Chapter 3

“I want you to investigate the truth behind the death of a little girl named Lily Arthur, who died on the train tracks ten years ago.”

Detective Miller's sharp eyes narrowed. “Arthur? What's your connection to this girl?”

“She was my daughter.”

I closed my eyes, a vivid image of the little girl's innocent smile appearing in my mind.

Our conversation was still live-streamed.

After hearing my daughter's name, online users immediately started researching what happened back then.

Lily's death had even made the news.

Reports stated that a six-year-old girl, unsupervised, wandered onto the train tracks and was crushed by a speeding train.

Over a dozen trains. Her small body was pulverized into the damp earth, her blood painting the tracks with a thick layer of crimson rust.

I still remember that day. Seeing Lily's mutilated remains, my hair turned white overnight.

I spent a week, from dawn till dusk, slowly searching for Lily along those tracks.

A tiny finger, a fragment of liver... Each time I found a piece, I felt both a surge of joy and overwhelming sorrow.

My Lily was the prettiest little girl; I couldn't let her leave incomplete.

But a large part of my Lily was still missing.

My Lily was so obedient. After school, she'd dutifully wait by the school gates for her dad to pick her up. But that day, someone lured her away.

Detective Miller, following my lead, reopened the investigation.

The case had originally been classified as a tragic accident caused by a child's mischievous play.

He initially only gave the files a perfunctory glance, but unexpectedly, he discovered inconsistencies.

The railway surveillance only showed snippets of Lily being run over by the train, but there was no footage of her arrival.

He exerted considerable effort trying to locate the surveillance footage from the first train that hit Lily ten years ago, but too much time had passed.

That specific train had even been decommissioned by higher-ups who deemed it 'unlucky' after the incident.

But any intelligent person could connect the dots: Lily's death had to be linked to the Hayes family. This provided a clear motive for my revenge against them.

While the police were bogged down with endless applications and procedures just to get information, skilled hackers among the online community had already uncovered crucial clues.

The hackers and the police approached the investigation from different angles.

The hackers started by looking into Lily's school, using big data to sift through surveillance footage from around the school ten years ago, pinpointing clips that showed Lily's face.

Finally, they found a blurry video. In it, three or four teenage boys were leading six-year-old Lily towards a secluded area.

The hackers used advanced techniques to enhance the faces, and one of the boys bore a striking resemblance to Milo Hayes.

Once the video was released, it ignited a firestorm online.

[I *knew* Arthur had a grudge against the Hayes family! Otherwise, why would he be so brutal?]

[Holy crap! So Milo led the little girl onto the tracks? He's responsible for her death, indirectly, right?]

[Then Arthur's revenge against the Hayes family makes sense. But why kill the others? Milo was the one involved!]

[But it's been so long, and Milo wasn't even an adult back then. He didn't directly kill the little girl. The chances of him being sentenced are slim, right?]

[I guess that's why Arthur cut off his legs.]

Milo, who had just returned to the hospital, was cuffed by police who had seen the video and 'invited' him back to the station.