As the guard finished speaking, Zhan Xi—trembling all over and gripping the corner of the table—spoke in a hoarse voice: "I—I need to go there personally—"
"You don't need to go. The child is not in that vehicle."
Still seated in front of the monitors, Lin Xun's expression remained completely impassive. He had noticed Zhan Xi and the others' reactions earlier but hadn't said anything at the time.
Only when Zhan Xi was about to leave did he speak up.
His words almost instantly pulled Zhan Xi back to his senses: "What did you say? Ningning isn't in that vehicle?"
"No."
Officer Lin Xun was a man of few words, and when he did speak, it was in short bursts. He wasn't particularly tall, and his face wasn't cold or aloof in appearance, but his expression and manner of speaking carried a chill—giving him a somewhat contradictory aura.
After dropping those two words, Lin Xun fell silent. Ludwig glanced at him, subtly hiding his palm that had nearly been clawed bloody from clenching too hard. After a few seconds of silence, he reminded Lin Xun: "If you make any new discoveries, you need to speak up promptly."
Rather than staying quiet and leaving them to guess blindly.
Ludwig was a fairly astute emperor—an emperor was suited for battlefields and command, not for solving crimes.
Hearing the Emperor personally make the request, Lin Xun fell silent for a moment, then nodded in compliance. "Alright."
He had no choice but to comply—after all, he was a subject of the empire.
With the Emperor's words, Lin Xun finally spoke a bit more than before. He marked several vehicles with small red dots on the screen and said concisely, "Related to the suspect vehicle."
Once Zhan Xi calmed down, his sharp mind kicked back in.
He had spent years as a space pirate and was no stranger to criminal tactics. Though he had gone straight in recent years, his years of experience were nothing to sneeze at.
He elaborated on Lin Xun's point: "When the suspect vehicle stopped earlier, these vehicles passed by it."
So those passing vehicles were likely connected to the suspect vehicle.
Lin Xun gave a grunt of acknowledgment.
He then continued tracking the routes of those vehicles, which kept changing paths. Along the way, other vehicles passed by them as well.
With so many cars shifting around, it was dizzying to follow.
But Lin Xun remained unflustered.
The surveillance footage was clear enough, and Lin Xun was skilled enough. He circled a few vehicles, and without needing instructions, dedicated personnel immediately began investigating them.
The royal family's efficiency was swift.
"Pull these vehicles over."
"Check the spacecraft."
Lin Xun still spoke sparingly, but with him on the case, they pinpointed the little child's whereabouts in under two hours.
The child was on a commercial vessel.
That commercial vessel had already taken off before Ludwig ordered the lockdown of White Mist Planet.
The information of everyone on board—from the captain down to the crew—was dug up cleanly in record time and delivered to Lin Xun.
After reviewing it, Lin Xun said only one thing: "Premeditated."
The personnel records looked unremarkable, even suspiciously simple—particularly a few individuals whose entire families were gone, leaving only themselves.
Hearing Lin Xun say "premeditated," Zhan Xi was taken aback: "My Ningning only goes to school and hangs out on the street. He has no enemies. Why would anyone go to such lengths to take him away?"
Without Lin Xun this time, Zhan Xi alone would have struggled greatly to trace the child's path.
In response to Zhan Xi's question, Lin Xun offered no answer.
When a child was abducted, the reason either lay with the parents or with the child themselves.
Zhan Xi, as the parent, had already run through every grudge he'd ever held. He had no real enemies—anyone who crossed him was usually dealt with on the spot.
He didn't leave foes behind to seek revenge.
No—wait.
There was one more enemy—no, not just one, but an organization—that hadn't been completely wiped out yet.
The former perennial runner-up on the space pirate rankings: Venomspider.
Venomspider had once enjoyed its share of glory. Boss Zhan had never particularly liked the organization and had even pulled a few black-on-black heists against them, but he'd never pursued them to total annihilation.
Later on, someone from Venomspider mentioned the little child to Zhan Xi, claiming he knew the child's secret.
Upon hearing that, Zhan Xi had immediately formed the intent to kill.
To eliminate that man, Zhan Xi had been lured to the Land of Death and nearly lost his own life.
The little child had tracked his father there, and the young Crown Prince Caesar personally rescued Zhan Xi. After being brought back, Zhan Xi sent a message to Boss Zhan.
Then, they mobilized their full force to hunt down the remaining members of Venomspider.
Regardless of whether those members knew the child's secret or not, none were spared. They killed so many that, by all logic, there should have been no survivors.
The more Zhan Xi thought about it, the more uneasy he became.
He picked up his communicator and called Zhan Rao: "Boss, are all the Venomspider members dead?"
"All the ones on their roster have been eliminated. Why do you ask?"
"Ningning is missing. Someone took him onto a commercial vessel."
As Zhan Xi spoke, his heart ached sharply. From the moment he learned Ningning was gone to now, two hours had passed. In those two hours, he hadn't fallen apart or lost control—he hadn't gone mad with panic.
His eyes were just red, and his voice had gone a little hoarse.
He knew he had to stay steady, stay calm, and hold himself together.
On the other end of the line.
Hearing Zhan Xi's words, Zhan Rao nearly dropped his communicator.
"When did Ningning go missing?"
"This morning."
Zhan Rao asked only for the time, then turned the question Zhan Xi had asked him over in his mind once more.
This time, he thought for quite a while before replying: "I can only confirm that I killed everyone on Venomspider's list. But I can't be sure whether that list included all of their members."
Every space pirate organization kept a roster—only those on it were recognized as official members.
Back in the day, Zhan Rao's own pirate crew had had such a list too.
"Zhan Xi, I'll look into Venomspider."
Zhan Rao took on the task, also asking for the commercial vessel's flight route, model, and the full list of everyone aboard.
Over the past two years, Zhan Rao and his people had also switched careers. They now ran legitimate transport businesses and had left their old ways behind.
Even so, they still knew the interstellar routes like the back of their hand.
Zhan Rao hung up and got to work.
Meanwhile, Lin Xun—with the cooperation of the aviation department—had obtained a more detailed route map as well.
"Let's go."
Lin Xun stood up and said to Zhan Xi and Ling Qi, "Let's go find the child."
Lin Xun knew that Zhan Xi and Ling Qi were the missing child's family, and it was clear that the Emperor, Empress, and the young prince also placed great importance on this child.
But given the Emperor and Empress's positions, they couldn't very well go out searching for the child themselves.
Just as Lin Xun called out to the two, Ai Wei spoke up: "Ludwig, you and Xiao Lin go with them. I'll handle the empire's affairs."
Ai Wei had made this decision after careful thought.
The little child had been taken off-world and was very likely in danger, and Ludwig's spiritual power level was more than enough to clear any threat.
If Ludwig left, she would have to stay behind in the empire. As for Xiao Lin—if they didn't let him go along, that little face of his would be dripping with frost.
After making the arrangements, Ai Wei watched them leave.
And all the guests who had come to the banquet that night remained on the premises until morning.
Ai Wei hadn't stayed with Ludwig this long for nothing—she was no weakling. When it came to handling matters, her toughness was every bit a match for Ludwig's.
She kept all the guests in place, then ordered Mans to lead a team in conducting a thorough background check on every single one of them.
The guests themselves, as well as their households—not a single one overlooked.
With Ai Wei holding down the rear, Ludwig boarded a spacecraft and departed from White Mist Planet.
The commercial vessel—
The very kind of vessel that had taken the little child away stirred unavoidable memories in Zhan Xi from a few years ago—
"The little child was also discovered by me on a commercial vessel back then."
If Zhan Rao hadn't taken them for that black-on-black heist, given the route that earlier commercial vessel was on, the little child would have been delivered straight into the nest of the Zerg.
"Ludwig, do you think Ningning might be sent to—"
Zhan Xi stopped mid-sentence.
Lin Xun noticed him pause and looked up with a silent "?"
He didn't speak directly, but his expression clearly showed confusion—as if asking why Zhan Xi had stopped.
Zhan Xi hesitated.
He didn't know Lin Xun well enough yet, so he couldn't reveal too much in front of him—at the very least, he couldn't expose the little child's special nature.
"Ningning isn't my biological son. A few years ago, he was also placed on a commercial vessel. A group of space pirates raided that ship and found him."
"I happened to be passing by and rescued Ningning."
"That commercial vessel was later traced by Ludwig to be heading toward Blue Star, which was overrun with Zerg. Now, years later, it's another commercial vessel..."
After laying out the connection between the two commercial vessels, Zhan Xi couldn't help adding one more detail: "The space pirates who raided that ship and tried to kill Ningning are enemies of mine."
"There's also a chance they're behind this one."
Zhan Xi had two lines of suspicion and couldn't determine which was more likely, so he laid them out for Lin Xun to consider.
Lin Xun noted down the information Zhan Xi gave him, then returned his attention to the route maps and all the aviation surveillance footage.
The Emperor of the Empire was no incompetent ruler.
Every high-definition video across interstellar aviation was now laid out before Lin Xun's eyes in full view.
They were tracking the commercial vessel's route.
Time ticked by.
The little child, whom the adults were so worried about, had also begun to realize that something was wrong.
He hadn't made it to the palace.
He'd been taken—stolen right out of the box!
Realizing someone was stealing him, the little child stopped trying to break out with brute force. His mind wasn't running as complexly as his father's—he wasn't thinking about space pirates or his past.
His chubby face tightened, and he only remembered what the neighbors had said—
Just a couple of days ago, someone else on White Mist Planet had gone missing too.
Oh no.
He was the second missing person!
Now that he was a missing person, the little child didn't cry, didn't throw a tantrum, and didn't yell wildly. Instead, he started racking his brain for all the knowledge his father and uncles had taught him!
