Chapter 31

Chapter 31 Chapter 31: Premeditated Revenge.

Outskirts of Beijiang City.

Time passed second by second. The originally noisy warehouse gradually fell silent. Their hands and feet were tightly bound, and the poor blood circulation made their limbs slowly go numb. Several of them were cold and frightened. The pink-haired girl who had drunk more than half a cup of the drugged beverage earlier was now lowering her eyelids, drowsy and on the verge of falling asleep.

Her bruised knees were pressed tightly together. The girl in the school uniform whispered: “I… I need to use the bathroom.”

She hadn’t spoken a single word the entire time. At this moment, she was clearly really desperate, her cheeks flushed red. Her head was lowered, staring at the ground as if she wanted to bore a hole into it.

Teenage boys and girls were at the age where they were most sensitive and concerned about gender. Hearing this, Xu Hao and Gao Zixuan exchanged a glance but didn’t respond. They simply wriggled around like worms and turned over, deliberately facing the wall.

Only the boy with earrings did not. Not only did he deliberately let his gaze fall on the school-uniform girl’s exposed calves that were not covered by her skirt, he even mocked: “Such a good student.”

“Even after being kidnapped, she still remembers to ask permission.”

“Too bad there’s no teacher here, and no proper environment for you to choose. Bathroom? Sure, no one’s stopping you—but go somewhere far away. Don’t dirty my place.”

“Li Ming!” Gao Zixuan, the bespectacled boy, was shocked that his friend would say something so vicious. “What are you saying? We’re all classmates.”

Li Ming curled his lips. “Who wants to be classmates with that kind of poor trash?”

“You don’t know, do you? The VIP tickets for today’s amusement park trip were begged for by her, clinging shamelessly to Yuan Qian. Carrying bags, handing water—she was like a maid.”

Yuan Qian—the pink-haired girl who had been crying the most—was so dizzy she couldn’t think straight. She had no energy to pay attention to what others were saying and only mumbled a couple of sounds when her name was called.

This made Li Ming even more arrogant.

“See? Yuan Qian agrees too.”

“Song An’an, you—”

“Is anyone there?” Without warning, Xu Hao, who had been carefully behaving since being captured, suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs. “Is anyone there! Is anyone there!”

Li Ming’s expression changed instantly. He hissed urgently in a low voice: “Are you crazy?”

Creak——

As if someone had been waiting outside all along, the rusty warehouse door was soon opened.

Xu Hao immediately shut his mouth, stopping his hoarse shouting. If Li Ming could see his expression right now, he would find it clearly written on his face: “Getting beaten is better than listening to your bullshit.”

Footsteps—light.

It should be the female kidnapper leading the group.

Still facing the wall obediently and not moving, Xu Hao secretly felt relieved, but didn’t forget to explain: “Song An’an wants to use the bathroom.”

If the kidnappers’ target was ransom, then Song An’an was purely an innocent victim dragged into this. The warehouse only had one floor, and if the criminals were going to stay overnight, they would definitely need to live inside as well—they probably wouldn’t want it getting too dirty.

At this point, whoever could escape, even one person, was still worth it.

However, the female kidnapper’s footsteps did not come toward them. A few seconds later, Li Ming cried out in pain: “Hey—why are you grabbing my hair?!”

“You got the wrong person. The one who was causing trouble just now was Xu Hao.”

The answer he received was a crisp slap.

“Smack!”

Li Ming, who had barely even been scolded in his life, let alone beaten, felt his face burn with pain. He instinctively wanted to flare up, but after seeing the other party’s cold, gloomy eyes, he forcibly swallowed it back down.

But the other party did not let him go.

Instead, they dragged him out by his collar like a dead pig, his body scraping across the dusty ground and leaving a long trail.

Li Ming finally panicked, flailing his legs desperately like a dehydrated fish.

“Where are you taking me?! What exactly do you want to do?!”

“Let me go, let me go.”

“My parents are very rich—way richer than theirs. You can name any price you want.”

“Please… I’m begging you…”

All bluster masking cowardice. The unknown fear made Li Ming’s final words almost break into sobs. Faced with the prey’s submission, the female kidnapper said nothing at all, not even changing the rhythm of her breathing.

Before the warehouse door closed again, Xu Hao’s ears caught a faint male voice: “Sister Hong.”

“Qiangzi is back.”

A few minutes later, confirming there was no more sound outside, Xu Hao slowly shuffled to the wall, painfully sat himself up, and looked around. He discovered that Song An’an now had a jacket placed over her legs.

The edges were pale in color, clearly washed many times.

Beside her, Gao Zixuan had buried his head like an ostrich. After being pushed several times, he finally lifted his red, tear-filled eyes and said through chattering teeth: “…She’s not wearing a mask.”

“She also took off her baseball cap.”

If they truly intended to let them go, how could the kidnappers possibly expose their faces? Weren’t they afraid that afterward the victims would report them to the police and they would spend their lives as fugitives?

The only explanation was that the other side had never intended to let them leave alive.

Realizing this as well, Xu Hao’s mind buzzed with dizziness.

“Maybe… we can first figure out where we are,” Song An’an said timidly in the silence of the room. “If there’s a chance, we should try to send the correct distress signal to the outside world.”

Sunday afternoon.

Some people had long-lost lazy sleep-ins, eating and drinking their fill while binge-watching dramas and novels on their beds. Others, receiving a paycheck barely worth calling overtime pay, were miserably stuck at their desks.

Yet the mysterious algorithm-driven system pushed the same paid advertisement to both groups.

It was a low-quality marketing video. The first few seconds were filled with a stiff AI-generated voice, paired with classic movie clips and fast “handsome guy, pretty girl” summary narration. Most people swiped away instantly, so few made it past the beginning to see the later completely mismatched footage.

But “few” did not mean “none.” Soon, a bored netizen curiously reposted it to a forum:

【Experts, please help—at 36 seconds in, what movie is this? I’m begging for the title or resource, may you live a long and peaceful life!】

Clicking in, inside a dim and cramped room, a punk-styled boy was bound hand and foot. His face was bruised and swollen as he knelt on the ground, tears and mucus streaming down his face as he recited something.

plink.

A drop of blood fell, smearing the white paper in front of him—printed with “lines”—with a streak of red. The camera zoomed in, slightly shaky, and through fleeting gaps one could barely make out a few meaningless words: “Leiao,” “City,” “Wrong,” and the extremely ordinary name “Li Guojian.”

Probably because the filming technique was extremely amateur, comments gradually increased:

【What garbage movie is this? The audio is terrible. At least add subtitles.】

【The shaky camera is making me nauseous.】

【Found-footage style? I remember horror films a few years ago loved this. Damn, don’t tell me a ghost is gonna jump out at the end!】

【AAAAAA thank you above comment, I just moved my tablet away.】

【Skimmed to the end, nothing there. The quality looks like it was filmed on a phone—some college student’s assignment maybe? But honestly, ignoring the script, the acting is pretty good.】

【Pretty good +1】

【Strong immersion, I’m starting to feel pain.】

【Weird… no expert has solved this yet?】

In this era, even a random “deng deng deng deng” could be identified as a song. Yet a nearly three-minute video packed with details actually managed to circulate for over half an hour.

Challenge-driven curiosity was sparked. More and more netizens joined in, and the content even spread back onto other platforms, attracting various film and TV bloggers to jump in.

In the end, the one who noticed something strange was an ordinary private account:

【Leiao? Leiao New City? Isn’t that the unfinished building on the east side of Beijiang? I checked—back then, the main developer of that land was a man named Li Guojian.】

The crowd of onlookers was stunned:

【What does that mean? It’s not a movie, it’s a vlog?】

【No way people are actually in that unfinished building…】

【Location Beijiang. Anyone want to form a team to go check it out?】

【So scary. The person in the video looks exactly like my classmate. His name is Li Ming.】

【The more I think about it, the scarier it gets.】

【Call the police! Hurry and call the police!】

【Look at how scared you all are. Maybe it’s just AI face-swapping.】

“Brother He, Brother Wang,” Song Xiaotong, who had just returned from the restroom, knocked on the meeting room door and raised her phone. “A friend sent me a video. Can you take a look?”

The signals from all three children’s phones had disappeared inside the unfinished building. Bureau Chief Zhao had already sent support teams toward Wutong Street, leaving He Linfeng and Wang Lai to hold the rear command.

Taking the “lead” Song Xiaotong handed over, He Linfeng quickly noticed the authenticity of the blood droplets. Frowning, he enlarged a screenshot from the video and then projected it onto the screen.

Before he could even ask, Mrs. Li suddenly collapsed sideways, her vision going dark: “Mingming! That’s my Mingming! Which heartless bastard dared to hit my son! I’ll fight him to the death!”

Jian Qing subconsciously glanced at his wristwatch.

2:00 p.m. exactly.

There were still sixty minutes left before the kidnappers’ earliest murder deadline.

3, 9, 12… one was clearly missing. Through contact investigations with teachers, classmates, and parents, it was basically confirmed that “6” was a girl named Yuan Qian.

Li Ming, Yuan Qian, Gao Zixuan—the unfinished building on Wutong Street.

Jian Qing quickly caught the key point: “The Leiao New City purchase list.”

“Check the property owners of the unfinished building.”

Two voices overlapped, their meanings not conflicting. After the words fell, all the parents except Jian Qing showed awkward, stiff expressions.

Once again in tacit understanding with the young man, He Linfeng raised an eyebrow: “So it’s a premeditated revenge.”

“You all really know how to keep your mouths shut.”

“You didn’t think the kidnappers would dare kill people—you thought they were just extorting money?”

Li Guojian: …

Once the list of missing children came out, he had more or less guessed what was going on. But family scandals shouldn’t be made public, and the kidnappers only seemed to be “bluffing.” Since the police had already located the phones, whether he confessed or hid the truth wouldn’t affect Mingming’s rescue anyway.

“Revenge? What revenge? Because of Leiao New City?” Suddenly being lectured by a young man with no power or influence, Li Guojian felt his pride hurt and stubbornly retorted, “President Jian’s younger brother was also kidnapped. Officer He, care to explain that?”

“What is there to explain?”

Before the person being questioned could even speak, the cold-eyed young man looked over: “After I rejected investment, didn’t you buy news articles smearing the Jian Corporation?”

“This is a police station.”

“If everyone is unwilling to cooperate, and is determined to delay Mr. Jian from rescuing people, I also wouldn’t mind troubling Consultant He to take everyone to the interrogation room.”

“Anyway…” Expressionless, the young man pushed up his glasses. His pitch-black pupils were almost inorganic:

“Xu Hao is currently the safest child.”