Chapter 3571

After returning to Jin Ling and the Zijin Mountain Villa, Lin Waner never stepped outside again.

Although the school curriculum was demanding, Lin Waner had grown weary of school life.

She had originally gone to Jin Ling University mainly to find and get close to Ye Chen; after Ye Chen was found and she shared all her secrets with him, school became optional for her.

After returning from Japan, her mood sank into a depressive phase, feeling she no longer had the energy to maintain a university student's identity, so she asked Qiu Ying Shan to help notify the school, citing illness requiring rest, and submitted a leave-of-absence application to Jin Ling University.

With Qiu Ying Shan's influence, the school leadership naturally approved it immediately, so Lin Waner remained confined to Zijin Mountain Villa without going out.

In the blink of an eye, several days had passed.

During these days, Ye Chen was much like Lin Waner—he had been staying at the half-mountain villa of the Xiangxieli Hot Springs and never left the premises.

During this time, he had also been attempting to enter closed-door cultivation, but because his mind was too burdened, the results were not good.

He hoped Li A Lin and Lin Waner would bring him good news, but Li A Lin's reported progress was consistently unoptimistic, and Lin Waner had not sent any news at all.

During Ye Chen's closed-door cultivation period, Li A Lin had already flown from Australia to China.

In Australia, he failed to track down Tang Sihai's whereabouts; although he knew that with full effort he could surely find clues, it was like looking for a needle in the ocean.

Looking for a needle in the ocean—the needle is in the ocean, not that it cannot be found, but the cost is too great, even beyond human capability.

To avoid wasting time, he decided to abandon Australia and use China as the entry point.

Solving a case is essentially a screening process; the difficulty lies in the size of the screening base.

Any case is committed by people; putting it bluntly, if one were to check all eight billion people on Earth, one would certainly find the person sought.

But the problem is, no one possesses such screening capability.

Not to mention eight billion people—even eight hundred thousand would be difficult to screen thoroughly; one can only do a few rounds of coarse then fine screening. If the coarse screening misses nothing, it's fine, but once the coarse screening lets something slip, nearly all subsequent work is wasted.

Li A Lin, after many years in the police force, is not capable of solving every case—some cases simply cannot be solved no matter how hard one investigates.

After spending several days searching and finding no clues related to Tang Sihai, he realized that Tang Sihai's defensive measures, as well as the professional level of his team behind him, were extremely high; continuing like this, even a year and a half might yield no progress.

Thus, he returned to China and met Su Ruoli.

With Su Ruoli's help, he brought the He family and the ninjas of the Ito family to investigate the clues regarding the departure of Xiao Churan and her family of three.

If searching for Tang Sihai in Australia is like looking for a small boat in the vast ocean, then searching for Xiao Churan and her family of three in China is like looking for a specific mung bean in a pile of mung beans.

Li A Lin felt immense pressure, yet he could only check vehicle by vehicle.

Moreover, this process would be extremely long, so he also reminded Ye Chen to prepare for a prolonged struggle.

However, not everything is without opportunity; he simultaneously fed the image data of Tang Sihai and Xiao Churan's family of three into an AI model, combined with the Earth Network system, and deployed surveillance worldwide—whenever these four individuals appear within the Earth Network's monitoring range, he would receive immediate notification.

Although Ye Chen was anxious, he knew such matters cannot be rushed, so he could only accept reality.

As for Lin Waner's side, he did not press further, because he himself had not expected that Lin Waner, whose routine was limited to school and home, could help him find Xiao Churan, who had long since left Jin Ling.

……

At this moment, Xiao Churan's family was still drifting on the South Pacific.

Sailing on the open ocean is extremely boring, but fortunately, the ship's hardware is very comfortable, and the food and drink are almost all world-class ingredients, allowing Xiao Changkun and Ma Lan to indulge fully.

After drifting for several more days, Xiao Churan's family finally arrived at a small island of less than twenty square kilometers located in the Windward Islands of French Polynesia.

This island had already been sold to a Silicon Valley tycoon seven or eight years earlier, who had invested heavily in its reconstruction, turning it into a private island with excellent hardware facilities.

The island not only has its own dock, capable of berthing medium-sized yachts and seaplanes, but also a private small airport, with a runway nearly two kilometers long, capable of taking off light jet business aircraft and fixed-wing planes.

Xiao Churan's family, while in international waters, left the cargo ship, transferred to a seaplane that took off from the sea, and arrived at this island.

Before landing, as the plane flew over the entire island, Ma Lan and Xiao Changkun stared in disbelief.

Visible to the naked eye, the island was extraordinary—having a dock was expected, but it even had its own aircraft runway.

At this moment, a medium-sized yacht was docked at the pier, and at the end of the runway, a twin-engine turboprop business aircraft manufactured by Hawker Beechcraft, the King Air 350, was parked.

After modification, this aircraft has a maximum range of nearly five thousand kilometers, capable of flying nonstop from here to Hawaii Island, and with one refueling, it can reach Los Angeles.

On the north side of the island, there is a luxurious residence worth tens of millions of dollars, built facing the sea—opening the door leads directly to the beach and the green-tinted sea, with scenery comparable to the Maldives and in no way inferior.

This luxurious residence is the one prepared by An Cheng Xi for Xiao Churan's family.

To achieve maximum isolation from the outside world, the island is equipped with photovoltaic, wind, and tidal power generation, paired with large-scale energy storage, enabling complete self-sufficiency in electricity; ample power can also drive the island's seawater desalination system, solving domestic water needs, so water and electricity require no external supply.

The island is several hundred kilometers away from the cargo ship's shipping route, making resupply relatively convenient—only needing to meet the cargo ship en route to receive substantial supplies.

When the seaplane glided across the water until it came to a smooth stop at the dock, Xiao Changkun and Ma Lan were already eager to jump out of the cabin.

Several servants respectfully approached; the lead, a middle-aged Chinese man, said warmly: "Mr. Xiao, Ms. Ma, welcome to the island. I am your housekeeper, Ning Xiaolong. From now on, all your meals and daily living on this island will be managed by me. You may call me Xiao Ning."

Xiao Changkun gazed at the luxurious yacht on the other side of the dock and couldn't help but ask: "Xiao Ning, is this yacht also arranged by my good son-in-law?"

Ning Xiaolong had already received instructions, so he smiled and said: "That's correct, Mr. Xiao—not only this yacht, but the aircraft on the runway as well was arranged by Mr. Ye. The yacht is for your and Ms. Ma's sea outings, and the aircraft is for emergency situations."

Xiao Changkun excitedly rubbed his hands, but soon his conscience struck him, and he muttered: "Just how much money has Ye Chen defrauded? If caught, wouldn't he face execution by firing squad?"