Rebirth 08: Equipment God

Chapter 331 Searching for Relatives
This is the scene that Zhai Da and Wu Yue saw when they arrived.

A pool of evenly smeared minced meat, onlookers who were both frightened and reluctant to leave, and a driver making a phone call to negotiate with the insurance company.

Turning to look at the roof of the residential building across the street, Little Black was chewing on a cape, barking "caw caw," as if it were showing off.

Zhai Da: You only saw a back view and all you remembered was the cloak?!
Little Black! A brain is a good thing, but you're not good enough yet.

Zhai Da immediately reached into his robes, pretending to take out the [Pure Gold Secret Staff] from his pocket, which was actually his "equipment slot".

I managed to track the little boy in the white model's field of vision for a while, but then we encountered a traffic light, which caused the little boy to drift out of the 500-meter range.

At the time, I was hoping that Xiao Hei could salvage the situation, but I never expected it to unfold like this.

The cane was not unfolded, but was concealed inside the sleeve and tapped repeatedly with fingernails.

The white model's field of vision rapidly expanded, covering a distance of approximately 500 meters. This energy was affected by the reinforced concrete of the building, and the actual effect was roughly an irregular area of ​​a little over 400 meters.

Without the cloak, the little boy became a relatively ordinary figure. Since the white model's vision was not realistic in terms of color, Zhai Da could only focus his attention on the missing hand.

Within such a vast area, first finding children of roughly the same age, and then observing their fingers, Zhai Da was once again constrained by the fact that he had "a God's-eye view but was not God."

But he kept adjusting his perspective, like a bird in the white model's field of vision, quickly shifting his attention to the figure that met the standard.

Not this one
This is a girl.
This looks very similar, but it has all the fingers.
While Zhai Da was searching with his eyes closed, Wu Yue was not idle either. He walked to the pile of rotten flesh, frowned, and squatted down to observe it.

Everything inside the body was evenly coated, and even if you held your breath to block out the smell of blood, you could still feel the warm moisture if you were close by.

Wu Yue always joked that he was deceived by Zhai Da because he didn't read enough books, but in fact he often reads books.

Some books that he himself was interested in.

Just then, a restaurant owner who had been watching the commotion from the crowd came over and asked, "Brother Yue, do you know this guy?"

He only opened a small shop, but because it was close to Harbin Institute of Technology, it was one of the earliest customers of Yueda. At that time, Wu Yue personally came to run the business, and the boss has always been proud to know "Brother Yue".

Wu Yue shook his head: "He just ate the food in his stomach. Where did he eat it?"

The boss thought to himself, "You're a tough guy, otherwise how could someone become the boss?"
"It's not our restaurant, it should be Old Wang's noodle shop."

"Call Old Wang over here. I need to ask him something. Also, how many shops around here have security cameras installed?"

"Both my family and Zhuzi's family have installed it."

A glint of light flashed in the boss's eyes, and he lowered his voice, saying, "Should we wipe it off?"

Wu Yue gave him a speechless look: "Smear it on the chicken neck. Keep it safe, show it to the police when they come."

But at the end, he added, "Also, keep a backup."

"Understood, Brother Yue."

A few minutes later, Wu Yue returned and found Zhai Da.

As more and more people gathered, Zhai Da hid in a side alley; his face was still very recognizable.

What he didn't know was that about ten minutes earlier, the boy and the man had been in the same spot.

At this moment, Zhai Da had an extra cloak in his hand, but his mind was not on it.

He shook his head at Wu Yue and said, "I didn't find it. I mean, I didn't find Xiao Hei. It's still not smart enough. I'll have to train it more later."

In Bai Mo's field of vision, he found eight or nine children in a row, but none of them were the boy. They must have already run far away.

Wu Yue said in a deep voice, "That child picked up the money and ran away. We don't know where he'll go. The police might not care and could very well treat it as a regular traffic accident. I need to stay and talk to them."

He still has influence among the police in this area.

Wu Yue looked at the police car driving by the roadside and said with a hint of ruthlessness, "If you can't keep up with me, it will take some effort. I'll have to mobilize more people to help. Don't worry about this, I'll handle it. A bunch of disgusting insects from out of town won't survive in Harbin."

He added a final sentence:
"Uh, that's an adjective, I don't mean anything like that."

Zhai Da glanced at him, but this time, unusually, he didn't say anything.

Looking at the cloak in his hand, he realized that he was still "not owned" of it, but that was no longer the most important thing.

"And that child, you might need him."

As he spoke, he handed over two Polaroid photos.

Wu Yue was taken aback; it was actually a front-facing photo of the boy and a close-up of his hand.

"Didn't you just take a picture of his back?"

Don't even mention her back view.
These two photos were just taken using the "Souvenir Instant Photo" app.

Wu Yue nodded, took the photo, and looked at the dim, golden sun on the horizon.

It will be dark soon.

Once it gets dark, it's his time to shine.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away, a middle-aged man, looking travel-worn, stopped in front of a small shop on a motorcycle.

The motorcycle was old, but also very conspicuous, with rows of colorful flags stuck on its back that read "10 yuan reward for finding son".

After getting off the bus, the middle-aged man said, "Boss, have you seen this child? My child has been abducted. I heard someone saw him at a service area in Northeast China." The shopkeeper, a young man in a vest, was eating dinner with a bowl of noodles. He instinctively wanted to wave, but stopped himself when he saw the flag.

He glanced at the photo, shook his head, and said, "Never seen it."

The middle-aged man pointed to the cloak behind him: "It doesn't matter if you don't recognize the face, I understand. Few people remember what a child looks like. This cloak was made by his mother. I think someone saw it at a service area last month. It might be a bit old, I don't know if you remember it? It might be a little dirty!"

However, the shop owner shook his head again: "No, we don't have any."

Undeterred, the middle-aged man bowed repeatedly in thanks and said urgently, "Boss, I really came here after hearing the news. The child might be in the three northeastern provinces. Could I... could I put this photo on your door?"

The man shakily pulled out some banknotes from his pocket: "I want to buy a pack of cigarettes... I want to buy a pack of cigarettes."

His hands were shaking not because he was nervous—he had been searching for his son for three years and had dealt with countless shop owners—but because he had been riding a motorcycle for more than ten hours straight.

The shop owner frowned for a long time, but finally agreed. However, he said, "There are still human traffickers coming from the three northeastern provinces? Are they not afraid of death? I've heard of several being killed when I was a child."

The middle-aged man sighed: "My child from Dongguan was lost over there."

"No wonder your Mandarin sounds so non-standard."

"."

Just then, a little boy ran past from behind, clutching a red banknote in his hand.

After searching for his son for many years, the middle-aged man had developed a conditioned reflex, and he would glance at any child that appeared.

Unfortunately, he was just a happy child who had taken his allowance and was passing by.

"Daddy! Daddy! I want to buy a toy car!"

"Buy, buy, buy! You look like a little car to me, your grandpa has spoiled you rotten!"

"I don't care, it's what my grandpa gave me, I can buy whatever I want."

A middle-aged man stared at an ordinary yet happy father and son for a long, long time.

He turned around and thanked them again. He then began to post the missing child notice on the store entrance and bought a pack of cigarettes.

"Boss, this is my first time here. Are there very few human traffickers around here?"

Along the way, besides the hardships of wind and sun, loneliness was also hard to bear. It's not easy to find someone to talk to.

The shop owner perked up, placed the noodle bowl on the transparent cigarette cabinet, and a few drops of soup dripped down:
"Let me tell you, it's not entirely impossible, but it's certainly rare. In our Gala, the one-child policy is quite thorough. Families only have one child and keep a close eye on them. Also, there's not much preference for boys over girls, so there's no desire to buy children."

"The area is vast. Not to mention the city, there are villages and farms in the countryside that can stretch for hundreds of kilometers without any inhabitants. Unlike the south, where there are so many mountains, you can easily find a place even if you venture in. There are only a few roads, making it difficult for human traffickers to escape. For half the year, it's covered in ice and snow."

"Of course, the most important thing is that the person is tough. In the city, if you get caught, you'll at most be locked up, but in the village, you could really be beaten to death."

“A classmate of mine was kidnapped when he was a child. He was pinned down before he even left the village. The kidnappers escaped, but the ones who stayed behind were beaten to death. The village brought an old man in his eighties to the police, and he was released in less than half a month. He even gained two pounds and was eating better than at home. The police didn’t care. This is even more shameful than taking bribes.”

The middle-aged man's eyes grew brighter and brighter, and he was filled with many emotions. However, another thought popped into his mind.

One of the reasons might be that their accents are easy to recognize. If a kid from the three northeastern provinces goes to the south, his thick accent will definitely attract attention.

They have very little accent, to the point that they can be distinguished nationwide.

The middle-aged man said admiringly, "You know so much; you must have read a lot of books."

The young shop owner chuckled: "That's right! I'm a college graduate, and I studied household registration management!"

But then she added quietly at the end, "Sigh, my hometown is nice, but it's hard to find a job."

Otherwise, he wouldn't have died young and be working here minding the shop.

The TM store isn't his yet.
If he doesn't make it to shore this year, he plans to go to the south to work.

"There should be fewer human trafficking cases now, with surveillance cameras everywhere. Is it really that rampant in the South?"

The middle-aged man lit a cigarette: "After my child went missing, everyone I met after that had also lost a child. In the past few years, all I've encountered are these kinds of cases. I don't know how rampant they are, but... they always happen."

The young "shop owner" also lit one, probably feeling much better after hearing what he had just said, which made him seem quite intellectual: "If you ask me, they should just execute him if they catch him; that's too lenient a sentence."

The middle-aged man shook his head and said, "I thought the same thing before my child was lost, but I changed my mind after it happened. People will still do business that could lead to execution. If they were caught and shot, it might make them even more ruthless."

“One of the parents in our group had a child who kept crying on the street. The trafficker ran out of sleeping pills and smothered the child to death. Maybe I’m being selfish, but I do hope that one day traffickers will be given lenient sentences and more people will turn themselves in, which would bring more clues to light.”

The young shop owner shook his head: "It's a difficult thing, but I know that you can't scare bad people away by being lenient. Now that there are more surveillance cameras, there will be far fewer human traffickers and petty thieves."

"you're right."

The middle-aged man did not take the cigarettes he had just bought, but instead pushed them to the other person.

"It's rare to have someone to chat with, so here's the bag for you. Please keep an eye on the children when you pass by."

The young man didn't refuse; the other party chose the cheapest "Daqianmen" brand.

If it's too expensive, he won't want it.

Motorcycles are back on the road, colorful flags fluttering, full of energy.

What is reflected is a tired and uneasy figure.

(End of this chapter)