Disappearance

"Sent by Brother Bing?" Zhang Yuanqing frowned after reading the letter. What did he mean by "change your life"? What did he mean by "unable to handle it"? Honestly, couldn't he be clear about anything? He turned his attention back to the black card, examining it over and over. He confirmed that it seemed like an ordinary card. If there was anything unusual about it, it was that it felt good in the hand, and the material appeared to be quite rare. Could it be a VIP card for some high-end club? Only an extraordinary man like me could handle 36D ladies. Lei Yibing was his childhood buddy, known by his nickname Ah Bing, and two years older than him. Before Zhang Yuanqing's grandparents bought their new home, the two families had lived in the same hutong. Lei Yibing had A-rank strength and A-rank speed, but C-rank intelligence. He had looked out for Zhang Yuanqing since they were kids—charging at the forefront during fights and covering the retreat when blows rained down. If anyone ever mocked Zhang Yuanqing for being a fatherless child, Lei Yibing would step up to defend him. That was why Zhang Yuanqing had always called him Brother Bing. Ah Bing's high school grades hadn't been great, so he had gone to college in neighboring Jiangnan Province. Since then, separated by distance, they had been in touch less frequently. Slipping the black card into the pocket of his windbreaker, Zhang Yuanqing picked up his phone and sent Brother Bing a teasing text: "Which club is this VIP card for? At least give me an address or contact info." After sending the message, half an hour passed without a reply. Zhang Yuanqing simply dialed Brother Bing's number. After two rings, the call connected, and a man's deep voice came through the speaker: "Hello! This is Lei Yibing's father." "Uncle Lei?" Zhang Yuanqing paused, surprised, before asking happily, "Brother Bing came back to Songhai this week? Put him on the phone, please. I need to talk to him about something." Silence hung on the other end for a moment, followed by a grief-stricken voice: "Yuanzi, I'm in Jiangnan Province. Ah Bing... he's missing." Brother Bing was missing?! Zhang Yuanqing froze on the spot. After a few seconds, bewildered and anxious, he asked, "What happened?" How could Brother Bing be missing? He had clearly just mailed him something. "He went missing three days ago. Your Aunt Zhou and I received a notice from the university yesterday and rushed over immediately." Uncle Lei sounded despondent. "Did you call the police? What did the people from the Public Security Bureau say?" Zhang Yuanqing asked in a deep voice. Uncle Lei remained silent for a long time before saying hesitantly, "It's hard to explain. The way Ah Bing disappeared is a bit strange..." Strange? What did that mean... Zhang Yuanqing was taken aback. Uncle Lei said, "Ah Bing disappeared from his dorm three nights ago. The police pulled the surveillance footage from the dormitory hallway and saw that Ah Bing didn't leave the room all night, but by early the next morning, he was gone. "His roommates said they still saw him before going to sleep. When they woke up, he wasn't there, and they just assumed he had gone out." Zhang Yuanqing blurted out, "How is that possible?" Could a person just vanish into thin air? Even a three-year-old wouldn't buy such an explanation. Suppressing the anxiety in his chest, Zhang Yuanqing lowered his voice. "Uncle Lei, did Brother Bing offend someone at school?" His first thought was that Brother Bing had crossed someone at school who wielded local influence, which was why the surveillance footage showed nothing amiss—a scenario that often pointed to a cover-up by school authorities. In this era of information overload, anyone who used the internet had heard of similar incidents. "The school administrators said they would do their best to cooperate with the police, while the officers told us to go back and wait for news, saying they'd investigate... Your aunt and I didn't sleep a wink all night." Uncle Lei's tone was heavy with frustration and worry. Sure enough, exactly that kind of answer. Damn it. Zhang Yuanqing took a deep breath and consoled him: "Don't panic just yet. You know my grandfather and cousin both work in the Public Security Bureau. I'll ask them how to handle something like this and what to pay attention to. If there's anything you're unsure about or need advice on, don't hesitate to call me. "Also, you must talk to his classmates. If Brother Bing crossed someone, a classmate is bound to know." Uncle Lei felt somewhat comforted and said, "Understood, Yuanzi. Don't worry too much either. As soon as there's any news, I'll let you know right away." Hanging up the phone, Zhang Yuanqing felt restless. He paced back and forth in his room, deeply worried about Brother Bing's safety. People didn't just vanish for no reason. If the cameras hadn't captured anything, they had to have been tampered with. The only question was whom Brother Bing had crossed. Yet who could a third-year college student possibly offend? Wait... disappeared three days ago... Three days ago?! Zhang Yuanqing was jolted by a sudden realization. An express parcel took two to three days to travel from Jiangnan Province to Songhai. Calculating the timeline, Brother Bing had gone missing the very night he sent the package... Was it a coincidence? Or was there a connection between the two? With that thought, he instinctively reached for the black card in his pocket. But the moment his hand slipped inside, he froze. The black card was gone. Did it fall on the floor? Zhang Yuanqing hastily looked down, his eyes sweeping across the floor. Nothing! He dropped to his hands and knees to look under the bed. A layer of dust coated the floor beneath it, along with a scattering of coins, pens, buttons, and other odds and ends, but no black card. The card was truly gone, yet he distinctly remembered putting it in his pocket. How could it vanish into thin air? Connecting Brother Bing's mysterious disappearance, the strange letter, and the card's bizarre vanishing act, Zhang Yuanqing felt an inexplicable dread and confusion creep over him. "Could the black card be connected to Brother Bing's disappearance? Or is it an important clue?" Taking a deep breath, Zhang Yuanqing decided to use his "old condition" to reboot his memory. First, he poured a glass of cold water, took the medicine bottle from the nightstand, unscrewed the cap, kicked off his shoes, and lay down on the bed. Once all that was done, he closed his eyes and lay completely still, visualizing his father's face in his mind. The condition to actively trigger his ailment was to calm his mind and visualize a scene—ideally something he had seen before but couldn't recall clearly. Doing so would stimulate his brain's vitality, warming it up gradually until his mental capacity surged to a boil. After so many years, his father's face had long grown blurred, making it the perfect subject. Second by second ticked by. His father's face gradually shifted from a blur to sharp clarity, until every minute detail was visible. Zhang Yuanqing's heart pounded violently, like an overloaded engine. In that instant, time seemed to flow backward. The scenes from an hour ago flashed past frame by frame, like a movie reel. He saw himself opening the parcel, finishing the letter, slipping the black card into his windbreaker pocket, and then sending Brother Bing a message. From there, for the next half hour, he had sat motionless by the desk, scrolling through short videos for a dozen minutes and exchanging lewd pictures with fellow perverts in a gaming chat group. He had saved a few high-quality pictures. Then he had read a novel for a few minutes before calling Brother Bing, unable to stop thinking about the card. After hanging up, the crucial moment arrived. Anxious, he had paced all over the room—the most likely window for the card to have fallen out. In his recalled memory, he saw himself pacing the room with furrowed brows, then reaching for the black card only to find it was already gone. Zhang Yuanqing snapped his eyes open, his face pale with horror. Gone?! The black card was just gone, vanished into thin air. What the hell did Brother Bing actually send me... For a moment, his scalp tingled with cold dread. Before he could think any further, chaotic noise erupted in his ears, like countless voices speaking at once. Fragmented images surged into his mind like an erupting volcano, crashing over him in a flood. Warm liquid dripped from his nose, and pain shot through his head as though a steel spike had been hammered into it. His face contorting in agony, he crawled toward the headboard. With trembling fingers, he dumped five small blue pills into his mouth, then shakily raised the glass of water, throwing his head back to wash down the pills and water together. A moment later, Zhang Yuanqing sat at the head of the bed, pale and gasping for breath. By this point, he could be fairly certain that there was some connection between Brother Bing's disappearance and the black card. "Brother Bing went missing right after mailing me the black card, and that card has something bizarre about it—it's clearly no ordinary object..." This inevitably suggested that he might have faced some sort of threat and was forced to move the item elsewhere. "But why didn't he hand it over to the local Public Security Bureau instead of mailing it to me?" Could a college student like him—who'd never killed a chicken, let alone slept with a woman—be more dependable than officers at a police station? Zhang Yuanqing suddenly recalled the detail that neither the surveillance cameras nor his roommates had noticed anything out of the ordinary. To pull off something like that required a certain level of power and influence. Had Brother Bing avoided turning the black card over to the local Public Security Bureau because the bureau couldn't be trusted? Or perhaps the person or faction behind his disappearance had influence that reached into the local Public Security Bureau itself. "Did he mail the black card to me because he knew my grandfather is a retired police chief and my cousin is a captain in the bureau, with deep connections throughout Songhai City, so the people in Jiangnan Province wouldn't be able to influence me?" He had to tell his cousin about this. "Ding-dong~" Just then, the doorbell rang from the entryway. His grandmother's footsteps sounded immediately, crossing the living room to the front door, where she turned the handle. "Who are you looking for?" "Hello, we are investigators from the Kangyang District Public Security Bureau. Is Zhang Yuanqing home?" a voice outside replied.