Brother Bing's Clue

Hearing about Brother Bing, Zhang Yuanqing felt a surge of joy and asked:

"Are there results from the Hangzhou branch? Did they find anything?"

The efficiency of the colleagues at the Hangzhou branch was abysmal; it took them three days to produce results, clearly showing they didn't take the disappearance of Brother Bing seriously, he complained inwardly.

Brother Bing had been missing for nearly half a month. If the Spirit Realm Walker of the Hangzhou branch had investigated with due diligence, they should have been able to provide feedback and sufficient information when Li Dongze commissioned them.

Clearly, they believed Brother Bing had died in the Spirit Realm and saw no point in investigating.

"We did find something." Li Dongze weighed his words for a moment before saying:

"Lei Yibing's interpersonal relationships were relatively simple. He had a withdrawn personality, kept to himself, and wasn't close to his classmates. He kept a low profile at school and never caused trouble, but after an in-depth investigation by our colleagues in the Hangzhou branch, they discovered that in the past three years, two people who had provoked him died in somewhat reasonable ways."

Zhang Yuanqing frowned deeply as he listened. Once Li Dongze finished, he immediately retorted:

"That's not right. Brother Bing wasn't exactly a social butterfly, but he was definitely not withdrawn, and 'low profile' had nothing to do with how he did things. I grew up with him; I know him too well. When his temper flared, he wouldn't even bother saying 'What are you looking at?'—he'd just start swinging."

As for Brother Bing's suspected involvement in the deaths, he didn't know the details, so he neither refuted nor commented on it.

"You're describing a Fire Master, aren't you?" Li Dongze couldn't help but quip. He coughed to steer the conversation back: "So, the Lei Yibing you know is different from the one in the students' impressions. Who do you think is the one with the problem?"

Zhang Yuanqing was silent for a moment: "Perhaps, it was Brother Bing who changed."

Li Dongze gave an "mm" of agreement and analyzed:

"You attended the same high school. If there had been anything abnormal about him, you would have sensed it. In other words, the change in Lei Yibing began when he started university.

"Between graduating high school and starting university, he must have encountered something that caused his personality to change drastically. But there are too many factors; without more clues, it's impossible to speculate."

Zhang Yuanqing agreed with Li Dongze's assessment, but there was one thing he couldn't figure out: given their brotherly bond, why didn't Brother Bing tell him after becoming a Spirit Realm Walker?

The Spirit Realm had no mechanism for erasure; if you wanted to, you could even use a megaphone to travel the world and promote the Spirit Realm.

Though, no one would believe it...

"Anything else?"

"Yes, but I'm not sure if it counts." Li Dongze pondered for a moment before saying: "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 before he went missing—the night before he mailed you the Role Card—he wrote one entry."

"Where is the diary?"

"The diary is in his university dorm. Our colleagues at the Hangzhou branch checked it and felt it had no value, but at my request, they took photos. I'm sending them to you now," Li Dongze said.

"If I remember correctly, tomorrow is the fourteenth day since you came out of the Sheling Tunnel."

"Yeah!"

Tomorrow was the deadline; he had to enter the Spirit Realm either tonight or tomorrow.

"There will be a short buffer period when the Spirit Realm opens. Remember to call and report to me, or call Guan Ya."

"Got it."

The two ended the call, and Zhang Yuanqing opened his messaging app to receive the compressed file sent by Li Dongze.

After decompressing it, he obtained over thirty images.

Zhang Yuanqing sat at his desk and read the diary. Brother Bing indeed didn't write in it often—sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly—and it was mostly about trivial matters.

Zhang Yuanqing read very carefully at first, but once he confirmed the earlier entries had no value, he skipped directly to the last image.

"I'll be interning in the second half of the year. Time flies; before I knew it, I'm about to bid farewell to my university life and step into society. Dreaming back last night, I remembered my childhood with Yuanzi in the alley, remembered sneaking forbidden books with him, remembered the old days of scamming my dad and his uncle for pocket money, and remembered the games we played together."

The content was very brief, just a few short sentences.

Zhang Yuanqing stared deeply at the phone screen, then suddenly leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

Brother Bing really did leave me a clue!

The next day, Zhang Yuanqing woke up at 9:30 AM.

"Looks like the time to enter the Spirit Realm is today."

He ate breakfast, put on a mask and a baseball cap, and hailed a taxi to Lei Yibing's home.

The alley where he lived as a child was called Yinping Residential Quarter, built half a century ago. Every residential building was mottled with the passage of time. The buildings were uniformly six stories high with no elevators, and messy cables were wrapped around the walls in circle after circle.

Zhang Yuanqing got out of the taxi and took a casual look. It had been over a decade, and apart from the exterior walls being repainted and a guard booth added at the entrance, nothing else had changed.

When he was in middle school, rumors of demolition had circulated in this area. Everyone waited and waited, but after nearly ten years, there wasn't even a shadow of a demolition crew.

Zhang Yuanqing crossed the road and bought a bag of loquats, a pineapple, and three Keitt mangoes at the fruit shop across the street.

Walking up the cramped stairwell, he stopped in front of the door to unit 402 and rang the doorbell.

A moment later, footsteps sounded from inside. The security door opened, and a woman in her forties stood at the entrance, looking stunned:

"Yuanzi?"

Her complexion was poor, with heavy dark circles under her eyes and a gaunt face.

"Aunt Zhou, I came to check on you and Uncle Lei," Zhang Yuanqing said with a well-behaved tone, sighing inwardly.

Aunt Zhou's gaze fell upon the fruit he was carrying, and she offered a gratified smile, saying softly:

"Come in."

The apartment was a two-bedroom layout, spanning over eighty square meters. Zhangyuanqing sat on the living room sofa, cradling a cup of warm water poured by Aunt Zhou, listening to her recount her sorrows with a heavy heart.

"Aunt Zhou, I believe the Public Security Bureau will find Brother Bing," Zhangyuanqing comforted her.

"Your grandmother came to see me a few days ago. She said that Old Chen told her that no news is not necessarily bad news," Aunt Zhou sighed, then added:

"Stay for lunch."

"No need, I have class later," Zhangyuanqing shook his head.

When he was a child, he and Brother Bing were inseparable, often sleeping in the same bed and frequently crashing at each other's homes for meals. But today, he could enter the Spirit Realm at any moment, so he tried to minimize his time spent outside.

"Aunt Zhou, I'm going to stay in Brother Bing's room for a while."

Zhangyuanqing had not forgotten the purpose of his visit.

He pushed open the door to Brother Bing's bedroom. The small room contained a double bed, a wardrobe, a desk, and a television. His gaze swept quickly across the room before he finally pulled a large cardboard box from under the bed.

The box was filled with a hodgepodge of items: a Subor game console, a Digimon virtual pet, a bouncy ball, a yo-yo, binoculars, Water Margin hero cards, a wooden spinning top, a whistle, Dragon Ball manga volumes, and The Amorous History of Emperor Yang of Sui by Qi Dong Ye Ren.

Every little toy here had its own story. Take the binoculars, for example: back then, there was a red-light district nearby. As night fell, the salons would light up with hazy neon, and the enchantingly dressed ladies would sit on the sofas inside, their graceful curves visible even through the glass doors.

Once, when they were still in elementary school, Brother Bing had snuck up to him, claiming he had seen Zhangyuanqing's uncle secretly entering one of the salons.

Zhangyuanqing didn't believe it and went straight to confront his uncle. The uncle was shocked and gave him twenty yuan as hush money.

Afterward, as Zhangyuanqing and Brother Bing licked their popsicles, they both agreed it was a pretty good business.

So, the two little brats started staking out the roadside after school. This time, they didn't catch the uncle, but they did catch Brother Bing's own father.

The old man was terrified and also gave them a dozen yuan in hush money.

Later on, the father and the uncle mended their ways and were never caught again, until one day, when Zhangyuanqing stole his aunt's pocket money to buy binoculars and observed from afar.

And so, he earned more hush money.

Thus, the box held not only Brother Bing's childhood but also Zhangyuanqing's.

He stared blankly at the toys from his youth, feeling only that time had flown and people had changed.

What are you being so sentimental for? You're not at the age to dwell on the past yet. He mocked himself, pushing back the memories that came flooding into his mind.

He then picked up The Amorous History of Emperor Yang of Sui and shook the pages.

Amidst the "rustle" of flipping pages, a slip of paper fell out, covered in dense strings of numbers.

Seeing this, Zhangyuanqing let out a long breath, the heavy stone in his heart finally lifting.

The numbers on the slip were a code that only the two brothers could understand.

Influenced by his grandfather, Zhangyuanqing had been obsessed with police procedurals, detective-themed cartoons, and novels as a child, fantasizing about being a brilliant detective.

In middle school, he and Brother Bing were reading a famous foreign detective novel and were inspired by one of the cases, thinking: how could the great detective Zhangyuanqing and his assistant Abing not have a secret code?

So, they spent a great deal of effort developing a cipher format.

For example, the first number corresponded to the line, the second also to the line, and the third to the page number. Seven digits made a group, and the format of the second group was the reverse of the first.

And the very first time they played this game, the base text they used was The Amorous History of Emperor Yang of Sui.

As Zhangyuanqing recalled the cipher format and cross-referenced it with the book, time slowly slipped away. After an unknown amount of time, he finally pieced together the entire message.

First line of numbers: 6203; Two brothers for a lifetime.

Second line of numbers: Yuanzi, find it; I left everything there.