It was the end of November, the winter season, and there was nothing to look after in the fields, so there were no patrolling militiamen in the area.

Although Lian Xiaomin had a blank letter of introduction from the County Material Bureau, she decided not to use it to avoid wasting it.

Therefore, she approached Tumenzi Village with extreme caution.

Just now on the village road, I met two women walking with empty baskets. They seemed to be heading to the city to a supply and marketing cooperative or something like that.

She asked a few questions about how to get to Tumenzi Village, and said she was from another village and wanted to contact a tractor for use.

Many rural women love to chat, and since the other party was a girl, she had no scruples and said a few more words.

Let her go find Meng Laohei, who lives in the third house at the east end of the village. He has the final say.

Lian Xiaomin wrapped herself in a thick black scarf that covered her entire face, leaving only her eyes exposed. She was not afraid that the two women would be able to recognize her later.

It is broad daylight now and it is not as convenient as the cover of night, but we cannot afford to waste time.

In the woods at the entrance of the village, I put my bicycle into a space and walked around. I definitely couldn't just walk into the village openly, as that would cause more trouble if people asked me.

She released her mental power to observe so as not to run into anyone, and thus quietly found the third yard at the east end of the village.

According to Qiao San, the man named Meng Laohei who went to the black market to buy things was in his early thirties, had a beard, and was of medium build. He didn't pay much attention to other people.

Based on this information, Lian Xiaomin flashed into the space at the vegetable garden behind the house.

He began to use his mental power to check the people inside to see if this was Meng Laohei's home.

Fortunately, there were six people playing cards, or poker, in a room inside.

One of them kept muttering, "Old Black, can you please come out faster? Why are you taking so long~"

Okay, this is it, a beard, around thirty years old, looks and age match.

There are four rooms in this yard. In one of the other three rooms, there are two little girls under ten years old, doing needlework with their mother on the kang.

There were two rooms that were empty at this time, perhaps they had gone out to visit neighbors.

Lian Xiaomin first searched the yard from front to back, including the cellar, but did not see any twelve-year-old boy, so Yunlai was not there.

Now that she was here, she would continue to monitor to see if Meng Laohei could provide any useful information.

After listening for a while, it turned out that one of the people playing poker was Meng Laohei's younger brother, named Meng Guang.

In just a short while, he had already lost three dollars and eighty cents, which is a lot for a country man.

Others urged him to go back to the house and get it, telling him not to deny it, and said that he should go and get it while his wife was taking the children back to her parents' home!

Meng Guang was about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, short and unconvinced, and kept shouting, "Three dollars and eighty cents is nothing, I have money!"

He turned around and went to the next room to get it.

While the others were waiting for his brother to withdraw money, Meng Laohei stopped playing cards and smoked a cigarette. Then he got off the kang, put on his shoes and went to his brother's room.

"Second brother, don't take it. I'll give you the money. Here, how about ten dollars?"

As he said this, he took out a big unity banknote from his trouser pocket and handed it to Meng Guang.

As a result, Meng Guang snorted "Tsk~" and looked unappreciative, as if he deserved a beating.

"Brother, what's the matter? Do you want to get rid of me with just this little money?"

Meng Laohei immediately hugged his brother affectionately and whispered, "Look at you, we are brothers, how can I treat you badly? But those gold ingots have to be exchanged for money slowly, right?"

"…This matter can be big or small, don't worry! I will definitely give you a share."

Meng Guang didn't buy it and rejected the card with disdain.

"Brother, I helped you deal with that child. Anyway, you can do whatever you want!"

"...If I hadn't caught up with you the day before yesterday, you would have been nearly beaten to death by that guy with a stick!"

"…I just realized that you had dug up the gold bars buried in someone else's house without telling me and hid them all yourself! Otherwise, would the child have come after you and killed you?"

"…I get angry just thinking about this. Three years ago, you had already won so much gold, but how could you spend it on yourself and leave us all to eat coarse food? You are so cruel. You are really my dear brother."

Meng Laohei coaxed his brother and promised to exchange the gold ingots for money as soon as possible and give his brother a share.

Lian Xiaomin was so anxious that she wondered if Yunlai would kill these two people.

The general idea of ​​the matter has been clarified. This Meng Laohei must have accidentally discovered that there was gold buried in Yunlai's house, so he dug it out and took it for himself.

This happened about three years ago. They didn't mention anything about harming Yunlai's family. It seemed that they just dug for gold and made money, but didn't kill anyone.

These two little kids can’t be snatched back, and you can’t report it. These gold ingots are feudal, capitalist, and revisionist things. If they were dug out from your home, then your family is doomed…

Listening to the conversation between the two people in the room, two days ago, Yunlai should have been seeking revenge on Meng Laohei and almost succeeded, but was met by Meng Guang who followed his eldest brother and subdued him.

Just when Lian Xiaomin was thinking about whether to arrest the two brothers of the Meng family and force them to tell her the whereabouts of Yun Lai, she unexpectedly heard some useful information.

Meng Laohei still put the ten yuan into his brother's pocket and asked him in a low voice, where is the child buried?

Lian Xiaomin felt a chill in her heart.

Meng Guang said, "My dear brother, although I am an unreliable person, I have never killed anyone."

"I didn't dare to kill him... so I threw him in the ancestral house and locked him up. Then I ran back with you, who had fainted, on my back."

Seeing that his second brother was no longer angry, Meng Laohei discussed with him that after dark tonight, the two brothers should go together to find a place to bury the body to avoid any future trouble.

They talked for about five or six minutes, then went back to the original room to continue playing cards.

Lian Xiaomin couldn't wait for them to go to the ancestral home after dark and then follow them. Yunlai had been left there for two days and two nights, so he had to be found as soon as possible.

She left the space, released her mental power and began to search the entire village, which made her arrive much faster.

Searching from the east end of the village all the way to the west, the Meng family’s ancestral home must be an abandoned empty house.

It happened quickly. After an hour, we finally found the abandoned yard of the two houses in a relatively remote place.

The door to the room was just a broken wooden board with a hole in it, and it was locked. There was indeed a half-grown child lying on a pile of hay inside.

That’s right, it must be Yunlai!

Lian Xiaomin had already entered the yard without a gate, came to the woodshed where people were locked up, and kicked the door down with one kick.

She strode in quickly and squatted down to check on the child.

The young boy was breathing weakly, but had no injuries on his body.

I gently lifted his head and took a look. I saw a big bump on the back of his head. It looked like he had been hit by a stick and he might have fainted immediately.

The child was locked up for two days without food or water. Fortunately, he was wearing a thick cotton coat and the ground was full of hay, otherwise he would have frozen to death.