Seeing that Xie Chiyuan was still there, the third son belatedly realized what was going on: "Are you worried about my eldest brother?"
"Um."
Xie Chiyuan admitted directly, "The place he went to this time is a bit dangerous, and I'm worried about him."
The third child said "Oh".
He chewed on a bamboo stick, swung his legs, and casually advised, "Don't worry so much about my brother. Even if you die, my brother won't die."
Although the words of comfort sounded a bit off, Xie Chiyuan was still comforted.
He also realized that Sanzai's words were mostly quite accurate.
So he coaxed the three children to continue saying auspicious words.
The third kid got annoyed after only three sentences. He glared at Xie Chiyuan and asked coldly, "Do you want to fight?"
Xie Chiyuan chuckled and patted his head: "Even if I wanted to fight, I wouldn't fight you."
This baby is a national treasure; beating a national treasure is not allowed.
With the auspicious words from the third child, Xie Chiyuan's heart was somewhat at ease.
He continued to deal with the matter at hand and patiently waited for Yu An to send back a message.
In the small town.
Yu An and the children had already walked onto the street. The street looked messy, but it didn't seem like it hadn't been visited by anyone for ten years.
They had walked a few steps down the street when suddenly they saw the first person.
They are people, not zombies.
The group all stopped and looked at the person walking towards them.
"Hey, who are you all? Why are there so many of you all at once?"
The man walking towards them looked on with surprise at their appearance.
He was wearing a casual floral shirt and shorts, and holding a large handmade fan in his hand.
Yu An looked at him warily.
The man had already walked over, fanning himself, and appeared completely non-threatening.
"I'm asking you a question, why aren't you saying anything?"
After being questioned again by the man, Yu An finally spoke.
"We're here to find someone."
He then countered directly, "I'm here to see my dad. His surname is Gu, and his name is Gu An'nan. Have you met him before?"
After the question was asked, the man in the floral shirt seemed to slow down the frequency of his fanning.
He looked Yu An up and down, and after a long while, shook his head: "I don't have any impression of this name."
Yu An changed the subject: "What about Qin Sang? Have you met Qin Sang?"
The man in the floral shirt fanned himself vigorously this time, his eyes darting around as he continued shaking his head: "I can't remember. I came here for vacation, not to make friends."
"I can't remember any of what you're saying."
The man's accent was clearly visible as he waved his fan and pointed behind him: "Why don't you ask someone else? Maybe they'll know. My mind hasn't been working very well these past few years."
As the man pointed, Yu An noticed that there were quite a few people behind him.
They were all dressed casually, like people on vacation.
Yu An exchanged a glance with the tiger cub beside him, and the next second, the group continued walking forward.
These people all seemed relaxed, and they started greeting Yu An even before he got close.
In response to Yu An's question, an elderly woman in a white linen dress replied, "Qin Sang has gone out and won't be here for the next few days. Since you are her family, please stay here for now and wait for her to return."
Yu An frowned.
He didn't impersonate Qin Sang's relatives; he only said he was looking for his father and Qin Sang.
Several warm-hearted people arranged accommodation for them at Qin Sang's house.
Qin Sang's house is very big, so big that it can be considered as two homes.
“If you stay here, she can see you as soon as she comes back. Isn’t that convenient?”
The elderly woman who arranged the accommodations watched them move in and even brought them some food.
"We don't lock the doors here. If you need anything, just come to us."
"good."
Yu An did not refuse the other party's kindness.
After everyone had dispersed, Yu An looked at Qi Zai. Qi Zai understood and went over to close the door.
Bazai had already sensed the strangeness of this place when he first encountered the first person.
He stayed hidden in his older brother's pocket the whole way, remaining quiet and making no sound.
"Big brother, I'll go and watch the door for you."
Bazai nervously pressed himself against the crack in the door, acting as their doorman.
With Bazai guarding the door, Yu An took the opportunity to talk with the children.
Are we inside a barrier?
Everything that was happening in the town, and the people who appeared in front of them, seemed unreal.
Unreal... This means they may have entered the space of some superhuman or aberrant being.
Xiao Jiu's special ability is to induce hallucinations, and he is the most qualified to speak on this: "I can't sense whether there are any special abilities here."
“I’m pretty sure those people from earlier weren’t one of us.”
In other words, they are not aberrations.
That's so weird.
The scene here can only be described as eerie.
Yu An tried calling Xie Chiyuan, but as expected, there was no signal and the phone couldn't make any calls at all.
"Just wait and see."
Unable to find the cause of the anomaly, they could only continue to wait.
"We're waiting for Qin Sang to come back."
Anyway, these people say that Qin Sang will definitely be back in the next couple of days.
They'll stay here for two days, which will give them a good chance to explore what's going on here.
Time passed little by little.
They carefully searched Qin Sang's house, but apart from finding a few documents, they couldn't find anything else.
This time, the document included a photo of Qin Sang's face.
After seeing the ID photo, Xiao Jiu carefully compared it.
"Big brother!"
He jumped onto his older brother's shoulder, extended a mycelium, and pointed to the front of his face in the ID photo: "You two do look a bit alike!"
“Look, there’s a small mole near your earlobe.”
Jiu Zai tried his best to prove his discovery, but Yu An didn't take it too seriously.
Such small moles are very common on humans, especially in the same location, and many people will bump into them.
"Ninth Child, this doesn't mean anything."
Yu An patiently told Jiu Zai, "Go and look again to see if you can find anything else."
Upon hearing this, Jiu Zai had no choice but to put down the photo.
After searching for a while, they found many medicine bottles.
The medicine bottle had no packaging on it, and it contained various pills. Judging from the dosage, someone had been taking them regularly.
On the two medicine bottles with the labels still attached, Yu An saw a string of English markings.
Bazai saw it too, scratched his head, and tried to spell it out in pinyin.
But after trying for several minutes, he still couldn't spell out a single sound.
Yu An: "..."
Yu An sincerely said, "Son, let's start with kindergarten English."
Every time he wavered about whether to send the kids to kindergarten, Ba Zai proved with his actions that he really needed to go to kindergarten for further training.
Bazai grumbled indignantly, "What kind of English is this? I think it's just random letters! It's gibberish!"
Yu An calmly translated the string of "garbled text".
"It's a medication for controlling mental state; this bottle is for treating anxiety."
"This bottle—"
Yu An looked at the medicine bottle, her voice gradually softening: "It's also for treating mental illness."
According to the information Xie Chiyuan provided, Qin Sang had no record of being ill.
But why are there so many medicines where she lives?
After checking the house inside and out several times, Yu An found nothing suspicious.
Night falls quickly in the small town.
They only searched Qin Sang's house and hadn't had time to check on the others yet.
The moon was already hanging in the sky.
Seven asked his older brother, "Big brother, are we going out tonight?"
"Not going out."