Regarding Bing-ge’s matter… Zhang Yuanqing felt a surge of excitement and asked:
“Did the Hangzhou branch get any results? Did they find anything?”
The colleagues at the Hangzhou branch were too inefficient. It took them three days to get any results. It was clear they weren't taking Bing-ge’s disappearance seriously… he grumbled inwardly.
Bing-ge had been missing for almost half a month. If the The Way of the Extraordinary of the Hangzhou branch had been investigating diligently, they should have been able to provide feedback and give enough information when Li Dongze entrusted them with the case.
Clearly, they thought Bing-ge had died in The Way of the Extraordinary and there was no point in investigating.
“They did find some things…” Li Dongze paused for a moment, carefully choosing his words, and said:
“Lei Yibing's interpersonal relationships were relatively simple. He was introverted and a loner, not close to his classmates. He was very low-key in school and never caused trouble, but after the Hangzhou branch colleagues investigated further, they discovered that in the past three years, two people who had provoked him had died in some seemingly reasonable way.”
Zhang Yuanqing frowned as he listened. After Li Dongze finished speaking, he immediately retorted:
“That's not right. Bing-ge wasn't exactly socially adept, but he was definitely not a loner, and he wasn't low-key either. I grew up with him. I know him too well. When his temper flared up, he wouldn't even bother saying 'What are you looking at?', he'd just start a fight.”
As for Bing-ge's suspected homicidal behavior, he didn't know the details, so he didn't refute or comment.
“You're describing a Fire Master…” Li Dongze couldn't help but complain. He cleared his throat and brought the topic back on track, saying: “So, the Lei Yibing you know and the Lei Yibing that the students remember are different. Who do you think is the problem?”
Zhang Yuanqing was silent for a moment. “Perhaps, the problem is with Bing-ge.”
Li Dongze hummed in agreement and analyzed:
“You went to the same high school as him. If there was anything unusual about him, you wouldn't have missed it. In other words, Lei Yibing's change started when he went to college.
“Something must have happened to him during the period between high school graduation and the start of college, which led to a big change in his personality. But there are too many factors involved. Without more clues, it's impossible to speculate.”
Zhang Yuanqing agreed with Li Dongze's statement, but there was one thing he couldn't understand. Given his brotherly relationship with Bing-ge, Bing-ge didn't even tell him after becoming a The Way of the Extraordinary.
The Way of the Extraordinary doesn't have a memory-wiping mechanism. If you wanted, you could even travel the world with a loudspeaker promoting it.
Although no one would believe you…
“Anything else?”
“Yes, but I don't know if it counts…” Li Dongze hesitated for a moment before saying, “Did Lei Yibing have the habit of writing a diary?”
“Who writes a diary these days?”
“The colleagues in Hangzhou found a diary in his dormitory. He didn't write in it often, but before he disappeared, the night before he sent you the character card, he wrote a diary entry.”
“Where is his diary?”
“The diary is in his university dormitory. The colleagues in Hangzhou checked it and thought it wasn't valuable, but at my request, they took photos of it. I'll send 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, either he would enter The Way of the Extraordinary tonight, or tomorrow.
“There will be a short buffer time when The Way of the Extraordinary opens. Remember to call me to report, or call Guan Ya.”
“Got it.”
The two ended the call. Zhang Yuanqing opened the chat app and received the compressed file sent by Li Dongze.
After decompressing it, he got more than thirty pictures.
Zhang Yuanqing sat at his desk and read the diary. Bing-ge didn't write in it often. Sometimes it was updated weekly, sometimes monthly, and it was all about trivial things.
Zhang Yuanqing initially read it very carefully. After confirming that the previous diary entries were worthless, he went straight to the last picture.
“I’ll be doing an internship in the second half of the year. Time flies so fast. Before I knew it, I'll be saying goodbye to my university life and stepping into society. Last night I dreamed of my childhood with Yuanzi in the alley, of secretly reading forbidden books with him, of tricking my dad and his uncle out of pocket money, of playing… games together.”
The content was short and concise.
Zhang Yuanqing stared deeply at the phone screen, then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Bing-ge had indeed left me a clue!
.........
The next day, Zhang Yuanqing woke up at nine thirty in the morning.
“It seems the time to enter The Way of the Extraordinary is today…”
He ate breakfast, put on a mask and a baseball cap, and took a taxi to Lei Yibing's house.
The alley where he lived as a child was called Yinping Community. It was built half a century ago, and each residential building was filled with the mottled marks of time. The buildings were all six stories high, without elevators, and messy cables were wrapped around the walls, circle after circle.
Zhang Yuanqing got out of the taxi and casually glanced around. After more than ten years, apart from the new paint on the exterior walls and the addition of a security booth at the entrance of the community,
Nothing else had changed.
When he was in junior high school, there was a rumor that this area would be demolished. Everyone waited and waited, waited for almost ten years, and the demolition team's shadow couldn't be seen.
Zhang Yuanqing crossed the road and bought a bag of loquats, a pineapple, and three Kate mangoes from the fruit store across the street.
Walking up the narrow stairwell, he stopped in front of the 402 apartment and rang the doorbell.
After a while, footsteps came from inside the door, and a woman in her forties stood at the door, surprised.
“Yuanzi?”
She looked a little unwell, with heavy dark circles under her eyes and a gaunt face.
“Aunt Zhou, I came to see you and Uncle Lei.” Zhang Yuanqing said obediently, sighing silently in his heart.
Aunt Zhou’s gaze landed on the fruit he was holding, and she smiled with relief, softly saying:
“Come in.”
The house was a two-bedroom, one-living room layout, about eighty square meters. Zhang Yuanqing sat on the sofa in the living room, holding the warm water that Aunt Zhou poured, and listening to her sad story.
“Aunt Zhou, I believe the Police Department will find Bing-ge.” Zhang Yuanqing comforted.
“Your grandmother came to see me a few days ago. She said that Lao Chen told her that no news might be good news.” Aunt Zhou sighed, then continued:
“Stay for lunch.”
“No, I have class later.” Zhang Yuanqing shook his head.
When he was a child, he and Bing-ge were inseparable, and they often slept together at night. Sharing meals was even more common, but today he could enter The Way of the Extraordinary at any time, so he tried to shorten his time outside as much as possible.
“Aunt Zhou, I’m going to stay in Bing-ge’s room for a while.”
Zhang Yuanqing didn't forget the purpose of his visit here.
He pushed open the door to Bing-ge’s bedroom. The small room contained a double bed, wardrobe, desk, and TV… His eyes quickly swept across the room, and finally he pulled out a large cardboard box from under the bed.
The box contained a jumble of things: a Little Tyrant game console, a Tamagotchi, a Pili Ball, a yo-yo, a telescope, Water Margin hero cards, a wooden spinning top, a whistle, Dragon Ball manga books, *The Lustful History of Emperor Yang of Sui* by author Qi Dong Yeren…
Each of these little toys had its own story. For example, the telescope. There used to be a red-light district nearby. When night fell, the salons would light up with hazy lights, and the coquettish aunts would sit gracefully on the sofas in the stores, and their graceful curves could be seen through the glass doors.
Once, when Bing-ge was still in elementary school, he quietly found him and said that he saw Zhang Yuanqing's uncle secretly entering a salon.
Zhang Yuanqing didn't believe it, so he went straight to find his uncle. The uncle was shocked when he heard this and gave him twenty yuan to keep his mouth shut.
Afterwards, Zhang Yuanqing and Bing-ge licked popsicles while thinking that this business was not bad.
So the two kids squatted on the side of the road after school. This time they didn't squat on their uncle, but on Bing-ge's old father.
The old father was also shocked and gave them more than ten yuan to keep their mouths shut.
Later, the old father and uncle mended their ways and were never caught again, until one day, Zhang Yuanqing stole his aunt's pocket money to buy a telescope and secretly observed from a distance.
He earned a hush money again.
Therefore, the box contained Bing-ge's childhood and also contained Zhang Yuanqing's childhood.
He stared blankly at the toys from his childhood, only feeling that time was fleeting and things were no longer what they used to be.
What are you sentimentalizing about? You haven't reached the age to remember the past… He mocked himself and pushed back the memories that came to his mind.
Then, he picked up *The Lustful History of Emperor Yang of Sui* and shook the pages.
In the "whoosh" sound of turning pages, a piece of paper fell out. The paper was covered with dense rows of two strings of numbers.
Seeing this, Zhang Yuanqing slowly exhaled, and finally put down the big stone in his heart.
The numbers on the paper were a code that only the two brothers could understand.
Influenced by his grandfather, Zhang Yuanqing was very obsessed with police and gangster films, detective-themed cartoons, and novels when he was a child, fantasizing that he was a great police officer.
When he was in middle school, he and Bing-ge watched a well-known detective novel from abroad together. They got inspiration from a case in it and thought that how could the great detective Zhang Yuanqing and his assistant Abing not have a code.
So they spent a lot of effort to develop a set of password format.
For example, the first number corresponds to the number of lines, the second also corresponds to the number of lines, the third corresponds to the page number, seven characters are a group, and the format of the second group of numbers is the reverse of the first group…
And the first time they played this game, the blueprint they used was *The Lustful History of Emperor Yang of Sui*.
While recalling the password format, Zhang Yuanqing compared it to the book. Time slowly passed, and after an unknown amount of time, he finally pieced together all the content.
First line of numbers: 6203; Brothers for life
Second line of numbers: Yuanzi, find it, I left everything there.