Chapter 140: Silhouette in the Rain 2
The Mingzhu Mountain Forest Park touted a vibe of “primitive nature infused with high technology.” It occupied a vast area. Aside from the hotel zone, camping zone, and music festival zone, all other areas were cleared and checked by security patrols after dark. Furthermore, wherever there was a path, almost every one or two hundred meters stood a “Comprehensive Service Post,” integrating streetlights, broadcasting, and emergency call buttons. Dozens of drones also patrolled on set schedules and routes. The safety measures were very thorough.
Yi Ke and two friends went to the path where Pei Zheng disappeared. It was a very ordinary gravel path in the park, winding along, connecting a convenience store at one end and a garden at the other. Both sides of the path were fenced by evergreen shrubs over a meter high. The police had already searched here and found nothing unusual.
Song Yang asked for the eighteenth time, “Are you sure there’s no Rule Zone nearby?”
“Positive.” Yi Ke stopped walking and shone a high-powered flashlight around to check. Soon, he discovered that behind a clump of bushes, there was a patch of grass that looked sparser and more withered than the surrounding area, bald and patchy.
A scenic area staff member nearby saw this and proactively explained, “This is kind of a shortcut. If you go through here, you can get directly to the West Zone of the forest park. There are quite a few scenic spots there too, plus a parking lot and some snack stalls. So if tourists want to be lazy and skip the main gate, they’ll choose to cut through here.”
“Are there surveillance cameras after cutting through?”
“No, it’s not a proper path. When it was designed, no one thought tourists would walk here. Cutting through leads to a road. Across the road is another patch of less steep woods. Sliding down the slope there, you can go in any direction.”
No wonder the police were struggling to find him. Although Pei Zheng’s disappearance site had only one proper path, it also had countless improper paths. Theoretically, the kid could have gone north, south, east, or west.
Yi Ke followed this shortcut through the bald grass patch. Sure enough, below was a two-lane winding mountain road. The parking lot was not far away, packed full, with cars queuing outside.
“Down from here is the West Zone of the forest park.” The staff member raised his flashlight, the intense white beam instantly illuminating a large swath of silent, deep forest. Tourists had also trampled an inconspicuous path through the woods here. Rotten wood, dead leaves, and soil were currently being soaked by fine rain. One didn’t need to step on it to know the ground must be soft and slippery. Whether a person would fall was another matter, but shoes would definitely be ruined.
A normal person wouldn’t walk this kind of path on a rainy day, let alone Pei Zheng, who was a germaphobe. And there was no possibility of being in a rush, because there were no performances at all in the West Zone.
Yi Ke shone his flashlight and went down alone to search a loop. As expected, he found nothing. The West Zone was also cleared at night; there were no hotels or other commercial entities, so it was many times more deserted than the East Zone.
Everyone searched outside for nearly two hours. By the time the evening guests had almost finished singing, and Pei Yuan had received the news and entered the mountain, there were still zero clues.
When they emerged from the woods, the mountain road was noisy, sounding exceptionally clamorous. Yi Ke grabbed a tree to vault back onto the road and saw quite a few audience members indeed emerging from that shortcut, walking in groups of three or five toward the parking lot.
The music festival audience was naturally mostly young, trendy people, but “trendy” ranged from ordinary trendy to “one-upping” trendy. Amidst the bustling crowd, the most eye-catching was undoubtedly a girl with long blonde hair—tall, fair-skinned, with exaggerated heavy makeup that couldn’t hide her beautiful features.
As a contemporary good husband who strictly adhered to “husbandly virtues,” Yi Ke gave the beauty a purely professional glance and prepared to continue walking back. But after two steps, he realized something, turned his head, frowned, and asked, “Xiao Tian?”
“Brother Yi!” Tian Luxin was also surprised to see him. “You came to the music festival too? Where’s Team Leader Zhuang?”
“At the office area. A sixteen-year-old kid is missing; we came to help find him.” Yi Ke pulled up the photo on his phone and showed it to her. “Seen him?”
Tian Luxin took a look and shook her head. “Haven’t seen him. But I’m in several big music festival fan groups. How about this, Brother Yi, give me the photo, and I’ll ask in the groups. By the way, is he a fan of anyone?”
“He’s been abroad and came back to visit relatives this time. Yesterday he bought an album by Dong Feifan, so he should have some interest in him?” Yi Ke sent the photo over. “Contact me anytime if there’s news.”
“Okay.” Tian Luxin unzipped her shoulder bag and rummaged for her phone at the very bottom. “Don’t worry, Brother Yi. I’m also in Dong Feifan’s fan club, and I know the president of his fan club. Many of them came today, and there were lots of activities. Maybe someone has seen this boy.”
Her shoulder bag was stuffed full, big and heavy, like a grocery store. Yi Ke had to help her support it. Tian Luxin explained somewhat embarrassedly, “I packed it like this on purpose. There are too many pickpockets at the music festival. The messier the bag, the higher the anti-theft index.”
Yi Ke accepted her explanation. After much effort, Tian Luxin finally fished out her phone, accepted the photo, and immediately forwarded it to various music festival groups. She also pulled Yi Ke into them so he could see news more promptly. After doing all this, she readjusted her bag. Before leaving, she didn’t forget to explain to Yi Ke, “My hair and tattoos are fake. Once I get back from the festival and take off my makeup, I’ll be a proper aspiring civil servant again!”
A blue sports car drove out of the parking lot at this moment. Seeing it, Tian Luxin waved to Yi Ke. “I’m off then. If you need any help, just ask.”
Yi Ke smiled, thanked her, and watched her get into the car. glancing casually, he saw the driver was a young man—pale skin, blond hair, very handsome, with obvious Slavic ancestry.
When he returned to the office, Pei Yuan was standing and chatting with Zhuang Ningyu. As soon as Song Yang saw him, he burst into tears, crying that he had failed his nephew. The long surgery and Pei Zheng’s disappearance made Pei Yuan look undisguisedly haggard. Having worked straight through and then sat in traffic all the way here, he was already exhausted, yet he had to turn around and comfort Song Yang, sighing, “Don’t panic yet. Xiao Zheng is sixteen, and he has some wilderness survival skills.”
“This isn’t about wilderness survival.” Song Yang rubbed his face vigorously. “Why would Xiao Pei do wilderness survival when he’s bored? This isn’t some US military base. If the kid is missing now, he’s definitely encountered trouble!”
Yi Ke patted Song Yang on the back, signaling him to calm down and stop howling, while scrolling through his phone. The messages in the music festival fan groups were flying by fast, but very few were related to the missing person notice Tian Luxin had sent out. This was normal; if it were a child, perhaps people would be much more concerned. But Pei Zheng in the photo looked about the same as an adult. An adult losing contact for an afternoon in the frantic environment of a music festival really didn’t sound like a serious matter.
Zhuang Ningyu wrung out a hot towel for Yi Ke to wipe his face. A moment later, scenic area staff brought two large bags of boxed meals. Although no one had an appetite, they each hurriedly ate a few bites. Zhuang Ningyu sat with Yi Ke at a small corner table, transferred the large chunks of beef from his box to Yi Ke’s, and asked, “How did you end up joining music festival groups?”
“Ran into Xiao Tian. She seems to really like rock music and knows quite a few people in this circle.” Yi Ke glanced at the computer. “How’s the video search going?”
Before Zhuang Ningyu could answer, Song Yang beside them let out a “Huh?” He looked at the surveillance footage on the screen, which had been deliberately enlarged and paused, and asked, “Is there something wrong with this woman?”
“We met her on the way here.” Zhuang Ningyu roughly described what Uncle Lin had seen, adding, “Because her behavior was a bit abnormal, we checked the parking lot surveillance to see why she came up the mountain. Do you know her?”
“I actually do know her, and so do you.” Song Yang reminded Yi Ke. “Forgot? Qi Hui’s ex-girlfriend, the ruthless one who angered Auntie Qi into the ICU.”
Yi Ke didn’t exactly know her, but mentioning Qi Hui’s ex-girlfriend brought the whole story back to him. The woman was supposedly a professional broker released by casinos in Southeast Asia, specializing in disguising herself as women of various identities to trick second-generation rich kids with a bit of family money into gambling abroad. Qi Hui had fallen into her trap.
The incident had caused quite a stir in their circle back then. When Ms. Deng Zongyun first heard about her youngest son’s shocking romance, her first reaction wasn’t joyful tears and blessings, but rather instantly imagining a tragic scenario where she had to carry a hundred million in cash to a compound to redeem him. This was the root cause.
“What’s her name?” Lin Daguan asked.
“Qin Ya,” Song Yang replied.
“If she’s a casino broker, does that explain her previous behavior?” The policewoman put down her finished meal and wiped her mouth. “Maybe she isn’t a fan of Dong Feifan at all, but just wants to use the fan identity to continue scamming the next wealthy target?”
Lin Daguan nodded. “That’s possible.”
“I didn’t expect she’d actually come back to the Jincheng area,” another friend clicked his tongue. “Shouldn’t this kind of person be committing crimes all over the country? With the Qi Hui incident, who would still fall for it here? Her photo was spread everywhere back then.”
Although Ms. Qin Ya’s deeds sounded worth investigating, she likely had nothing to do with sixteen-year-old Pei Zheng, and she couldn’t scam a child. So the policewoman simply reported it to the bureau, and everyone’s focus returned to finding the boy.
The rain had stopped.
Jincheng was humid to begin with, and the mountain forest after rain was even wetter; it felt like wringing the bedding would produce water.
At 3:00 AM, Zhuang Ningyu sat on the edge of the bed, watching Yi Ke apply medicine to his knee, and volunteered, “It doesn’t hurt much.”
Yi Ke squatted in front of him, skillfully wrapping the bandage to prevent the ointment from rubbing onto the quilt later. “It’s all swollen, and you say it doesn’t hurt much.”
Zhuang Ningyu laughed and pulled Yi Ke’s cheek. “With you taking care of it, it doesn’t hurt. Come to bed quickly, grab two hours of rest. When it’s light, we have to swap shifts with them and continue searching for Xiao Pei.”
Yi Ke didn’t sleep immediately. Hugging the damp quilt, he squatted in front of the oil heater, slowly turning the quilt bit by bit to toast it. Because of the music festival, the scenic area had no good hotels available, so they could only clear out a vacant staff dormitory for them to rest temporarily. The dormitory conditions were naturally poor—small and not very clean—but fortunately, the bedding was newly brought from the nearby hotel warehouse.
The large and tall Yi Ke, huddled with a cotton quilt by the door, looked out of place in the shabby environment, like he had wandered into a different graphical layer.
Only when he confirmed the quilt in his arms was very warm and dry, ensuring it wouldn’t induce the damp chill in the bones when covered, did he tuck his wife in and kiss his forehead. “Sleep now.”
