Before you know it, an unquiet night has passed. A rooster crow reminded Qin Tai that it was almost dawn, Qin Tai put down the file in his hand and walked outside the door to move his already stiff body. Not only to move the body, but also to relieve the mood, so that Qin Tai is sober and not too anxious. Qin Tai actually cares about his son Xiao Ping'an, after all, this child is not only Qin Tai's first child, but Qin Tai always feels sorry for his son. Other children can spend their infancy in peace, but Xiao Ping'an has to leave home early because of Qin Tai's affairs. Later, because of Qin Tai's relationship, Xiao Ping'an had to be separated from his biological parents, so Qin Tai always felt sorry for his children. When Qiu Xiaoqiu told Qin Tai that his wife Xiao Ping was gone, Zhan Xiaoxiao was anxious and angry, but Qin Tai felt sad for a while.

Qin Tai struggled alone for a night, and finally there was no gain at all. Although these clues were quite messy, and even ordinary people could hardly see anything unusual, Qin Tai still carefully found a trace of clues. As a county near the capital, Daxing County has relatively good living conditions, at least not so much that a large number of ordinary people will starve to death. Therefore, ordinary people will have a large group of children in their families, both male and female, large and young. At that time, not only was family planning not practised, but in most traditional beliefs, having more children was a blessing for the family. In less than four months, the county government of Daxing County has received nearly 1,000 cases of disappearance, most of which are cases of missing children. Originally, it was common for people to go missing in a place, some women ran away from home, some little girls were abducted, and more ignorant children were taken away. But this kind of thing doesn't happen very often, and it doesn't happen in one place in a row. Take Qin Tai's hometown Pingyao as an example, there will be more than a dozen disappearances in a year. Some of them were taken away by wives who couldn't stand the abuse of their husbands or in-laws, there were also a few little girls who were seduced away by some rhetorical sellers, and of course there were a few cases of traffickers taking away their children. But the fact that nearly a thousand children disappeared in four months, not to mention that there was one, even if I had never heard of it. This is beyond the ordinary category and belongs to a rather egregious case.

Qin Tai always felt that something was wrong, so he carefully looked through the file and finally found a key problem. The missing children were not only babies who could not walk, but also boys. In ancient times, boys were not worth more than girls, and some people didn't even want boys. Only some large families with wealth and status will pay attention to the number of boys in the family. Some families who can't support their children and need to live by selling their children and daughters even hope that their children are all girls. Because girls can be sold to other people's families as child daughters-in-law, they can also be sold to brothels to be trained as prostitutes in the future, and they can even be sold to large families to be maids for the families of rich people. Take Pingyao, Qin Tai's hometown that Qin Tai is more familiar with, for example, a half-old boy can only sell for ten taels of silver at most, and when there is a famine or taxes, the price is not high. But an eight-year-old girl, as long as she is not a fool or physically defective, can generally sell for twelve to fifteen taels of silver. An eleven or twelve-year-old girl could even sell for thirty taels of silver. And when there is a famine or a tax, the price remains even higher. But in so many disappearances, it is not a relatively valuable girl who is lost, but a group of male babies who can't take care of themselves, which is a bit weird.

Qin Tai has not thought about the problem of "alchemy", generally speaking, ordinary people are willing to sell their daughters, but there are not many people who are willing to sell their sons. The first is because the price of boys is not high, the second is because few families are willing to accept boys, and the third is because boys do not need to be sold, they can be sent to the palace as eunuchs. Therefore, girls abound on the market, and boys are rare. Some alchemists who are on the sidelines do not hesitate to do things that hurt nature and reason in order to refine a good medicine. It is said that it will cost a lot to buy boys and girls and use them to refine pills. So there are some people who will secretly buy girls back and find their own way to get boys. The so-called way is nothing more than stealing, robbing, abducting, and cheating. However, Qin Tai immediately overturned this possibility, because alchemy did not need so many boys. Qin Tai didn't understand the method of alchemy very well, but Qin Tai had also been involved in it and knew the truth of yin and yang complementarity. That is to say, when the drug is introduced, not only should the number of boys and girls be equal, but also the time and order of response should be required. Besides, even alchemy doesn't need so many children as medicine guides, and if you want so many boys, how many girls do you need to cooperate? Even if a girl can buy it, will she have so much money to buy it? Therefore, it will not be alchemy, and any sacrifices can be excluded, and no one will spend so much money, material resources and energy to do this kind of thing.

But what is the use of the other party asking for so many boys? A boy is not a girl, and even if it is a girl, you can't find such a young child. Even if such a young child is to be trained, it will take more than ten or twenty years to become a talent, and even if a girl sells it as a prostitute for money, it will take astronomical financial and material resources and energy. In addition, those who can't be raised carelessly, those who don't become adults, and those who die of illness in the future will definitely outweigh the losses. What's more, these are all a group of boys, could they be sent to the border as soldiers en masse, or maybe they will enter the palace as eunuchs together? It's really a big joke to be sent to be a soldier when you raise it, and it's not worth it even if you train killers. Sending to the palace as a eunuch is even more unreasonable. Because there are quite strict rules and regulations for the admission of eunuchs, not just anyone can enter the palace. Although eunuch is a profession with no dignity and inferiority, because of his particularity, it must be investigated very clearly. The so-called eunuchs of the harem are actually divided into three ranks, the first level is miscellaneous labor, that is, some prisoners' families or prisoners of the enemy country. They are implicated in lifelong disabilities and have no chance of getting ahead. Not only will they die of old age in the palace, but there will be no place to bury them in the future. The second class is the descendants of the untouchables, the sons of prostitutes, who are born without a father and do not know who their father is. Sending them to the palace as eunuchs is their most common fate, and these people can only be low-level eunuchs because they have no household registration, and they rarely have the opportunity to get ahead. The third class is the descendants of the common people, these children whose families cannot support them, after special castration procedures, enter the palace with their household registration as eunuchs. As long as these people can survive, have luck and means, they can become powerful eunuchs. However, such eunuchs not only need to be registered, but also need to be double-checked to ensure that these people are not only clean but also have no criminal record.

Wait, Qin Tai suddenly thought of a bold conjecture, and couldn't help but scare himself. Although this was just Qin Tai's conjecture for a while, it made Qin Tai very upset, as if it made Qin Tai very unhappy. Qin Tai tried to forget and not think about this question, but this thought always appeared in Qin Tai's mind. Qin Tai deliberately forgot it, didn't want to think about it, and didn't want to mention it.

The catchers of the three counties rushed to the county government of Daxing County with their capable subordinates and a large bundle of files. Since the vast majority of people don't know words, even if they know words, they are afraid of missing any important information. Therefore, the magistrates of the three counties asked them to sort out all the relevant files together and bring them to Qin Tai. Because they no longer had a case record in their hands, the arrest of the three county officials quickly brought them the same message to the county magistrate, that is, while sorting out the files, they asked the Daxing County Clerks to copy a copy and let them take it back to their respective county offices for archiving.

Although the catchers did not look at all the files carefully, they generally knew some important information. Qin Tai asked a few simple questions, and he knew some more direct clues. In the three counties plus Daxing County, there have been at least 3,000 missing cases in the four counties, and the vast majority of them are missing infants. It seems that this case is really not small, and the other party seems to be not afraid of being known. Qin Tai was worried that the families of some missing children did not report the case in time, so he asked everyone to go to their respective sites to investigate and verify and thoroughly figure out the number of missing people. The heads of the three counties were more serious, and after listening to Qin Tai's words, they immediately asked their subordinates to go back and do it. Later, I learned that among the missing children in these three counties, several of the children were distant relatives of the county government, and one was also the nephew of the head of a certain county, so it was no wonder that they were so concerned. Qin Tai immediately had an idea and asked the Daxing County Clerk's Office to find out the families of the missing persons related to the Daxing County government personnel and notify their county government relatives. In this way, Daxing County will also be more concerned, at least it will not be passive and slacking off. It's okay not to ask, but after checking, I learned that the children of the cousin's nephew's family in Daxing County were also missing. After the county learned about it, he immediately ordered to make every effort to track down the missing persons, and one to find out the murderer.

At this time, Zhan Xiaoxiao will also come, but he did not bring anyone from the Criminal Department. Zhan Xiaoxiao told her husband Qin Tai with a tired face that Zhang Juzheng was willing to help, but as soon as the people from the Criminal Department heard Qin Tai's name, they immediately had a new condition. The people from the Criminal Department said that they all had cases in their hands, and as long as Qin Tai could help them solve the case, they could help Qin Tai solve the case. If Qin Tai can't help them, he can only help Qin Tai solve the case when they solve their case. Saying that, Zhan Xiaoxiao took out some case files, saying that the other party only gave Qin Tai three days, and if they couldn't solve the case, they would treat Qin Tai as Qin Tai automatically admitting defeat.