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At the same time, Lu Yizhan and his colleagues were also investigating the case of missing children in the welfare home.

"You said, this matter should be handled by the Criminal Police Brigade, or some special department, right?" Lu Yizhan's colleague looked unhappy. "Look at the surveillance footage of the missing child. This is not something we can handle!"

"Four children heard a flute in the early morning last night, and then lined up to go out and play in the central children's park. The weirdest thing is that these children don't seem to be hypnotized or sleepwalking at all. They even deliberately avoided surveillance, which shows that these four children are all conscious and swinging on the swings in that small children's park. An hour later, these children suddenly disappeared from the surveillance!"

My colleague started to curse as he was talking: "Damn it, but the child is missing and the equipment is still moving. I didn't sleep well yesterday after watching the surveillance..."

After saying that, Lu Yizhan's colleague couldn't help rubbing his arms. He had goosebumps all over his body. "Now there are only five children left. We were originally planning to transfer them to other welfare homes, but now this incident happened in the hospital. Everyone must stay in this welfare home and wait for investigation. It's so fucking weird!"

Lu Yizhan frowned and said, "Let's go ask the dean first."

"Director? I don't think she would say anything." A colleague from Lu Station grumbled, "This old woman didn't even report the missing child! If it wasn't for the subsequent mushroom poisoning incident at the hospital that escalated the case to a higher level, when we came to check the children, we found that the head count was wrong and four were missing. No one would have known that there were missing children here!"

"Then we should go and ask her." Lu Yizhan said in a steady tone, "She must know something."

In the dean's office, Mu Ke's father had already discussed the donation with the dean and went to talk to other people. The old dean was the only one in the dean's office.

The old dean sat in a chair, looking at Lu Yizhan who came to look for her with droopy eyes: "You asked me why I didn't report my child's disappearance?"

Lu Yizhan nodded, and the old director suddenly laughed. She trembled and opened the drawer, pulled out a bunch of receipts and handed them to Lu Yizhan: "Young man, are you new here? I reported my child missing every time, but have you ever found my child? So I simply didn't report it this time. Anyway, our welfare home is about to close down."

Lu Yizhan frowned as he looked at the police report receipt handed to him by the old dean.

The warrants this time were all from ten years ago, and they were all reports of missing children. However, the investigation reference opinions were all "children ran away from home on their own", and there was no follow-up.

"Every year, our private orphanage holds a June 1st performance for the kind-hearted people who invested in our orphanage, so that these owners can see the conditions of the children they raised. However, every year after the June 1st performance, there are children missing from our orphanage, and the results of the investigation show that the children found ways to escape on their own."

The old director said slowly, "At that time, you police suspected that our orphanage was abusing children, so the children would [run away from home], but the investigation found that we did not abuse them here, it was just that these children wanted to run away, and we did not do anything out of the ordinary to these children, such as selling human organs or engaging in pedophilia sex trade. You have already investigated this place thoroughly, but you didn't find anything, right?"

The old dean opened his eyelids and said, "It's a very common case of a child running away from home and disappearing."

"It is very difficult to find missing children. These little dots are just like a grain of rice dropped into a sea of ​​people. You are looking for these children who are deliberately avoiding you, which is like looking for a needle in a haystack. So every year nothing is found."

A colleague from Luyi Station couldn't help but interrupt: "But this time, according to the surveillance footage, the child was missing while sitting on a swing in the park! This is not a missing person case where the child ran away!"

"What you said is so strange. How could it happen? Our surveillance has been used for a long time. It is old and outdated." The old dean said lightly, "Maybe it is possible that it broke down or malfunctioned?"

Lu Yizhang's colleague was choked and had a heart attack. Just as he was about to interrogate the old dean in a stern voice, he was stopped by Lu Yizhang.

Lu Yizhan asked calmly, "Director, it's our fault that we can't find the child, but you should still report it to the police. And you shouldn't have failed to report it for more than just this year, right? I just looked through your receipts, and there are several years where you didn't report it, and you said that children go missing every year, so what is the truth?"

The old dean was silent for a few minutes, then turned around and pulled out a large file bag from the dusty place inside the bookcase behind her. She blew away the dust on it, untied the string, pulled out something as thick as a photo album, and opened it.

The first page is [Group photo of the 200x Children's Welfare Home Cultural Performance] - this is obviously the archive of this private welfare home.

In the photo, dozens of little kids are standing awkwardly next to a group of successful people in suits, showing the cute and fake smile that they have been taught thousands of times. There is a lipstick mark on their foreheads, and their lips are painted bright red, which looks both vulgar and old-fashioned.

"Children go missing every year, but I don't report it every year." The old director looked at the children in the photo and said in a long tone, "Even if someone invested in this children's welfare home for a year or two, it wouldn't last long and would go bankrupt. It doesn't matter if I tell you all these old stories."

"Many children here are not easy to discipline. To put it nicely, they have personality. To put it bluntly, they are wild and like to run outside."

"Some of them are not runaways, but are on the run."

The old director turned another page, which was similar to a diary for recording early childhood education. It read: [After the June 1st performance, the orphans Bai Liu, Xiao Ke and the other five beat up investors who came to watch the performance and robbed the investors of their belongings and mobile phones. They were ordered to clean the entire institution and fast for one day. Additional punishment will be imposed depending on their reformation.]

"For example, this group of children beat up the investors after the recital and then ran away that night. I did not report it to the police and turned a blind eye to them running away, because if they did not run away, these children would not have a good ending in this welfare home invested by these investors."

The old dean pointed his finger at the punishment and said meaningfully, "At least the punishment cannot be just fasting for one day."

"Dean, can I see that photo?" Lu Yizhan's attention was elsewhere, and the expression on his face was more solemn than ever before.

The director handed the file bag to Lu Yizhang, who turned to the previous page and saw the photo of the [200x Children's Welfare Institute's Arts Performance Group Photo]. His eyes quickly searched among the children in the photo, and finally locked onto a child at the edge of the corner.

Even with lipstick on his face and a big red dot on his forehead, this child didn't look funny. Instead, he had the subtle beauty of a little girl. However, this beauty was ruined by his calm eyes, revealing a precocity beyond his age. In his cold eyes, the other children seemed like a bunch of idiots, which was very eye-catching.

No one would be more familiar with this face at this time than Lu Yizhan.

Lu Yizhan's eyes were fixed on the child in the photo. He pointed at the child and looked up at the old dean: "Who is this child? What's his name?"

"This kid?" The old director looked at him for a while, as if lost in memory. "He was the kid who took the lead in beating up the investor and ran away, so I remember him very clearly. When he came to the welfare home, he just said his name was Bai, Bai Liu."

"No." Lu Yizhan slammed his hands on the table and stared at the old director. "His name is Bai Liu. He was indeed once called Bai Liu, but he changed his name when he was fourteen and never used that name again. He came out of the public welfare home with me. It's impossible for him to appear in this private welfare home at the same time!"

"But..." The old dean looked at Lu Yizhan with a confused look, "Did you recognize the wrong person? This kid named Bai Liu escaped and was found by investors not long after. He couldn't leave here. Bai Liu died not long after he was found."

"Dead? What was the cause of his death?" Lu Yizhan asked in a strange voice.

The old director sighed and said, "It was a very strange way of death. He accidentally swallowed a strange coin, which had a hole in the middle. He swallowed it into his trachea and died in a few minutes. Because he suffered some very bad things in our welfare home before leaving and after returning, so... we all suspect that Bai Liu committed suicide."

Lu Yizhan moved his gaze stiffly and looked at the expressionless face of Bai Liu in the black and white photo. His eyelids drooped loosely and he looked to the side as if a little sleepy. His hanging hair was wet, as if soaked with sweat from the performance. Lu Yizhan felt that his chest was invisibly and heavily pressed by these strange things. He stared at the thin boy in the photo and felt a little breathless.

That was Bai Liu ten years ago.

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Bai Liu went forward and picked up the doll next to the seesaw. It was a handmade doll. It was obviously based on the template, but the texture was very old. However, there was still a trace of a ribbon on the leg of the doll. It felt like a handmade gift doll. Usually, such gift dolls would have the date of gifting or making.

Bai Liu turned the doll over to try to find out if there was a date on it, and finally found a line of handwritten date inside the squeezed-off head.

This is indeed a doll from ten years ago.

Bai Liu has only been working for two or three years. He started dressing up as a social animal wearing a shirt and suit pants after he started working. The coin hanging around his neck was obtained by Bai Liu not long ago after he joined the game. It is the concrete carrier of the system.

His current outfit was used to customize a doll ten years ago, and his head and limbs were cut off and left here.

Bai Liu narrowed his eyes.