There was a pet hospital nearby.
One of those chain places.
They weren't closed for the day yet, so Shen Xin took Evil Bully over.
He asked about the price. Even the online group-buy neutering package cost 588.
"This cat's pretty fierce," said the female vet who checked them in. She was quite pretty in profile.
"A stray. The king of our neighborhood." Shen Xin tapped the carrier again.
"Not surprising. This is a Qilin Cat, after all."
Her name tag read Zhao Rui. Smiling, she poked at Evil Bully through the bars of the carrier. Her eyes narrowed, and with a smile that could cut, she said, "You'll be on your best behavior soon enough."
Since he was a stray, Zhao Rui gave him a twenty-percent discount.
That saved him enough for two meals.
Shen Xin happily paid. Zhao Rui didn't waste any time and immediately called over an experienced male assistant.
With a wrap of a towel, they had Evil Bully firmly restrained.
Then came the Elizabethan collar.
The moment that thing was on, Evil Bully's cries became even more pathetic.
Zhao Rui was used to it and went about shaving his fur and drawing blood.
The entire examination room echoed with Evil Bully's shrill, miserable howls.
Shen Xin just stood by, secretly gloating.
'Serves you right for scratching me.'
'But since you're Da Mei's husband, once you're missing your balls, I'll take care of you for the rest of your life.'
Evil Bully's cries tapered off. He seemed to realize that struggling was useless, and he suddenly turned his head to look at Shen Xin.
He just stared, his gaze fixed, and let out a series of whimpers.
Shen Xin realized that without an affinity meter, it was really hard to decipher the look in his eyes.
But he could guess it was probably a plea for help.
What Shen Xin hadn't expected was that, in the next moment, an icon appeared above Evil Bully's head again.
1 bar!
Shen Xin froze. 'Weird,' he thought. 'I dragged Evil Bully here to be neutered against his will and let Dr. Zhao "torture" him right in front of me. He should hate my guts. Why did his affinity go up instead?'
'Could it be…'
Shen Xin suddenly thought of a possibility.
'Submission!'
'He's an animal, after all. Fear and awe of humans, and perhaps a 'might makes right' mentality, could lead him to seek closeness and develop a fondness for them.'
"Dr. Zhao."
Shen Xin suddenly stopped Zhao Rui. "Can you play along with me for a minute? I'm planning on taking this cat home to keep."
Zhao Rui had just finished drawing blood. She immediately understood what Shen Xin was up to and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Cats are pretty forgetful, you know. You really don't need to put on a show."
But she glanced at Evil Bully and changed her tune. "Then again, it doesn't matter. This is a dragon li. They're definitely smarter and hold more grudges than your average house cat."
Then she asked Shen Xin what he wanted her to do.
Naturally, Shen Xin would play the role of the savior, rescuing Evil Bully from his fiery predicament.
Shen Xin stepped forward and took Evil Bully.
This time, the cat was very docile, clinging tightly to Shen Xin's arm.
Shen Xin put him back in the carrier, then said, "In a minute, I'll put the carrier outside. You guys can just bring him back in. Just act like you've snatched him back. I'll leave right away and come back to pick him up later."
'He still needs to be neutered.'
'But at least this way, I've 'saved' him. It's just that the 'enemy' is too vicious and snatched him back.'
Zhao Rui, still not knowing whether to laugh or cry, nodded in agreement.
Shen Xin carried the carrier out, making a point to mutter a few words to Evil Bully, "See how fierce they are? I'm the good guy, right?"
Who knows if Evil Bully actually understood, but the icon above his head shot up by 2 bars in one go.
3 bars!
'This guy must be really terrified.'
'Plan successful.'
Shen Xin announced, "I'm going to get the car," and placed the carrier next to the entrance.
As he got in his car, they were already making their move.
Faintly, he could hear Evil Bully's shrill, miserable howls again.
Shen Xin had been planning to go to the ER for a rabies shot, but just as he got on the road, he received a call from the station.
He was told to hurry to Lanfeng Garden for backup. Someone had reported a missing child.
A missing child was no small matter.
Shen Xin forgot all about the hospital and sped toward Lanfeng Garden.
It was another resettlement complex: a mixed bag of residents with property management that was more for show than anything else.
The person who made the report was in Unit 32.
It was an old woman. She said that after dinner at 5:30 PM, she had taken her grandson downstairs to play in the community square.
She figured that since her grandson was over five years old and they were surrounded by old neighbors in the complex, she let her guard down and got caught up gossiping.
But when she turned her head back, the boy was gone.
Now the child's parents were back, and the whole family was frantic. The mother and her mother-in-law had almost come to blows.
By the time Shen Xin arrived, the investigation was already underway.
Almost everyone from the station who was on duty, and even those who hadn't clocked out yet, had shown up.
Dong Yueming, the captain of the Public Security Squadron, was in charge of the scene, checking the surveillance footage.
Shen Xin ran into Li Dongsheng and quickly joined him in searching the perimeter.
Li Dongsheng looked grim and exhausted. As they walked, he vented to Shen Xin about several bizarre calls they'd had that day.
The weirdest one was a call from a young girl who reported animal abuse—someone had used glue to stick two dogs' butts together.
Li Dongsheng had wanted to roll his eyes when he took the call.
When he arrived on the scene, it was just as he'd suspected: the two dogs were in the middle of doing the indescribable.
Shen Xin didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
In any case, he had encountered his share of strange emergency calls, too.
Just then, a voice came over the radio. They'd questioned another child, who said they had been playing hide-and-seek with the boy, Chen Zixuan.
But they couldn't find where Chen Zixuan had hidden, so they just gave up and went home.
Shen Xin and Li Dongsheng exchanged a look and immediately headed back.
The good news was that they had a lead.
The bad news was that they still couldn't rule out the possibility that the child had wandered off or been abducted.
"He probably wasn't abducted."
Li Dongsheng reasoned that the complex was full of elderly people, most of whom had moved from the same village and all knew each other. If they saw someone trying to abduct a child, they would definitely intervene.
"Most importantly, child abduction cases are much rarer these days."
"And it's rare for it to happen inside a residential complex. It's usually at train stations, malls, or other crowded places."
Shen Xin thought so, too. It was more likely the kid had just found a really good hiding spot and was still foolishly waiting for the others to find him.
The two of them began focusing their search on hidden, narrow places.
But after just a few minutes of searching, a voice came over the radio, announcing that the child had been found.
Shen Xin and Li Dongsheng hurried over.
In the northwest corner of the complex, against the perimeter wall, there was a bank of package lockers.
Someone had complained that couriers were always leaving packages in the lockers, which incurred high fees. Over time, the couriers stopped using them, and they fell into disuse. The locker company just hadn't gotten around to removing them.
The lockers were installed flush against the side wall of the community center, leaving a gap of about twenty to thirty centimeters.
When Shen Xin arrived, the little troublemaker was stuck in that very gap, looking pitifully at the crowd.
No one knew when he'd gotten stuck. The spot was out of the way, so he hadn't been discovered.
"Thank goodness," Li Dongsheng said, sighing in relief.
Shen Xin nodded.
The worst fear was that the child had been abducted. That would have been the absolute worst outcome.
The child was found, but he was stuck. Now all they could do was call the fire department to come and rescue him.
While they waited for the firefighters, Shen Xin looked at the helpless child in the gap. A thought struck him, and he suddenly remembered Wu Jiawang.
'Could Wu Jiawang's case have been something similar? Playing with friends, or maybe by himself, he got accidentally stuck somewhere, was never found, and was just… trapped there until he died?'