“Don’t worry just yet. My grandfather and cousin both work at the Public Security Bureau, as you know. I’ll ask them how to handle this kind of situation, what things to pay attention to. If there’s anything you don’t understand or need to consult about, feel free to call me anytime.

“Also, you must ask your classmates at school. If Brian has offended anyone, surely some classmates would know.”

Uncle Lei felt a bit more at ease and said:

“Got it, Mike. You don’t worry either. If there’s any news, I’ll let you know right away.”

After hanging up, Michael Bolton felt restless, pacing back and forth in his room, worried about Brian’s safety.

People don’t just disappear for no reason. If the surveillance didn’t catch anything, then someone must have tampered with it. The question is, who did Brian offend?

But as a junior in college, who could he possibly have offended?

Wait, the disappearance was the day before yesterday...

The day before yesterday?!

Michael Bolton was suddenly startled. It takes 2–3 days for a package to be delivered from Jiangnan Province to Songhai. Judging by the timing, Brian disappeared the very night after sending me the package...

Is this a coincidence? Or is there some connection?

Thinking of this, he instinctively reached for the black card in his pocket, but as he put his hand in, he suddenly froze.

The black card was gone.

Did it fall on the floor? Michael Bolton quickly lowered his head, scanning the floor of the room.

Nothing!

He got down to look under the bed. There was a layer of dust, some coins, pens, buttons, and other odds and ends, but no black card.

The card was gone, and he remembered very clearly that he had put it in his pocket.

How could it just vanish into thin air?

Connecting Brian’s mysterious disappearance, the strange letter, and the bizarrely missing black card, Michael Bolton felt a sudden, inexplicable fear and confusion.

“Could the black card be related to Brian’s disappearance? Or is it an important clue?”

Taking a deep breath, Michael Bolton decided to use his “old ailment” to reboot his memory.

He first poured some cold water into a glass, took a pill bottle from the nightstand, unscrewed it, then took off his shoes and lay down on the bed.

After all this, he closed his eyes, lay still, and visualized his father’s face in his mind.

The trigger for his old ailment was to calm down and imagine a scene, preferably something he’d seen before but couldn’t remember clearly.

This would stimulate his brain, slowly warming it up, until his mind was boiling.

After so many years, his father’s face was already blurry—making it the perfect subject.

Time ticked by. His father’s face gradually went from blurry to clear, until every detail was vivid, and Michael Bolton’s heart pounded violently, like an engine running at full throttle.

At this moment, time seemed to flow backward. Scenes from an hour ago flashed by like a movie, frame by frame.

He saw himself opening the package, reading the letter, putting the black card into his jacket pocket, then messaging Brian.

After that, for the next half hour, he sat at his desk without moving, watched short videos for over ten minutes, and exchanged a few lewd pictures with the lsp group in the gaming chat.

He saved a few high-quality images.

Then he read a novel for a few minutes, but kept thinking about the card, so he called Brian.

After the call, the crucial moment came. He anxiously paced around the room—this was the time he was most likely to drop the card.

In his memory, he saw himself frowning and pacing, then reaching for the black card and discovering it was gone.

Michael Bolton’s eyes snapped open, his face full of terror.

Gone?!

The black card was just gone, vanished into thin air.

What the hell did Brian send me... For a moment, he felt his scalp tingle.

Before he could think further, a chaotic noise rang in his ears, like countless voices overlapping. Fragmented images erupted in his mind like a volcano, flooding in all at once.

A warm liquid trickled from Michael Bolton’s nose, and his head felt like it had been nailed with steel spikes.

His face twisted as he crawled to the head of the bed, shakily poured out five blue pills and stuffed them into his mouth, then grabbed the water glass with trembling hands and swallowed the pills with water.

A moment later, Michael Bolton sat at the head of the bed, pale and gasping for breath.

At this point, he could basically confirm that Brian’s disappearance was connected to the black card.

“Brian disappeared after sending me the black card, and that card is bizarre—it’s clearly not an ordinary item...”

This inevitably made him think that Brian might have been threatened and had no choice but to transfer the item.

“But why didn’t he hand it over to the local Public Security Bureau, and instead sent it to me?”

Could it be that a college student like me, who’s never even killed a chicken or slept with anyone, is more reliable than a police officer?

Suddenly, Michael Bolton thought of the detail that “neither the surveillance nor the dorm mates noticed anything unusual.”

To be able to pull that off, someone must have considerable power.

Brian didn’t hand the black card over to the local Public Security Bureau because... the Bureau couldn’t be trusted either?

Or perhaps, the person or force behind his disappearance had influence that extended to the local Public Security Bureau.