The first person to discover Duan Xingze's disappearance was Lin Youqing.

It was 11:30 p.m. When it was time for lunch, the adults who had gone out to work returned one after another, but the children who were supposed to stay in the villa to study were nowhere to be seen.

During this time, because it was confirmed that there was no danger in the botanical garden, Duan Whale did relax his restraint on his son slightly. But Duan Xingze is well-behaved and sensible on weekdays, and never adds to the chaos. Even if you go out alone occasionally, you will definitely say hello to the adults and take the table.

This time, however, his hand was placed on the table, and even the computer software for the lecture was suspended. Duan Xingze seemed to leave halfway through, went to the kitchen to drink a glass of water, but never came back.

From the rooftop to the basement, Duan Whale searched every corner of the villa, and expanded the scope to the garden. It was Lu Rulan who reminded: "The cat and the dog are gone." ”

Haichen built a dog house in the yard for Ah Gou, and Ah Mao had a nest made of bamboo baskets in the hall on the first floor. On weekdays, whenever it comes to dinner, they always squat on the edge of the table on time than people. However, as soon as Duan Xingze disappeared, the two disappeared with them.

Hurry to be in a hurry, but Duan Whale is not in a mess. Fortunately, these days, he and Lin Youqing have successively completed the relocation and transformation of the site monitor. He immediately checked the surveillance, hoping to find out his son's whereabouts.

The monitors installed at the gates of the Botanical Gardens and on the road to the beach are functioning normally. Looking back at the image records, no trace of Duan Xingze was captured in the past few hours. This at least shows that the child should still be on the island.

Duan Whale then called up several other surveillance, and finally got a little harvest - the monitoring installed on the moon cake road showed that an hour ago, Duan Xingze walked from west to east on the road.

“…… Is there something on this child's mind? ”

Su He looked at Duan Whale: "I felt weird when I saw him last night, and I didn't have an appetite for food." Did you scold you? ”

Duan Whale was about to deny it with a dark face, but Lin Youqing, who was beside him, had already confessed the content of yesterday's family meeting.

Su He was stunned: "You want to go to Qinghai?!" ”

Duan Whale was also anxious towards Lin Youqing: "It's all been vetoed, why do you still say it!" ”

"I'm sorry...... But I think that there is really no need to hide some things when we are all together. Lin Youqing apologized to Duan Whale and added: "And I think that Xiaoxing's disappearance may have something to do with this incident...... So if you say it, maybe you will have a little clue. ”

That being said, even if they knew the reason, everyone still didn't know where Duan Xingze had gone. Lunch was not finished anyway, so everyone walked east along the mooncake road and decided to rummage through the entire botanical garden.

I searched the hillside, the aromatic plant area, the peony garden and the rhododendron garden, and the rainforest greenhouse, power station and dock. Not even the windbreaks and mangroves have fallen.

But Duan Xingze seemed to have evaporated from the island, without a trace of it.

A few hours passed quickly, and in the blink of an eye, it was getting late. Duan Whale, who was concerned about the chaos, began to lose his breath, and Lin Youqing was already sweating. At this time, it began to rain again, and the morale completely overwhelmed the trough.

There are no good clues, but there are countless possibilities for bad conjectures. Before the negative energy exploded, Du Yunfei stood up and summarized the next plan.

"People can't disappear out of thin air, there must be some place we haven't found. Let's list them first. ”

"I've looked where I need to be." Even Su He rubbed his temples tiredly: "There are still a few places, I don't know if I should say it or not." ”

Duan Whale's heart sank suddenly: "...... Where. ”

"One is a tunnel well that stores rainwater, and the other is a cliffside."

Needless to say, everyone knows what these two locations mean. Duan Whale lowered his head and buried his face in his hands, took a deep breath, and then stood up again.

"I'll look for it!"

Knowing how much pressure this search had on Duan Whale, everyone got up one after another and rushed forward, and persuaded him to stay in the villa first and wait for news.

Only Haichen, who had been manipulating the drone from a bird's-eye view from a high place, kept staring at the surveillance screen, and beckoned everyone to gather around.

"Look at this!"

He pointed to the video feed transmitted by the drone. It was an artificial lake at the back door of the villa, and on the surface of the lake that fluctuated hazy in the rain, there was a lemon-yellow object floating there.

"It's slippers!" Lin Youqing recognized it at a glance, "This Xingze's slippers!" ”

The new discovery gives everyone the creeps. Duan Whale's face turned pale, and he rushed out with an arrow step, running towards the artificial lake in the rain curtain.

The lake is so vast with smoke and water that you can't even see the opposite shore clearly. He looked around blankly, only to feel a wave of earth-shaking fear in his heart.

"Little Star - Little Star !!"

The aftermath of the screams echoed across the lake, but there was no response.

Unable to wait any longer, Duan Whale immediately jumped into the lake.

"Duan Whale!"

Lin Youqing, who came later, didn't have time to stop him, and he ran to the water's edge and was pulled back by Su He.

"Don't make a mess!"

Haichen, the best of all the people, also ran over, took off his shirt twice and threw it to Lu Rulan: "I'll go down and take a look." ”

"Be careful." Lu Rulan took care of it.

The two men plunged into the water one after another, and soon disappeared without a trace. The remaining four waited on the shore, anxious.

After about a minute or so, the whale first surfaced. After a change of breath, he dived into the water again. After another minute, Haichen appeared on the shore with a yellow foam slipper in his hand.

"Shoes...... There are words on the shoes! ”

When everyone heard this, they hurried up to watch.

I saw that the slippers were really the ones they had retrieved from the container terminal, and there were a few small characters written on the middle of the shoes. The handwriting is crooked, and after identification, you can see clearly that it is written in three Chinese characters of "Duan Xingze" and a few English letters.

Su He tried to spell it a few times, but he still couldn't understand the meaning of those letters.

Lin Youqing immediately reacted: "Xingze can't write yet, this should be his self-taught Chinese pinyin!" ”

Everyone began to work spelling again, but the handwriting was crooked, and the spelling seemed to be problematic. At this time, the whale surfaced for the second time to ventilate, and Lin Youqing hurriedly called him over to help with the details.

It is worthy of the father and son to connect their hearts, Duan Whale immediately blurted out: "Hole!" There are holes underwater! Xiaoxing said he was in the hole!"

Knowing that Duan Xingze was likely to be fine, everyone finally took a breath. But new problems followed.

How could there be a hole underwater, and how did Duan Xingze run into the hole underwater?

Du Yunfei, who began to think about the answer just now, first gave his own explanation.

"This artificial lake was originally an ancient quarry, and there must have been some artificially excavated quarry caves. When open-pit quarries are flooded, these caves form natural air pockets. If Xiaoxing hides there, there should be no problem for the time being. ”

"Did he swim in on his own?" Su He continued to diverge along this line of thought, "Why don't you swim in by yourself and come out by yourself?" ”

"He's not that watery." Duan Whale shook his head, "Maybe it was drowning into an air pocket, and then I didn't dare to venture out again." ”

"Don't forget, the cat and the dog are gone." Lu Rulan reminded, "It's impossible for them to swim in together, right?" ”

Whatever the truth is, for the sake of the present, it is imperative to find the air pockets that float out of this shoe. Duan Whale and Haichen, who had been resting for a while, plunged into the water again. Seeing that it was getting late, Du Yunfei also decided to strip off and go into the water to help search.

"Don't be pushy." Su He squatted on the shore and looked at him worriedly.

"I'm measured."

After saying this, Du Yunfei also disappeared into the water.

Time is still slipping away minute by minute. At about five o'clock in the evening, the annoying rain finally stopped, but the lake was still muddy.

The three of them floated in the lake and groped for a while, but never found the location of the cave. As the sun sets, once the light fades, it will be much more difficult to find the cave.

Will a miracle happen? The three men who remained on the shore were on pins and needles.

However, at this moment, it seems that all that can be done is to wait.

About another forty-five minutes had passed, and the visibility outside had dropped to half of daylight. Just when everyone was about to lose confidence, Lin Youqing suddenly pointed to the distance on the water, revealing a stunned look.

"That'...... What is that? ”

Following the direction of his finger, Su He also saw it.

Just about twenty meters away on the surface of the lake, a huge green pom-pom appeared silently. The round ball body rises and falls on the surface of the lake, as if it is alive.

Just as Haichen surfaced to ventilate, Lu Rulan immediately pointed it out to him, and told him to be careful when he went. Haichen smiled back with a confident smile and swam towards the green pompom with a standard freestyle stroke.

While Haichen was swimming, Su He also moved closer along the shore of the lake. But in just one minute, I saw an equally large pom-pom floating in the lake.

"Looks like weeds!"

Haichen touched one of them, rubbed it, and gave it to Su He.

Su He picked it up with a bamboo pole, slowly got to the shore, touched it with his hands, and was stunned for a moment.

"Seems to be a chlorella?!"

Lu Rulan, who ran over, was also stunned when she heard it: "Didn't our family have this product before?" You also said that there is no chlorella production in China. Thirty yuan a small Japanese product on Taobao, but it turns out that there is no money in this lake and it grows so big?! ”

"That's not right."

Su He rubbed the green pom-pom, and quickly overturned his judgment just now.

"It's a plant mutation! There should be zombies under the lake! ”

Zombies can't move freely in the water, and this has been tested many times by survivors around the world. Besides, even if there are zombies at the bottom of the artificial lake, they must first die and decompose into flower fertilizer before the algae can mutate.

Why does chlorella mutate at this time - because zombies "die".

Why do zombies "die" - because of Duan Xingze!

Su He suddenly brightened, and he hurriedly motioned to several people in the water to follow the direction of the bulb's float to carefully explore.

It was a coincidence, and while he was talking, several more chlorella surfaced one after another.

Haichen hurriedly dived down to investigate, and a minute later, the best news in most of the day came-

"Hole! The hole we were looking for turned out to be here!! ”