CH 33.1

“When I came in, did you hear the dogs barking?” Gu Xizhou pointed to the roadway at the door. “With this roadway as the boundary, the poisoned dead dogs can protect the people in the yard.”

“The newcomer who died the first day, he had left by himself, so the dogs in the yard did not bark. That night, we also didn’t hear any barking noises,” Gu Xizhou said. “And as for Xiao Hai who died the next day, I suspect he must have been pushed out by ‘Xiao Hua’, and didn’t leave by himself, so the dogs in the yard barked that night.”

Fang Zhi nodded: “Yes, I remember that night, Gu Ge, you said that you only saw a pair of eyes. The dead white dog can’t come in, while the country dogs have always been in the yard!”

Gu Xizhou nodded and said, “Just now the woman told us that the Tian family had a daughter who was around eight years old. She lived in this yard when she was a child, but disappeared when looking for a dog eight years ago. I suspect that the girl was looking for this Samoyed. Also, she wasn’t missing, but instead died on the mountain.”

“Xiao Hua’s name is the proof we need. Tian is in her name.”

“So, I’m guessing that Xiao Hua should be the girl who went missing.”

Xie Wenhuo heard Gu Xizhou’s words and was slightly stunned. He muttered: “Tian is in her name? Xiao Hua…”

“Yes. Tian trapped in a heart makes Hua, which is why she’s called Xiao Hua. Also, she’s always been able to see all the dogs, because she sees things differently from us. She can see the other eight dogs in the yard.”

Because of Gu Xizhou’s words, the people in the team immediately looked at the dark yard, as if there were many dogs in the yard who were shaking their tails, sitting on the ground, and looking at them.

Si Yu looked suspiciously at Gu Xizhou.

Gu Xizhou could translate that gaze for him: When did this guy become smart?

Actually, in Si Yu’s heart: I suspect that you are Xiao Hua herself!

“You said that those country dogs were actually protecting us? But obviously these children… poisoned them… why would they protect them like this?!”

Xue Xiao heard the people in the team whispering quietly, and she sighed. “Dogs are different from people.”

Si Yu withdrew his gaze from Gu Xizhou and said to the rest: “It’s getting late. Let’s go back to the room and rest. Since we have determined the direction we should search in, we will call the Tian family again tomorrow.”

“But… we still have someone… who isn’t back!”

Si Yu heard this and raised a contemptuous smile at the corner of his mouth, asking the man who had spoken: “You want to save him?”

“No, no, I’m just…” The man’s eyes fell on Gu Xizhou’s body, and he took two steps backwards without saying a word.

Vl Te mbivis rjlv: “Qtja’r atf qblca bo ibbxlcu ja batfg qfbqif? Tbe kjca ab yf j ubbv qfgrbc, ub jtfjv ys sbegrfio, jcv mtbbrf sbeg bkc wfatbv bo vfjat.”

Ktf wjc kjr wfgmlifrris jcv mbivis mglalmlhfv ys Vl Te, jcv tlr fzqgfrrlbc kjr nfgs euis.

Pc atf wlvvif bo atf cluta, Xe Wlhtbe ijs lc yfv jcv ofii jriffq. Mjcu Itl cfza ab tlw rjk Xe Wlhtbe mbwlcu yjmx, jcv tlr tfjga ofii yjmx lcab tlr mtfra. Lf ijs bc atf yfv jcv rajgfv ja atf mflilcu, ojiilcu jriffq delmxis.

On the other hand, Si Yu sat on the bed in silence, and a pair of eyes stared at Gu Xizhou for a long time.

Gu Xizhou opened his eyes and asked him, “What are you looking at?”

Si Yu said softly, “Looking to see whether you are human.”

“Do I need to recite the core values of socialism again?” Gu Xizhou blinked at him, opening his mouth and exposing two small tiger teeth.

Unexpectedly, Si Yu even said, “Okay.”

Gu Xizhou: “…”

Gu Xizhou turned over and sat up from the bed to recite: “Prosperity, democracy, civilization, harmony, advocate freedom, equality, justice, rule of law…”

After hearing Gu Xizhou memorize the core values of socialism, Si Yu seemed relieved, covered himself with a quilt, and lay in bed.

Gu Xizhou saw this and said, “Are you really convinced? What if ghosts can also recite core values?”

Si Yu didn’t react after hearing this. He lay on the bed, turning his back to Gu Xizhou, and scolded him for being troublesome.

…

The next morning, the team members were a little tired, and they got together right after having breakfast.

The man who was scolded by Siyu yesterday was also among the crowd, and he stared balefully at them. 

Si Yu coldly said: “What are you looking at us for? Call the Tian family to confirm Gu Ran’s guess yesterday and ask them what happened at that time.”

Xie Wenhuo was somewhat entangled. He and Xue Xiao whispered as if they didn’t hear Si Yu’s words. The same thing happened to the few people next to them, pretending that they didn’t know what was going on.

In the mission world, people rarely made phone calls. Sometimes there wouldn’t be a signal. Other times, even if there was a signal, you wouldn’t know if the person who picked up was a human or a ghost.

Gu Xizhou looked at these people indifferently, took out his mobile phone in the bag, and pressed the phone number they had found yesterday.

After a few busy tones, someone answered the phone.

“Hello, hello, who are you looking for?”

“Hello Mr. Tian, I am a policeman and want to ask you something.” Gu Xizhou said.

The man’s voice over the phone was a little choked, “Hello, comrade police! Has my daughter been found?”

“This is indeed related to your daughter, but we cannot confirm if it is her. I want to ask about the situation that year. The more detailed the better.”

“Okay, my freight company had just started ten years ago, and my wife was helping the company. Back then, she was pregnant and unwell. We didn’t have time to take care of our daughter, so we sent her to the countryside to be fostered at her grandparents’ house. It’s been two years since she had started to live in the country, and she said she saw other people in the yard all had puppies. She was envious, so I bought a puppy for her that summer…”

“Was it a Samoyed?”

“En… it’s a white Samoyed, the dog died last year… Little White had been disobedient at home and liked to bite things. Relatives at home let us send the dog away, or lock it up, but we never agreed to that. To tell the truth, when my daughter went missing, us parents have always felt guilty. Sometimes, I thought that if I hadn’t sent my daughter to the countryside, she wouldn’t have gone missing.”

“That day was also a summer day. I had some free time, so I brought the dog down to the countryside to deliver to her. She liked the puppy immediately and asked how to take care of it. When I returned, I even planned to buy two books on how to rear dogs, but who knew that after a few days, we would receive the bad news…that my daughter had gone missing.”

“They said she went missing because she had been chasing after the dog, but I suspect it’s something else.” 

Gu Xizhou: “Why do you think so?”

“En… the Samoyed that died last year… actually, we found it in the bin after my daughter went missing…We looked for her everywhere but didn’t find her. To be honest, I was very angry at that time, and I blamed myself for buying a dog for her…”

“But then, my wife found Little White in the bin. Its two legs were broken, and its body was all injured. Its head was stoned and its body was covered with blood. After seeing my wife, it barked, howling so pitifully with its dying breaths that it broke our hearts. I suspected that someone might have abducted my daughter and Little White tried to bite them, but it was only a puppy at that time, definitely not an opponent for a trafficker, so it had been viciously bitten and dumped in the bin.” 

Gu Xizhou: “Did you ever ask the children in the yard if they had seen your daughter?”

“Asked, of course I’ve asked, but they said they went to the mountains early in the morning and played until the evening, and never saw my daughter.”

Gu Xizhou: “Well… they are all children of the same age, why didn’t they bring your daughter together with them?”

“…I can’t explain why, but those kids didn’t like playing with my daughter very much. It’s very strange. I came back a few times to bring her a lot of food and let her distribute it to other children, hoping to help them form a good relationship. But I saw the Li’s child not only refuse the food that my daughter gave him, but also push him. The boy turned his head and told his grandmother that my daughter was stupid and would fall when walking, and his grandmother could barely resist from laughing. To be honest, I was very angry at that time, so I went up and scolded the boy.”

“The boy glared at me and scolded me in return. It was hard to listen to anyway, very rude and uncultured.” 

“Why hasn’t your phone number changed for so many years?” Gu Xizhou asked.

“Eh? Is this related to my daughter?” The man on the other end of the phone was stunned.

“Just asking casually.”

The man: “…Uh, I actually changed a lot of numbers. I just kept this number because my daughter used to call me on her grandfather’s landline when she was a child. This is the phone number she had memorised… I thought that maybe if she tried to call me one day in the future…I would be able to pick up at once.”

“…” Xue Xiao heard the words between Gu Xizhou and that man played on speaker, and her eyes turned red. The man’s words pretty much proved Gu Xizhou’s judgment. Back then, there was a girl that went missing from the Tian family, and the girl did not have a good relationship with the other children in the yard. This paved the way for her disappearance.

After hanging up the phone, one of them murmured: “The girl’s disappearance was due to the children in this yard?”

“That’s likely.”

“But why? Why would these kids do this? How old were they? Eight years ago, their oldest was only ten!”

Si Yu coldly said: “They can poison eight dogs at home, what do you think they don’t dare to do?”

Jealous of her parents, jealous of her dogs, jealous of all the things she has that they don’t have, and at the same time they reject the girl’s good intentions!

One of the teammates couldn’t accept this, his face pale, “This…”

People around numbly said: “What should we do now?”

Si Yu frowned and said, “First, find a way to find the girl’s body.”