The director felt that if he stayed with Yuan Meng and Yang Liu any longer, he might suffocate, so he quickly fled the scene.
Yuan Meng felt really bored and just stood there in a daze. Her blank look was really heart - wrenching.
"Sister Mengmeng, don't be afraid. I'll protect you!"
Sure enough, the big "sucker" nephew was bewitched by Yuan Meng's dazed look. He thought she was scared, so he quickly came to show his "loyalty".
Yuan Meng gave Yuan Xingcheng a sidelong glance, and there was a hint of disdain in her eyes involuntarily.
"Xingcheng... Look at that photographer over there."
Yuan Xingcheng followed the direction Yuan Meng pointed at. The photographer was all muscle, and there must be an eight - pack on his abdomen.
"Xingcheng, you're not as strong as the photographer. You should believe that the photographer will protect us!"
Xiang Bo was also there when Yuan Xingcheng said he would protect Yuan Meng. He originally wanted to recommend himself to protect everyone... but after seeing the photographer...
"What, do you also need the photographer to protect you?" Mo Lin saw clearly what Xiang Bo did - he wanted to recommend himself but then closed his mouth after seeing the photographer. It would be a pity not to tease Xiang Bo at such a moment.
Xiang Bo glared at Mo Lin fiercely, snorted, and then ignored him.
"Right!" Yuan Meng turned to look at Xiang Bo and Mo Lin.
"Have you found any clues?"
Xiang Bo and Mo Lin shook their heads, and then they both looked at the place where Yang Liu fell.
"There's only this one corpse where Yang Liu fell. It looks like a female corpse. We haven't found anything else. How about you guys?"
Yuan Meng and Yuan Xingcheng were a bit silent. After a while, Yuan Xingcheng slowly told them what they had seen.
"The truth of this story might be a bit cruel. We went to the house at the far left end. There's a cellar there.
I found a skeleton in the cellar, and a female ghost scared me. The female ghost is not the same as the woman we saw in that red building. It should be the soul of the skeleton. However, both the hanged female corpse and the female ghost have one thing in common..."
"Their clothes don't look like those of the people in this village."
Yuan Meng helped Yuan Xingcheng finish the last sentence, the one that revealed the truth.
"They moved here? But what kind of disputes could have happened to cause their deaths... Wait... So you're guessing, human traffickers!"
Mo Lin frowned as soon as Yuan Meng said the last sentence. Then Xiang Bo also reacted. All four of them were a bit silent.
The topic of human traffickers doesn't need people to deliberately empathize. After all, a person's life is only a few decades, and everyone's experiences are very different during these decades. But one thing in common is that no one's life is smooth - sailing.
Human traffickers casually ruin other people's lives for some dirty profits. This is a sin that no one can tolerate.
Yuan Meng and Yuan Xingcheng had already searched the left side. Now there were only three houses on the right that hadn't been searched for evidence.
It was getting late, so the four of them decided to act separately. Xiang Bo would search one house, Mo Lin one, and Yuan Meng and Yuan Xingcheng one.
These three houses represented three families, and there must be the family of human traffickers among them.
Yuan Meng and Yuan Xingcheng slowly walked into the house. The family was very ordinary. There was only a table and a few chairs in the house, and there was nothing that didn't seem to belong to this village. Everything was so normal, but the more normal it was, the more something seemed off.
As the scriptwriter, Yuan Meng, with the omniscient perspective, of course knew that this seemingly most normal family was the ultimate big boss, the mastermind behind the human - trafficking incidents in the village.
She stopped Yuan Xingcheng who was about to leave. "I always feel something's wrong. Isn't this room too clean?"
Yuan Meng couldn't directly tell the truth, so she could only solve the case by constantly hinting to Yuan Xingcheng.
"I also feel something's wrong. As we've been searching all the way, even the rooms without clues would have something off about them. But this room looks too right. It's as if this family has never communicated with other villagers in this village."
Yuan Xingcheng was indeed the nephew who had watched Yuan Meng handle cases for many years. His sensitivity to the key clues of the case was no less than that of an ordinary detective.
"Let's look for it. Maybe there are some clues."
The two of them started to search everywhere for clues. The key clue was an account book that recorded the trafficking transactions of the human traffickers. As long as they found it, they could prove all their speculations.
As the author, Yuan Meng of course knew where the account book was. But to maintain her persona, she still needed to look for it symbolically, and then casually guide Yuan Xingcheng to find the script, making it seamless.
The two of them searched carefully, in the vegetable baskets, in the big pickle jars, under the tables and chairs...
But in the end, they didn't find any clues.
"Do you think... we might be wrong? This room really does seem very clean." After the search, Yuan Xingcheng couldn't help but start to doubt if there were really any clues.
"Um... Could it be in some places we can't see?" Yuan Meng mentioned casually, but actually she was subtly reminding Yuan Xingcheng.
After hearing this, Yuan Xingcheng seriously thought about it. A few minutes later, he strode towards the wall.
"Come and look together, Sister Mengmeng. Maybe the clue is inside the wall!"
As Yuan Meng was looking, she praised her nephew in her heart. He really hadn't wasted all those years of learning from her. He was really quick to catch on at the critical moment!
The two of them groped on the wall. Many parts of the wall were covered with dust, but there was one place that was very clean, which clearly showed that someone had often touched it.
"Found it, here!" Yuan Xingcheng called Yuan Meng over. He pressed that brick, and sure enough, there was a space inside. There was an account book in it, exactly the one recording the human - trafficking transactions.
Yuan Xingcheng opened the account book. Sure enough, it clearly recorded who was abducted, who they were sold to, and how much money was made from the sales.
"This... This is just... I sincerely hope that all human traffickers in the world will be punished on the spot. How can they ignore others' safety and ruin other people's lives just for their own self - interest! They will get their just deserts!"