CH 36.2

Back at the factory, the boss quickly chained the iron gate of the factory and brought them back to the common room.

The boss pulled out a low stool and sat down. Taking a breath, he sized up the people in the room, “Are you guys okay?”

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Su Qin shook her head then turned to ask her mother, “Mom, are you okay?”

The scene of her daughter hitting the dog with a wooden stick just now frightened Wang Lin. She stared at her daughter now and even began to wonder if this girl in front of her was her daughter.

She shook her head, “No.”

The unkempt young girl kept pulling Su Qin and refused to let go.

Su Qin brought the girl to sit on the stool and asked her in a low voice, “What’s going on? Why was there a dog chasing you?”

The girl glanced at Su Qin, then looked at the others. With tears around the rims of her eyes, she pursed her lips and said, “I … “

With convenient transportation, factories and backward constructions, there are many migrant workers and crooks who blend in with the honest folks in Sangzao Town.

The tile-roofed house where Su Qin and the others picking jujubes just now was a human trafficking’s transit hub. The traffickers there had gone to another place for a ‘meeting’ today.

This girl named Bobo, who raised a dog before, temporarily gained the dog’s trust. But when she escaped, the well-trained German shepherd chased after her.

After that, it was the scene Su Qin and the others saw.

The boss punched his palm and cursed, “Damn, I have long felt that the group of people behind our factory is abnormal, but I didn’t expect there is really a problem. I had only heard earlier there was prostitution in that den, but didn’t expect they were human traffickers!”

The boss himself has two adorable daughters too. Once he heard what happened to the girls, it became so closely related to himself that he trembled with anger, “It seems I can’t let my two daughters come here in the future, it’s too damn dangerous.”

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The boss often takes his two daughters there to pick jujubes too and sometimes he even felt at ease to let them go pick by themselves. The thought of that residential house behind the factory being a transit hub for human trafficking, chilled his spine.

Frowned, Su Qin took out her handphone and intended to make a call.

Li Xian stopped her, ‘Little Su, what are you doing?”

“Calling the police.”

“You’re calling the police now, what if they come over with retaliation? It’s too dangerous. It’s okay to just take this girl away but don’t mess with that group of people.”

Su Qin almost shouted out, “Didn’t you hear what Bobo said? There are still other girls in there! If we don’t call the police, they will be transported to other places!”

The rims of the girl’s eyes reddened, just like a whiny vicious beast.

Li Xian was startled by her and then spoke with appeasement, “I … I was thinking … “

Okay, he is simply cowardly, afraid of offending the criminal gang.

“If we delay a moment longer, a girl may be sent away.” Su Qin calmed down and said, “I’m going to make a phone call first. You guys wait for me.”

The boss agreed to first call the police too. He said, “Damn it, the thought of a hornet’s nest behind my back unsettled me. Fortunately, my two daughters are smart and didn’t let them prevail!”

Holding the phone in her hand, Su Qin thanked the boss with joined palms, “Thank you, boss.”

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The sudden thanks puzzled the boss. Scratching the back of his head in embarrassment, he said, “Why are you thanking me, you’re not the one being trafficked. Go make the call quickly.”

“En.”

Knowing what her daughter had experienced, Wang Lin watched her daughter walk out of the room then looked at the young girl Bobo who was sitting on the low stool and felt a burst of ripping pain in her heart.

When her daughter was abducted and sold at that time, was she in such a plight too? Thinking of this, Wang Lin’s eyes filled with tears that trickled down.

Li Xian was fidgety, so scared that he didn’t know where to place his hands. His hands could not stop shaking thinking of those criminal gangs.

She took a few deep breaths to calm herself down.

Walking out of the room, Su Qin pressed the two ‘11’ numbers on the numeric keypad, then deleted it. She searched for Zhang Cheng’s number and called him.

Unable to get through Zhang Cheng’s phone, Su Qin paced in place with anxiety.

Calling 110 to report to the police was not a very good choice, she dared not trust the police here in Sangzao Town.

Sangzao Town is only so big, it makes no sense that there is such a large human trafficking’s transit hub here yet no one knows about it, hence she has reason to suspect that there are shady police in this area.

Many of these minot local police stations are not regiments from the police academy; some are retired or discharged military armies while some are influential local gangsters.

Thinking of this, Su Qin was even more afraid to call 110. For safety’s sake, she wanted to call Zhang Cheng first and listen to his opinion.

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But Zhang Cheng’s phone could not be reached, thus she was anxious like ants in the sizzling pan.

Just at this moment, Li Chuan called.

She took a few deep breaths then put the call through and said, “Hello.”

Thinking of the girl in the house and the thought of the human trafficking’s transit hub behind the factory, Su Qin recalled all of her past lifetime. Unable to find a reliable person to save those girls, she felt even more anxious.

Li Chuan heard the slight abnormality of her voice and asked with a frown, “What’s wrong?”

“Li Chuan.”

The girl’s voice trembled even more.

She usually called him “Teacher Li, Teacher Li” and he rarely heard her call him by his name as far as he could remember. Li Chuan noticed her heavy fluctuating emotions and the graveness of her voice, “Su Qin, did you come across something?”

“I’m in Sangzao Town.” Su Qin took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, “Quanxin Printing Factory.”

On the other end of the phone, Li Chuan stood in front of the office’s french window with one hand in his pocket and the other holding the phone.

He looked at the city’s night view without uttering a word and didn’t intend to interrupt the girl on the phone. He listened quietly to her and calmly heard the girl’s fluctuating breathing.

“Behind the factory, there is a human trafficking’s transit hub and there is a girl with me now. I don’t trust the police here. I called Zhang Cheng, but I couldn’t get through.”

Sinister aura filled Li Chuan’s eyes, “Are you safe now?”

“There are dozens of people in the factory. It’s safe at the moment.”

Li Chuan’s voice was cold yet steady, “Stay there and also don’t go anywhere. Wait for Zhang Cheng and my arrival.”

Hearing the man’s steady voice, Su Qin’s heart calmed down at once.

Su Qin stood outside for a while after hanging up the call. She took a few deep breaths of fresh air then leapt in place a few times to calm herself down.

Only after she had regained her composure did she push open the door to go inside and said to everyone with a relaxed expression, “I’ve already reported to the police. Someone will come over soon.”

The boss tapped his knee, then remembered something and shouted out, “Oh no.”

Startled by him, Li Xian swallowed his saliva and asked nervously, “What’s wrong?”

The boss said, “Most of our police here are local gangsters, who got in through connections. Collecting protection fees and so on are their usual business. I suspect those lair of human traffickers have friendly connections with the police here, so our police report is completely worthless ah.”

Su Qin had long thought of this, and said, “Don’t worry. My friend is the city police. I will let him bring someone here. With the city police’s assistance, even if the local police have tenfold of guts, they would not dare to let the lair of criminals go.”

Outside, it was already dark and there were faint noises of insects’ sound and frogs’ croak.

Fearing of dogs, Li Xian thought of that vicious dog beaten off by Su Qin that he couldn’t help shivering and said, “When the human traffickers come back and find that a girl has escaped, won’t they send dogs to track her? Dogs have the keenest senses, what if … “

He swallowed his saliva and just as his words faltered, dogs barking were heard outside and someone slammed the factory’s big iron gate with a ‘bang’ sound.

“Is anyone there?”

Everyone in the room shuddered in fear.

Su Qin knew the group of human traffickers were devilish and utterly vicious.

She calmed down then quickly came up with a way to deal with the situation and asked the boss, “Boss, go get some work clothes and also help ask the female compatriots in the factory to borrow a set of clothes for this girl to put on.”

“Okay.”

The boss quickly went to the next common room to ask the workers for a set of women’s clothes, and instructed the workers not to come out later.

Su Qin and the others quickly changed into work clothes with masks and hats on, then went to the workshop pretending to carry stuff.

The boss feigned sleepiness and went to open the iron gate, “Coming, coming! Knock, knock, knock. What’s with the knocking in the middle of the night? What’s wrong with you? Won’t you let people sleep?”

Drawing back the iron bolt, the men outside rushed in with a few German shepherds. The boss was so frightened that his butt hit the ground and pointed at them, “You … What are you guys doing? Don’t mess around ah!”

A total of ten men rushed in, each leading a big wolfhound.

The man in lead was pulling a fierce haughty German shepherd. He looked around before saying, “Boss, we are here looking for a girl. My younger sister who is insensibly young and rebellious. Did she come over here?”

“Oh … you mean that young girl with disheveled hair ah? She came to our factory before it was dark and said a bunch of nonsense to my workers, so we drove her away.” The boss got up from the ground and poked his temple with the finger, “Is your sister badly agitated? She doesn’t seem well here. But Sangzao Town is only so big, a girl like her can’t run very far away, you bring your dogs to go look for her.”

The man looked at the boss skeptically. The dog he was leading barked at the workshop and he said, “Boss, do you mind if we take a look?”

Taken aback, the boss glanced at the dozen or so vicious dogs. He pulled the shirt draped over his shoulders and nodded with a forceful composure, “Inside are all finished printed products. What’s to be done if your bunch of dogs go in and dirty it up?”

The man smiled beamingly, “I’ll go in alone.”

The boss dared not stop him, and let him in.

There were three women and a frail man in the workshop. The four of them were dressed in work clothes with white gloves, white masks and hats, and only could roughly see their figures but not able to see their appearances clearly.

The man frowned as he sized them up. The dog on leash sniffed carefully and barked at one of the girls.

The man and the dog rushed over. Grabbing the girl by the shoulder, he pressed her petite body against the wall. The girl looked terrified. With eyes widened, she struggled and screamed, “You … What are you doing! Hubby! Save me Hubby!”

The man pulled Su Qin’s mask off. Stunned for a moment, he then let her go and lowered his head to verbally curse the dog “Stupid”.

The dog seemed to understand as it lowered its head and “Ow” very aggrievedly.

Su Qin secretly breathed out a sigh of relief too, fortunately she wore Bobo’s clothes inside.

Standing not too far, Bobo’s body moved as a gust of wind sent her scent towards the dog’s nose. Sensing the smell, the dog turned around abruptly and barked at Bobo.

Just when the man was about to lead his dog over, Li Xian grabbed a paper bag, rushed towards the man and smashed it on the man’s forehead.

He scolded as he smashed him, “Damn it, you dare to bully Laozi[1]’s wife! Laozi will beat you to death! Having a dog is so terrific! Laozi will kill you bastard! Get out of here!”

The protective dog bit him.

Li Xian shrieked in pain and as he shrieked, he yelled, “Dare to let your dog bite me, Laozi will send you to the police station and let the police execute your dog! Damn it, bite ah, bite ah. The harder you bite, the more compensation you will pay Laozi!”

Such a big man shrieked madly and cried rather crazily, his cheeks were wet with tears.

The human trafficker obviously didn’t want to stir up trouble, so he shouted “Black Bear let go” and the well-trained dog immediately let go.

In order not to stir up more trouble, the human trafficker pulled a stack of 100-yuan bills from his pocket and threw them at Li Xian, “Brother, sorry. I’m looking for my younger sister. This dog protects its master and bit you. I’m really sorry. Take this money and get an injection.”

Saying that, he led the dog and left with the others.

Once the group of traffickers left, the boss hastily locked the gate and returned to the workshop to carry Li Xian back to the room with Su Qin.

Lying on the bed, Li Xian cried loudly as he grabbed the boss’ hand and asked, “Boss, am I going to die? Will I get rabies? … I don’t want to die yet. I still haven’t become a famous designer yet, I haven’t made any money and haven’t found a wife yet. I don’t want to die just like this.”

Su Qin helped roll up his pants and the dog’s bite marks were deep. She turned her head and asked the boss, “Boss, do you have iodine or perhaps alcohol here?”

The boss nodded, “Yes, yes, yes. I’ll go get it now.”

Su Qin then instructed her mother, “Mom, go bring a basin of water and find a bar of soap.”

“En.”

Wang Lin went to the kitchen to get a basin of water, then went to the common room next door and asked the workers for a bar of soap.

Su Qin first cleaned Li Xian’s wound with soapy water and then disinfected his wound with the iodine. But one could not be negligent after bitten by a dog, Su Qin asked the boss, “Boss, is there a rabies vaccination place in Sangzao Town?”

The boss replied, “The town’s hospital has gotten off work already, so we can only wait for tomorrow morning.”

Wang Lin wet a towel, wrung it dry and handed it to Su Qin, “Su-su, let’s leave this place first thing tomorrow morning and don’t ever come back again.”

When the boss heard that they would not come again, he perceived he would lose a big business and spoke hurriedly, “Don’t worry, your safety will be guaranteed when you come to my place. I will hire some security guards tomorrow and also keep a few dogs. I won’t believe those bastards will dare do anything to me.”

“Boss, we will not forgo our cooperation with you because of this matter. Don’t worry, we will definitely come to you when we need printed matters in the future.” Su Qin said while wiping her hands.

Although Su Qin looked the youngest, the boss had spent an afternoon with the three of them thus more or less knew that this girl was the one in charge.

Dressing up quite maturely today, with sensible speech and thoughts, she gave the impression of being in her early 20s.

Li Xian was obviously terrified as he lay in bed and cried sobbingly.

About two hours later, there was the sound of cars rolling over the muddy dirt road outside the factory and followed by the car horn.

The handphone in Su Qin’s pocket rang and the caller was Li Chuan. Picking up the call, she held it against her ear and said, “Hello.”

“Open the door.”

Stunned for a moment, Su Qin hurriedly said “Oh” then went to open the door for Li Chuan.

Once the big iron gate was opened, the car’s glaring light outside blinded Su Qin that she couldn’t open her eyes.

Standing outside the door, the man was dressed in a short-sleeves camouflage and trousers that tucked into his boots. On the man’s waist was a sharp-blade leather pouch, which should hold a military dagger inside.

Li Chuan seldom wears short-sleeved T-shirts, but more of long-sleeved gym suits or long-sleeved shirts. The short-sleeved camouflage T-shirt on his upper body at this moment clung to his torso, revealing the man’s very sturdy chest.

His arms are buff too, roughly twice thicker than Su Qin’s arms. The tendons are solidly taut, appearing very vigorous.

Dressed in long-sleeves usually, it is impossible to see that his figure is actually more strapping than it appears.

There was a dense dark haze in the man’s eyes. Due to his clenched fists, the muscles in his arms were bursting tautly with blue veins faintly visible on his forearms.

Glancing at Su Qin, his gaze softened instantly as he strode forward and looped around the thin shoulders, then restrained himself when he was about to gather her in his arms.

Su Qin raised her gaze to look at the man, her apprehensive heart immediately settled as she weakly called out “Teacher Li”.

The man gripped her shoulders tightly and only spoke after a long moment, “I’m here.”

Su Qin smiled at him, then glanced at the two police cars parked behind him, “Thank you.”

Throat bobbed, Li Chuan patted the girl’s shoulder lightly. Wanting to say something, yet he didn’t utter a word.

The boss came out of the factory too and briefed the police about the ‘human trafficking’s transit hub’ behind the factory.

Zhang Cheng brought along five police officers. Due to cross-district operations, there were three local police officers who came with them.

Once the police left, a fat guy got out of the SUV behind.

The fat guy had several military knives on him. Grabbing a dagger in his hand, he walked towards Su Qin and seeing that the young girl was fine, he raised a hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead, “Sister Su Qin, it’s good that you are fine, but you scared us to death.”

Li Chuan was not familiar with the journey to Sangzao Town, so he dragged Panda along to be the driver. Hearing there was a threat, this guy hung all his usual collection of blades on himself. He had been hiding in the car just now. Having watched too many shoot-out movies, he worried about the occurrence of shoot-out outside.

With profuse sweating, Panda let out a sigh of relief and said, “This place is too remote. Sister Su Qin, why are you here? Let’s go quickly and leave this to the police.”

Su Qin dared not stay here any longer too, fearing retaliation by the human traffickers.

She went back to the house to call her mother and the young girl named Bobo, and supported Li Xian into the car with Li Chuan’s help.

With six people in the car, it was a little crowded. Panda was driving the car while Li Xian with a leg injury sat on the front passenger seat.

Li Chuan, Su Qin, Wang Lin and the girl named Bobo sat in the back.

Hitting the road, the dirt road was bumpy and jolting.

Next to Li Chuan, Su Qin realized she was sitting on the man’s leg and instinctively grabbed the front seat to support her body up to a half-squatting position.

Noticing the young girl’s subtle movement, Li Chuan grabbed her shoulder and pressed her body downward. Under such pressure, half of Su Qin’s butt was sitting on the man’s lap while the other half was on the small seat space.

Wang Lin noticed her daughter’s squirm and pulled her, “Su-su, sit on Mom’s lap.”

“En.”

Sitting on her mother’s lap, Su Qin’s face blushed up.

Not knowing why, her heart was beating very fast.

The moment she opened the big iron gate and saw Li Chuan, there was a peculiar sense of dependence looping in her heart that she even wanted to throw herself into his arms.

The handphone in Li Chuan’s pants pocket rang. Groping the phone out, he put it through and coldly said, “Hello”.

The man’s brows knitted even more tightly.

After hanging up the call, Su Qin asked him, “Is that Zhang Cheng’s calling?”

“En.” Li Chuan took a deep breath and said, “The human traffickers seemed to have received the news and they had all escaped. The good news is that they couldn’t take the girls they locked inside when they escaped. A total of eleven girls have been rescued.”

“Eleven?” Su Qin covered her wildly beating heart and still felt her scalp tingle when she heard such an inconceivable number.

When she was about to lament that ‘Fortunately the police were timely, she heard Li Chuan spoke again, “Since it is a human trafficking’s transit hub, there must be a large human trafficking ring involved.”

Li Chuan dared not think too profoundly. Merely hearing the number ‘eleven’ made him shudder.

Putting his hand on the girl’s shoulder again, he grasped her thin shoulder, “Don’t run around after school in the future. I’ll pick you up on Saturday. If you come across this kind of situation again, keep calm and call me immediately, okay?”

Su Qin’s ears were slightly muddled. Her grip on the driver’s back seat became even more tighter.

The number ‘eleven’ made her too scared to think about it.

Bobo, who was silent all along, whispered, “We are all a group of underage orphans, who no one will notice if we are missing. Those people want to send us abroad.”

Su Qin’s mind ‘boom’, as if something exploded.

Abducted and sold in her previous lifetime, she had all along been paying close attention to reports related to ‘trafficking of women and children’ after she was rescued. She remembered there were several NGO formed by retired special forces which were specifically responsible for rescuing women and children who were trafficked abroad in her previous lifetime.

Due to transborder involvement and difficulty for police operation, many parents were willing to give them money to save their daughters.

The domestic media had reported several times, thus Su Qin knew that parents of some girls who could not afford so much money would contact this organization on their own accord to give them money so that they could at least rescue even one by one.

Su Qin’s financial resources however were limited after all, and the earnings from her tailoring shop was paltry too, hence the girls rescued were only a few. But that NGO often provided her information.

The criminal syndicate of transborder human trafficking was far more terrifying that she could imagine.

Girls who were sold to the mountains to give birth were considered ‘lucky’ and the worst were those girls who were sold to the red-light district in Thailand to be child prostitutes.

[1] 老子 (Lǎozi) – in this context it’s self-proclaimed for I, used arrogantly or jocularly.