It seems that the villain is targeting me.

There are a lot of thieves on trains these days. If you are not careful when you sleep at night, it is easy for someone to steal your things.

She put her hand on her schoolbag in annoyance: she was so naive. All her belongings were packed in it. If her schoolbag was lost, she would be really blind - she wouldn't even have the chance to regret and buy a ticket to go home.

Chen Xiaoya thought with some relief: It’s a good thing that she was discovered when she ran away from home. At least she still has Xiao Niao by her side now. This guy is relatively reliable... huh?

Hmm? Chen Xiaoya shifted his gaze to the left in confusion. Right next to the backpack straps was the backpack that Xiaoniao had carried on the train.

It was just an ordinary-looking bag, with a zipper and buckles, a sturdy, common style, nothing special.

point.

Did he see it wrong? Chen Xiaoya's hands trembled unconsciously.

This bag...did it move just now?

Before Chen Xiaoya could continue to doubt himself, the shoulder bag tilted for a few seconds without any touch.

...and then it straightened itself back up.

Chen Xiaoya: “…”

Okay, she can confirm that the movement of the bag just now was definitely not her illusion.

This obviously had nothing to do with the shaking of the train, and the train did not brake suddenly. It was always running at a relatively stable pace - and there was no reason why a crooked train would straighten itself out!

Chen Xiaoya swallowed silently.

Her hands trembled even more violently, and she moved forward like a thief and carefully opened the zipper of her shoulder bag a little.

As if sensing the light from outside, the things in the bag spun around slipperily.

Chen Xiaoya seemed to see a tuft of white hair that looked very familiar...

The next second, she met a pair of wide-open cat eyes.

Chen Xiaoya: “…”

Cat number four just woke up: "..."

Outside the corridor of the carriage, the calm and reliable adult sneezed viciously.

Chen Xiaoya stared at the timid cat in the bag for a few seconds, closed his eyes and zipped it up again.

Just pretend I didn’t see it, she thought.

After more than ten minutes, Xiao Niao opened the door of the carriage and walked in.

Chen Xiaoya turned his head to look at her, his eyes and mood were a little complicated.

The little bird looked at her in confusion - why is this child acting weird just after getting up?

"Awake?" Xiao Niao said, putting down the boiled egg he had gotten from somewhere. "Come up and eat something. We still have a few hours' drive ahead."

The two of them bought some food before getting on the bus, so they had no chance to get the "Peanuts, Melon Seeds and Eight Treasure Porridge" cart.

After starting to raise her child, Xiao Niao formed the traditional and simple concept of "don't let the child eat junk food" without any guidance. The things she bought were mainly pure milk and soda crackers, and she also brought some fruits that were easy to store and last longer, such as bananas and apples.

Chen Xiaoya is not picky about food. She sat down obediently to drink milk and eat biscuits. She also sensibly picked up a banana and handed it to the bird... Then she pretended not to see the other party, quietly unzipped her shoulder bag, and fed the egg yolk to the cat.

She looked out the car window.

It was almost daylight, and the scenery outside the train could be clearly seen: the lush green vegetation and trees were disappearing, replaced by small buildings painted white and a dazzling tangle of cables.

The scene in front of her felt very fresh to Chen Xiaoya. She looked out the window quietly for a while. The person sitting next to her was slowly peeling eggs. The train was moving forward tirelessly, creating a rhythmic white noise.

Such a slight shaking feeling makes people's nerves relax unconsciously. Chen Xiaoya quietly turned his head to look at Xiaoniao, and wanted to lean on her.

But such an action seems to have gone too far and would break some invisible boundaries.

The girl, who had just literally slept with a bird, began to feel distressed.

What is the relationship between them?

They are neither relatives nor friends, but more than ordinary sponsors and out-of-school teenagers.

Chen Xiaoya couldn't even find a more appropriate way to address Xiao Niao - the latter didn't seem to like the name 'sister' very much, and had tactfully asked her to change it, and even said quite tolerantly that it was okay to just call her by her name.

It may seem a little hard to understand why someone doesn't want to be called "sister," but if you think about it carefully, you'll understand.

As we all know, Xiaoniao has niche interests and tends to have some special yearning for gentle and beautiful older sisters, so they are more sensitive to certain types of titles than ordinary people.

For her, being called "sister" by Chen Xiaoya, who was not related to her by blood, was even more awkward than being called "grandma" by Number Four. She was so confused that she could almost be twisted into a dough stick. It would be better to just call her by her name.

But our poor little girl obviously didn't know this. She had wild thoughts and thought that Xiaoniao was drawing a line and didn't want to be too intimate with her - so she was very reserved for a while.

"Xiao...bird," the child recited mechanically, his words clumsily and awkwardly, as if he was learning to speak for the first time. "...well, how long will it take us to get there?"

But the bird didn't think anything of it.

"Tired?" she asked, lowering her head. "We still have five or six hours to get to Taoyuan Station. We'll have to sit for quite a while."

Xiao Niao still remembers the experience of taking a train with his parents when he was a child. They bought seat tickets at that time and sat for seven or eight hours. When they got off at the station, Xiao Niao felt like he was about to fall apart.

Actually, he wasn't particularly tired, Chen Xiaoya thought, because Xiaoniao gave him most of the bed.

She slept very comfortably at night and felt almost no discomfort when she got up.

Chen Xiaoya was just... a little worried and didn't know what to do next.

Impulsively, she boarded the train to Taoyuan District, with the sole intention of rescuing her friend.

But apart from the few clues that "the telephone signal was interrupted in Taoyuan District", Chen Xiaoya had no other information, let alone any detailed plans.

She just felt that she couldn't let go no matter what.

Arqiong doesn't care.

Xiao Niao observed the little boy's expression from the side and basically guessed what the child was thinking.

She didn't say much - the child should learn a lesson on his own - but just patted Chen Xiaoya's arm gently, expressing her comfort with this action.

At least she is still here, and even if Chen Xiaoya doesn't make any mistakes, he will always have the opportunity to correct them.

The rest of the journey went smoothly and we arrived at our destination peacefully.

The station was extremely noisy, with people bustling around everywhere. You could hear all kinds of people talking and the station's broadcast in standard Mandarin accent.

It was the first time that Chen Xiaoya was immersed in a completely unfamiliar accent. She felt both curious and nervous. In He County, where she had lived since childhood, very few people spoke Mandarin. She could not fully understand what the people around her were saying. She only felt that everyone's tone of voice was very different.

As a child who grew up in a small town, she felt like she had fallen into a completely different world, with her ears filled with all kinds of new and strange sounds.

Chen Xiaoya looked back at the train parked on the track and suddenly realized that he was far away from home.

She couldn't estimate how far that distance was, but she felt that the world was so big that it was easy for people to get lost.

"Little boy, let's go."

Xiao Niao's voice came from the side.

Her hand was held up by someone, and someone's slender knuckles held her. Chen Xiaoya could feel the hidden power in the other person's palm from the touch.

"Follow closely," Xiao Niao said to her, "Don't get lost."

------

-

The sound of water drops.

Zheng Qiong woke up from a short sleep, and the surroundings were still immersed in darkness. She didn't know whether it was day or night.

How much time has passed?

She was confused and thinking - she had only been in the cage for a few days, but she had already begun to lose the most basic sense of time.

Generally speaking, the human biological clock is very dependent on light. If you stay in a dark environment for a long time, the biological clock will not work.

Zheng Qiong felt her face was tense, and her eyelids seemed to be weighed down by lead, unable to stay open for long. She hadn't drunk water for a long time, and she was extremely thirsty, with her mouth feeling as if it was filled with cotton wool.

My feet have been numb for a long time, my legs are also numb, and there is no part of my body that is in good condition.

But soon, she no longer had time to pay attention to the uncomfortable feelings in her body.

The large iron door that had been tightly closed was opened again, and several strange men walked in. Zheng Qiong squinted her eyes and looked for a while in the dim light, and recognized the man in the lead. He was the man in a white coat who drew blood from them at the beginning.

Zheng Qiong noticed a little blood on the hem of his coat.

——It was the kind of splattered blood, and it was only stained on the bottom hem of the clothes, about two or three centimeters wide.

It was as if the man had previously put on a plastic raincoat or something, and then accidentally got it stained with the blood that had just spurted out.

Zheng Qiong instinctively felt that the aura of the man in the white coat was extremely fierce.

It seemed that someone in the room recognized the man in the white coat. No one dared to speak, and everyone hid in the deepest part of the cage in fear, fearing that any sound they made would attract the other party's attention.

Zheng Qiong cursed these damn human traffickers in her heart and wished she could chop off their heads and use them as chamber pots.

Those people walked past rows of cages with flashlights, shining the lights inside from time to time. Every face illuminated by the flashlight was filled with intense fear.

Zheng Qiong felt a strong sense of unease. These strangers she had never met before seemed to be making some kind of selection.

They kept pointing at someone in the cage, and the traffickers following behind them would then open the cage and pull the chosen person out.

Most of those chosen were girls of about her age, and there were also a few ignorant little boys who looked only two or three years old.

Someone was crying quietly in the room.

Zheng Qiong's ominous premonition became stronger and stronger - and this premonition reached its peak when those people stopped in front of the cage where he was.

She saw someone pointing at her.

"This one." The man said in broken Mandarin.

Because they were close enough, Zheng Qiong could clearly see how the strangers were dressed - they were not as sinister and ugly as she had imagined, but were honest and simple, like normal people.

If you saw such people on the street, you would never guess that they would point at a person in such a flat tone, as if picking on an animal.

The people in the nearby cages were all looking at her silently, and Zheng Qiong noticed that their expressions had become much more relaxed.

Zheng Qiong knew that these people were glad that it was her who was taken away instead of themselves.

But Zheng Qiong didn't blame them at all.

Chapter 5: This is really a story about three people [k+]

Xiao Niao sometimes doesn't quite understand why his life is always so unfortunate.

It was clear that just over ten hours ago, she was sleeping soundly at home, leisurely strolling around every day, just waiting for the results of the qualifying exam to come out.

But now, she has taken a train hundreds of kilometers away, chasing after him across provinces.

Investigate human trafficking criminal groups.

"Why do I always get involved in such deadly things..." Xiao Niao couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

"I was just about to ask," the system interrupted, "Why do you always manage to make even simple tasks so spectacular..."

Xiao Niao rolled his eyes and said, "To be honest, in a romance novel with no detective elements, there are so many crimes, violence, blood, and conspiracy... Is this really normal?"

[Normal.] The system's response was unprecedentedly concise.

Cat System No. 4 was stuffed into its shoulder bag and couldn't speak, but to show its agreement, it scratched the bird's shoulder hard through the fabric.

"... Just how miserable are the days your system goes through?"

She complained to the system in her heart, but the expression on her face was very normal - after years of cooperation as a partner, Xiao Niao had become accustomed to this way of chatting while doing two things at the same time.

At this moment, she had just left the train station with Chen Xiaoya and was preparing to find a place to rest first.

Xiao Niao had much more experience in traveling than Chen Xiaoya. She quickly found a hotel on a suitable road to stay, dropped her luggage, and had a good sleep.

I slept until the evening, and when I woke up, I felt barely recovered from the fatigue of the journey.

Xiao Niao simply washed his face and took Xiaoya to the local night market to eat dry-cured noodles and soda meat.

They got off the train at a place called Taoyuan District in a certain province.

This area is a small city with several towns and counties under its jurisdiction, with a permanent population of more than 400,000. It is indeed much more lively than Bihe County, but at best it is considered a third-tier city.

But in that chaotic and opportunity-filled era, third-tier cities meant being far away and no one could control you.

Just as the name suggests, Taoyuan District does have some of the meaning of a paradise on earth - the commercial buildings in this area are extremely grand, and there are dens of debauchery everywhere.

The last news about Zheng Qiong was cut off at such a place.

The mixed noodles we ordered were brought up by the night stall owner.

Chen Xiaoya scalded the chopsticks with tea and placed them in front of Xiaoniao, but the latter just stroked the back of his neck absentmindedly, indicating that Xiaoya should not worry about him and just eat first.