Chapter 82 p1
Two hours ago.
Lin Song left the restaurant’s private room with the magazine Ye Zhao had given her and returned to the station.
She changed into her police uniform and went to the morning briefing for senior officers.
“Minister of Public Security Zhou Ren has recently issued multiple directives. The department needs a strict rectification. Everyone, from top to bottom, must clean up their act and absolutely refrain from doing anything they shouldn’t…”
Lin Song lowered her lashes, concealing the deep irony and hatred in her eyes.
The morning briefing finally ended. She sat back down in her office and, somewhat irritated, tugged at her tie.
“Besides adult sea otters, do they also catch little sea otters?”
“They have.”
The discussion in the private room had ended long ago, but Shen Rendong’s answer still echoed in her mind, repeatedly crushing and piercing her heart, a fierce wind howling through the holes.
Her Little Bao, whom she had held in the palm of her hand, had she also been captured and locked in a hellish warehouse cage, becoming a victim of humanity’s greedy transactions…
Her heart wept blood. Lin Song’s breathing grew rapid, and she closed her reddened eyes.
She was unconsciously reminded of the events from several years ago.
…
All along, humanity’s evil act of overfishing in the ocean had only increased.
Sea otters were deeply harmed by this and were therefore very repulsed by and resistant to the human scent.
And as a sea otter with the talent to transform into a human, Lin Song had been rejected by her own kind since she was little, and even collectively attacked.
A lone otter, in the end, could not stand against a group of beasts.
Once, she had been severely injured and had escaped to the shore, on the verge of death.
On the brink of death, a strange woman who lived by the shore had picked her up and taken her home.
The strange woman wore a snow-white mask all day, and her voice was raspy when she spoke, perhaps because of a throat ailment.
She was very gentle, not at all like the vicious humans that her fellow sea otters spoke of, who were full of sin.
Her house was small and warm, and it was filled with a clear fragrance.
She meticulously treated the sea otter’s wounds, applying and changing the medicine.
As she moved, she would always speak in a soft, quiet voice, regardless of whether a sea otter could understand.
Later, she even gave the sea otter the name “Little Song.”
Half a year passed. Lin Song had completely recovered and was fully released back into the sea by the woman.
But every night, she would bring beautiful seashells to the shore to wait, wanting to see the woman again.
After the woman discovered this by chance, she would come to see her every night.
She would pet her and accept the beautiful seashells.
Life went on peacefully like this for a while.
One day, during a routine check of her body, the woman said with some surprise:
“You’re pregnant.”
Lin Song raised a paw to rub her furry belly, her whole being plunged into confusion.
Pregnant with whom?
She had not been in contact with any other sea otters, so it could only be with this woman.
—A wild otter did not understand what reproductive isolation was. She was simply happy about this possibility and joyfully concluded that the woman was Little Bao’s mother.
And the woman had indeed taken care of her seriously for the entire year of her pregnancy, right up until their Little Bao was born.
From then on, instead of coming to the shore alone every night with beautiful seashells, she would come every night with Little Bao and beautiful seashells to see the woman. The human and the two otters were very happy together.
Life should have continued so peacefully and harmoniously.
Until that night, two men in black with green bird logos on their chests broke into the woman’s courtyard, wanting to take her away.
“Miss Li, please come with us.”
Lin Song, carrying Little Bao, was on her way to the woman’s house and happened to run into that scene.
Her heart jumped in alarm. She hid Little Bao in the nearby grass and was about to rush forward to stop them.
The woman caught sight of her from a distance and shouted with all her might, her voice raspy:
“Little Song, don’t worry about me! Take Little Bao and go…”
A man in black chopped the back of the woman’s neck with precision, and she was forced into unconsciousness.
Lin Song’s pupils constricted at the sight, and for a moment, she was filled with extreme rage.
Emotions clamored in her chest, roaring along with her pulse, bursting until her whole body was numb and hot.
As the intense will surged, she, for no reason, transformed into a human in an instant.
She rushed haphazardly toward the group of men in black, wanting to snatch the woman back.
But how could her still-unskilled hands and feet stand against the cold weapons of humans?
In the not-so-fierce struggle, the woman’s mask was accidentally taken off.
Lin Song saw that the fair face was covered in terrible rashes, possibly from an allergy, so she couldn’t even make out her specific features.
Only a small, rosy mole on the tip of her nose was vaguely and breathtakingly beautiful.
Later, the woman was taken away, and she lay by the door of the house, covered in blood and wounds.
“Did that sea otter just transform into a human?”
“Are you seeing things? Shut up and let’s go, don’t cause any trouble.”
The human voices faded into the distance.
And Little Bao, who had been placed in the grass, desperately crawled over, curled into a ball in fear in her arms, and whimpered and cried.
Lin Song struggled to stroke Otter Bao, feeling that she was probably going to die—
She didn’t know how to transform back into her beast form, and the bleeding wounds on her body were also difficult to treat.
Dragging this tattered human body, she couldn’t hunt for food, and she could no longer return to the sea.
The sea otter clan had always been friendly and united, especially with their numbers dwindling due to human overfishing, and they cherished their young.
Therefore, although her own kind would not accept her, who was covered in a human scent, they would still accept Little Bao.
With nowhere else to go, Lin Song, before she died, sent Little Bao into the hands of her own kind.
“Be good and live with your aunties. Mom will come back to see you later.”
She looked at Little Bao reluctantly, told a lie, and decided to find a place to die quietly.
…
Lin Song’s life was tougher than she had imagined.
The haphazardly applied herbs on the way seemed to have worked. As autumn passed, she was still not dead.
Her wounds gradually healed, and one day, for no reason, her body suddenly transformed back into her beast form.
But her life was also harder than she had imagined.
Just as her injuries had initially recovered and Lin Song was about to go and find her daughter, she was captured by the “Green Bird” organization.
After several months of barely surviving in “Green Bird,” she heard the staff gossiping that the only Miss Li of the Li family had passed away from illness.
Lin Song was instantly reminded that when the “Green Bird” men in black had come to the shore to take the woman away, they had called her “Miss Li.”
—The child was still small, yet both her mothers were gone.
That day, in the dark and sunless cage, she had cried in utter grief.
For some reason, the entire warehouse of beasts had begun to howl with her.
Those bad people had done all sorts of evil things, yet they were superstitious and felt that the collective howling of wild beasts was an ominous sign.
And so, they had temporarily decided to postpone the time of slaughter by three days.
Two days later, Shen Rendong, taking advantage of the chaos, had released the entire ship of marine animals back into the sea, and she had been able to return to the ocean.
She had struggled to find her original sea area, and the number of sea otters had once again sharply decreased.
The few remaining of her kind said:
“Your child left on her own.”
Lin Song was as if struck by lightning, her heart as if it had been cut by a thousand blades, and she wept blood.
—Such a dazed and timid little sea otter baby, how could she have possibly gone ashore on her own?
It was clearly a euphemism for being captured by humans.
That day, Lin Song had returned to the woman’s little house like a walking corpse.
The woman had been a neat freak, and the little house had always been tidy and fragrant, but now it was covered in a thick layer of dust, which made her cough for a long while.
She opened the bedroom wardrobe, and in the first drawer were several beautiful seashells, treasured.
The warm memories were as clear as yesterday, but Little Bao’s mother and Little Bao were both gone…
Revenge on “Green Bird” seemed to be Lin Song’s only way out.
She had grown up in a bloodbath, from a sea otter with nothing to an ordinary police officer, and then, after repeatedly distinguishing herself, she had risen to the captain of the S-City Public Security Bureau’s animal squad.
And to investigate Zhou Ren, she had taken the initiative to be transferred to the captain of the B-City Public Security Bureau’s animal division.
Ten long years had passed, and her innocent and pitiful Little Bao was still nowhere to be found, and it was highly likely that she had really been captured and sold.
And Miss Li, who had been dead for many years, had not faded for her either.
In her midnight dreams, she would frequently recall the small, rosy mole on the tip of her nose.
…
