Brother Bing's Clue

At the mention of Brother Bing, Zhang Yuanqing's heart leaped with joy. "Did the Hangzhou Branch find anything? Have they learned anything yet?"

The Hangzhou Branch had been far too slow. It had taken them three days to come up with anything. They clearly weren't taking Brother Bing's disappearance seriously, he grumbled inwardly.

Brother Bing had been missing for nearly half a month. If the Spirit Realm Walkers at the Hangzhou Branch had done their jobs properly, they should have had feedback and plenty of information to share by the time Li Dongze asked them to investigate.

Apparently, they had decided that Brother Bing had died in the Spirit Realm and that there was no point investigating.

"They did find a few things." Li Dongze paused to choose his words, then said, "Lei Yibing didn't have much of a social life. He was withdrawn and kept to himself, and wasn't close to his classmates. He kept a low profile at school and never caused trouble. But after looking into things more closely, my colleagues at the Hangzhou Branch found that in the past three years, two people who'd provoked him had both died in ways that seemed perfectly plausible."

Zhang Yuanqing frowned deeply as he listened. As soon as Li Dongze finished, he objected, "That's not right. Brother Bing wasn't the most sociable guy, but he definitely wasn't withdrawn, and he was anything but low-key. We grew up together. I know him inside and out. When he got angry, he wouldn't even bother asking, 'What are you looking at?' He'd just throw a punch."

As for Brother Bing's apparent involvement in killing people, Zhang Yuanqing didn't know the details, so he neither disputed nor commented on it.

"You're describing a Fire Master, not Lei Yibing," Li Dongze couldn't help saying. He cleared his throat and steered the conversation back on track. "So the Lei Yibing you knew was different from the one his classmates remember. Who do you think changed?"

Zhang Yuanqing was quiet for a moment. "Maybe Brother Bing changed."

"Mm." Li Dongze agreed and analyzed the situation. "You went to the same high school, so if anything had been off about him then, you would've noticed. That means Lei Yibing must have changed after starting college.

"Something must have happened between his high school graduation and the start of college that changed his personality. But there are too many possible factors. Without more clues, there's no way to tell."

Zhang Yuanqing agreed with Li Dongze's reasoning, but one thing still didn't make sense to him. They'd been as close as brothers, yet after becoming a Spirit Realm Walker, Brother Bing hadn't even told him.

The Spirit Realm didn't have any rule against revealing its existence. If you wanted, you could travel around the world with a megaphone, telling everyone about the Spirit Realm.

Though no one would believe you...

"Anything else?"

"There is, but I don't know if it counts." Li Dongze pondered a moment before asking, "Did Lei Yibing keep a diary?"

"What kind of normal person keeps a diary these days?"

"My colleagues in Hangzhou found a diary in his dorm room. He didn't write in it often, but the night before he disappeared—the night before he mailed you the Role Card—he wrote an entry."

"Where's the diary?"

"It's in his college dorm. My colleagues at the Hangzhou Branch looked through it and didn't think it was useful. But at my request, they took pictures of it. I'll send them to you now," Li Dongze said. "If I remember right, tomorrow will be the fourteenth day since you came out of Sheling Tunnel."

"Mm!"

Tomorrow was the deadline. He would either enter the Spirit Realm tonight or tomorrow.

"There'll be a brief grace period when the Spirit Realm opens. Remember to call me and report in, or call Guan Ya."

"Got it."

After ending the call, Zhang Yuanqing opened his chat app and received the compressed file Li Dongze had sent.

After extracting it, he found more than thirty photos.

Zhang Yuanqing sat at his desk and read the diary. Brother Bing really hadn't written in it often—sometimes once a week, sometimes once a month—and the entries were all about trivial things.

At first, Zhang Yuanqing read carefully. Once he'd confirmed the earlier entries weren't useful, he flipped straight to the last photo.

"Internships start in the second half of the year. Time really flies. Before I know it, I'll be done with college and entering the real world. Last night, I dreamed of our childhood in the alley, Yuanzi and me secretly reading banned books, and the times we tricked my dad and his uncle out of pocket money. I thought of all the games we used to play together."

It was brief, only a few lines.

Zhang Yuanqing stared intently at the phone screen. Then he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

Brother Bing really had left me a clue!

The next day, Zhang Yuanqing woke up at nine thirty in the morning.

"Looks like I'm entering the Spirit Realm today."

After breakfast, he put on a mask and a baseball cap, then took a taxi to Lei Yibing's home.

The alley where he'd grown up was called Yinping Residential Quarter. Built half a century ago, its every apartment block was mottled with age. The buildings all had six floors and no elevators, and tangled cables coiled around their walls in endless loops.

Zhang Yuanqing got out of the taxi and glanced around. More than ten years had passed. Aside from the fresh paint on the outer walls and the security booth added at the entrance, nothing else had changed.

When he was in middle school, people in the neighborhood had already been talking about demolition. Everyone had waited and waited for nearly ten years, but the demolition crew had never shown up.

Zhang Yuanqing crossed the street and bought a bag of loquats, a pineapple, and three Kate mangoes from the fruit shop opposite.

He went up the cramped stairwell and stopped outside the door of apartment 402, then rang the bell.

A moment later, he heard footsteps inside. The security door opened, revealing a woman in her forties. She stared at him in surprise. "Yuanzi?"

She looked unwell, with deep circles under her eyes and a gaunt face.

"Aunt Zhou, I came to see you and Uncle Lei," Zhang Yuanqing said obediently, sighing inwardly.

Aunt Zhou noticed the fruit in his hand and gave him a relieved smile. "Come in."

The apartment had two bedrooms and a living room, and was a little over eighty square meters. Zhang Yuanqing sat on the sofa, holding a glass of warm water Aunt Zhou had poured for him, and listened as she spoke sadly.

"Aunt Zhou, I'm sure the Public Security Bureau will find Brother Bing," Zhang Yuanqing said comfortingly.

"Your grandmother came to visit me a few days ago. She said Old Chen told her that no news might not be bad news." Aunt Zhou sighed, then added, "Stay for lunch."

"No, thanks. I have class later." Zhang Yuanqing shook his head.

When he was little, he and Brother Bing had been inseparable. They often slept over at each other's homes, and sharing meals was second nature to them. But today, he could enter the Spirit Realm at any moment, so he wanted to spend as little time outside as possible.

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

Zhang Yuanqing hadn't forgotten why he'd come.

He pushed open the door to Brother Bing's bedroom. The small room held a double bed, a wardrobe, a desk, and a TV. His eyes swept quickly around the room before he pulled a large cardboard box out from under the bed.

The box was full of odds and ends: a Little Tyrant game console, a Digimon virtual pet, a crackling ball, a yo-yo, binoculars, Water Margin hero cards, a wooden spinning top, a whistling toy, Dragon Ball manga, and The Amorous History of Emperor Yang of Sui by Qi Dong Ye Ren.

Each of these little toys had a story. Take the binoculars, for instance. There used to be a red-light district nearby. When night fell, the hair salons would glow with hazy lights, and the elegantly dressed ladies would sit on the sofas inside, their graceful curves visible through the glass doors.

Once, when they were still in elementary school, Brother Bing had secretly come to tell him that he'd seen Zhang Yuanqing's uncle sneaking into a hair salon.

Zhang Yuanqing hadn't believed him and had gone straight to find his uncle. His uncle had turned pale with shock and given him twenty yuan as hush money.

Afterward, Zhang Yuanqing and Brother Bing had licked their popsicles and agreed it was a pretty good business.

So the two little brats had started keeping watch by the roadside after school. This time, they didn't catch his uncle. They caught Brother Bing's father instead.

His father had turned pale with shock too and given them more than ten yuan to keep quiet.

Later, his father and Zhang Yuanqing's uncle had mended their ways and were never caught again—until one day, Zhang Yuanqing stole his aunt's pocket money to buy binoculars and spy on them from a distance.

And earned more hush money.

So the box held Brother Bing's childhood, and Zhang Yuanqing's childhood too.

He stared blankly at the toys from their youth, feeling that time had flown by and everything had changed.

What was he getting sentimental for? He wasn't old enough to dwell on the past yet. He scoffed at himself and pushed the flood of memories back down.

Then he picked up The Amorous History of Emperor Yang of Sui and shook the pages.

With a rustle, a slip of paper fell out. Two long strings of numbers were written on it.

Seeing it, Zhang Yuanqing slowly let out a breath, finally easing the weight from his chest.

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

Influenced by his grandfather, Zhang Yuanqing had been obsessed with police-and-bandit movies, detective cartoons, and novels as a child. He'd imagined himself as a brilliant police officer.

In middle school, he and Brother Bing had watched a famous foreign detective novel adaptation together. An incident in the story had inspired him. How could the great detective Zhang Yuanqing and his assistant, A-Bing, not have a secret code?

So they'd spent a great deal of effort coming up with a cipher.

For instance, the first number indicated the line, the second indicated the character on that line, and the third indicated the page. Each group had seven characters, and the second group of numbers followed the first group in reverse order.

The book they'd used as the key when they first played the game was The Amorous History of Emperor Yang of Sui.

Recalling the cipher as he checked the book, Zhang Yuanqing kept at it as time passed. After who knew how long, he finally pieced together the entire message.

First line of numbers: Six-two-zero-three; brothers for life.

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