"I can give you the child, but you have to think clearly. If such things are not resolved thoroughly, they will happen again in the future, and the next time you hold the child, it may not be me." Chen Ge put Wenwen down. The child was still holding the shampoo bottle in her hand. She seemed to have gotten used to staying with her sister. She would feel insecure as long as she left her sister.

"Don't worry, I will take good care of Wenwen." The woman looked at Wenwen. The little girl had calmed down. She did not hurt the woman again, but she did not leave with the woman either.

"Go home with your aunt. I will help her fulfill her wish." Chen Ge pointed to the shampoo bottle and said, "Trust me."

It took a long time for Wenwen to let go of the shampoo bottle and silently took her aunt's hand.

Seeing Wenwen return to normal, the woman also breathed a sigh of relief.

"You guys should go back early. Leave the rest to me." Chen Ge stuffed the shampoo bottle into his backpack and looked at the dark river surface.

Sensing that his tone was wrong, the woman pulled Wenwen behind her and said, "What do you want to do? We didn't ask you to help, and don't be stupid enough to investigate."

From what the woman said, Chen Ge felt that Wenwen's aunt must know something, but for various reasons, she didn't say it.

"You are all victims. Those who turned tragedy into misery are the real culprits. If they are not stopped, more families will suffer the same pain as you. Despair is contagious, and it will become increasingly difficult to end it in the future." Chen Ge grabbed the railing on the bridge with both hands. He didn't know whether he said this to get useful information to facilitate his completion of the trial mission, or to rely on his insignificant power to change this not-so-perfect world.

"Then be careful. I have to go to work tomorrow, so I won't play with you anymore." The woman took Wenwen's hand and walked away. After taking a few steps, she suddenly stopped and stayed there for a few seconds. She turned to Chen Ge and said, "Planting requires three things: seeds, fetuses, and mothers. Planting a child's life into another child's body is planting. If you plant the lives of many people into one person's body at the same time, with the entire city as the mother, then when the seeds take root and sprout, what kind of monster will grow?"

Chen Ge was thinking about something when the woman suddenly said this. He almost thought he had misheard.

"After my parents left that night, I secretly followed them to Liwan Town and saw some things." The woman seemed to be talking to herself, and then she took Wenwen's hand and left.

Chen Ge stood by the bridge, looking at the woman's back, watching her walk away.

"Using the entire city as the matrix?" Chen Ge held the railing tightly with both hands. He found that the situation was more serious than he had imagined: "With the lives of countless children and desperate people as seeds and the city as the matrix, the fetus may be a ghost fetus."

"Liwan Town's difficulty is three and a half stars, and the ghost fetus' difficulty is four stars. What is the relationship between the two?" Chen Ge's mind was filled with countless doubts: "Wenwen's family may just be a very basic experiment to prove that everything will indeed produce a certain effect. Liwan Town is the real testing ground of the mastermind. Xiaobu is very likely the 'fetus' chosen by the mastermind, but why does it have to make a ghost fetus? Is it like the female ghost who jumped into the well in Living Coffin Village, wanting to be reborn?"

The gate of Liwan Town is out of control. Chen Ge has no idea how strong Xiaobu is. Maybe she is also a very different red-dressed girl, so she was noticed by the mastermind behind Dongjiao.

"The limit of the three-star scene is the top-level red clothes, and three and a half stars is a little hard to say."

Recalling the woman's last meaningful words, Chen Ge thought carefully and found some details that he had forgotten before: "If the mastermind behind Dongjiao is planning to use the entire city as a matrix and all living people as seeds, then he must need a medium to contact everyone. The first time I saw a shadow was at the Dongjiao Water Plant. It happened to happen in the Donggang Reservoir not far from the water plant. The water plant purifies the water of the Donggang Reservoir. These two stations are all on the 104 bus route. Could it be that the mastermind is planning to use drinking water? The man from the fishing association said that he saw a large number of water ghosts in the reservoir. Under normal circumstances, this should not happen. Could the Donggang Reservoir be part of the mastermind's plan?"

The situation was much worse than he had imagined. Chen Ge hailed a taxi and headed directly to Donggang Reservoir.

Occasionally, a few ripples would appear on the dark water surface. When Chen Ge arrived at the Donggang Reservoir, it was already past eleven o'clock in the evening.

"Is anyone there?" He knocked lightly on the reservoir manager's door. Ten seconds later, the light in the room came on.

"Who is it?" The voice was a little wary. The other party did not open the door immediately after getting out of bed.

"Brother Zhang, we have met before. Wasn't there someone at Fishing King that day? I was the one who delivered the fishing rod to him in the end."

"I remember. What are you doing at the reservoir so late at night?" Perhaps because he thought Chen Ge's voice sounded familiar, the man's voice softened significantly.

"I want to borrow our boat." Before Chen Ge finished speaking, the door was opened.

Administrator Zhang Dapo was wearing a coat and looked a little surprised: "Borrow a boat?"

"Yes, I want to confirm one thing. I need to go to the reservoir to salvage some things." Chen Ge's eyes were firm and his tone was unquestionable.

"I don't care what you want to confirm, but you can't not take your own life seriously. There are king fish in the reservoir, and you come here in the middle of the night to salvage them. What if something unexpected happens?" Zhang Daopo shook his head and refused.

"Brother Zhang, when I went to deliver the fishing rods that day, I found a body buried in the home of the man who was fishing. The police may come to you soon."

"They came here today during the day." Zhang Dapo looked at Chen Ge with a wry smile, "I was also scared. I was actually alone with a murderer for so long."

"In fact, I have always been in contact with the police. You can search the Internet for the owner of the Western Suburbs Haunted House. I have cooperated with the police to solve many major and serious cases. This time I borrowed your boat to investigate something." Chen Ge took out his mobile phone and opened the address book. In the pitifully small list of contacts, more than half of the contacts were those with the words police, police officer, and captain in their names.

After much persuasion, Zhang Dapo finally agreed: "I can lend you the boat, but I won't go with you."

"OK."

"By the way, what are you going to salvage by borrowing the boat?" Zhang Daopo was a little curious.

"Finding a body. The body of a little girl."

This answer was obviously different from what Zhang Daopo expected. He rubbed his hands, not knowing what to say.

Opening the door of the warehouse, Zhang Dapo took out the oars, harpoons and ropes: "Wait a moment."

He turned and went into the management room, and took out a flashlight from inside: "Don't mind it being broken, the light from this thing can travel very far at night. If you are in danger, just wave it towards the shore a few times, and I... will help you call the police."

"Thank you." Chen Ge placed a bunch of things on the bow, then pressed the switch of the recorder and jumped onto the boat.

"Usually, it takes several teams to salvage a corpse. Can you do it alone?" Zhang Dapo felt that Chen Ge's approach was a little unreliable.

"Don't worry, I'm not fighting alone." Sitting firmly on the boat, Chen Ge took out the comic book and put the jar ghost into the water.