272 Alert

Yu Bing watched from afar first. Under the tree, there was a long stone bench built with cement around the tree roots. Beside it, there were two sets of stone tables. Most of the people gathered towards one side of the stone table.

A woman in her fifties, who was sitting on a matching stone stool, was watching her grandson while listening to everyone talk. Occasionally, she would chime in.

Yu Bing realized that as long as she spoke, the sounds of discussion would become softer and most of their attention would be focused on this woman. Hence, Yu Bing walked towards her with a faint smile on her face as she said warmly, “Hello, I want to ask you something.”

When the auntie looked up at Yu Bing, she realized that she was an unfamiliar girl in her twenties who even had an accent. Beside her, there stood a sturdy young man of about the same age.

The auntie beckoned to her grandson, who was talking to another child, and pulled him to her side. When the others saw that it was an unfamiliar face, they also called their children back to their side.

Yu Bing looked at Xiao Sheng in confusion. Although her appearance wasn’t very amiable, she didn’t look like a bad person, right?

Yu Bing and Xiao Sheng had just arrived in City C and didn’t know that two children had gone missing nearby a few days ago. Even after the police intervened, they had yet to find them.

One was a five-year-old boy who disappeared after entering the public bathroom. The other was a three-year-old boy who followed his grandmother to the supermarket to buy groceries. While his grandmother was paying the bill, the child disappeared.

Now, in order to find the child, the two families had already mobilized their entire family to look for them on the streets, but there was no news at all.

Everyone was guessing that the children had most likely been kidnapped by human traffickers and the probability of finding them was almost zero, so families with children had been very vigilant recently. No matter how kind-looking a suspicious person was, they would treat him or her as a human trafficker first.

The woman sized up the couple in front of her suspiciously and asked, “Are you guys from out of town?”

Yu Bing saw everyone’s vigilant gazes. Although she didn’t understand what was going on, she knew that it was best to prove her identity now to prevent any misunderstandings.

Hence, Yu Bing took out her and Xiao Sheng’s certificates from her bag and handed them over as she smiled and said, “I’m Yu Bing, the director of the He Mountain Brigade’s food factory. This is our factory’s sales consultant, Xiao Sheng.”

Everyone leaned forward to look at the certificate. When they saw that they were staff members of a factory, they were relieved.

Hence, the auntie told Yu Bing and the other two about the recent incidents. “I’m sorry. When we heard that you guys had accents, we became even more afraid and nervous.”

Yu Bing was enlightened. There were really many human traffickers in every era and many families had been separated.

Although gender equality was strongly advocated, how could feudal thinking that had been passed down over thousands of years be changed so easily?

The people in the city were more progressive. The more remote the area was, the more conservative people were. They believed that raising children was for the purpose of being looked after in old age. They believed that if there were no sons in the family, they would be letting down their ancestors. Therefore, a family that couldn’t give birth to a son would spend their family’s savings to buy someone else’s son to adopt and raise as their son.

Therefore, the prime target of human traffickers was little boys under the age of five or six. Because they were still young, they barely remembered things and would forget their biological parents and original family quite easily.

When Yu Bing heard this news, she sighed. In a few decades, technology would become more advanced, but even then, lost children might not be able to be found, let alone now.

After Yu Bing came back to her senses, she explained her intentions to everyone. “We came to City C on a business trip to open an office for the food factory, but we don’t know much about City C. When we saw you guys chatting here, we thought that since you guys are all locals, you’ll definitely know the situation in City C like the back of your hand! Therefore, we want to ask you guys to give us some guidance.”

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