"Moreover, I saw a name in the files that should not have been there. I didn't expect, well..." Ray paused, furrowing his brow and sighing deeply, as if he were recalling something painful.
The atmosphere turned heavy in an instant.
Seeing this, Liu Xing quickly signaled to Tina with his eyes. Tina immediately understood, and with a cheerful smile said to Ray, "Ray, it's not nice to keep us on tenterhooks like this. Can you please continue and tell us what exactly happened?"
No sooner had Tina spoken than the sound of dice hitting the table filled the room.
Tina, quick conversation, 39/70, success.
Tina, persuasion, 23/55, success.
Liu Xing looked at Tina, somewhat surprised. He hadn't expected her to roll so high in quick conversation and to also succeed in persuasion. Was this a new strategy? Nonetheless, due to the double success of quick conversation and persuasion, Ray nodded and began, "If you want to know about this matter, you must promise not to disclose it to anyone else. After all, this is an internal secret, and speaking of it could have undesirable consequences."
The three of them nodded immediately, knowing full well that the information Ray was about to divulge would be of great significance.
"The thing is, when I first started working, I was assigned to oversee the security of the Harvest Festival. Given that there weren't many events in our small county town, the Harvest Festival was always as lively as the New Year celebrations. Thus, it attracted a very large crowd every year."
"I was on patrol when I found a little boy who had been separated from his family, so I brought him here. The missing children's center has always been set up here during the Harvest Festival, so parents whose children have gone missing would come here to search."
"When I asked the boy his name, he said it was Ji Lei. Just as I was about to inquire about his parents, he pointed behind me, towards the peach trees, and said his dad was there," Ray explained, gesturing towards the peach trees behind the temple.
Liu Xing looked at the peach trees but didn't notice anything particularly unusual about them; they were just significantly thicker than ordinary peach trees.
"Ji Lei ran towards the peach trees, and as I turned to look, I saw a man smiling and waving at Ji Lei. The boy was gleefully running towards the man, appearing very close, so I assumed Ji Lei had found his father. I thought my job was done and left to continue maintaining order at the festival."
"After that Harvest Festival, I was sent to Rongcheng for a criminal investigation training program and stayed there for a few years before returning to this county town. Having transferred to become a detective, I was no longer in charge of security at the Harvest Festival."
"Until last year, when a child went missing during the Harvest Festival. The prime suspect was the child's father, as the parents were divorced, and the child was under the mother's custody. The child was attending the festival with his mother when she suddenly realized he was missing. While searching, she saw her ex-husband taking the child up the stairs towards Xianhe Temple. She immediately gave chase, but when she arrived at the temple, both the child and his father had vanished without a trace."
So it was that the child's mother reported to the police, and as the case fell under my jurisdiction, I came here seeking any clues that might shed light on the matter. In my search, I chanced upon an old man who divulged a secret. He urged me to review the files on children gone missing in recent years. I discovered a peculiar pattern: every cycle, which is to say, every twelve years, there was a bizarre case of a child's disappearance. Each time, a family member of the child vanished simultaneously, with the final trace leading back to this Crane Watch Pavilion. Among these was Ji Lei, the child I had just mentioned to you, and his father." By the end of his account, Ray's mood had once again sunken.
"Ray, you mustn't blame yourself for this..." Akira Akashi wanted to offer comfort, but found himself at a loss for words.
At that moment, Liu Xing's mind was struck by a phrase—"to become the ghostly minion of a tiger."
There is an old legend that those devoured by tigers become their ghostly underlings, luring others to the tiger's maw.
Clearly, the adults in these child disappearance cases were these ghostly minions, like Ji Lei's father, who lured away his own son!
As for the "tiger," Liu Xing was certain it must be a mythical creature, and it resided within this very Crane Watch Pavilion! What puzzled Liu Xing, however, was why this "tiger" would complicate matters so. After all, as a mythical creature, capturing a child would be effortless; why then go to the trouble of first creating ghostly minions?
In Liu Xing's view, creating these minions must surely take more time and effort than it was worth, so why would the "tiger" engage in such an unrewarding act?
Mystified, Liu Xing glanced again at the peach trees but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Yet, he couldn't shake the premonition that something was amiss with these trees.
Nevertheless, Liu Xing could now be certain of one thing—that Nan Xiaoniao's mother had most likely become one of these ghostly minions.
At this time, Li Ming and Tian Dao finally made their ascent to the Crane Watch Pavilion, reaching the child disappearance center to join Liu Xing and the others.
"Uh, why are you all sitting here? Where has the little bird gone? Did you find her mother?" Tian Dao asked, surprised.
Tian Dao's words jolted Liu Xing and the others out of their reverie. They had been so engrossed in Ray's tale that they had neglected to keep an eye on Nan Xiaoniao.
A plot twist!
That was Liu Xing's immediate thought, because while initially listening to Ray's secret revelations, he would intermittently check on Nan Xiaoniao, monitoring her movements. But as Ray continued, Liu Xing gradually forgot about her presence. He was certain this was a narrative device—a plot twist orchestrated by KP Cao to advance the story by forcibly removing Nan Xiaoniao from their control.
Liu Xing had witnessed such tactics before when he was a spectator at Wu Lei's gaming sessions. At the time, player Wu Lei had stubbornly refused to explore a cellar that would trigger the next event, forcing the KP to deploy a plot twist—suddenly an earthquake shattered the ground beneath Wu Lei, causing him to fall...
But this was not the time for excessive thought. Liu Xing and the others immediately stood up and began to search for Nan Xiaoniao, and seeing their urgency, Tian Dao and Li Ming realized that Nan Xiaoniao might have been lost by them.
"There!" Liu Xing was the first to spot Nan Xiaoniao.