Chapter 99: The Missing People Empty Lot
Zhuang Weili looked at Sang Chu for a long time before slowly exhaling and saying, “This place is very dangerous. One wrong step and you could disappear without a trace, never to be seen again. I investigated for a long time, but found no clues at all.”
Seeing his dejected expression, Sang Chu asked, “Detective, why don’t you tell me what you know first? Qin Ge told me some things when he sent me, but I think hearing it from you would be better. Perhaps we can find some new clues.”
“Alright!” Seeing Sang Chu’s stable demeanor, Zhuang Weili also calmed down unconsciously. “Then I’ll start from the beginning?”
“Yes, it’s best to be detailed. Perhaps there are some details we haven’t noticed.”
Zhuang Weili nodded repeatedly, then slowly recalled when he first took on the case.
“It was a stormy day, I remember it very clearly because the rain was heavy and the thunder was loud, the lightning seemed to split the sky in two. I was packing up to go home when suddenly a woman burst in. She was drenched and covered in mud. She said her son had suddenly disappeared and she couldn’t find him anywhere. Her son was a very well-behaved child.
The walk from school to home is very short, and he never came home that late. But when she realized the child who should have been home by now hadn’t arrived, she rushed out to look. She searched the school and the small town, but he was nowhere to be found. Later, she heard he had gone towards the outskirts of town with a classmate. His parents immediately rushed to that classmate’s house, but that classmate was also missing. That child’s parents were also searching!”
Zhuang Weili sighed deeply. Even now, when he recalled it, he could still hear the family’s anguished cries.
As parents themselves, he knew how difficult it was for adults when a child went missing.
Sang Chu asked softly, “Was it human traffickers?”
Tu You couldn’t transmit privately, so she leaned close to Sang Chu’s ear and whispered, “If it were human traffickers, this case wouldn’t have landed on the Time-Space Train’s doorstep.”
Zhuang Weili, unable to hear Tu You, shook his head helplessly at Sang Chu’s guess:
“I don’t know. No one saw those two children after they left town. Then, a few days later, more children went missing. That’s when everyone panicked. In just a few days, four or five children had vanished without a sound. From then on, everyone watched their children more closely, but unexpectedly, even with that, they still couldn’t prevent children from disappearing.”
Sang Chu: “Did even adults disappear?”
Zhuang Weili glanced at Sang Chu and nodded heavily, “Yes, adults disappeared along with the children.”
Tu You said it wasn’t human traffickers, so it must be some evil spirit or demon at work!
In the Demon Realm, she had seen records of such things. There were demons that liked to eat children, but for them to leave and disappear so silently, that was a bit tricky, wasn’t it?
Unless it was…
Sang Chu suddenly looked at Zhuang Weili, “Detective, when the children went missing, were they all during thunderstorms?”
Zhuang Weili thought for a moment, “It seems so. Every time it was during heavy rain, thunder, and lightning. I remember the parents who reported the cases were also covered in mud.”
“Very muddy? Meaning, the last clues they got were outside the small town?”
She had gotten off the train outside the small town. Did this mean the children’s disappearance location was actually here? It was just that this detective himself might have forgotten, but by trapping himself in this place, it should be a reminder.
“Possibly, but I’ve searched almost every inch outside the small town and found nothing.”
“Detective, don’t worry, this is just my guess. I’d like to go out and look around, if that’s alright.”
Zhuang Weili: “Of course, I’ll go with you.”
“Okay.”
Holding an umbrella, the two walked along the small path in the village.
The village was surrounded by fishing tools, and fishing nets were drying. But Sang Chu hadn’t seen the sea here before?
“Detective, these…”
Sang Chu was about to ask the detective about these tools, but when she turned around, the detective had disappeared!
Tu You: “He disappeared as soon as we stepped out. I thought you knew?”
“I wasn’t paying attention to him. He doesn’t know he’s dead, so he’s trapped in a certain point in time, and his actions are restricted. That’s why he’s offering such a high bounty to ascend the list.”
Tu You: “Yes, as far as I know, for a ghost like him to ascend the list requires a lot of soul power. You need to be prepared, the reward might be much lower than Mian Ge said.”
Judging by the extent of his restrictions, he wasn’t a powerful ghost. The things he could offer as a reward wouldn’t be much, so the person taking this mission wouldn’t be anyone powerful, otherwise, it should have been resolved long ago.
Sang Chu: “It’s fine, I only want points. By the way, what do you think about this matter?”
“Hard to say. You suspect a fish demon, right?”
Sang Chu nodded, “Yes, in the Monster Tome Mountain Range, I saw a type of demon among the Fish Tribe that liked to eat children. But now he says not only children, but adults have also disappeared. This somewhat overturns my conclusion.”
“It’s also possible his target was only children, and taking the adults was just incidental. He just doesn’t like eating adults, not that he can’t eat them.”
“True, even if he doesn’t eat them, he can just leave them aside.”
Sang Chu and Tu You walked forward, discussing as they went.
Suddenly,
from not far away came the continuous cawing of crows.
Following the sound of the crows, they saw a strange clearing.
Tu You looked at the clearing, with things flying back and forth, and was very confused. “I don’t know much about rural areas, but is it reasonable to have such a large empty space?”
Sang Chu: “It’s normal to have empty spaces, but what’s strange is that such a large empty space between the village and the farmland is completely barren?”
As she spoke, she pointed to the edges of the clearing and the fields not far away. “No one tends to them. Look how tall the weeds are, but the ground in this clearing is just ordinary soil, yet there isn’t a single blade of grass.”
Tu You: “Really? I didn’t notice until you said it.”
Sang Chu squatted down, her spiritual tendrils gradually penetrating the ground. The deeper she went, the stranger the feeling became.
She even had the illusion of being watched!
‘Boom—’
The sudden thunderclap startled Sang Chu, almost making her fall on her backside.
Tu You frowned, looking at the lightning in the distance. “This thunder is coming strangely!”
“Yes, be careful. I have a bad feeling something is about to happen.”
Tu You nodded repeatedly and jumped onto Sang Chu, holding her tightly.
Boom—Boom—
Consecutive bolts of lightning struck, and suddenly the entire ground began to shake. Sang Chu retreated in terror.
