At this moment Aunt Song felt as if her body had been plunged into an icehouse.
She had never imagined at all that her young miss would vanish right under her nose.
She checked the whole room at once.
And the check made it worse still.
On the bed she found the inflatable doll; in the bathroom she found the timed contraptions.
All of this meant that this disappearance had been carefully prepared.
She pressed her handheld terminal at once: "Attention, the whole villa: go to the highest state of emergency at once. The young miss is missing. Search the whole villa at once!"
Almost in an instant, every security team in the villa was on edge.
The young miss was gone?
In the villa's monitoring room,
the security chief was studying the recording screens before him.
At this point the door was pushed open.
"Have you found her!" Aunt Song came in hurriedly and asked anxiously.
"Not yet. From last night until now, there's no footage of the young miss leaving the villa!" The security chief's forehead was beaded with sweat, but he still had not found any lead at all.
The team members searching were very tense now too.
"Stop! Enlarge the whole picture for me." Aunt Song suddenly called a halt and pointed at one of the camera feeds.
A team member at once began enlarging this picture.
This camera feed showed the view outside the balcony of the room the young miss lived in.
Out of consideration for the young miss's privacy,
there were no surveillance devices of any kind inside the young miss's room in the villa.
All the other surveillance devices were outside the room.
In this footage before them, no figure of Miss Nannan leaving could be seen.
But Aunt Song said with unshakable certainty, "This picture is fake!"
"Ah? This picture is fake? How could that be!" the team member said incredulously.
Aunt Song pointed at a detail in the picture: "Enlarge this!"
The team member did so at once.
In this picture, a little bug could be seen, sitting there unmoving.
"What's wrong with this?" the team member said, puzzled.
"Even if a bug like this sits still, it can't hold exactly this posture. That means this footage is frozen right now. If you don't believe me, play it further!" Aunt Song said gravely.
The team member at once began playing the footage.
About ten-odd seconds later,
the bug jumped instantly a few centimeters away.
At this moment even the security chief could be sure this footage had a problem.
Without ceremony he slapped this team member of his on the head: "What's wrong with you? Not noticing the bug moving oddly is one thing. But this footage skipped ten-odd seconds outright, and you didn't even notice."
The team member said, aggrieved, "It's because there's nothing else in this footage to measure against; who would've thought the bug would jump such a little way…"
"Still talking? I'm telling you: you're docked a year's pay!" The security chief glared at his team member.
The team member did not dare speak.
Though he had been docked a year's pay,
it should be understood that their year's pay before had come to twenty or thirty years of an ordinary guard's, so holding them to strict standards was perfectly understandable.
"Then what do we do now? Should we report this to Madam!" The security chief looked gravely at Aunt Song.
Aunt Song thought for a second; three minutes had now passed since she found the young miss missing.
"I'll report this to Madam. You go right now, this minute, and find where the young miss is. I'm telling you. If anything happens to the young miss, then for us it won't be anything so simple as losing our jobs and paying a fine," Aunt Song said gravely.
The security chief nodded and said nothing to this.
If they paid that much to hire them, then if something went wrong, one could imagine the price to be paid behind it.
If it didn't kill them, it would flay them.
Aunt Song walked out of the monitoring room and found a corner with no one about.
In the whole villa, she alone had a channel to contact Madam.
She took a deep breath and steadied her feelings.
At once she dialed the contact Madam had left her before.
She still remembered that when Madam gave her this contact, she had stressed
that unless it was a matter of the utmost importance, she must never contact her.
And now the young miss's disappearance was without doubt a very serious matter.
The seconds passed one by one.
For Aunt Song, every second was very tense.
In truth Aunt Song was not worried about her job, nor afraid Madam would punish her.
These years, Madam had been very good to her, and the young miss was like her own child in her eyes.
The young miss was very good and sensible; there was no one in the villa who did not love this little sprite.
If anything happened to the young miss, then whatever price Aunt Song paid, she could never atone for it.
The call connected.
"What is it?" That familiar voice came from the other end; it could be heard to be somewhat tired.
"Madam, something has happened at home. The young miss is missing."
One short sentence told the whole thing.
After a second of quiet,
the other end showed neither rage nor anxiety.
Instead the voice, tired a moment before, became extraordinarily calm: "When did this happen? How long has she been missing; did she go off by herself, or was she taken?"
"She should have disappeared after eight yesterday. She has been missing over twenty-four hours. As for whether she was taken or left on her own, we can't determine that yet. But we've found the way she went. The camera outside the young miss's room balcony was tampered with; she must have gone out that way. I've already had people look into it. There should be a result very soon."
Just at this moment,
along the corridor, that security chief came running over in a hurry.
"Madam, I think there's a result. Please wait a moment."
"Don't hang up; I'm listening," Chu Xuan said.
"What have you found?" Aunt Song looked at the security chief.
The security chief raised his hand and showed several images, saying, "By our methods, we've captured some images from the mountain ring road outside. Every camera on the mountain ring road was tampered with, very discreetly, often for only a few seconds. But we used the dashcams of some vehicles passing this way, and found some traces. After eight last night, some vehicles' dashcams caught the figure of a little girl with a backpack leaving on a skateboard. The clips aren't very clear; they didn't even catch her face. But by the time and her build, it can be confirmed it should be the young miss. Besides that, we searched the whole city's surveillance network. Considering that the other party used some kind of jamming, we checked whether any footage had frozen. At last we found it. It happened at the airport. And according to statements from airport staff, at that time a woman university student and a girl should have gone into the airport together, but there's nothing at all in the airport's surveillance. That means some method erased their movements from the airport's surveillance. Surveillance can be erased, but the memories of the people involved are still there."
"A woman university student? Have you found out who she is?" Aunt Song seized on what might be a very important lead among all this.
"This university student, from witnesses' descriptions, we've already found her identity. She should be a student at the Aalborg Federation Third College, named Jiang Yumeng. She's an ordinary girl student; one could even say she's had a hard time of it. Because her mother is very seriously ill, and treatment needs a great deal of money. And as chance would have it, right at this juncture her mother's treatment made progress; the money and everything needed all came through."
These words made almost every lead point to this Jiang Yumeng.
"And most important of all, from almost this point in time on, all of this Jiang Yumeng's movements vanish! Just like the young miss's, as if erased from the surveillance." The security chief caught his breath and went on: "From all this alone, it can basically be concluded that the young miss shouldn't be in any danger. Because this time the young miss left on her own."
Hearing the young miss was in no danger let Aunt Song breathe a sigh of relief too, and every nerve in her body eased a little.
But in her heart she still dared not relax her guard.
So long as the young miss had not been found for a single minute, she dared not relax her guard.
Out there, the young miss could meet danger at any moment.
So the young miss had to be found as soon as possible.
"Since the young miss went to the airport, they must have bought plane tickets. Have you found out their flight?" Aunt Song asked.
"We've found the flight. It was to the Fierce Dragon Kingdom!" the security chief said.
The Fierce Dragon Kingdom.
Aunt Song was startled at heart.
Others might not know it, but she in fact knew clearly that her Madam was one of the Fierce Dragon Kingdom's leaders.
"And after she flew to the Fierce Dragon Kingdom? Have you found out where the young miss went!" Aunt Song asked further.
"After she flew to the Fierce Dragon Kingdom, the young miss bought tour tickets for two, the destination the Dragon Palace Starport! Going by the time, she should be at the Dragon Palace Starport now. If it involves the Dragon Palace Starport, it'll be very hard for us to keep tracking with our authority!" the security chief said, somewhat at a loss.
"I see." Aunt Song looked at the other end of the call.
"Madam, you know the situation now too. How would you like the rest handled?"
"I know what's happened. Your investigation on that end can stop. I'll handle what comes next myself," Chu Xuan said.
Aunt Song still wanted to say something more.
But the call had already been cut.
At the other end of the call,
Chu Xuan, who had been in a meeting, was now rubbing her temples.
At first she had been somewhat worried.
But on learning that her daughter had come to the Fierce Dragon Kingdom, and had even gone up to the Dragon Palace Starport,
the worry in her heart had in fact lessened a great deal.
Anywhere else she could not be sure of her daughter's safety.
But if it was the Dragon Palace Starport, there would be no problem at all.
And this way she had worked out why her daughter had vanished and turned up at the Dragon Palace Starport.
How clever her daughter was, Chu Xuan naturally knew very well.
So she could be sure
that this was no kidnapping by anyone,
but wholly a running away from home directed and acted by her daughter herself.
A five-year-old girl had actually pulled off such a complete plan to run away from home, and turned up at the Dragon Palace Starport too.
"This girl really doesn't make things easy for me." Chu Xuan thought it over.
Whom should she send to handle this?
Anyone too familiar to her certainly would not do, and better not too many people either.
Otherwise this secret of hers might be exposed.
In the end Chu Xuan decided to go and find her herself.
Anyway, taking a little time to go back to the Dragon Palace Starport would not hold up her affairs much.
Having worked this out,
Chu Xuan looked at everyone at the interrupted meeting table and said earnestly, "We'll stop this meeting here for now. When you go back, do what you ought to do. I'll check on it later. This is a stage of rapid development for our Fierce Dragon Kingdom's military. Though we won the second campaign against the Dax Empire, and seized the Frey civilization's territory too, from here on we also have to bear the Dax Empire's pressure on our own. So any problem may become a big problem for our Fierce Dragon Kingdom. In this stage of development, any time wasted may become a bullet fired at us on the battlefield!"
Having given her instructions,
Chu Xuan without a word had a flagship of hers return to the Dragon Palace Starport right away.
She sat in the captain's chair, her feelings somewhat complicated.
That her own daughter could do such a thing:
she could in fact roughly guess what her daughter's aim was.
Her daughter had always been very curious about her own origins.
And with a character almost exactly like her own, her daughter would surely find every way to get to the bottom of this.
So her coming to the Dragon Palace Starport this time was most likely to get to the bottom of just what her origins were.
Chu Xuan sank into thought.
For her own part, she in fact did not much want her daughter's existence exposed.
For she had not yet worked out at all how to handle what came after.
But she also knew very well this was very unfair to her daughter.
She was just like other ordinary children, hoping to have a whole family, hoping to know where her father was.
What was wrong with that?
So this had become the point Chu Xuan was torn over now.
Even if she found Nannan this time and took her back,
who could promise there would not be a next time?
She was five now, but her cleverness was already fully a match for an adult's.
Keeping it hidden forever was, all things said, somewhat unfitting after all.
But… if she truly came clean,
then what about the Fierce Dragon Emperor?
At the thought of these things, Chu Xuan felt her head was about to explode.
This was far more unbearable than having her fight a hard battle.
And what Chu Xuan did not know at all was
that this daughter of hers was at this very moment sitting at one table with her father, eating.
Had this picture been sent back, Chu Xuan herself would probably have been greatly astonished!