Chapter 514: A Clean Sweep (Part 2)
Little Tang Mo looked at Su Li’s expression and pursed his lips, his small face furrowed in a frown.
"Mom... was Sister Miao Zhi... captured too?"
Little Tang Mo carefully recalled the moment he was forced into the car. He had passed out quickly, but he had a nagging feeling that he’d heard Miao Zhi’s voice.
So... could it be that Miao Zhi found him and tried to save him, only to get dragged into the car herself?
If that’s what happened, then it was his fault that Sister Miao Zhi...
"Mom, do you think Sister Miao Zhi was on that vehicle?"
Su Li nodded and stroked Little Tang Mo’s head. "It’s possible... If she was, then maybe your uncles will bring her back today."
A heavy look filled Su Li’s eyes. The probability that Miao Zhi had been abducted was now over ninety percent.
And for a young woman like her—a university student from the Imperial City—her "value" was on a whole other level.
As for Miao Zhi, she wasn’t stunning, but she was still pretty and sweet. There were only two likely outcomes for her.
First, she could be sold for a high price to be someone’s wife. Most of the men who resort to buying wives are those no one is willing to marry, and they usually live in remote, underdeveloped rural areas.
For a girl like Miao Zhi, escaping on her own would be nearly impossible. After so many days, she had likely already been...
The other possibility was that she’d be forced into prostitution. The long-term profits were better than a one-time sale...
By the same token, after so many days, Miao Zhi had likely already been...
Regardless of the scenario, Miao Zhi’s situation was dire. If she wasn’t rescued, her future was easy to imagine. But even if she were rescued, the damage might already be irreparable.
Su Li found herself caught in a contradiction. She hoped Wu Sheng and Tang Yuanxiao would rescue Miao Zhi, yet at the same time, she hoped they wouldn’t.
She even held onto the hope that Miao Zhi was just in a bad mood and had ’run away’ for a few days to stay with a classmate...
By afternoon, Wu Sheng and Tang Yuanxiao returned. They had managed to capture the fugitives who had previously escaped and had successfully rescued many abducted women.
Little Tang Mo’s suspicion had been correct. Some of the rescued people had been abducted on the same day as him and then transported together.
But Miao Zhi was not among the rescued.
She hadn’t been rescued, but they did have news about her.
Just as Su Li and Little Tang Mo had suspected, Miao Zhi had indeed been abducted. She had been on that very vehicle, and some of the others rescued from it remembered her.
"...She was crying terribly. She kept saying her dad would come to save her, that he was the best and very capable. She also kept talking about a child, saying a kid she knew had also been taken."
"She even cursed out the traffickers and got beaten badly for it... After that, she got sick."
These words came from a young woman whose face was ashen with despair.
She had been successfully rescued, but only from the home of the man who had bought her.
Just last night... she had been violated by the man who bought her.
If she’d been rescued just one day sooner, she wouldn’t have... But it was already too late.
She wasn’t a child; she remembered her name and address perfectly. But no matter how the police questioned her, she refused to say who she was or where she was from. All she did was beg them to let her go.
She didn’t want to go back. No, that wasn’t it. She *couldn’t* go back.
She was engaged and had a fiancé; their wedding was just around the corner when disaster struck. She had been rescued, but how could she go back and get married now, with a body like hers!
The young woman was consumed by despair and wouldn’t answer any other questions. Only when they asked if she knew a girl named Miao Zhi did she seem to rally a little and speak up.
She was kind-hearted. Even though she was so desperate she wanted to die, she still hoped that the other poor girl, Miao Zhi, could be saved.
"...After that... she was still sick when they pulled me from the vehicle. There were three other girls left on board..."
This was the last piece of news about Miao Zhi. The whereabouts of those three, as well as their transporters, remained unknown; they hadn’t been caught.
All they could do now was continue to investigate, continue to search, and continue to rescue.
Among the rescued women, besides those who had only recently been sold, there were many who had been trafficked for varying amounts of time.
Some already had children. When the police came to rescue them, they couldn’t bear to leave their children behind and wanted to go back.
Others were heavily pregnant, and some... had only just conceived.
Those who were about to give birth were trapped in an agonizing dilemma. They hated the men who bought them, hated the men who got them pregnant, but the children were innocent. As mothers, they faced an impossible choice.
As for those who had just discovered their pregnancies, they made the resolute decision to have an abortion.
Aside from the few who wanted to return for their children, every single one of the rescued women hated the traffickers who had ruined their lives and the so-called "husbands" who had bought them.
None of the "bought" wives were ever willing. It was standard practice for the buyers to use force initially, followed by regular beatings.
Those who didn’t "behave" and tried to escape were often locked up for a year or two, forbidden from leaving the house. And then came the beatings.
After a period of beatings subdued them, or once they became pregnant, the women would stop trying to escape and resign themselves to their fate. Only then would the men relax.
Unfortunately, for many of them, beating their wives had already become a habit. They would resort to violence at the slightest provocation...
For those young girls in the prime of their youth, or the young women who were newly married or had just had children, their lives were irrevocably altered by their abduction.
And just like with the abducted children, their kidnapping destroyed not only their own lives, but the lives of their families as well.
Everyone in the world hates human traffickers precisely because of the devastating harm they cause.
In modern times, with many families having only one child, that child is born into the hopes of two sets of parents and multiple grandparents. A single child connects two families: their parents, paternal grandparents, and maternal grandparents.
The loss of a single child devastates not just a few people, but two entire families. The heart-wrenching agony is a wound that can never heal.
And all of this suffering exists for one reason: the traffickers’ insatiable greed for profit.
After confronting the situation with the children, and now facing these poor women, one can only imagine the oppressive weight on the hearts of the police.
One by one, their eyes grew red-rimmed. They worked without rest, interrogating and investigating, vowing to fight these utterly depraved traffickers to the bitter end.
Police officers across the country shared much the same sentiment.
In the days that followed, a nationwide anti-trafficking operation was launched, spreading like wildfire.
Based on the confessions of those arrested, authorities across the country captured over three hundred more suspects over the next ten days.
Following up on these new confessions, police nationwide successfully rescued over five hundred abducted women and more than six hundred children.
The sheer numbers were horrifying and staggering to behold.
The good news was that this operation had also completely dismantled the entire criminal organization.
While it couldn’t completely put a stop to the trafficking of women and children, this operation would, at the very least, drastically reduce the number of abductions for the next three years.
The entire criminal syndicate had been wiped out in one go. Accomplishing such a thing was not just difficult; it was monumentally so.
And yet, despite the immense difficulty, they had done it.
The criminal syndicate was well and truly wiped out.
And none of it would have been possible without Little Tang Mo.
If it hadn’t been for Little Tang Mo, none of this would have happened.
Tang Mo. Countless people etched this name into their hearts, especially the police officers.