"In the 21st year of the Jing Dynasty, the four-year-old twin daughters of the Shu family in Hejiazhuang and Hedong disappeared while playing at the entrance of the village. After reporting the case, there was no result. There is no news about the two girls..."
"In the 19th year of the Jing lunar calendar, the six-year-old child of Xue Yongren, the owner of Haocheng pawnshop, disappeared while playing outside the shop. After that, he reported the case and searched the whole city to no avail. So far, there is no news..."
"In the 23rd year of the Jing Dynasty, in Shilipu, Wuyang City, the six-year-old son of Xin Yamen's family disappeared while playing hide-and-seek with his friends..."
"..."
After Shen Hao classified the first batch of backlogged cases from various cities into categories, he discovered that apart from those trivial matters, the cases that really deserved further investigation were actually missing cases, and moreover missing children.
Among the more than 100 backlog cases submitted, there were 13 cases of missing children!
This was an extremely horrifying number, which naturally attracted Shen Hao's attention.
"Transfer the original files of these thirteen missing cases, immediately."
"Yes, Commander-in-Chief."
If the person above says a word, the person below will run away and break their legs.
These cases are ordinary local cases, and the files are not stored in Xuanqing Weili, but are stored in the filing rooms of local government offices. But Shen Hao has spoken, do the local government offices below still dare not to cooperate? Nowadays, who doesn’t know that there is a great evil star named Shen Hao in Xuanqing Guard in Licheng?
However, even though everyone from all walks of life worked as quickly as possible, it still took most of the day to collect the files of these thirteen missing cases from the filing rooms in each city.
However...the thickness of these files is obviously different.
They are all missing cases, and they are all missing children, but some files are as thick as two inches, containing detailed records and investigation and evidence collection during the case handling process, etc., while some files are very thin, basically It simply recorded the incident and the confessions of the parties involved, and the investigation process was almost zero.
The reason is simply different from the background of these parties: the deeper the background, the harder the yamen investigates, whereas if they are not, they will be perfunctory or even ignore it completely.
this is the truth.
With so many cases throughout the year, the yamen's manpower is limited, so it is natural to give priority to those cases with clear clues that are easy to handle. For a disappearance case with vague clues, unless your family background is strong enough, who would handle such a thankless case?
Therefore, as time goes by, the backlog of cases increases.
In fact, the backlog is not just missing cases, but the first batch of reported backlogs this time contains many such cases. It seems that the parents of these children are more anxious.
After thinking about it for a while, Shen Hao looked at the sky outside. At about the time of Shenchu, he got up and left the apartment, turned around and walked to the place where Chen Tianwen was next to him.
"Mr. Chen Qi, are you still busy?"
"Haha, you are just busy and busy. Is Mr. Shen Qi looking for something to do with me?"
"Well, I have something to ask Mr. Chen Qi."
"Oh? Then sit down and talk."
After sitting down, Shen Hao didn't hesitate and went straight to the topic: "I wonder how much Mr. Chen Qi knows about Yaxing?"
"Yaxing?" Chen Tianwen said with a smile: "Has Mr. Shen Qi been eyeing those guys from Yaxing?"
"Haha, no, Mr. Chen Qi misunderstood, but there is a case in hand that involves the issue of missing persons, so I would like to ask Mr. Chen Qi about the delivery channels of Yaxing."
"Are you suspecting that Yaxing is involved in unfair human trafficking?"
"We can't talk about it yet. Let's get to know the situation first. You also know that I used to deal with grassroots cases, and I don't know much about these local methods."
"Okay, I'll tell you. But if you really want to get down to some details, I think you'd better go to the dental shop to find out for yourself."
"Thank you very much, Mr. Chen Qi."
Chen Tianwen waved his hand and introduced: "Yaxing is the only human trafficking point permitted by the imperial court. It mainly targets foreign slaves, criminals who have been demoted as slaves, or the families of criminal officials.
I don’t need to introduce you to the criminals and their families, right? You should know everything.
In addition, because there is no war now, it is said that foreign slaves mainly come from major slave hunting companies. Behind those companies are the top dignitaries in the country. These people control almost 90% of the foreign slave market.
What I just mentioned are all formal channels. As for the gray ones, as far as I know, they are mainly from private traffickers. For example, in places affected by disasters, if they can't feed their children, they will go to the dental store to sign the paperwork and sell the children to give them a way to survive. Or if you are short of money, you can take your slaves to a dental shop and resell them.
The state's control over dental shops is still very strict, with many restrictions and every transaction they make must be reported to the local government for filing.
That's all I know. "
Shen Hao continued to ask: "So there are no loopholes in the rules of Laiya? Now the slave business is the most profitable business, can they sit still?"
"What can I do if I can't sit still? As I said before, the biggest beneficiaries now are the slave trading companies, all of them are people with great hands and eyes. In order to maintain their current market share, they have been staring at the only entrance and exit of Yahang. Who can If you dare to break the rules, you will ruin their jobs, and Yahang doesn’t dare to mess with the power behind these businesses.”
Saying this, Shen Hao somewhat understood: Although Yaxing was beautiful on the surface, it was actually controlled by the top slave firms and became a tool for making money for a few powerful people. And this money-making tool happens to be built within the framework of “rules”. Anyone who dares to break the rules will be punished by those powerful people with vested interests.
So the dental row is much cleaner than it looks.
Although Chen Tianwen was curious about which disappearance case Shen Hao wanted to investigate, he couldn't ask more questions since Shen Hao didn't elaborate. However, Chen Tianwen was very proud of the fact that Shen Hao came to him when he was in trouble, and he was secretly happy that his previous statement had had an effect.
Unlike other people who were jealous of the Black Flag Camp, Chen Tianwen looked deeper. He read the firm attitude towards the Black Flag Camp and had a premonition that this would be an emerging force that was very likely to rise. When the time comes, how can the icing on the cake be as good as the current intersection at the end of the world? From now on, Shen Hao, a role model in the Black Flag Camp, will rise rapidly. Will he also be able to get some glory?
...
After coming out of Chen Tianwen's apartment, Shen Hao returned to his place and took out the files again and went through them. His plan is to set up a supervision team to specifically target these missing children cases accumulated over the years, and form a long-term action.
Even if one out of a hundred backlogged cases can be solved, the response among the people will be absolutely remarkable.
So what Shen Hao has to do now is to select a suitable and potentially solved case from the thirteen missing children cases in his hand as a breakthrough.
But as he watched, Shen Hao's brows suddenly wrinkled. It had not been discovered before that several of the missing children in these thirteen cases actually had the same birthday and month.
"On the ninth day of the ninth lunar month in the thirteenth year of the Jing lunar calendar...two? What a coincidence."
"On the second day of February in the seventeenth year of the Jing lunar calendar... three times, is this also a coincidence?"
Shen Hao, who was born in criminal investigation, doesn't believe in the word "coincidence" the most, especially the so-called "coincidences" that appear in clusters.
