compulsory education law... When Zhao Xuan was eight years old, he completed the enrollment procedures for Zhao Xuan at Tianfu City Second Primary School, but according to the school's files, Zhao Xuan did not come to school for two semesters... According to the parents, the child suffered from a troublesome disease and needed treatment. Because Zhao Ming is from the Weird Research Institute, the school did not dare to ask too much..."

"Did Zhao Xuan go to school when she was going through the admission procedures?" Sun Hang asked again.

"No." Song Yarong still shook her head, "All the procedures were completed by Zhao Ming alone."

"That is to say, this Zhao Xuan has never appeared in other people's field of vision..." Sun Hang pondered, "Where does Zhao Ming live?"

"Room 15, Building 2701, Maohua Community."

"You go back and take Shen...Tang Jing back to the research institute first, and then ask Lao Wang to come back immediately. Don't leave Lao Wang's sight before we come back." Sun Hang said as he opened the navigation software on his phone and found the location of Maohua Community.

This is a resettlement house located between the fourth and fifth ring roads in the east of Tianfu City. It is located in a remote area. Logically speaking, with Zhao Ming's income level, he should be able to afford a better house...

Why does he continue to live in such an old and run-down house?
Is it to save up dowry for your daughter?

…………

Sun Hang quickly arrived at Building 15 of the Maohua Community. When he arrived, several sheriffs and investigators were already standing on the rooftop. A helicopter was hovering in the air, and the sound of propeller blades was deafening.

"Are you really not afraid of alerting the enemy..." Sun Hang glanced at the sheriffs who were frightened by his appearance, then showed his hunter's license and asked, "Is this Zhao Ming's residence?"

"Yes, yes." The middle-aged sheriff in the lead nodded quickly, "The 27th floor is the top floor. We will reach it by going down to the rooftop."

The corridor was also crowded with fully armed sheriffs. Two investigators wearing heavy armor were squatting at the door of Room 2701, ready for action, holding an alloy shield weighing more than ten kilograms in one hand and a pistol stuck in the groove of the shield in the other.

Song Yarong has already informed everyone here that as long as Sun Hang arrives, all command rights at the scene will belong to him.

"Is there any movement inside?" Sun Hang asked.

"No, sir!" a sheriff replied, "We have sent a drone to conduct a thorough inspection of the house and found nothing unusual."

"Have you detected the fluctuations of the weird meme?" Sun Hang asked again.

"Reporting to the commander, we have also tested it and did not find any memetic fluctuations!" the sheriff replied.

“Can you show me the drone images?”

"Please, sir." The sheriff handed over a tablet.

The drone they used is a snake-shaped drone that is often used in the archaeological field. This type of drone is flat and slender in shape, and has multiple movable joints. It can easily pass through gaps that conventional drones cannot penetrate. This time, the drone drilled into the room from under the door and checked the entire room.

The layout of the room was almost exactly the same as what Sun Hang saw in his memory fragment, even the cake was placed in front of Yan Lili's black and white photo.

There were two plates on the dining table, one of which contained one-third of a cake, and the other had only some cream residue at the bottom.

There is no rotten meat covered with tentacles, nor a little girl with a weird smile.

"Sir... do you need us to break the door by force?" asked the sheriff.

"No, I'll do it myself." Sun Hang walked forward, grasped the door handle, and pushed it gently. The door was pushed open as if it was not locked.

The sound of cloth and equipment rubbing against each other came from behind. The sheriffs and investigators all raised their weapons, with more than a dozen black muzzles pointing into the room.

"Don't come in yet." After saying that, Sun Hang kicked away several pairs of slippers piled at the door and walked into the room.

He switched on the light in the living room.

The moment he lowered his head, Sun Hang discovered something was wrong.

There were several pairs of shoes on the shoe rack at the door, including shoes for adult men and children's shoes for girls - there was nothing wrong with the adult men's shoes, but there was something wrong with these children's shoes.

The sizes of children's shoes are very mixed, and the largest and smallest sizes are almost half the size of each other... It's like putting all the shoes that a little girl has worn since she was a child together...

The shoes were covered with a thin layer of dust, but apart from that, all of them looked new, without any wrinkles on the uppers or heels, as if they had never been worn.

"Haha." Sun Hang sneered, raised his head and looked around the room.

The children's room is easy to find. The door painted pink with a sign saying "Xuan'er's Room" is very conspicuous in the entire minimalist decoration style.

The Sheriff's Department's drone also explored the children's room, which contained a small pink bed, a set of pink children's desks and chairs, and a pink bookcase.

The bookcase is filled with books suitable for children to read, as well as some dolls and other toys that little girls like.

But these things, including the desk and bedspread, were also covered with a thin layer of dust.

Sun Hang walked straight to the children's room and pushed open the door.

His nose twitched twice, and he seemed to smell a faint pungent odor.

At first Sun Hang thought that the smell came from the chemicals emitted by these almost new furniture, but then he thought, although these furniture are new, they have probably been here for several years, and even if there was any smell, it would have dissipated long ago.

Sun Hang walked around the room and finally locked the source of the smell on the wall at the head of the bed.

"Two people come in and bring the law enforcement recorder with you." Sun Hang waved at the door.

The sheriff who had just spoken to Sun Hang and another investigator holding a shield walked in cautiously.

"There is something inside the wall." Sun Hang said to the two.

"Is...is it a ghost?" The sheriff shuddered and subconsciously took half a step back.

"It shouldn't be. I don't smell the unique smell of strange things." Sun Hang shook his head, "Turn on the recorder."

"It's been filming," the sheriff said.

"That's fine... Speaking of which, if I break down the wall, it shouldn't count as destroying the scene, right?"

"Well...if there are clues inside the wall, destructive excavation is inevitable...but before that, perhaps we can use other means to determine what is inside the wall..."

"I have confirmed it." After saying that, a liquid metal hammer appeared in Sun Hang's hand and he smashed it against the wall at the head of the bed.

As the lime and cement peeled off, they soon discovered that the wall had been broken down before, but after it was sealed, the owner of the house renovated the entire room, completely covering up the sealing marks with pink paint.

Soon, a huge glass jar appeared in the three people's field of vision. At the same time, the pungent smell in the room gradually became more obvious.

The glass jar was filled with a solution suspected to be formalin, and in the solution were soaked the remains of a baby.

(End of this chapter)