Chapter 672: Go Look for Her in a Place with Water
Mo Yixuan stood up and held Yuan Yuan’s hand. As the sunlight shone on them, their figures seemed lonely and dejected.
They had come to the village, full of hope, but they didn’t manage to find anything.
“Yuan Yuan, your mother isn’t here,” Mo Yixuan said as he looked into his son’s hopeful eyes. He seemed crestfallen as he tried to tamp down his sorrow.
He hadn’t been able to sleep well these days and fretted over her safety every day. He kept telling himself that she’d be fine and was merely trying to hide from him and that she must have hated him so much that she didn’t want to be found.
He would dial her number every day but each time, he received an automated voice message that told him, ‘the number you’re trying to call cannot be reached.’
He would even send her text messages every day, even if he never received a response.
He had also hired someone to hack into her many social media accounts, including her messaging apps like QQ, WeChat, Alipay, and other applications that required internet. However, to his disappointment, the time stamp on all these apps showed that her last login was before she had gone missing.
There had been no word from her in the past 20 days.
Mo Yixuan wanted to collapse at the thought that she had been unreachable for the past 20 days. He turned to the car and laid his head against the steering wheel, but did not start the engine for some time.
As much as he didn’t want to, he had to start thinking of the worst-case scenario; something might have happened to her.
He might never be able to meet her again.
“Pa pa…” Yuan Yuan said. He tugged at his father’s clothes and pointed at an old man outside the window.
He had never seen this old man.
Yuan Yuan’s words pulled Mo Yixuan out of his reverie.
“Yuan Yuan…” he said as he pulled the child into his embrace. He had no one else but Yuan Yuan.
He looked at the direction that his child had been pointing at and saw that there was a man who looked about fifty years of age and who stood outside their car.
Mo Yixuan rolled down the window and said in confusion, “Is anything the matter?”
He was very unfamiliar with this place and had only come here once last year. He had even met a young boy who seemed to be Yan Yan’s nephew. Other than Yan Yan and her nephew, he didn’t know anyone here.
The old man nodded and dug out a pack of cigarettes, handed one stick to Mo Yixuan and made a ‘please’ gesture.
Mo Yixuan understood that the old man was waiting for him to get out of the car and he carried Yuan Yuan out of the house.
The old man looked at Yuan Yuan and even stretched out and arm to ruffle his hair. Then, he let out a long sigh.
“It is about Xiyan, isn’t it?” The old man asked and seemed a little sorrowful.
Mo Yixuan froze in silence. His complexion was pale due to his injuries but at that moment his face seemed to have paled even more.
“I’m her uncle. I know who you are, Mo Yixuan…” the uncle said.
Mo Yixuan turned to look at this elderly man in surprise. He remembered Yan Yan had once said that she still had an uncle but since her parents had pa.s.sed on, these two families hardly ever interacted.
“Uncle, have you seen Yan Yan around recently? Did she return to sweep the tombs of her parents? She would return to this place at least once every six months.
After he verified the elderly man’s ident.i.ty, Mo Yixuan grabbed the old man’s hands tightly and latched on to the elderly man’s words.
The elderly man looked at him and shook his head with resignation. He sighed and an indescribable sorrow crossed his face.
“She won’t be back,” the elderly man said. “She has gone to be with her parents, so you’ll have to find her in places that contain water such as the river, the ocean, or the lake.”