Zhang Yuanqing's heart leaped with joy at the mention of Bing Ge. "Did the Hangzhou Branch get any results? Did they find anything?"
The Hangzhou Branch colleagues are so inefficient, he grumbled inwardly. Three days to produce results? They clearly didn't take Bing Ge's disappearance seriously.
Bing Ge had been missing for nearly half a month. If the Spirit Realm Walkers at the Hangzhou Branch had conducted a thorough investigation, they should have been able to provide feedback and sufficient information when Li Dongze first made his request.
Clearly, they assumed Bing Ge had died in the Spirit Realm and saw no point in investigating further.
"They did uncover some things," Li Dongze said after a moment's hesitation. "Lei Yibing's social life was quite simple. He was withdrawn, a loner who kept to himself and didn't get close to his classmates. He maintained a low profile at school and never caused trouble. However, after the Hangzhou Branch colleagues dug deeper, they discovered that in the past three years, two people who had provoked him both died under seemingly natural circumstances."
Zhang Yuanqing frowned deeply as he listened. When Li Dongze finished, he immediately countered,
"That's not right. Bing Ge isn't exactly socially adept, but he's definitely not a loner. He's also far from being low-key. I've known him since we were kids—I know him too well. When his temper flares, he doesn't even bother with 'What are you looking at?' He just throws punches."
As for Bing Ge's alleged murder, Zhang Yuanqing didn't know the details, so he neither refuted nor commented on it.
"You're describing the Fire Master, aren't you?" Li Dongze couldn't help but retort, clearing his throat to steer the conversation back on track. "So, the Lei Yibing you know is different from the Lei Yibing the students remember. Who do you think is the problem?"
Zhang Yuanqing paused. "Perhaps... Bing Ge is the problem."
Li Dongze hummed in agreement, analyzing:
"You went to the same high school. If he had changed back then, you would have noticed. This means Lei Yibing's transformation began when he started college.
"Between graduating high school and starting university, something must have happened to drastically alter his personality. But there are too many variables. Without more clues, it's impossible to speculate further."
Zhang Yuanqing agreed with Li Dongze's assessment, but one thing puzzled him: given his brotherly bond with Bing Ge, why hadn't Bing Ge told him about becoming a Spirit Realm Walker?
The Spirit Realm had no suppression mechanism. If you wanted, you could even travel the world with a megaphone, promoting the Spirit Realm.
Though no one would believe you...
"Anything else?"
"Yes, but I'm not sure if it counts," Li Dongze said after a moment's hesitation. "Did Lei Yibing have a habit of keeping a diary?"
"Who keeps a diary these days?"
"Our colleagues in Hangzhou found a diary in his dormitory. He didn't write in it often, but he did write an entry the night before he disappeared—the night before he sent you the Character Card."
"Where's the diary?"
"It's in his university dormitory. The Hangzhou Branch colleagues checked it and deemed it worthless, but at my request, they took photos. I'll send them to you now," Li Dongze said.
"If I remember correctly, tomorrow will be the fourteenth day since you emerged from the She Ling Tunnel."
"Right!"
Tomorrow was the deadline. He had to enter the Spirit Realm either tonight or tomorrow.
"There will be a brief buffer period after the Spirit Realm opens. Remember to call me or Guan Ya to report."
"Got it."
After ending the call, Zhang Yuanqing opened his messaging app and received a compressed file from Li Dongze.
Upon extracting the file, he found over thirty images.
Sitting at his desk, Zhang Yuanqing began reading Bing Ge's diary. The entries were infrequent, sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, and mostly chronicled mundane events.
Initially, Zhang Yuanqing read carefully, but after confirming the earlier entries held no value, he skipped straight to the last image.
"Internship starts in the second half of the year. Time flies. Before I know it, I'll be saying goodbye to university life and stepping into society. Last night, I dreamt of my childhood with Yuanzi in the alleyways—secretly reading forbidden books, tricking my dad and his uncle out of pocket money, and playing games together."
The entry was brief, just a few lines.
Zhang Yuanqing stared intently at his phone screen, then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Bing Ge really did leave me a clue!
The next day, Zhang Yuanqing woke up at 9:30 AM.
"Looks like today's the day I enter the Spirit Realm."
After breakfast, Zhang Yuanqing put on a mask and baseball cap, then hailed a taxi to Lei Yibing's home.
The alley where he grew up, Yinping Community, had been built half a century ago. Each residential building bore the mottled marks of time, uniformly six stories tall without elevators, their walls tangled with chaotic loops of cables.
Zhang Yuanqing stepped out of the taxi and glanced around. After more than a decade, only the exterior walls had been repainted and a security booth added at the community entrance. Everything else remained unchanged.
Back in middle school, rumors of demolition had circulated endlessly. Residents waited and waited, nearly ten years passing without a single sign of the demolition crew.
Crossing the street, Zhang Yuanqing bought a bag of loquats, a pineapple, and three Kate mangoes from the fruit shop across the street.
He climbed the narrow stairwell to the fourth floor and stopped at apartment 402, pressing the doorbell.
Moments later, footsteps approached from inside. The security door swung open, revealing a woman in her forties standing in the doorway, her face etched with surprise.
"Yuanzi?" she exclaimed.
Her complexion was pale, dark circles heavy under her eyes, and her face gaunt.
"Aunt Zhou, I came to check on you and Lei Uncle," Zhang Yuanqing said in a well-behaved tone, inwardly sighing.
Aunt Zhou's gaze fell on the fruit he was carrying, and a relieved smile appeared on her face. She said softly, "Come in."
The apartment was a two-bedroom, one-living room layout, about eighty square meters. Zhang Yuanqing sat on the living room sofa, cradling the warm water Aunt Zhou had poured for him, listening to her deep, sorrowful lament.
"Aunt Zhou, I believe the Public Security Bureau will find Bing Ge," Zhang Yuanqing reassured her.
"Your grandmother visited me a few days ago. She said Old Chen told her that no news might actually be good news," Aunt Zhou sighed, then added, "Stay for lunch."
"No need, I have class later," Zhang Yuanqing replied, shaking his head.
When they were children, he and Bing Ge had been inseparable, often sleeping over at each other's houses and sharing meals. But today, he might enter the Spirit Realm at any moment, so he wanted to minimize his time outside.
"Aunt Zhou, I'm going to spend some time in Bing Ge's room."
Zhang Yuanqing hadn't forgotten his real purpose for coming.
He pushed open the door to Bing Ge's bedroom, a small room furnished with a double bed, wardrobe, desk, and television. His gaze swept quickly across the room before settling on a large cardboard box under the bed.
The box was filled with a jumble of items: a Little Tyrant gaming console, a Tyrannosaurus Rex toy, a Thunderball, a yo-yo, a telescope, Water Margin hero cards, a wooden spinning top, a whistle, Dragon Ball manga volumes, and The Amorous History of Emperor Yang by Qi Dong Ye Ren.
Each toy held a story. For instance, the telescope: back then, there was a red-light district nearby. As night fell, the hair salons would glow with hazy lights, and alluringly dressed women would sit on the sofas inside, their curves clearly visible through the glass doors.
One day, when Bing Ge was still in elementary school, he secretly approached Zhang Yuanqing and whispered that he had seen Zhang Yuanqing's uncle sneaking into one of the salons.
Zhang Yuanqing didn't believe him at first, but he went to confront his uncle anyway. The uncle panicked and gave him twenty yuan to keep quiet.
Afterward, Zhang Yuanqing and Bing Ge licked their popsicles and agreed it was a good business deal.
After school, the two boys squatted by the roadside, keeping watch. This time, they didn't catch their uncle, but Bing Ge's father.
The old man was terrified and gave them over ten yuan as hush money.
Later, both the father and uncle reformed, never getting caught again. Until one day, Zhang Yuanqing stole his aunt's allowance to buy a telescope and secretly observed them from afar.
He earned another hush money payment.
Thus, the box sealed away Bing Ge's childhood, and Zhang Yuanqing's as well.
Staring blankly at his childhood toys, he felt the swift passage of time and how things had changed.
What am I getting sentimental about? I'm not even old enough to reminisce about the past yet, he mocked himself, pushing back the flood of memories.
He then picked up The Amorous History of Emperor Yang and flipped through the pages.
With a rustle, a slip of paper fell out, covered in two dense strings of numbers.
Seeing this, Zhang Yuanqing slowly exhaled, finally relieved.
The numbers on the paper were a code only the two brothers could understand.
Influenced by his grandfather, Zhang Yuanqing had been obsessed with police dramas, detective cartoons, and novels since childhood, fantasizing about becoming a formidable Security Officer.
During middle school, while reading a renowned foreign detective novel with Bing Ge, they were inspired by a particular case. They reasoned that the great detective Zhang Yuanqing and his assistant A-Bing couldn't possibly lack a secret code.
Thus, they painstakingly devised a cipher format.
For example, the first digit corresponded to the line number, the second also to the line number, and the third to the page number. Seven digits formed a group, and the second group's format was the reverse of the first.
Their first time playing this game, they used The Amorous History of Emperor Yang as their source material.
As Zhang Yuanqing recalled the cipher format, he cross-referenced it with the book. Time slipped away unnoticed. After what felt like an eternity, he finally pieced together the entire message.
First line of numbers: 6203; Two brothers, one lifetime.
Second line of numbers: Yuanzi, find it. I left everything there.