Brother Bing's matter... Zhang Yuanqing felt happy and asked, "Has there been any progress from the Hangzhou branch? Did they find anything?"

The efficiency of the Hangzhou branch colleagues was poor, taking three days to come up with results, clearly indicating that they did not attach importance to Brother Bing's disappearance case... he complained in his heart.

Brother Bing had been missing for almost half a month. If the Hangzhou branch's Lingjing walkers had investigated diligently, they should have given feedback and provided sufficient information when Li Dongze commissioned them.

Obviously, they believed that Brother Bing had died in the Lingjing and there was no point in investigating further.

Theft is never good, try looking at bit.ly/3iBfjkV.

"We did find something..." Li Dongze hesitated for a moment before saying, "Lei Yibing's social circle is relatively simple. He is a solitary person who keeps to himself and does not get close to his classmates. He is low-key in school and never causes trouble, but after the colleagues from the Hangzhou branch conducted a thorough investigation, they found that in the past three years, two people who had provoked him had died in a reasonable way."

Zhang Yuanqing frowned upon hearing this and immediately retorted when Li Dongze finished speaking, "No, Brother Bing is not someone who is two-faced, nor is he low-key in his actions. I grew up with him and know him too well. When he gets angry, he doesn't even bother to say 'what are you looking at' and goes straight to using his fists."

As for Brother Bing's suspected murder, he did not refute or comment as he did not know the details.

"You're talking about a fire user, right..." Li Dongze couldn't help but comment, coughed, and changed the subject, "So, the Lei Yibing in your mouth and the one in the students' impression are different. Who do you think is the problem?"

Zhang Yuanqing fell silent for a moment. "Perhaps, it's Brother Bing who has a problem."

Li Dongze nodded in agreement and analyzed, "You and he went to the same university after graduating from high school. If he had any abnormality, you could not have failed to notice it. That means that Lei Yibing's change began when he entered university."

"During the period from high school graduation to the start of university, he must have encountered something that caused his temperament to change drastically. However, there are too many factors involved, and without more clues, we cannot speculate."

Zhang Yuanqing agreed with Li Dongze's statement but could not understand why Brother Bing did not tell him anything about becoming a Lingjing walker despite their close brotherly relationship.

The Lingjing did not have an erasure mechanism, and if one wished, they could even take a loudspeaker and travel around the world to promote the Lingjing.

Although no one would believe it...

"Is there anything else?"

"Yes, but I don't know if it counts..." Li Dongze hesitated before saying, "Does Lei Yibing have a habit of writing a diary?"

"Who writes a diary these days?"

"The colleagues from the Hangzhou branch found a diary in his dormitory. He did not write frequently, but on 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 from the Hangzhou branch checked it and found that the diary was of no value. However, at my request, they took photos of it, and I am sending them to you now," Li Dongze said, "If I remember correctly, tomorrow will be the fourteenth day since you came out of the She Ling Tunnel."

"Yes!"

Tomorrow was the deadline. Either enter the Lingjing tonight or tomorrow."The Spirit Realm will have a short buffer time when it opens. Remember to call me or Guan Ya to report it."

"Got it."

After ending the call, Zhang Yuanqing opened the chat app and received a compressed package sent by Li Dongze.

After decompressing it, he got over thirty pictures.

Zhang Yuanqing sat at his desk and read the diary. Brother Bing didn't write frequently, sometimes updating weekly, sometimes monthly, and it was all about trivial matters.

At first, Zhang Yuanqing read it carefully, but after confirming that the previous entries had no value, he directly flipped to the last picture.

"I'll start my internship in the second half of the year. Time flies so fast. Unknowingly, I will say goodbye to my university life and step into society. Last night I dreamed of my childhood with Yuanzi in the alley, remembering the banned books we secretly read, remembering the things we did to trick my dad and his uncle for pocket money, remembering the games we played together..."

The content was brief, only a few sentences.

Zhang Yuanqing stared at his phone screen deeply and suddenly leaned back on the chair, closing his eyes.

Brother Bing really left me a clue!

...

The next day, Zhang Yuanqing woke up at 9:30 in the morning.

"It seems that today is the time to enter the Spirit Realm..."

After having breakfast, he put on a mask and a duckbill hat, and took a taxi to Lei Yibing's home.

The alley where he lived as a child was called Yinping Community, built half a century ago. Each residential building was imbued with the marks of time. The buildings were all six floors high, without elevators, and messy cables were coiled around the walls.

Zhang Yuanqing got out of the taxi and took a casual glance. It had been more than ten years, and except for the new paint on the exterior walls and the addition of a guard booth at the entrance, everything else had not changed.

When he was in junior high school, there were rumors that this area would be demolished. Everyone waited and waited, waited for almost ten years, but there was no sign of the demolition team.

Zhang Yuanqing crossed the road, bought a bag of loquat, a pineapple, and three Kate mangoes at the fruit store across the street.

Walking up the narrow corridor, he stopped in front of the door of Room 402 and rang the doorbell.

In a moment, footsteps came from inside the door, and a woman in her forties stood at the door, looking surprised.

"Yuanzi?"

She looked bad, with heavy dark circles and a thin face.

"Aunt Zhou, I came to see you and Uncle Lei." Zhang Yuanqing said in a gentle tone, silently sighing in his heart.

Aunt Zhou's gaze fell on the fruit he was holding, and she showed a relieved smile, saying softly, "Come in."

The house had two bedrooms and one living room, with an area of more than 80 square meters. Zhang Yuanqing sat on the sofa in the living room, holding the warm water poured by Aunt Zhou, and listened to her deep and sad story.

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

"Your grandmother came to see me a few days ago. She said that Lao Chen told her that there was no news, which might not be a bad thing." Aunt Zhou sighed. Then she continued, "Stay for lunch."

"No need. I still have class later." Zhang Yuanqing shook his head.

He used to be inseparable from Brother Bing when he was a child. They often slept together at night, and it was common for them to share meals. But today, he could enter the Spirit Realm at any time, so he tried to shorten his time outside.

"Aunt Zhou, I'll wait in Brother Bing's room for a while."

Zhang Yuanqing didn't forget his purpose for coming here.He pushed open the door to Brother Bing's bedroom. The small room contained a double bed, wardrobe, desk, and television... His gaze quickly scanned the room, finally settling on a large cardboard box pulled out from under the bed.

The box contained a hodgepodge of things: a Nintendo game console, a dinosaur toy, a Thunderball, a spinning top, a telescope, a Water Margin hero card, a wooden top, a whistle, a Seven Dragon Ball comic book, and the author of "The Erotic History of Emperor Yang of Sui" by Qi Dong Wild Man...

Each of these toys had its own story. For example, the telescope. In the past, there was a red-light district nearby. At night, the hair salons would light up with dim lights, and the seductive aunties would sit on the sofas in the shop, their curves visible through the glass door.

One time, when Brother Bing was still in primary school, he quietly told him that he saw Zhang Yuanqing's uncle sneaking into the hair salon.

Zhang Yuanqing didn't believe it and went to find his uncle. His uncle was shocked and gave him twenty yuan as hush money.

Later, Zhang Yuanqing and Brother Bing licked ice cream and thought this was a good business.

So the two little rascals would squat by the roadside after school, but they didn't catch the uncle. Instead, they caught Brother Bing's father.

Brother Bing's father was also shocked and gave them a dozen or so yuan as hush money.

Later, Brother Bing's father and Zhang Yuanqing's uncle turned over a new leaf and were never caught again. Until one day, Zhang Yuanqing stole his aunt's pocket money to buy a telescope and secretly observed from afar.

So they earned hush money again.

Therefore, the box contained Brother Bing's childhood and Zhang Yuanqing's childhood.

He stared blankly at the toys of his childhood, feeling that time flew by and things changed.

Why bother reminiscing when he wasn't even old enough to do so... He chuckled to himself, pushing the memories out of his mind.

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

As he flipped through the pages, a piece of paper fell out with two sets of densely packed numbers written on it.

Seeing this, Zhang Yuanqing slowly breathed a sigh of relief, as if he had put down a heavy burden.

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

Influenced by his grandfather, Zhang Yuanqing was obsessed with police and detective-themed cartoons and novels when he was a child, fantasizing about being a powerful public security officer.

In high school, he and Brother Bing read a well-known foreign detective novel together and got inspired by one of the cases. They thought that how could the great detective Zhang Yuanqing and his assistant Bing not have a secret code.

So they spent a lot of effort to come up with a code format.

For example, the first number corresponds to the line number, the second number still corresponds to the line number, the third number corresponds to the page number, and seven characters make up one group. The format of the second group of numbers is the reverse of the first group...

And the blueprint they used for the first time they played this game was "The Erotic History of Emperor Yang of Sui."

As Zhang Yuanqing recalled the code format and compared it to the book, time slowly passed. He finally pieced together all the content.

The first line of numbers: 203; two brothers for life.

The second line of numbers: Yuan, find it, I left everything there.