Mo Xiaoqing and Xu Yao walked in, and then they saw that the pot was just a pot of porridge, with a few pieces of vegetable leaves and potato chips floating on it.

This was probably the old man's dinner.

"Hello, old man!" Mo Xiaoqing also greeted him a few times, but the old man didn't even turn his head.

Finally, after Mo Xiaoqing called him for the fourth time, he slowly turned his head and looked at them with a pair of confused eyes. After a few seconds, he continued to slowly stir his pot of vegetable porridge.

The old man finally put down his rice spoon, pointed at his ears, and said slowly,

"Who are you looking for? I can't hear."

The old man's broken Mandarin was barely understandable. He shouted loudly for a few times and raised his right hand to stir the pot a few times. Then he slowly walked to the wooden rack next to him and casually took out a blackened rice bowl and scooped out the sticky porridge in the pot.

Mo Xiaoqing shouted loudly, "Uncle, are you Uncle Li Qingguo?"

The old man nodded, "Yes, I am."

"I want to ask, do you have a son named Li Tieer? Has he always used this name or did he have a former name?"

Mo Xiaoqing said with all her strength, but the old man shook his head in confusion, indicating that he didn't understand.

It was really difficult to talk to an old man with poor hearing.

Xu Yao stood aside and looked around. There were two lonely adobe houses in this courtyard. Outside was a very small courtyard surrounded by adobe bricks. In the courtyard was a tall plum tree with lush leaves swaying in the spring breeze.

Mo Xiaoqing was still trying to ask the old man, but she still declared failure.

The old man seemed to only understand a few simple words, and he was mumbling a bunch of words that she couldn't understand.

Mo Xiaoqing guessed that the old man should be speaking the dialect of Lijia Village. She actually had a good grasp of the dialects in China, but she couldn't understand the dialect spoken by this toothless old man.

"Uncle Li, come here. We killed a chicken today. We'll bring some over for you." A voice came from outside the yard.

Then, a farmer in her 40s or 50s wearing a gray coat walked in.

The woman was holding a bowl of rice with fried chicken on it, and she was looking at Mo Xiaoqing and the others with a puzzled look on her face.

"Excuse me, who are you? What can I do for you?"

Xu Yao hurried over and showed his police ID. "Hello, we are criminal police from Kangsar City. We want to find this old man to understand some situations.

But I find it quite difficult to communicate with him. May I ask who you are to this old man?"

The woman had a look of awe for the police on her face, and hurriedly said: "Oh, I am the next-door neighbor of this old man. I know most of his family affairs, otherwise you can ask me."

As the woman spoke, she brought a bowl of food into the main room, put it in the old man's hand, and shouted in his ear:

"Uncle Li, eat quickly, otherwise it will get cold."

The old man held the food with a grateful look on his face, and muttered something excitedly, which should be words of gratitude.

"Oh! Uncle Li is so pitiful. Originally, he could still live when his wife was still alive, at least he could have a hot meal.

But not long ago, his wife died of illness, and he was left with a lot of illnesses.

He wanted to raise his son who was going to see him off..."

The woman sighed again and again. Mo Xiaoqing came over and asked, "Auntie, the son of Uncle Li you just mentioned, is he called Li Tieer?"

"That's right. Are you here to help Uncle Li find his missing son?" the woman asked with expectation on her face.

Mo Xiaoqing answered unnaturally, "No. Finding missing people is not within our jurisdiction."

Xu Yao also came over and took out the blurry photo they brought from his bag and handed it over.

"Do you know the people in the photo?"

The woman took the photo and looked at it carefully. After a while, she said hesitantly, "They look familiar, but I just can't remember who they are?"

Xu Yao handed over another photo, and the woman immediately said, "Of course I know these two people. One is Li Wenbo, the son of his cousin's family in Xincun, and the one he is holding on the shoulder is called Li Tie'er."

Xu Yao asked directly, "Then can you tell us about this Li Tie'er? Do you know if he has any other names?

I heard from before that Li Tie'er was a child adopted by Li Qingguo from an orphanage."

"Yes. Uncle Li and his wife didn't have children for more than ten years after they got married. Later, when they were 40 years old, they thought about adopting a child to take care of them."

Xu Yao asked, "Then do you know which welfare home this child was adopted from?"

The peasant woman shook her head: "I'm not sure about this, but Uncle Li's family should still have some documents from that time."

The woman began to mutter to herself: "Hey, you said that my uncle's family has always been so unlucky. They can't have children, but they adopted a mentally retarded child. 's child.

After coming back, the child has been locking himself in the room and seldom comes out. I heard that he would draw in the room when he has nothing to do.

At the beginning, my second uncle thought that the child was shy, so he treated him very carefully and sent him to the primary school in our village.

It is not likely that he is mentally retarded. After all, he rarely makes trouble in primary school and is just taciturn. However, his grades are surprisingly good, and he is also a good painter.

But when he entered junior high school, something went wrong."

Mo Xiaoqing asked in surprise, "What happened?"

"I was expelled from the school."

"Why did you drop out?" Mo Xiaoqing continued to ask curiously.

"It was a riot, and the police seemed to be alarmed. The kid was convicted of attempted murder. Later, someone else reported that he had killed their class teacher's pet cat.

Then the child couldn't even leave school, so he stayed in his room all the time and didn't go out.

But I don't know what happened later, he suddenly ran away from the room and could never be found again. "

Xu Yao frowned and said thoughtfully: "Auntie, can you be a translator for us? I want to ask Uncle Li in person."

The woman agreed readily with her head down.

They walked from the courtyard into the main room, and the old man almost finished the whole bowl of food. I heard that he was seriously ill, but I didn't expect that his physical foundation was not bad.

The woman walked up to the old man and switched to another language to talk to him.

The dialect of Lijia Village itself has nothing to do with Mandarin. It’s just that more people went out and tourism developed, so young people or people who have more contact with the outside world can understand Mandarin and speak a few sentences.