In the dead of winter, a pair of ice-cold handcuffs was enough to break anyone’s spirit. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The old woman, trembling with fear, collapsed straight to the ground.

Shen Xin wasted no time. He and Royal City hauled her away.

Ding Yuwei followed, holding the child in her arms.

Once they were in the car, Shen Xin thanked Royal City for his help.

"It’s nothing."

Royal City waved a dismissive hand. He made sure to add Shen Xin on WeChat, telling him to get in touch if he ever had a case in Nanjiang.

The more friends, the more connections—a principle that held true even for police officers.

Meanwhile, Chen Chao’s team was also getting results.

As expected, they had everyone in custody.

Chen Chao’s plan was to take the suspects back to the station first, then get the children to a hospital for a check-up.

They would regroup at the precinct.

Shen Xin immediately drove back to Nanjiang.

The boy was well-behaved the whole way. Ding Yuwei tried to communicate with him, but she didn’t know sign language, and he couldn’t read well.

Just then, the boy reached out and patted Shen Xin, who was driving. He made a hand gesture and looked at him questioningly.

Shen Xin didn’t understand the gesture. After a moment, he guessed what the boy was asking. "Are you asking how the dog is?"

The boy nodded.

’Looks like he and Tiger Stripes got along well.’

"Don’t worry, he’s doing just fine."

Shen Xin really wanted to ask about the boy’s throat—whether this gang had poisoned him to make him mute.

’TV shows always had those potions that make you mute. You drink it and just like that, you can’t speak.’

But he decided against it. It probably wasn’t a good memory for the boy.

Back at the precinct, it was the first day of the Lunar New Year, but work continued as usual.

Shen Xin handed the old woman over to Sun Zhao, who had also arranged for a team to search the scrapyard and collect evidence.

Shen Xin and Ding Yuwei then took the boy to the hospital.

City First Hospital.

Even during the Lunar New Year, the hospital was still crowded with patients.

They registered for the emergency department. While they waited, Ding Yuwei bought some snacks, which the boy ate happily.

Watching him, Ding Yuwei’s heart ached all over again.

Shen Xin sighed. ’The boy is one of the lucky ones, at least his limbs are intact.’

Unlike the other two children, who both had disabilities.

But even if that was the case, the act of poisoning these children mute was, on its own, an unforgivable crime.

And that wasn’t even mentioning the trafficking.

’Devils walking among us. These traffickers really deserve to die.’

Soon, it was the boy’s turn.

When the doctor heard that he was one of the rescued child beggars, the man’s expression changed slightly. He stood up, closed the door, and began to examine the boy carefully.

The boy sat obediently, and even smiled at the doctor.

Even the doctor felt a pang of sympathy.

"Doctor, in a case like his, where he was poisoned to make him mute—can it be cured?" Shen Xin asked.

"Poisoned mute?"

The doctor looked stunned for a moment. "What do you mean by that?" he asked.

"They were intentionally made mute," Ding Yuwei added.

The doctor’s face cleared with understanding. "Oh, you’re talking about those muting potions from movies and TV shows."

As he spoke, he picked up a flashlight, checked the boy’s throat, and then said, "You’ve watched too much TV. That kind of thing doesn’t exist in real life."

"Huh?"

Shen Xin was stunned.

’If there’s no muting potion, then how did this kid become mute?’

The doctor continued his examination and explained, "As far as I know, to render someone completely mute, you’d either have to use irritants like strong acids or alkalis and pour them directly down the throat."

"That would cause permanent vocal cord damage and a loss of voice, but the process is extremely dangerous. There’s a high probability it would also damage their ability to swallow and breathe. No one would do that."

"Or, you could directly remove the vocal cords through surgery."

"As for the muting potion you mentioned, it doesn’t exist. Of course, there are supposedly some folk remedies, for example..."

As he spoke, he looked up and saw Shen Xin and Ding Yuwei staring intently at him. He stopped abruptly.

"I’m not telling you."

He said with a smile, deliberately keeping them in suspense.

Shen Xin was confused. It wasn’t just TV shows; he remembered reading about such things in all sorts of magazines as a kid.

But the man was a professional, so Shen Xin trusted his judgment.

"Then, Doctor, what’s the reason he can’t speak?" Shen Xin asked.

The doctor stood up, wrote out an order for some tests, and said, "It’s likely congenital. From what I can see, it could be a laryngeal cartilage deformity, like a laryngeal web or a congenital absence of the vocal cords. We’ll need to see the scans, but there might be a possibility of surgical correction."

He quickly filled out the order form and offered to take the boy for the tests himself.

Just then, Chen Chao called. He had also arrived with the other two children.

"Dr. Qin, could you wait a moment? There are two more children. Could you take a look at them, too?" Shen Xin said, stopping the doctor.

"Two more?"

The doctor’s expression changed.

Chen Chao walked in holding the girl, while Old Qian carried the slightly older boy on his back.

The moment they entered, the younger boy’s eyes lit up. He scrambled off the examination table and rushed over to them.

Dr. Qin saw the two new children’s disabilities at a glance. A flash of anger crossed his eyes as he hurried them over, telling them to put the children down so he could help examine them.

He couldn’t handle it all by himself, so he called another doctor over to help.

Shen Xin and the others went outside to wait.

"Captain Chen."

Shen Xin recounted what the doctor had said about the boy being congenitally mute.

"According to the doctor, that means this gang didn’t intentionally make these three children mute!"

’A new possibility occurred to Shen Xin.’

Chen Chao was silent for a moment before saying helplessly, "It’s hard to say... I’ve never actually seen a real muting potion."

"But I have heard stories. Some folk remedies, or just using strong acids and alkalis to destroy their throats."

"Frankly, making them mute is one of the milder things they do. Some have acid thrown directly in their faces... you just can’t imagine how terrifying human malice can be."

"As for making them mute, I’ve heard it’s actually quite simple. The kids they take are young. They beat them whenever they try to speak. After enough beatings, the children become too scared to talk, and over time, they effectively become mute."

"More often than not, they specifically target and abduct disabled children. Or, they buy them directly from their parents."

"If it’s the latter..."

He didn’t continue.

Shen Xin also fell silent.

’That was exactly what he had been thinking.’

Initially, Shen Xin had been focused on rescuing the three children and then helping them find their parents.

He had even thought about how to do it—using the precinct’s social media account, just like with the online reward notice, to quickly spread the word.

’He’d imagined their parents searching for them all this time, never giving up hope.’

Shen Xin had hoped to witness a tearful reunion between the children and their parents.

But if it was the latter scenario, the one Chen Chao described...

...then these children might have been willingly given up by their own parents—sold off because they were disabled.

’Then what would be the point of finding their birth parents?’

’If they were returned, they would only be abandoned all over again.’

Previously, Shen Xin had thought that the practice of maiming children to be beggars was cruel enough for modern society.

But if their own parents had sold them—giving birth to them but refusing to raise them—that was a reality even more horrifying, more cruel, than maiming them.

Ding Yuwei had clearly reached the same conclusion. Leaning against the wall, she said stubbornly, "We can’t be so pessimistic."

She turned to the three men and said, "We should try to think positively. Right now, there could be three families out there, just waiting to be reunited with their children."