Xu Mengshan and You Mingxu exchanged a glance, already understanding her thinking. He said, “We’ve already seized all properties under Yin Chen and Guo Feirong’s names—there’s no such place among them. Let’s immediately check if anyone connected to him owns such a small farm!”

The police officers immediately sprang into action, screening through Yin Chen’s and especially Guo Feirong’s social connections one by one.

Just 20 minutes later, as if they’d hit the jackpot, they found the answer.

Xu Mengshan looked at the farm registration documents before him, his eyes practically shooting fire. He turned to everyone and said, “Remember Ah Hua, the one killed by Luo Yu? His sister was one of Guo Feirong’s public mistresses. He didn’t own any property, but his parents had a chicken farm! It’s in the southern suburbs of Xiangcheng!”

—

Yin Feng stood beneath the abandoned building, watching Chen Feng hurry back.

Xiao Yan and Champion had also returned and were standing behind him.

Chen Feng shook his head at him.

Nothing found.

They had discovered nothing—not in the apartment Yin Chen had rented twenty years ago, nor in the nearby surveillance footage, nor any other possible hiding places.

Yin Chen wasn’t here.

Twenty minutes earlier, the police had forwarded Yin Chen’s video to Yin Feng as well. This had made their search objective clearer.

Everyone looked at Yin Feng, waiting for instructions.

Yin Feng was deep in thought.

One down, three to go.

Yin Chen hadn’t returned to the place where he had met You Ruixue.

That left Fan Shuhua, Yin Chen’s birth mother, and the Punisher’s lair.

This contradicted Yin Feng’s initial intuition, which slightly displeased him. However, the facts were right in front of him, and he had to believe them, calm down, and reason through other possibilities.

In comparison, Yin Feng felt the second option—the home where Yin Chen had lived with his birth mother—was more likely.

Whether it was Fan Shuhua or the Punisher’s lair, they might have once given Yin Chen new meaning in life, but now, with the Punishers destroyed and Fan Shuhua arrested, Yin Chen had nowhere to go. In other words, the Punishers had failed. Could a failed organization still give Yin Chen a sense of security? No. Could it make Yin Chen want to return? Also no.

When his eyes could no longer see meaning in his future life, he would look back to find the shelter he had once abandoned.

“Let’s go to the place where Yin Chen used to live with his birth mother,” Yin Feng said.

That was the home of his birth father, his former wife, and Yin Chen—the family of three before Yin Feng was born.

The group got into the car.

The sun had sunk below the horizon, and dusk was beginning to fall. Leaning against the back seat of the car, Yin Feng in his gray clothes and black pants also appeared hazy in the twilight, only his handsome profile visible.

As the car drove away from the area, he looked back at the abandoned building that had weathered frost and hardship.

For some reason, the feeling in his heart still didn’t seem right. He still felt that You Ruixue was the home Yin Chen most desperately yearned for. According to You Mingxu, when Yin Chen, Xing Jifu, and she were in that escape van, when You Ruixue was mentioned, the usually calm and composed Yin Chen had lost control and composure.

However, regarding that past when Yin Chen had been part of a family of three, Yin Feng, as a latecomer, truly didn’t understand. And with his parents’ peculiar natures, he had no way of knowing. So if his judgment was wrong, and Yin Chen wanted to return to his childhood “home” in the truest sense, it wasn’t impossible. Moreover, Yin Chen had stayed at Yin Feng’s parents’ place for a full hour. This might be the strongest evidence, even more persuasive than his intuition.

Thinking this way, Yin Feng’s heart calmed down. He decided to go to the next location first and investigate.

Just then, his phone rang. It was You Mingxu calling, and her voice sounded extremely excited and forceful: “Yin Feng, we may have found where the hostages are being held!”

Yin Feng was startled: “Where?”

“Do you remember Ah Hua? His parents own a chicken farm.”

You Mingxu briefly explained their entire reasoning process and verification work, and then said, “We’re moving out now! Perhaps we can still save them in time!”

Yin Feng fell silent.

A chicken farm owned by Ah Hua’s parents?

Strong intuition struck him again, and he shook his head with a faint smile: “No, Yin Chen won’t be there. You’ve got it wrong.”

Now it was You Mingxu’s turn to be stunned, her heart pounding. She never expected that the exciting answer she and her colleagues had worked so hard to deduce would be negated by a single sentence from him.

But how could it not be? The logic was so clear, and the deduced result was unique. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

“Why?” she immediately asked.

Yin Feng answered, “This location has no connection to him, no meaning of home. Ah Xu, he’s not just trying to take revenge on us by killing the hostages—we’ve already agreed on this. Killing and taking our parents hostage is just a surface goal. His real demand is to create an illusory home that can satisfy him. That’s the last lifeline this humble life of his can grasp. So, how could his purpose simply be to lock up those parents and slowly kill them? What would he gain from that? Besides Xu Mengshan being sad, who else would be upset? He must have other purposes, other rituals to complete.”