Chapter 3544: Simply an Empire

Cai Cai Zi heard Ye Chen say he wanted to stay in Australia, and subconsciously asked him: "Ye Chen, if you want to find Miss Xiao as soon as possible, shouldn't you hurry back to the country?"

Ye Chen sighed: "I came to Australia and already fell into their trap; they must have a strict organizational structure and action plan—maybe Miss Xiao is no longer in China now. If I go back now, it might be useless, but I am certain Tang Sihai is the mastermind behind all this. No matter where Miss Xiao is, as long as I find him, I can find her!"

Cai Cai Zi suddenly understood and said: "I get it, Ye Chen. In China, I will do my best to cooperate with Ruo Li—just rest assured."

"Good!"

Ye Chen's mind was in turmoil, and without saying more to Cai Cai Zi, he hung up the video call.

Feeling a coolness on his face, he reached up to touch it, only to realize tears were already streaming down his cheeks.

He quickly wiped his tears dry with his palm, then immediately pushed open the door and got out of the car.

The Ye family doesn't have many connections in Australia—basically just three hotels in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. Most of the staff are ordinary people, so trying to investigate someone like Tang Sihai would be utterly futile.

Thus, the first person Ye Chen thought of was the Chinese detective Li Yalin.

Li Yalin's criminal investigation skills are nearly unmatched. Through the operation last time in Morocco where he relocated the dead warriors, Ye Chen discovered that Li Yalin's counter-surveillance awareness is even stronger than his investigative ability.

The reason for this conclusion is that Li Yalin handled every clue from that incident with extreme cleanliness, leaving only a tiny loose end: the owner of the food factory. As long as that owner doesn't speak, no one in this lifetime will ever discover that the food factory was the key transfer point for those dead warriors.

Yet Li Yalin also cleverly lured the food factory owner into a benefit trap, turning him into a vested interest who feels guilty—so much so that he now guards the secret himself and won't let anyone know.

Such a case, although theoretically still has clues, practically has none left—pursuing it would lead to nothing.

This means that if we were to reverse the situation and have Li Yalin investigate such a case's clues, he would also find nothing.

Therefore, Ye Chen believes that whether he's looking for Tang Sihai or Miss Xiao Churan, he must get Li Yalin's help.

So he immediately created a group on WeChat, pulling in Li Yalin, his great-uncle An Chongqiu, and his second uncle An Fengfeng.

Ye Chen briefly explained the whole situation in the group, then sent his request for Li Yalin's help.

The first to reply was Ye Chen's great-uncle An Chongqiu, who said, bewildered: "Chen'er, from what you're saying, Tang Sihai these years doesn't seem to have been loyal to your father—his loyalty must lie elsewhere!"

Then he sent a voice message: "If Tang Sihai was acting on your father's orders to care for and protect you, his duty would be equivalent to that of an ancient regent entrusted with the orphaned lord—he should have protected you wholeheartedly and, after your smooth succession, loyally assisted you. How could he vanish just when you needed him most? Not only did he disappear, but he secretly plotted to make the Xiao family leave you?"

Ye Chen sighed: "Great-uncle, I think the same as you—Tang the steward's loyalty must lie with others as well."

An Chongqiu smacked his lips and said: "Tsk tsk…… This is strange! I know his character—he was absolutely loyal to your father. Your father and mother are both gone; besides being loyal to you, who else could he be loyal to? Being loyal to others makes no sense!"

Second uncle An Fengfeng sent a voice message: "Indeed illogical. Based on my understanding of Tang Sihai, he only obeys orders from his brother-in-law, at most adding the elder sister. Now that the elder sister and brother-in-law are gone, he must naturally obey Chen'er—how could he possibly scheme behind Chen'er's back?"

Even though An Chongqiu and An Fengfeng know An Chengxi best, they now dare not even entertain the idea that An Chengxi might still be alive.

Even Li Yalin, who has cracked countless cold cases his whole life, upon seeing these messages, never once considered that An Chengxi might still be alive.

After a simple analysis, he shared his thought: "I'm wondering—did Brother Changying back then know that breaking Qing would want his life, so when arranging Tang Sihai's posthumous affairs, he had already set all this up?"

An Chongqiu said: "Old Li, what you're saying is unreasonable. It's true Chen'er entering the orphanage was arranged in advance by Brother Changying, but Chen'er marrying the Xiao family girl? That could absolutely not have been Brother Changying's arrangement—so how could he have pre-arranged for Tang Sihai to secretly take Chen'er's wife behind his back?"

Li Yalin explained: "I think it's very likely he didn't simply leave Tang Sihai as a regent for Young Master Ye, but gave Tang Sihai certain authority, allowing him to secretly form a team? After all, this matter was planned with utmost precision and tight coordination—it couldn't have been done by just a few people."

"And although this team's core idea still revolves around assisting Young Master Ye, its specific actions are carried out according to Tang Sihai's subjective consciousness. When Tang Sihai believes that the Xiao family girl and her parents staying by Young Master Ye's side would indeed affect his revenge plan, he would use every means to make the Xiao family leave Young Master Ye—and that makes sense."

An Chongqiu and An Fengfeng both sent a thumbs-up emoji at the same time.

An Chongqiu said: "I think Old Li's analysis is closest to reality."

An Fengfeng said: "I also support Detective Li's analysis."

Ye Chen also felt Li Yalin's analysis was correct—his father, with far-sighted vision, left Tang Sihai to carry out a twenty-year protection mission for him; it's impossible he wouldn't have granted him autonomy. Thinking this way, Tang Sihai may have secretly built a team over the years that obeys him, a team whose existence he has told no one except himself and its members—not even Ye Chen knows.

Thus, he said: "Detective Li, now that Tang the steward has gone missing in Australia, but I estimate he hasn't left Australia yet. I need you to immediately give the AI model an order to search for Tang the steward's traces in the Earth Net system—I want to see if we can locate his movement trajectory during this period.

Because of the heavy investment, Ye Chen's Earth Net system has already been deployed across major airports, ports, and train stations worldwide.

All automatic vending machines around the world have been purchased by Ye family's various shell companies globally; the surveillance data from these vending machines is uploaded in real time to the vending machine operators' servers, and while being backed up on the servers, it is also synchronized to the AI model.

Every day, the AI model receives surveillance information from hundreds of millions of travelers worldwide; the model automatically records the facial captures from the vending machines, then automatically categorizes hundreds of millions of people based on different facial features.

Although it doesn't know who each person is surnamed or named, it remembers the appearance of every person it sees, then converts their facial features into data—each facial feature has its own database. Whenever another camera captures that facial feature, if the data matches, it will also categorize the newly captured information into that facial feature's database.

In this way, it naturally grasps a person's entire movement pattern.

For example, when the system first captured Zhang Jin Ling Airport, recognized Zhang San, thereafter whenever Zhang San appears at Yan Jing, Tokyo, New York, London, Paris, or even Afghan airports, the system will capture him and automatically aggregate the subsequent data.

Thus, Zhang San's activity trajectory will be recorded.

With several billion people worldwide, such massive information collection, storage, and processing requires astonishing computational power and storage space—but fortunately, Ye Chen's AI model has the world's strongest computing power, so it can freely collect, freely store, and freely analyze and compute.

Hundreds of millions of travelers' information are recorded one by one by the AI model—though many people's data may just be stored and never retrieved in a lifetime, once needed, it can definitely be found.

Unless, he never uses public transportation.

But what Ye Chen didn't expect was: inside the AI model, there was actually no matching information for Tang Sihai.

And Ye Chen can be certain: all airports in Australia have their own vending machine equipment.

This also means Tang Sihai truly never used public transportation!

Ye Chen suddenly felt a bit flustered, because he never imagined Tang Sihai had such an unfathomable ability—entering Australia, he didn't just leave no real identity entry record, but even his own image data was left nowhere!

He himself had used fake IDs to go to other countries before, but in most cases, he still had to take a plane normally through customs—once on the plane, once through the terminal, it's impossible not to leave visual information.

Moreover, some vending machines have been deliberately placed by those with ulterior motives at customs and airport security checkpoints—everyone passing through here must remove hats and masks, so facial information will inevitably be collected.

The AI model having no information on Tang Sihai proves he definitely didn't walk through the airport terminal.

Li Yalin instantly felt the difficulty.

He asked Ye Chen: "Young Master Ye, has Madam Ye traveled abroad recently?"

"Recently?" Ye Chen said: "Recently we went to the Maldives together around Spring Festival."

Li Yalin asked again: "When you went to the Maldives, did you separate? Or put more bluntly, could Tang Sihai have secretly met Madam Ye in the Maldives?"

"Impossible." Ye Chen said: "During that time, I and Churan were inseparable, and moreover, a mercenary attack occurred on the island then—Tang the steward absolutely could not have been on the island.", 【56】 After saying that, Ye Chen asked again: "Detective Li, why are you asking this?"

After saying that, Ye Chen asked again: "Why does Captain Li ask like that?"

Li Yalin said: "First, I personally believe that if he could persuade Madam Ye to make such a major decision to leave Young Master Ye, he must have met her in person, and certainly in a very safe and private place, where he reasoned with her and appealed to her emotions—otherwise, he couldn't have convinced her."

"Second, if Madam Ye has only recently traveled abroad once, and this time was entirely with Young Master Ye, then it proves Tang Sihai's in-person persuasion of Madam Ye did not happen abroad, but in China!"

"Given that Tang Sihai has just gone missing again in Australia, this indicates two possibilities: first, Tang Sihai never left China after his previous disappearance; second, Tang Sihai had already left China when he disappeared, but to persuade Madam Ye, he secretly returned to the country."

"Regardless of which situation is true, it shows this Tang Sihai is far more formidable than we imagined."

"Because, since our ground network system was completed, we have never captured any of his information."

"If he is the first case, then this time he left China for Australia, he achieved complete concealment of his whereabouts;"

"If it is the second case, then his first departure from China to an unknown country, second return from that unknown country to China, and third departure from China to Australia, all achieved complete concealment of his whereabouts."

"Besides, let's talk about Mrs. Ye's family. If he could even take Mrs. Ye and her family, who obviously left clear traces of their lives, out of China without leaving a trace, that would be even more unfathomable!"

"Having such ability must mean there is an extremely vast and powerful backing force providing convenience in all aspects, and this backing force might be even stronger than we imagined, or even stronger than us."

An Chongqiu interrupted him: "Is it really that exaggerated, Old Li? Nowadays, Chen'er's industry, combined with the Ye and An families' industries, we dare not say it's number one in the world, but it should be second only to the Breaking Qing Society and the Rothschild family. Tang Sihai is merely the Ye family's butler—how could he possibly have strength greater than ours?"

Li Yalin said: "Chongqiu, this is like seeing a fresh, freshly chewed piece of chewing gum on the moon. We see it and think not about which idiot lacks manners enough to spit gum on the moon, but about what organization could have the capability to send people to the moon and also allow them to chew and spit gum in that ultra-high vacuum environment—this is too terrifying."

"According to what I've seen, I personally feel that the strength behind Tang Sihai is no longer something a team can describe—it's simply an empire!"