By the end of December, all the accounting had concluded, and each household had received their share of food and money, many families beginning to discuss marriage arrangents amidst the lively atmosphere.
Li Xianglu and his brothers, Qin Xi and Qin Zhen, also received quite a bit of food and money this year. As there was no one at ho, Mr. Li directly entrusted Li Dafu to store Qin Xi’s and Qin Zhen’s food at his house, only then did he start preparing the items needed for the journey with peace of mind.
The most important were the food tickets. Mr. Li had borrowed so from Mr. Lan, and including what had been saved over the past two or three months, amassed over sixty jin in food tickets. Mr. Li still had two hundred yuan on him. Fortify the journey even if the ho is poor, thus Mr. Li took out another four hundred yuan to carry with him.
Ard with two letters of introduction, they went to the county to obtain certifications, and after informing the team leader, the four of them set off together.
At this ti, the largest county town in the Northern Guanzhong had not yet established a train service to the Provincial City; the only mode of transportation available was the long-distance bus.
So, to travel to another province one must first take a long-distance bus to the Provincial City, then take a train from there.
Buying a long-distance bus ticket did not require a letter of introduction. A bus ticket from the county to the Provincial City cost 6 yuan and took over 7 hours.
By the ti the four of them boarded the long-distance bus to the Provincial City, it was already 10 o’clock in the morning.
Tickets were not very scarce; it was Mr. Lan’s security guard who had queued up early in the morning to purchase them—first bus of the day, an old-fashioned large public bus, red and green, without heating. Li Xianglu and Mr. Li sat together, with Qin Xi and Qin Zhen in front of them.
Qin Zhen sat by the window, glued to it, looking outside incessantly, extrely excited, while Qin Xi beside him shook his head helplessly. When would his brother grow up?
Li Xianglu was also curiously looking outside non-stop. Although they called it a long-distance bus, it was essentially just the old large buses, but with double rows of seats on both sides, and it didn’t take long to fill up with passengers.
There were two uniford workers on the bus, one driver and one ticket conductor. After instructing everyone to sit down properly, the bus slowly started up.
Exiting the bus station, the bus ventured onto the smooth roadway. Houses could be seen on both sides of the street, but soon the journey beca bumpy and residential houses vanished, replaced by a continuous stretch of Yellow Earth Slope.
Many were making their first bus trip to the Provincial City. After one or two hours, their initial excitent faded, and many began to doze off.
Mr. Li, sitting on the outside, kept nodding off, clearly struggling to stay awake. Li Xianglu, seeing this, said with a hint of distress: "Grandpa, you move to the inside to sleep, I’ll read for a while on the outside."
Grandpa Li saw his granddaughter full of energy, smiled, made way for her to move out, then settled himself in the inside seat to sleep.
Li Xianglu took out a book from her bag and began to read listlessly. Qin Xi turned his head for a quick glance then turned back to close his eyes and sleep. The journey ahead was still long. Although it was said to be seven hours, these long-distance buses always broke down halfway or couldn’t maintain speed. It usually took ten hours to arrive. However, as they had tickets for the night train, there was no worry about missing the connection.
Li Xianglu read her book and as she did, her eyes began to droop from sheer drowsiness, eventually hugging her book and dozing off.
In a drowsy state, Li Xianglu heard a child’s sobbing nearby and a woman’s quiet scolding.
Bleary-eyed, Li Xianglu looked over and saw a couple in their thirties next to her, the woman cradling a child in her arms, constantly trying to soothe him. The child, appearing sowhat restless, struggled incessantly.
The person behind Li Xianglu then advised: "Feed the child so milk, he might be hungry."
The couple looked stunned at first, then the woman said with embarrassnt: "He’s been weaned already. He ate so biscuits soaked in water at the station before we left, don’t know why he’s fussing now, sorry for the trouble." Her cheeks, already tinged with a compos rose from the high altitude, betrayed her awkwardness.
The woman behind Li Xianglu was a middle-aged woman in her forties. Seeing the situation, she laughed understandingly and said, "It’s okay, when you’re away from ho, no one will mind."
Li Xianglu also showed a gracious smile. Just then, she heard a child murmuring and crying out, "Mommy, I want my mommy."
Hearing this, Li Xianglu frowned, feeling sothing was off.
The woman quickly patted the child a few tis, and then a man beside her took out a glass baby bottle and started giving the child water.
Strangely enough, after the child took a few sips, he stopped fussing and seed to fall asleep.
Li Xianglu was puzzled and carefully glanced at the child while pretending to stand and reach for sothing on the shelf.
The child looked over a year old, his cheeks flushed with an abnormal redness, as if he had a fever. Li Xianglu tensed, and thinking back to when the child was calling for his mommy only made her more anxious.
Could this be a case of child trafficking?
In Northern Guanzhong, people commonly refer to their mothers as "Mom" or "Mummy," and fathers are called "Daddy," even those from the county towns do the sa.
People here are different from those in many big cities and, even those from urban areas like to speak the local dialect and seem sowhat xenophobic.
The woman who had spoken earlier had a local accent, particularly thick, and her highland-flushed cheeks revealed her as a born-and-raised local. But what about that child? Even in a daze, when he called for his mommy, it was in a standard Mandarin. Could this really be a kidnap by traffickers?
Li Xianglu’s mind was racing with thoughts. She rembered in her previous life during college, she and her classmates had participated in a signature campaign nad "Imdiate Death Penalty for Child Traffickers."
The incident had started with a five-year-old boy playing outside his ho shop who was kidnapped. Only fifteen minutes later, the parents realized and gave chase. The child had been drugged and taken away by two traffickers on a motorcycle.
Furthermore, people from a nearby shop had spotted the two abductors’ faces.
At that ti, internet communication was very advanced and the parents relatively young, and they utilised the internet to search for their child, constantly sending out ssages.
Unexpectedly, this drove the kidnappers to desperation. Three days later, in a river in another county, the child’s body was found.
Everyone was furious at that ti, and nearly ten thousand people attended the funeral.
Following this, an initiative was launched – "Imdiate Death Penalty for Child Traffickers" – calling for the nation to seriously crack down on human trafficking, to strengthen the law, and to deter traffickers from proceeding with such cris.
While participating in the campaign, Li Xianglu and her classmates had learned many characteristics of traffickers, how they transferred and transported children, as well as so basic codes they used.
Now, Li Xianglu began to carefully observe the two adults.
The man appeared to be in his forties, with a crew cut, wearing a woolen coat, while the woman was oddly dressed in a thick, black, rural cotton-padded jacket. Their attire did not seem to match that of a couple.
PS: One more Chapter to co, stay tuned.
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