Chapter 640: This Is the First Time I

At this moment, Yu Dazhang's attention was entirely on the documents before him.

The enslavement case has further developments!

No, "further developments" isn't accurate.

It's a case within a case.

He mentally calculated the timeline.

When he investigated the enslavement case in N Province, those twelve intellectually disabled women had already been abducted.

Why hadn't they been discovered back then?

Yu Dazhang recalled and finally concluded: there were too many victims.

At the time, the rescued intellectually disabled individuals couldn't be counted in a hurry, so before the screening was complete, he had already returned to Songhai.

Was the lead broken?

In the end, his brow furrowed tightly.

Bad—this opponent is another group of brainy types, and extremely decisive.

Upon discovering someone on this line had gone missing, they immediately severed all contact, leaving no chance for anyone to trace them.

Such suspects are usually the hardest to track down.

Female, under 35 years old, starting price one hundred thousand, nationwide acquisition…

Yu Dazhang memorized each key piece of information.

He had long formed the habit in his investigations: first memorize the critical points of the case, forming fragmented memories.

When these key points recombine at a specific moment, they might very well become an entirely new lead.

Then Yu Dazhang opened the case files from S Province.

Compared to official case records, these materials emphasized narrative, detailing the entire case from start to finish—including time, location, and investigation process.

He had heard of this collective disappearance case involving deaf-mute female students before, but didn't know the details.

After reading it from beginning to end, Yu Dazhang's brow tightened even more.

Another broken lead?

Damn, so both collective disappearance cases in other provinces were dead ends.

This is just making things hard for me.

Everyone's investigative methods are about the same—you have no leads, so you just hand it off to someone else.

You're putting too much faith in me… Yu Dazhang suddenly felt nails beneath his seat.

Right—he couldn't sit still.

What he most wanted to do right now was stand up immediately and bolt out the door.

As long as he safely returned to the sub-bureau, no one could touch him; the sub-bureau leadership would protect him.

But…

He couldn't do something like that.

He sighed and opened the local case files again.

It's still our Songhai… Yu Dazhang muttered to himself.

Although it was also a collective disappearance case, only seven people vanished across both incidents combined, indicating far better public security than the other two provinces.

Through the city's SkyNet surveillance, both groups of girls were last seen disappearing within residential compounds.

Although not the same compound, these two compounds were very similar.

First, both compounds were old neighborhoods without access control—anyone could enter and exit freely.

Second, neither compound had installed surveillance cameras.

Clearly, these two compounds had been carefully selected and scouted by the perpetrator, specifically to avoid SkyNet monitoring and increase their success rate.

This is an old hand… Yu Dazhang judged internally.

He also concluded the perpetrator in Songhai was a human trafficker.

Methods differed, but the pattern was the same—the ultimate goal was always abduction.

Then he reviewed the chat logs extracted by the tech department from the social apps of those girls.

From the content, these logs were clearly carefully filtered—irrelevant conversations had been removed, leaving only key information related to the case.

One exchange was particularly interesting.

【Girl: I'm hungry. Can you buy me a Sha County meal? Twenty's enough.】

【Other: Sent 88.】

【Girl: I saw a pair of pants—only 98. Could you…?】

【Other: Sent 188.】

【Girl: My Android phone is too slow. I want to switch to an iPhone…】

【Other: Send a voice message. Let's talk details.】

And then nothing more.