Chapter 73 - 1#
Wandering Photos 19#
The man was now completely speechless.
The child clinging to Chu Chenli’s leg immediately stopped crying, stared blankly at the motionless man, shivered, and then hiccupped.
But he didn’t truly move away from Chu Chenli; he only loosened his grip slightly, still pressing tightly against him.
He now knew who could protect him.
The child nervously glanced around.
There should have been one or two more people coming to catch him.
Passersby nearby looked shocked, some shrinking back in fear.
Those standing in more concealed spots sensed trouble and turned to call for security guards.
The child was young but exceptionally sensitive to emotions.
Seeing that some people seemed to have already labeled Chu Chenli as a violent criminal, he quickly pressed closer again, no longer daring to grab his leg. Instead, he tugged at his clothes, pouted, and started wailing once more.
But this time, his cries weren’t as loud; amid the sobs, he could still speak clearly.
“That guy is evil! He’s a trafficker who kidnaps kids! He also killed my mom, and my friend’s dad! They want to catch more kids for experiments! I barely escaped, and luckily I ran into this big brother, otherwise he would’ve killed me on the spot!”
The bystanders’ expressions shifted instantly.
Kids his age could hardly recite texts for school, let alone prepare a whole speech and cry with such emotion.
The child was genuinely overwhelmed by grief as he cried, trembling and shaking, clearly terrified.
Now, perhaps feeling momentarily safe after surviving the ordeal, his emotions surged, and he couldn’t control himself. Eventually, he just kept crying.
Without realizing it, he had hugged Chu Chenli’s leg again.
Chu Chenli gently patted his head, feeling a bit helpless, but let him vent.
The man on the ground still needed to wait for the police to handle. He couldn’t rashly step in to manage affairs within the city.
And more and more onlookers gathered, surrounding the area several layers deep. If Chu Chenli tried to leave with the child now, it would only add to the suspicion that he was a trafficker.
Those on the outer edges were asking what happened.
The child was now crying too hard to speak, but many had clearly heard his earlier outburst, especially the part about murder, arson, and child trafficking.
In this day and age, children were still the treasures of their families and the hope of the future.
Many families had lost children in natural disasters, helpless against such tragedies, and they couldn’t help but resent it—let alone when someone openly tried to snatch children.
Just putting themselves in that position, they felt they could rip the criminal’s skull apart with their bare hands.
Seeing the pitiful man on the ground, no one sympathized with him anymore.
—Wasn’t he still breathing?
If anything, this young hero who had stepped in was incredibly merciful.
Hearing that it involved child trafficking, the police took it very seriously. Within ten minutes of receiving the report, they arrived fully armed in four police cars, blocking off the main roads around the square to prevent the criminals from escaping.
Leaving a few officers to guard the perimeter, the rest rushed to the center of the incident.
The crowd parted as they heard the loudspeaker warnings.
But there were too many people; seven or eight officers had to push their way through. Finally reaching the front, the squad leader adjusted his hat, briefly surveyed the scene, and asked, “Who’s the victim?”
The crowd eagerly pointed at the child hanging onto Chu Chenli’s leg. “Captain Little Cai, it’s them! That kid was almost kidnapped by traffickers!”
Captain Little Cai frowned. “And the suspect? Did he escape?”
He glanced around and instinctively felt that Chu Chenli didn’t look like a trafficker.
The crowd pointed downward. “He’s on the ground.”
Captain Little Cai lowered his gaze and was startled.
The “body” on the ground was shadowed by the surrounding crowd, and some people had deliberately moved closer, sneaking in a few kicks while no one was looking.
Several different shoe prints on the “body’s” backside clearly belonged to different people.
Captain Little Cai’s brows twitched, but since he’d already heard it was a street-corner child trafficking case, he pretended not to notice.
Finally, he looked at Chu Chenli, puzzled. “And who are you? The kid’s guardian?”
Chu Chenli had been about to lift the child off and hand him to the police, but every time he applied a little force, the child only hugged tighter.
Not wanting to hurt him, he let it be for now.
With the child clinging to his leg, Chu Chenli gave an awkward smile and explained, “I’m just a passerby.”
The other bystanders chimed in, describing him as a great hero who had saved the world.
Captain Little Cai was half-convinced by both accounts. He pointed out two earliest witnesses and told them to come to the station for further questioning.
He waved his hand, and several subordinates swarmed forward, lifting the “body” onto a police car.
The child finally stopped crying. Hiccupping, he told the police, “There’s more than him—one or two others are in on it! They also stole things from the square earlier!”
Seeing that the child could still speak coherently, Captain Little Cai nodded. He assigned four officers to stay behind and pursue the accomplices while the others drove to the station for statements.
At the station, the adults were taken to separate interrogation rooms.
The child, with swollen red eyes from crying, was led aside by a gentle female officer with a soft voice. She comforted him briefly, planning to get an overview from the adults first before speaking with him.
When the female officer carried him away, the child kept staring at Chu Chenli, reluctant to look away.
Chu Chenli waved at him.
As soon as the child and the officer disappeared behind another door, Chu Chenli’s warm expression faded. He said to the officer in front of him, “Can I make a call first?”
Captain Little Cai looked confused. “Who to? If it’s family or friends, don’t worry too much. We’ll let you go once we understand the situation. If it’s urgent, we can even drive you back.”
“The base,” Chu Chenli said. “Can internal police phones connect to the base?”
“The base? You…” Captain Little Cai scrutinized him, surprised, wondering if he worked at the Central Base. But years of experience and intuition made him realize another issue. “Is this already that serious?”
Chu Chenli didn’t commit too firmly. “I think it needs special attention.”
Captain Little Cai didn’t seem strongly opposed. “But I think you’ll need to verify your identity first.”
Chu Chenli pulled out his work ID.
It was after the last incident in the city, when he’d used his abilities and been taken away, that Shen Xuanyi had issued temporary work IDs to each of them, telling them to carry them when entering the city to avoid being caught again and wasting time on approval reports and bailouts.
With the ID, using abilities within certain limits could bypass the monitors’ automatic detection.
Such IDs were unique—if lost, they had to be reported, and they were checked regularly. They weren’t easy to forge.
Showing the ID basically confirmed his identity.
Captain Little Cai didn’t stop him. He whispered a few instructions to a subordinate, then turned and personally led Chu Chenli to the communications room.
The communications room was in another building of the police station.
But as they reached the entrance, they stopped.
There was a commotion at the door. Chu Chenli immediately recognized familiar faces: Fang Xiyu and Mu Yanshen were each pressing down on a black-clad man’s shoulders, while Tang Beihe carried their jackets and uneaten breakfast, obediently trailing behind.
The black-clad man was still struggling, stubbornly arguing, “Why are you arresting me? I didn’t even sell that thing. It was just a broken display stand—I thought it was trash and threw it away. Is that a crime?! Fine, I’ll pay compensation, okay?!”
The worker escorting him fanned himself with his hat, furious. “Can that kind of souvenir be measured in money?! Those are memories people donated for the exhibition! You just threw it away—how dare you betray those people?! Can money buy you a second one?!”
Amidst the heated argument, Fang Xiyu smiled at the officer on duty, explaining the situation concisely.
They had brought the thief.
Tang Beihe had just woken up when Mu Yanshen dragged him downstairs. He hadn’t brushed his teeth or washed his face, his hair a messy bird’s nest. Still confused the whole way, he stood blankly on the boundary line.
He was the first to spot Chu Chenli, eyes lighting up as he blurted out, “Master!”
This loud shout silenced the room instantly.
Even the quarreling thief and workers stopped involuntarily.
Captain Little Cai reacted. “Did he steal something from the square?”
The worker nodded repeatedly. “Yes, yes. The exhibition is tomorrow, and we wanted to set up today. Who would’ve thought someone would steal something like that?”
To be blunt, those items weren’t worth anything. Unless someone had a personal connection, they had no sentimental value.
So they hadn’t bothered with anti-theft measures—who’d have guessed someone would snatch them right under their noses?
“What is the world coming to!” The elderly man leaning on his cane at the back shook his head.
At the square—this must be connected to the same case.
Captain Little Cai called over a subordinate and ordered them to take the man to the trafficker’s interrogation area for a combined investigation.
Chu Chenli made a phone gesture to Fang Xiyu and Mu Yanshen, saying he’d report to the higher-ups and come back to explain in detail.
By “higher-ups,” he could only mean Shen Xuanyi.
Fang Xiyu’s expression was complicated, but after a moment’s hesitation, he said nothing and nodded at Chu Chenli.
They didn’t know exactly what Chu Chenli had told Shen Xuanyi. In any case, after they helped deliver the thief to the interrogation room and sat down on the bench outside, Chu Chenli returned with Captain Little Cai.
“The police will handle the interrogation first. Afterward, the higher-ups will directly access the investigation records here.”
Half an hour later, the three from the base, along with Tang Beihe who had been waiting outside, three police officers in charge of recording, and the child, were all in the same room.
Originally a meeting room, it had been converted into a common lounge—warmer and cozier than a cold interrogation room.
The child sat on the sofa, munching on walnuts. The female officer sat beside him, and in just half an hour, they had grown quite close.
The child’s name was Xiao Lu. When he saw unfamiliar adult men enter, he looked visibly nervous, but soon relaxed.
The questioning process was far easier than the police had expected. The child was almost an open book.
But the whole story seemed like something the city police shouldn’t have to handle.
Xiao Lu had arrived at the Central Base three months ago.
Before that, he and his mother had moved between several small bases in the south.
His mother was a researcher, somewhat well-known, and thus highly valued in those small bases. Although they frequently relocated, the mother and son had always been well protected, rarely facing battle directly.
But luck wasn’t on their side. Those small bases were still too weak.
Earlier, before the mutants had evolved, they could barely hold on. At that time, the two largest southern bases—Nanzhou Base and Yingchen Base—were still operational and often responded to their distress calls (though the former replied more frequently).
Under such circumstances, they still had some breathing room.
But ever since Yingchen Base was branded as traitors to humanity and fled en masse, and Nanzhou Base was supposedly merging with the Central Base while its top leaders went missing, internal chaos made it impossible to support other bases.
The key factor was naturally the evolution of mutants. Their reproductive capacity seemed to skyrocket overnight, making it unsustainable for small and medium-sized bases.
Complete annihilation overnight was no longer a rare, improbable event.
The adults present pieced together this background themselves.
In Xiao Lu’s memory, he only recalled one night when his mother suddenly packed their bags and left the last small base with him under cover of darkness.
The base had sent escorts, but before they reached the nearest branch of the Central Base, the escorts were all wiped out.
Xiao Lu and his mother hid and fled, barely surviving for a day or two. Just as they thought there was no hope, a team claiming to be survivors from other bases appeared and saved them.
Among the group were other parents with children. Upon further inquiry, their final destination was also the Central Base. They decided to travel together.
The next few days went surprisingly smoothly. They only encountered a few unmutated straggler mutants, which they dealt with without incident.
Perhaps because they had been on edge for too long, this sudden ease lulled them into complacency.
On the night before they were to reach the Central Base, a swarm of mutants rushed down from the mountains near their campsite. At least half of them were devoured, leaving only bones. Several heavily injured lingered until dawn before succumbing.
The true survivors were mostly the well-protected children.
The few surviving adults, though unrelated, stepped up with a sense of responsibility, promising to become their new parents and take good care of them.
The newly orphaned children, panicked and trusting the bonds they’d formed over the past days, believed them. They obediently followed the adults for the rest of the journey.
But they were taken to an abandoned factory and locked up.
The factory grounds were large, allowing the children to move around in the open. The adults in charge delivered meals regularly and threatened them, saying the outside was too dangerous and staying here was for their own good. The children should just bear with it.
At first, the children didn’t suspect anything. But as more and more children were locked up, and familiar faces began disappearing without reason—no matter how worriedly they asked, they only got impatient excuses—they started to feel something was wrong.
One day, one of the guards seemed happy about something. He brought back several bottles of liquor and celebrated with his partner, drinking heavily.
Drunk, they naturally let slip some gossip.
The truth about the children’s parents’ deaths and the reason for kidnapping them gradually came out.
The parents had been murdered. The children were kidnapped for experiments because their young age and adaptability made them more suitable.
The missing children had been sent to secret laboratories.
Those who survived the experiments were sent out; those who failed… would never be seen again.
Children weren’t naive. Growing up in the apocalypse made them mature early. Shaken by the revelation, they were terrified but unwilling to wait for death.
The oldest among them was just twelve or thirteen. After much thought, escape seemed the only option.
The experiment subjects were usually chosen from oldest to youngest based on age and appearance. Xiao Lu, being small and weak, was deemed too fragile to waste material on, so they ordered him to be fed longer.
But the factory guards were just hired hands with no interest or belief in their leaders’ goals. They took care of the children half-heartedly.
As long as the headcount matched during roll call, it was fine.
At most, they paid a bit more attention to the next batch on the experiment list.
Xiao Lu, young and quiet, was among the least noticeable.
The night before, the children’s escape plan began.
It was simple: the older children would cover Xiao Lu as he snuck out of the factory. He would tail a guard who was sneaking out to buy liquor, hide under the bus, and ride it all the way into the city.
Once the factory noticed someone missing, the others would create a bigger commotion and try to escape in the chaos.
They’d run as many as they could, then figure out how to rescue the rest later.
But Xiao Lu didn’t expect that only two people would come after him. The third was the bus driver, who had no knowledge of the factory’s real business and didn’t want to know.
Xiao Lu was lucky to have been spotted by Chu Chenli; otherwise, he would have been quietly caught and taken back.
As for the others, most were likely under strict supervision, guarding the remaining children.
Children didn’t think that deeply. They still held onto hope, but the adults listening sensed trouble.
Captain Little Cai knew city conditions best. After a moment’s thought, he asked Xiao Lu when he had hidden on the bus, what the road was like, and so on.
The old bus had driven from late night until dawn, without much bumpiness, no hills or slopes, crossing a long stretch of grass before spending most of the time on paved roads…
“It must still be within the city limits!” Captain Little Cai concluded firmly.
He immediately asked for colored pens and told Xiao Lu to draw everything he remembered, especially the bus. If he could recall the license plate, even better.
Vehicle use within the city was restricted—this would make tracking much easier.
Once Xiao Lu finished drawing the bus’s features, Captain Little Cai had the drawing copied and started investigating the vehicle.
The interrogators tried to squeeze more details from their respective subjects.
Unfortunately, the two “traffickers” and the “thief” were seasoned offenders. A background check showed they were single, isolated men living in remote corners, not interacting with anyone.
When questioned, one was indifferent, claiming ignorance no matter what, while the other whined about his grievances, dodging the questions entirely.
Mu Yanshen, listening from outside, turned to Chu Chenli and asked, “I should be able to… use a little, right?”