Li Yongqing was pleased. "Has there been any update from the Hangzhou branch? Have they found anything?" The colleagues at the Hangzhou branch were clearly inefficient—only delivering results after three days, which clearly showed they didn't take the case of Lei Yibing's disappearance seriously. Lei Yibing had been missing for nearly fifteen days. If the Hangzhou branch's Lingjing practitioners had been diligent and thorough in their investigation, they should have provided a solid update and sufficient information when Li Dongze first commissioned the case. Clearly, they believed Lei Yibing had died as a result of a Lingjing-related incident, and thus saw no point in further investigation. "Indeed, we've uncovered some things," Li Dongze said after a moment, "Lei Yibing's personal relationships were relatively simple. He was reserved, independent, and didn't closely associate with his classmates. He remained quiet and never caused any trouble at school. However, after a thorough investigation, the Hangzhou branch colleagues discovered that over the past three years, two people who had previously annoyed him both died under circumstances that seemed reasonably explained." Zhang Yuanqing frowned as he listened, and immediately countered once Li Dongze finished speaking: "No, Bingge isn't particularly skilled at making friends or being diplomatic, but he's far from aloof. He's anything but reserved in his actions. I've known him since childhood—very familiar with him. When he's in a mood, he doesn't even bother saying 'What are you looking at?'—he just acts. As for the incident where Bingge seems to have killed someone, I don't have the details, so I neither dispute it nor offer an evaluation." "During the period between his high school graduation and the start of university, he must have encountered something significant that caused such a dramatic change in his demeanor. Yet the factors involved are too numerous; without further clues, it's impossible to determine what exactly happened." Zhang Yuanqing agreed with Li Dongze's assessment, though he remained puzzled about one thing—given his close, brotherly relationship with Lei Yibing, he had never been informed of Lei's transformation into a spiritual realm traveler. The spiritual realm has no mechanism for erasure; in fact, if one so desired, one could even carry a megaphone and promote one's realm around the world. Although no one would believe it... "Is there anything else?" "Yes, though I'm not sure if it counts..." Li Dongze paused before adding, "Does Lei Yibing have a habit of keeping a journal?" "These days, who among the serious people still keeps a journal?" "A colleague from Hangzhou discovered a journal in his dormitory. He doesn't write frequently, but before he disappeared—specifically, the night before he sent you the character card—he wrote a detailed entry." "Where is his journal kept?" "The notebook is at his university dormitory. The colleagues from the Hangzhou branch reviewed it and thought the diary had little value, though under my request, they took photos of it. I'm now sending those photos to you," Li Dongze said. "If I'm not mistaken, tomorrow will be the fourteenth day since you emerged from the 'Sheling Tunnel.'" "Yes!" Tomorrow is the deadline—either we enter the spiritual realm tonight or tomorrow. "The spiritual realm will have a brief transitional period. Please remember to call me or Guan Ya for updates." "Got it." After ending the call, Zhang Yuan opened the chat app and received the compressed file sent by Li Dongze. Upon decompressing it, he found thirty-some photos. Sitting at his desk, Zhang Yuan began reading through the diary. Bingbo's entries were indeed infrequent—sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly—and mostly consisted of routine observations. Zhang Yuanqing read carefully at first, and once he confirmed that the earlier diary entries held little value, he directly turned to the last photo. "Next year, I'll be starting my internship—time flies! Without realizing it, I'm about to bid farewell to university life and step into the professional world. Last night, in my dream, I found myself back in the courtyard with Yuanzi, recalling our childhood days—how we secretly read banned books, how we once tricked my father and my uncle out of their savings, how we played together—so many little games..." The content was brief, just a few sentences. Zhang Yuanqing gazed deeply at his phone screen, then leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. Bing's brother indeed left me a clue! ... The next morning, Zhang Yuanqing woke up at 9:30 a.m. "It seems the entry into the spiritual realm is today..." He had breakfast, put on his mask and baseball cap, and took a taxi to Lei Yibing's home. The lane where he grew up was called Yinping Community, built half a century ago. Each residential building bore the marks of time, all six stories tall, without elevators, with tangled power cables winding around the walls in disorder. Zhang Yuanqing got out of the taxi and took a casual glance—over the past fifteen years, aside from fresh paint on the exterior walls and the addition of a gatehouse at the community entrance, nothing else had changed. When he was in junior high school, there had been talk of redevelopment in the area. People waited, waited, waited—nearly ten years passed—and still, no sight of the demolition team. Zhang Yuanqing crossed the street, bought a bag of pines, a pineapple, and three ketes at a fruit shop across the way. He climbed the narrow stairwell and stopped at the door of apartment 402, ringing the bell. A moment later, footsteps came from inside, the security door opened, and a woman in her forties stood there, surprised: “Yuanzi?” Her complexion was pale, with prominent dark circles under her eyes, and her face was thin. "Zhou Aunt, I'm coming to see you and Lei Uncle." Zhang Yuanqing spoke politely, silently sighing inwardly. Zhou Aunt's eyes fell on the fruits he was holding, and a warm smile appeared on her face as she gently said, "Come in." "Ah, Aunt Zhou, I'll just stay with Bingbo for a moment." Zhang Yuanqing didn't forget his purpose for coming. Pushing open the door to Bingbo's room, he took in the small space—doubles bed, wardrobe, desk, television—and quickly scanned the room. Finally, he pulled out a large cardboard box from under the bed. Inside, the items were all over the place: a Xiaowangwang game console, a Dragón machine, a bouncy ball, a yo-yo, a telescope, Water Margin character cards, a wooden top, a pull-whistle, a Dragon Ball comic book, and a book titled "The Lustrous History of Emperor Yang" by Qi Dongren. Zhang Yuanqing didn't believe it. He went straight to his uncle, who was so shocked that he handed him twenty yuan as a retainer. Afterward, while sipping their pops, both Zhang and Bing felt the business was quite promising. So the two young boys sat on the roadside after school, keeping watch—this time they didn't catch their uncle, but they did catch Bing's father. The old man was equally stunned and gave them about fifteen yuan as a retainer. Later, both the uncle and the father turned honest and were never caught again—until one day, Zhang Yuanqing stole his aunt's spare change to buy a telescope and secretly observed from afar, thus earning another retainer fee. Therefore, the box preserves not only Bing's childhood but also Zhang Yuanqing's own. He stared blankly at his childhood toys, feeling time slipping by and people changing. What was there to reflect upon? He hadn't quite reached the age of nostalgia yet. With a self-deprecating chuckle, he pushed the flood of memories back into his mind. Then, he picked up "The Lustrous History of Emperor Yang of Sui" and began flipping through the pages. A rustling sound as the book was flipped, and a piece of paper fell out, bearing two dense strings of numbers. Seeing this, Zhang Yuanqing slowly exhaled, finally setting his mind at ease. The numbers on the paper were a cipher only the two brothers could understand. Influenced by his grandfather, Zhang Yuanqing had been deeply fascinated since childhood by police and detective-themed animated series and novels, often imagining himself as a skilled security officer. During his high school years, while watching a well-known foreign detective novel with Bing, he was inspired by one case and decided that there had to be a secret code between the great detective Zhang Yuanqing and his assistant, Bing. Thus, he devoted considerable effort to developing a cipher format. For instance, the first number corresponded to the line number, the second also to the line number, the third to the page number, with seven digits forming a group, and the format of the second group being the reverse of the first. Their very first game of this kind was based on *The Lustrous Tale of Emperor Yang of Sui*. Zhang Yuanqing recalled the password format while cross-referencing with the book, and as time passed slowly, he eventually assembled all the content. First row of numbers: Lu Er Ling San; one world, two brothers. Second row of numbers: Yuan Zi—find it. There, I left everything.