Chapter 69 The situation escalates, and the police are dispatched!

After the Long family motorcade arrived at the municipal bureau compound, the few phone calls made by Old Master Long quickly took effect.

In less than half an hour, sensitive reporters from several mainstream domestic media outlets and local television stations swarmed in, carrying their long lenses and short guns.

They were stopped outside the police cordon, but their lenses were aimed unceremoniously at the gates of the Baishui City Public Security Bureau and the vehicles entering and exiting, with flashes lighting up the area.

Meanwhile, fueled by the intentional yet subtle influence of the Long family, news of the suspected disappearance of the nine-year-old grandson of Baishui City's richest man, Long Dagui, began to ferment on major social media platforms, attracting the attention and discussion of countless Netizens.

Under the multiple pressures of the Long family's social standing, the personal supervision of the municipal bureau leaders, and the media that had rushed to the scene, the Baishui City Public Security Bureau immediately established a special investigation team, led personally by the most experienced veteran criminal police officer.

At this moment, the atmosphere in the criminal investigation detachment's large conference room was so oppressive it could be wrung out like water.

It had been temporarily requisitioned as the command center for the highest-level special investigation team for the Long Group young master's disappearance case.

Deputy Bureau Chief Wang and the Mayor of Baishui City sat at the head of the table with grave expressions, serving as the highest supervisors of this operation.

Responsible for the specific command was the municipal bureau's ace, Criminal Investigation Detachment Captain Chen Jianjun.

He was nearly fifty, with slightly graying temples, and his eyes were sharp, yet they could not hide a weariness—a look that had seen too much evil.

"Have you tracked the vehicle's trajectory?" Chen Jianjun's voice was not loud, but it was steady, like ballast, barely stabilizing the anxious atmosphere in the room caused by the immense pressure.

A young cyber police officer immediately reported: "Report, Captain Chen, it has been tracked."

He projected the surveillance footage onto the large screen.

On the screen, a boy wearing a small suit was driving a perfectly scaled-down hardcore off-road vehicle.

The body lines were full of muscle and power; the high chassis, thick off-road tires, and angular contours all displayed its formidable desire for conquest.

The entire body was painted in a deep matte black; under the conference room lights, that black seemed to absorb all light, exuding a sense of weightiness while carrying a dangerous aura.

"After the target vehicle left the Yujing Garden villa area, it traveled east along Huayang Avenue and finally entered Xinhua Tunnel at 11:40 AM."

"And then?" Chen Jianjun pressed.

The young cyber police officer's forehead broke out in sweat. He pointed to the large screen, his tone somewhat strained: "Then... then it was gone."

On the large screen, the image was split into a dozen sections, showing the other exit of Xinhua Tunnel and the surveillance footage of all connecting intersections.

Everyone was staring intently at the screen. Time ticked by second by second, but the small black off-road vehicle, which should have exited the tunnel within minutes, never appeared.

It had vanished without a trace.

"Could it be hiding inside the tunnel?" a police officer speculated.

"Impossible." Chen Jianjun immediately denied, "Xinhua Tunnel is only eight hundred meters long, and there is nowhere inside to hide a vehicle. Furthermore, we have already sent people in to search, and there was nothing."

"Then could it... have been kidnapped? Was the car and the person loaded into another vehicle and taken away?"

"We have already screened all vehicles entering and leaving the tunnel during that time period. None of them had the capacity to load a small off-road vehicle and a child in such a short time. Moreover, the family has not received any ransom calls to date."

One seemingly reasonable guess after another was proposed, only to be refuted by cold, hard reality.

The entire special investigation team had fallen into the first deadlock since its inception.

Watching this inconceivable scene, the most experienced veteran police officers in the conference room felt their scalps tingle. They had worked on cases their entire lives and had never encountered anything so absurd.

Just then, the conference room door was pushed open. A clerk responsible for intelligence aggregation walked in quickly. With a strange expression on his face—wanting to laugh but not daring to—he reported to Chen Jianjun: "Captain Chen, the highway management center just forwarded an abnormal situation report."

"Speak."

"About half an hour ago, the highway traffic police received a report from a truck driver, saying that on the Baishui section of the Qinglan Expressway, he saw a... a ghost car."

"A ghost car?" Chen Jianjun's brows knitted together.

"Yes." The clerk's mouth twitched, and he steeled himself to repeat, "The driver said he saw a child-sized off-road vehicle without a license plate speeding on the highway; its design looked like a small tank. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, and just as he wanted to get a better look, the car suddenly disappeared as it approached a highway gantry. After passing the gantry, it suddenly popped back out. The driver was so scared he almost drove his truck into a ditch, and he is still in the service area muttering 'Amitabha'."

As soon as this recounting was finished, everyone in the conference room stared at him blankly, followed by an irrepressible burst of sneers.

"What kind of joke is this? Was the driver drunk?"

"Ghost car, my foot. I think he saw a ghost."

"Driving a child's off-road vehicle on the highway? And playing disappearing acts? Does he think he's filming a fantasy movie?"

Just when everyone was dismissing this as an absurd interlude, in the corner, the young cyber police officer, Xiao Wang, who had been responsible for retrieving surveillance footage, stared blankly at the two side-by-side windows on his screen.

One window showed the Xinhua Tunnel, where the small off-road vehicle had bizarrely vanished in the city surveillance footage.

The other window was the text report just faxed over regarding the highway ghost car incident.

He looked at the time the ghost car appeared as recorded in the report, then looked at the disappearance time of the target vehicle on his end, and a thought uncontrollably burrowed into his mind.

He couldn't help but stand up and, addressing Chen Jianjun who was still frowning in thought, said in a joking tone, half-doubting: "Captain Chen, what if... is there a possibility? This kid... he drove this small car onto the highway, and then, this car... it actually can turn invisible?!"

This unintentional joke made the already oppressive atmosphere in the conference room instantly become even weirder. A few police officers gave a few forced laughs, but more people looked at Xiao Wang with the eyes one would use for a fool.

However, among everyone, Chen Jianjun, who had been quiet and had been thinking ever since listening to the clerk's report about the ghost car, suddenly stiffened the moment he heard this sentence.

He slowly turned his head and stared intently at Xiao Wang. The weariness in his eyes was swept away, revealing a terrifyingly sharp glint.

Surveillance blind spot... Vanished into thin air...

Expressway... Vanished and reappeared into thin air...

Two seemingly unrelated events were, at this moment, connected by Xiao Wang's words.

A thought struck Chen Jianjun: 'When all conventional possibilities have been eliminated, then whatever remains, no matter how inconceivable, must be the only truth!'

He walked in two or three strides to the huge whiteboard in the center of the conference room, picked up an eraser, and forcefully wiped away all the conventional investigation directions written on it, such as kidnapping and concealment, until it was completely clean.

Amidst the astonished gazes of everyone, he turned around and, with an unprecedentedly grave tone, issued an order to all members of the special investigation team:

"Pass the word down: everyone stop all existing ineffective investigations immediately!"

"From now on, we have only one direction for our investigation—"

He took a deep breath and said, enunciating every word:

"We are assuming that this car can actually turn invisible!"