Blocked by Miss Yang as she held the elevator doors open and stared at him for several seconds, Ken frowned. "Are you getting in or not?"
Miss Yang hesitated, then asked, "You… you haven't seen my PINKIE, have you?"
Her dog was missing?
Recalling how that husky had behaved when it was with her, Ken felt that it getting lost was hardly surprising.
"No," he replied curtly.
Yet Miss Yang made no move to leave. She looked straight at him and said, "If you took PINKIE, you can just bring it back. I won't pursue the matter… If you want money, I can pay you."
Ken found the accusation baffling. "Miss, we don't even know each other, do we? Apart from running into each other once in the elevator the other day, we've had no contact. I didn't even speak to you then. On what basis are you suspecting me of stealing your dog?"
Miss Yang insisted, "That day… PINKIE was obviously frightened by you! It hasn't dared to get into that elevator since! You must hate dogs! You… if you really took PINKIE, just give it back to me, okay? I promise I won't take it out again!"
Ken looked at her standing in the elevator doorway, at a loss for words. He couldn't help thinking that the husky was truly unfortunate to have ended up with an owner like this.
Ken didn't dislike dogs. He knew very well that when a dog became annoying or disruptive, nine times out of ten it was the owner's fault—much like how obnoxious children were usually the result of poor parenting.
"I didn't take your dog. I haven't seen it since that day either. Instead of wasting time harassing me, you'd be better off looking for it. Post in the residents' group, ask other dog owners nearby for help, put up missing-dog notices. And let me give you a piece of advice—once you find it, go online and learn how to raise and train a dog. Otherwise, with the way you're doing things now, both you and the dog are going to suffer."
Hearing this, Miss Yang took two unsteady steps back, dazed, allowing the elevator doors to slide shut.
Just before they closed completely, something stirred in Ken's mind. He pressed the open-door button, and the doors slowly parted again.
"Miss Yang," he said, stepping out of the elevator, "when did your dog go missing, and where?"
She was startled, then answered reflexively, "Yesterday… last night. I took PINKIE out to play. I was on the phone with a friend, and when I looked back, it was gone. I searched with a few friends most of the night and couldn't find it. Do you think… do you think PINKIE might have been taken by dog thieves? I've seen so many posts online about dogs being stolen and sold to dog-meat hotpot places…" Her eyes welled up as she spoke.
Ken had no patience to comfort her. "Where did it disappear?"
"On the big lawn in the center of the garden next to the complex. Everyone who has dogs takes them there."
"And when you were on the phone, was it on a leash?"
"I… I let it off when we got there. PINKIE's gotten lost twice before, but we always found it within an hour or two. This time… this time it might really have been taken…" She looked at him pleadingly. "You… will you help me look for it? If you find it, I can pay you…"
Ken waved his hand. "I don't need your money. If I have time, I'll help you look. If I find it, you'd better seriously learn how to raise and train a dog."
"Yes, yes—if PINKIE comes back, I'll take it to classes with me," Miss Yang hurriedly promised. Though she had only met Ken once and felt that he didn't like her dog, she inexplicably trusted him, finding his words authoritative and convincing.
Ken didn't bother saying more. He left the building and headed toward the outskirts of the complex.
He wasn't doing this because Miss Yang was attractive, nor out of a sudden surge of altruism. He was wondering whether the husky's disappearance might be connected to the source of that peculiar scent he had been tracking.
At the same time, he wanted to test his ability to follow a trail by scent—to see whether he could locate the lost husky.
The lawn Miss Yang mentioned wasn't far from the complex.
To be honest, most dog owners around here had little sense of civic responsibility. Dog droppings littered the grass and the nearby paths, left uncollected, all dumped on the sanitation workers to clean up.
It was nearly six in the evening now, and many people were out walking their pets.
The dense, overlapping odors left by so many dogs significantly interfered with Ken's attempt to track the husky's scent.
He didn't need an item belonging to the dog as a scent source. From their encounter in the elevator, he already had a clear impression of that particular smell.
After circling the lawn for a while, Ken finally "caught" the husky's scent.
The trail branched in multiple directions. He first ruled out the one leading back toward their residential complex, then followed the remaining paths one by one, eliminating them through careful tracking.
Ken had lived here for no more than three days, and during much of that time he had been roaming the small mountain and its surroundings.
But because he had deliberately spent time memorizing, patrolling, and exploring the area, he actually knew the surroundings better than most residents—especially the overlooked corners and edges where animals liked to go and humans tended to ignore.
Tracking scent—especially in a city—was extremely difficult. There was too much interference, and surfaces like concrete and asphalt didn't hold scent well. Smells dissipated quickly, losing directionality.
Even well-trained urban tracking dogs struggled to follow a target accurately, often requiring large teams and significant time.
But Ken's sense of smell now surpassed that of most canines. More importantly, he possessed conscious analysis and reasoning. As he followed the scent, he could interpret the environment, terrain, and other clues, inferring the target's likely movements and location.
By a little past eleven that night, Ken finally found a lead.
It was a large pool of blood—and several clumps of dog fur.
Judging from the amount of blood, the husky's chances of survival were grim.
Yet at that very spot, Ken suddenly detected the same peculiar scent he had encountered in the mountains—far stronger than when he'd smelled it near the dead mouse.
It was that thing.
This location was already far from the lawn where Miss Yang had walked her dog, secluded and out of the way.
There were no other animal or human tracks near the pool of blood. The body itself had vanished without a trace.
This time, however, Ken wasn't puzzled. He raised his head, looking up into the air, toward a thick horizontal branch of a nearby tree.
He knew that thing had perched there.
No wonder he had been unable to find any traces of medium or large animals around the dead mouse in the mountains. That thing could fly.
The mouse probably hadn't been hunted in the mountains at all—it had been killed elsewhere and dropped from the air.
What was it? A bird? Was there really a bird that large, capable of killing a full-grown husky?
Ken's expression darkened. If this thing was an animal, then it was an extremely dangerous beast—one that could kill a husky could just as easily kill a human.
He pulled out his phone, intending to dial 110. After a moment's hesitation, he opened WeChat instead and tapped on Captain Zhao's avatar.
He typed a few words, then paused again. After some indecision, he put the phone away.
Looking into the distance, Ken knew that although the husky's body had been carried off by that thing, the amount of blood it had lost meant that even in flight, droplets would inevitably fall along the way—leaving a trail he could follow.
He moved forward along the scent. After a dozen meters, he spotted a few drops of blood on the grass. Continuing on, he found more blood at regular intervals.