Chapter 30: The Missing Daughter

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In City Y, Yang Cheng had lost count of how many times he had gone to the Public Security Bureau.

Yet this time, too, he returned disappointed.

When he reached his front door, the hand holding his key was trembling.

The moment he opened the door, a tiny figure came running toward him.

“Grandpa! Where’s Mommy?”

She wrapped her arms around Yang Cheng’s leg, her large, bright black eyes blinking with innocent curiosity.

Yang Cheng instinctively avoided his granddaughter’s gaze and forced a smile onto his face.

“Mommy’s still at work. She’s earning money to buy Lingling some treats. Let’s not disturb her, all right?”

He picked up his granddaughter and comforted her in a gentle voice.

Yang Lingling nodded, still bewildered. “Then I want to call Mommy. I want to video-chat with her!”

She had not seen her mother for several days. She missed her terribly. At night, she even felt frightened.

A middle-aged woman hurried out of the kitchen carrying a small plate of fruit.

“Lingling, come eat some fruit!”

The child’s attention was quickly drawn away.

Holding his granddaughter, Yang Cheng brought her to the little table that belonged exclusively to her.

Watching her innocent, unknowing expression, he turned away and quietly wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes.

Seeing him like that, Xu Ying knew that their daughter had still not been found.

She did not dare mention it in front of the child. She could only endure her grief, accompany her granddaughter through dinner, watch cartoons with her for a while, and finally coax her to sleep.

Before bedtime, Lingling began crying again.

“Mommy! I want Mommy! Waaaah…”

Suppressing her heartache, Xu Ying held her granddaughter tightly until the child cried herself exhausted and gradually fell asleep.

She stayed beside Lingling until the girl was sleeping soundly, then draped Weiwei’s clothes over her.

Sensing her mother’s familiar scent, Lingling moved her little hand but did not wake. Only then did Xu Ying quietly climb out of bed.

In the living room, Yang Cheng sat silently on the sofa.

Xu Ying came out of the bedroom. Seeing her husband, she could not help turning her head away as she fought back her tears.

It had only been a few days, yet more than half the hair on his head had already turned white.

Without realizing it, she herself had gained plenty of gray hairs as well.

With Lingling still asleep, the two elderly parents simply sat there in the living room.

“What did the Public Security Bureau say?” Xu Ying could not help asking.

“It’s been several days now. Whether she’s alive or dead, they have to give us an answer.”

Her perfectly healthy daughter had been inside the house, sleeping beside her granddaughter, when she suddenly vanished.

They had reported it to the police, but the surveillance footage revealed nothing.

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The police had even called in Lingling’s biological father for questioning, but he had no apparent motive or suspicion attached to him.

How could a perfectly good person simply disappear without a trace?

Then, just today, the police station had suddenly called the elderly couple and summoned Yang Cheng there. That was when they told him that his daughter might have gone into some kind of game.

Yang Cheng had to hear those words several times before he could barely understand them.

The police had also said that, one day later, they too would enter that game.

But even then, they would not be able to see their daughter.

Because everyone entered the game at a different time, it was impossible for them to appear in the same place.

Once inside, with billions of people scattered across it, how were they supposed to find anyone?

On the way home, Yang Cheng had thought for a long time, yet still did not know how to tell his wife.

When he saw the bloodshot eyes, dark circles, and visibly aged face she wore, Yang Cheng was filled with guilt. He was useless. He could not find their daughter, and had only made his wife worry as well.

More importantly, Lingling was still so young. How were they supposed to explain it to her?

She might never see her mother again.

“Say something!” Xu Ying urged, forcing her voice lower. “They summoned you there. They must have told you something.”

Under his wife’s insistence, Yang Cheng opened and closed his mouth several times.

“They said Weiwei was very likely taken by aliens.”

“What?”

Xu Ying heard the words, yet seemed not to comprehend them.

Now that he had begun, Yang Cheng told her everything.

“You know—the survival game they talked about on television yesterday, the one where they told everyone to memorize the manual.”

Only then did Xu Ying remember. There had indeed been something like that. Someone had even called her, asking whether everyone in the household was at home and warning them not to go outside. They had been instructed to hold their family members’ hands at exactly eight the next morning.

But at the time, all her thoughts had been consumed by her daughter’s disappearance. She had paid little attention.

Even if the end of the world really came, what difference would it make? Could it bring her daughter back?

But now her husband was saying that their daughter had entered the game ahead of them?

“Then… how are we supposed to find Weiwei?” Their whole family had to be together.

She rose and began pacing back and forth.

Afraid of waking her granddaughter, she kept her footsteps extremely light.

Seeing his wife like this, Yang Cheng felt miserable too.

“According to the police, some people have already come out of that game. One of them saw our Weiwei.”

From what the police had said, those people were players who had participated in the closed beta. Each player was placed in a separate area, but they could still add one another as friends and chat.

One of them had done business with Yang Baiwei and spoken with her several times.

Knowing that he was about to return, Yang Baiwei had specifically asked him to send a message to her family, telling them that she was still alive.

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Yang Baiwei had told him all about her family situation. He had been deeply moved by her circumstances as a single mother and had remembered her clearly, which was why he had agreed to deliver the message.

Knowing that their daughter was still alive, Yang Cheng was naturally overjoyed.

But that survival game was clearly no place of safety.

There was no food and no water. How were two elderly people supposed to survive there with a three-year-old girl?

Yang Cheng needed to discuss all of this carefully with his wife.

“Weiwei is still alive. That alone is good news. As long as we stay alive long enough, we’ll be reunited eventually.”

He was now the pillar of the family. He had to bear the burden on his shoulders.

“Right now, we need to hurry and study that manual. Lingling is counting on us.”

His face was worn with exhaustion, but his eyes were resolute.

Whatever that game was like, he would protect Lingling at all costs.

He had been a poor country boy from a remote mountain village. Step by step, he had built a home in the city through sheer determination.

He had fought for a house and fought for a small family of his own.

When his daughter’s marriage had failed, he had been the one to support her and shield her from the consequences.

Now that his daughter had been forcibly separated from them, he would protect Lingling.

Yang Cheng took Xu Ying’s hand.

“Wife, the game is dangerous. We have to take good care of Lingling.”

Xu Ying had been hit with so much information at once that only now did she truly process it.

She had endured plenty of hardship in her life. Her daughter, Weiwei, was everything to her.

Although she could not reunite with her daughter for the time being, she was not so easily broken. Instead, she began comforting her husband.

“You’re right, Old Yang. We still have Lingling. We have to stay alive and reunite with Weiwei.”

The two nearly fifty-year-old grandparents began searching the internet for every piece of information they could find about survival games. The more they read, the more frightened they became.

They went over the official Survival Manual again and again, determined to commit it all to memory.

Xu Ying thought even farther ahead. She had heard that they had been abducted by an extraterrestrial civilization and would have to live in the wilderness.

So she began searching for wilderness survival videos, learning what could be eaten and what was poisonous and must be avoided.

The hottest topics online at the moment all concerned wilderness survival skills.

#How to Start a Fire by Rubbing Sticks Together#

#The Ten Most Common Wild Edible Greens#

#Handcrafts for the Wilderness#

#Fifty Essential Skills for Surviving Alone in the Wild#