Chapter 190 The Sky Falls (25) (1st update + 2nd update + 1500 Thunder 3rd update) [VIP]

In the pitch-black room, Ren Zhiling's mother's voice trembled and suddenly stopped.

Most things glowed green under the night vision goggles, so it was impossible to tell what liquid was in the small bowl in her hand. One could only vaguely tell through the refraction of light and the darker color of the liquid's surface that it was probably not clear water.

She stood in front of the painting, took a few deep breaths, and suddenly walked towards the camera.

【！ ！ ！】

【Bullet screen protects you! 】

[Why are you coming over here all of a sudden!!!]

[Help! Why would I come to the live broadcast room in the middle of the night to watch this? I have nothing to do! 】

[Calm down, this is a recorded broadcast, not a live broadcast. This has already happened.]

[If the camera is discovered, Ye Dian won’t be able to take it back now.]

[It's scary even if it happened... Help...]

【Why are there so few comments? Where are the people? 】

[Everyone has gone to bed. It’s already past two o’clock. Who would be like us, watching this in the live studio with nothing to do?]

[…Thank you so much for reminding me that it’s past two o’clock.]

On the surveillance screen, Ren Zhiling's mother's face was getting closer and closer to the camera.

Bai Jinshu frowned slightly, watching Ren Zhiling's mother holding the bowl of liquid. When she was about to walk in front of the camera, she turned and went to the bathroom which was out of the camera's reach.

【call……】

[Oh my god, it's too scary. The eyes of Ren Zhiling's mother under the night vision goggles and the expression on her face are like a ghost story in the middle of the night.]

[What was she doing just now? Going crazy at a blank wall?]

[Facing the painting hanging on the wall, there is a painting in that position. I saw it during the day. ]

[Okay, you don’t need to tell me what’s in the painting. It’s past two o’clock and I still want to sleep.]

[…Um, it’s nothing, just a modernist style painting with various lines and colors, the kind of painting that I couldn’t figure out what it was expressing when I saw it at an art exhibition.]

…

Bai Jinshu had specially calculated the location for placing the camera. This place is a display cabinet with mirrors on all four sides. The camera faces inwards, so it can just reflect all the images in the three rooms at the back and the living room through the mirrors. This is to ensure that everything happening in this room can be captured without blind spots.

But he is not a pervert. Who would put a camera in the bathroom?

Ren Zhiling's mother carried a small bowl into the only blind spot of the camera. Bai Jinshu watched the rest of the video at triple speed. After Ren Zhiling's mother came out of the bathroom, she went straight into the bedroom to sleep.

For the remaining hour or so, nothing happened in the room.

After all the videos were played, Bai Jinshu ejected the memory card and stood up from the stool.

Ren Zhiling parted ways with her parents on bad terms around seven or eight in the afternoon.

It can be seen from the video that after Ren Zhiling left, Ren Zhiling's parents did not react much, and they did not even communicate much about her.

After a fit of rage, Ren Zhiling's father locked himself in the study. The cameras in the study showed that he did not do anything in there. He seemed to be working on his laptop and remotely directing his graduate students.

Ren Zhiling's mother's activities were even more unremarkable. She sat in the living room and looked through her work email for a while, then heated a cup of milk and returned to the bedroom.

Then at midnight she suddenly appeared in the camera holding a bowl of liquid.

She asked why she couldn't see it, which meant that he could see it before.

Her ability to "see" must be related to the painting, and her sudden inability to "see" may also be related to the person or information represented by the painting.

There is also Huai Jiamu who disappeared as soon as he entered the project. If he had not recovered his memory, he would not have remembered the Peach Blossom Talisman. He was the one who conveyed the information. What did he want to express through this symbol?

As the barrage of comments gradually died down on the live broadcast screen, Bai Jinshu raised his eyebrows imperceptibly.

Is this... the clue that Huai Jiamu sent to him?

*

"Brother Ye, Brother Ye!"

Early in the morning, Fu Yandong stood at the door of Ye Dian's room and knocked on the door continuously.

The soundproofing of the hotel was average. When he knocked on the door in the corridor, residents in the surrounding rooms could hear him.

He knocked a few times but heard no response from the door, so he raised his voice a little more: "Brother Ye! Brother Ye, Ren Zhiling is in trouble, Brother Ye!"

There was a sound of a door opening in the room.

Ye Dian stood in the room, holding the phone in one hand, and looked up at him: "Don't make noise, I heard you."

"It's only seven o'clock. Why are you up so early?" He glanced at the time. "What happened to Ren Zhiling?"

"Brother Ye!" Fu Yandong quickly walked sideways into Ye Dian's room, closed the door and said hastily, "Ren Zhiling can't be contacted."

He saw Ye Dian in front of him was visibly speechless for a moment, "It's past seven o'clock... Isn't it normal that we can't contact him?"

"No," Fu Yandong scratched his head, "Yin Liantao called her at around six in the morning, and no one answered after more than an hour."

On the screen that had been live for a while, comments appeared one after another:

【Calling at around six o'clock?】

[I played for more than an hour. This is perseverance. 】

【Why are you guys getting up so early? 】

[It’s so funny, guys didn’t sleep well last night. 】

[No, I went to bed at 10 o'clock last night. What happened last night? ]

[Let’s not talk about what happened last night. First, tell me why you called Ren Zhiling so early. ]

On the screen, Ye Dian's expression seemed to express the same meaning.

Under normal circumstances, everyone would start contacting each other at around eight o'clock these days. Why did Yin Liantao call Ren Zhiling at around six o'clock?

"Yin Liantao woke up early this morning, saying that he didn't sleep well after analyzing Liu Yi last night, and had nightmares all night, so he woke up at around five o'clock," Fu Yandong explained quickly, "Ning Xiao and I didn't sleep well either, and we woke up around six o'clock. The three of us met in the hotel's buffet restaurant and ate together at the same table."

"While eating, Yin Liantao suddenly remembered and asked us if we followed yesterday's speculation, then wouldn't that mean we still have not explained why Ren Zhiling is special?"

"Well," Bai Jinshu nodded, "and then what?"

"Then Yin Liantao remembered that Ren Zhiling was in a bad mood after she came out of her parents' house yesterday, so she sent a message to show her concern."

Fu Yandong: "After sending the message, Yin Liantao found that he had been deleted."

"Deleted?" Bai Jinshu repeated.

"Yes," Fu Yandong nodded, "After she sent the message, there was a red exclamation mark. Ning Xiao and I were at the scene, and we also tried it and found that we were deleted as well."

There is no time displayed for deletion, and they don't know when they were deleted.

Judging from what happened yesterday, it seems like they didn't do anything?

The three people looked at each other in the restaurant. Finally, Yin Liantao opened his address book and called Ren Zhiling to ask what was going on.

Then Yin Liantao discovered that Ren Zhiling didn't answer the phone. At first, no one knew when he had made her angry, but as the call went on, everyone realized something was wrong.

Why hasn’t Ren Zhiling answered the call?

Yin Liantao was the first to stand up from his seat: "I'm going to Ren Zhiling's house."

The hotel is very close to Ren Zhiling's residential area, less than ten minutes' walk away.

Ning Xiao was stunned for a moment: "I'll come too!"

Fu Yandong wanted to go with them, but Ning Xiao persuaded him to stop: "You stay and contact the others, Brother Ye, Brother Xu, and the others. If Ren Zhiling is in trouble, then Xi Enze might also be in trouble. Contact Song Jirou immediately."

Fu Yandong hurriedly called Song Jirou in the restaurant.

After receiving the message that Xi Enze was fine, Lu Changfeng and Xu Zichen, who were in the research institute with Song Jirou, tried it. As expected, when they sent messages, there was also a red exclamation mark.

Song Jirou had not been involved with them before and had not added Ren Zhiling on WeChat. She tried to add him but received no response.

Song Jirou and the others were afraid that Ren Zhiling's abnormal behavior was related to Liu Yi, so they didn't have time to say anything to Fu Yandong and hurried towards Xi Enze.

Fu Yandong hung up the phone and took a few seconds to react before he remembered that there was one person he had not notified. He hurried over and knocked on Ye Dian's door.

Bai Jinshu frowned after hearing the whole story: "What about Yin Liantao and Ning Xiao? Have you found them?"

Didn’t these two people say they were going to Ren Zhiling’s residence?

Ren Zhiling's residential complex is so close to the hotel. Even if there is access control at the door and one needs to climb over the wall or follow a resident with an access card to get in, it shouldn't be possible that there has been no news for so long, right?

Fu Yandong: “Yes.”

How long have those two been gone?

"Let me make a call." He took out his cell phone.

"Stop fighting," Bai Jinshu pushed open the door, "Let's go too."

The distance is so close, it would be better to go there directly than to communicate over the phone for a long time.

The two of them walked out of the hotel gate and soon arrived at the entrance of Ren Zhiling's community.

At this time, it was the time when students went to school and employees went to work. People were constantly coming in and out of the community gate, and Bai Jinshu and his team easily entered the community.

The apartment building where Ren Zhiling lived was in the middle of the community. When they were halfway there, they ran into Yin Liantao and Ning Xiao coming out of it.

"Ning Xiao," Fu Yandong hurried forward a few steps, "How is it, is Ren Zhiling okay?"

Yin Liantao shook his head slightly.

"Something happened?" Fu Yandong raised his voice.

Yin Liantao: “I don’t know.”

"We knocked on the door, but no one opened it," Yin Liantao said. "We even knocked on the door of the neighbor next door. They asked us who we were and we said we were colleagues who came to get documents. We then asked them if the resident had returned home yesterday, but they said they didn't know."

In modern society, except for those old houses that have been neighbors for decades, it is not certain that the neighbors on each floor in new communities know each other.

"Yin Liantao suspected that Ren Zhiling didn't come home last night, and said he wanted to go in and take a look," Ning Xiao said, "but we kept knocking on the door just now, which aroused the neighbor's vigilance. If we use more radical means or break the door directly, we are afraid that he will call the police directly, which will waste time. So we tried to crawl over through the fire escape to take a look."

Bai Jinshu raised his eyebrows: "Did it succeed?"

Yin Liantao touched the tip of his nose: "...failed."

Bai Jinshu opened the temporary group chat and saw that the three team members on the other side of the city had reported that Xi Enze was safe. He then knocked on Lu Changfeng and asked him to come over and take a look.

When it comes to climbing walls, Lu Changfeng is the best.

"This... Can Brother Lu do this?" Ning Xiao hesitated after seeing the conversation in the group chat, "It's over 20 floors. If he fails and falls, the cost will be too high."

Before Bai Jinshu opened his mouth, several comments floated over:

[What a joke, someone actually underestimated the rock climbing skills of rice noodle rolls. ]

【Our rice noodle rolls are at least the district champion. 】

[Excuse me, Lu Changfeng is even more capable of climbing walls than someone like me who falls in love with every girl she meets.]

[If you think about it this way, then I’m better at climbing walls…]

【Grass. 】

"No problem," Bai Jinshu nodded, "You guys continue talking, does the neighbor have anything else to say?"

"The neighbors didn't say anything, but Ren Zhiling was most likely not at home," Yin Liantao continued, "otherwise she should have heard us knocking on the door for quite some time, right?"

"Not necessarily," Fu Yandong shook his head, "What if she is deliberately avoiding us? She has deleted all of us."

"Hiss..." Yin Liantao scratched his hair in confusion, "This shouldn't be the case. What did we do yesterday?"

"No?" Ning Xiao was at a loss.

Yeah, they didn’t do anything yesterday?

They had agreed to install a pinhole camera on Ren Zhiling, and they also got her consent to trick her parents into believing what they were doing. Ren Zhiling even took the initiative to cooperate with them and tried out the monitoring system before arriving home.

If she would get angry about this, her reaction time would be too long.

"Could it be that Brother Ye, you were discovered when you placed surveillance equipment at her parents' house?" Yin Liantao looked at Bai Jinshu.

"No," Bai Jinshu showed several small memory cards in his hand, "I took back the surveillance cameras last night and checked them. None of these cameras were discovered."

That's strange.

Ren Zhiling is an emotionally stable adult in her twenties. It is impossible for her to delete all the messages in a fit of anger just because she was in a bad mood after a fight with her parents and her friend she just met did not comfort her.

So what happened to her?

There are surveillance cameras in the community, but they are only located at the entrances and exits, unit doors, and elevators. The community has a large flow of people, and from seven or eight o'clock last night to seven o'clock in the morning, even if you only look at the elevator surveillance, there have been hundreds of trips up and down. If you want to go through all the videos to check whether Ren Zhiling has returned home, you might as well wait for Lu Changfeng to come and climb through the window directly.

Fortunately, Lu Changfeng arrived quickly, and he was followed by three other people.

"Why did you all come here together?" Yin Liantao asked in surprise, "Xi Enze doesn't need..."

"No need," Song Jirou shook her head, "Xi Enze is going to meet someone today, and we can't follow him."

"Let's go up and take a look first." She looked up at the apartment building where Ren Zhiling lived. "Ren Zhiling is probably not at home. I'll get a search warrant or something so that we can do something easier later."

The windows of the fire escape in the corridor were very narrow, and there was not much space to step on, but fortunately there were windowsills outside every house. At this time, most of the residents were either awake or at work or school. Lu Changfeng walked carefully all the way there. Ten minutes later, the door of Ren Zhiling's house opened with a "click".

"Not at home." Lu Changfeng shook his head.

Behind him, Ren Zhiling's cat stood on the shoe cabinet, jumping from top to bottom, rubbing against everyone's legs affectionately.

"The cat food bowl is empty, and so is the water bowl," Bai Jinshu walked in and took a look around. "According to Ren Zhiling's usual habits and the habits of the people downstairs, if they have been fed once at night, then even if the food bowl is empty now, the water bowl will not be empty."

Ren Zhiling did not come back last night.

Yin Liantao diligently added cat food and water to the cat tied downstairs. As the orange cat devoured the food, the exploration team members gathered in a circle, all with the same thoughtful look in their eyes.

"We didn't go home with Ren Zhiling last night," Ning Xiao was the first to speak. "After she gave us the monitoring equipment on her body, she said she didn't want to have dinner with us and she wanted to go home first."

"We saw that she was in a bad mood and didn't seem to want to talk to us, so we didn't ask any more questions," Yin Liantao added. "After all, she had just had an argument with her parents, so it might be better to give her some space to adjust herself, so we let her go back alone."

Unexpectedly, that was the last time they saw Ren Zhiling.

It now seems that after they said goodbye, Ren Zhiling did not return home, but went somewhere unknown.

"What should we do now?" Xu Zichen spread his hands, "Should we check the surveillance cameras or what?"

Although I know that Ren Zhiling couldn't be contacted because she was not at home, where she went is also a question.

Looking at it in a positive way, maybe she went to a friend's house because she was in a bad mood. Thinking about the useless experience of changing careers over and over again in the past few days, she deleted everyone in a moment of anger. Although she doesn't look like she has any friends, it is not impossible that she went to the bar to drink to relieve her sorrow and had a hangover and hasn't had time to go home yet.

But if you think about the worst, Liu Yi didn't show up yesterday, and Ren Zhiling went home alone. If something happened on the way, then she would be helpless.

However, the possibility of this option is relatively small. Liu Yi is not a good person. How can he ask her to clear the browser search history and social software friends before she dies?

It's impossible to even think about it.

"If we check the surveillance," Song Jirou operated on her phone for a while, "I don't have high hopes for the results."

"I have used this method many times in previous explorations, but nine out of ten times I couldn't find anything," she said as she typed. "First, in a world with a similar worldview, the distribution and popularity of surveillance is far less than you think. People are not like vehicles, and they may go to all kinds of unsurveilled paths and blind spots, so in most cases they will be lost after chasing."

"The second reason is," she spread her hands, "it's too much work. You don't know if you've never tracked down a surveillance camera. Even experienced police officers who have been through hundreds of battles will sometimes lose track of the camera if it's blurry. If we rely on just a few of us, we may need a whole day to find Ren Zhiling through surveillance cameras, assuming the best result is that every place she passes is monitored by surveillance cameras."

"What should we do?" Fu Yandong frowned, "We can't just not look for her, right? Ren Zhiling is so important."

"Call the police." Song Jirou and Bai Jinshu said in unison.

"It's not very meaningful to find Ren Zhiling through surveillance. Let the professional police look for her," Bai Jinshu turned to look at Song Jirou, "Can you get that search warrant or something like that?"

Song Jirou: "Okay, but who are you going to check?"

Bai Jinshu tilted his head: "Ren Zhiling's parents' home."

"Her parents..." Xu Zichen reacted for a moment, "You want to ask what Ren Zhiling's parents said to her yesterday? But don't we have surveillance..."

"No," Bai Jinshu shook his head slightly and threw the memory card in his hand into his hand. "Last night's surveillance, start watching at 12:07 a.m."

"Whether Ren Zhiling is in trouble or not is actually not important to us. It doesn't matter whether we can find her or not. Because now, although Ren Zhiling is very special, the clues related to her specialness have nothing to do with her if we want to continue the investigation. Even if she is dead, it will not hinder our investigation." A gleam flashed in his eyes, "and Ren Zhiling is not important to us, she is important to Liu Yi and others."

Part of Liu Yi wanted her dead, and part of Liu Yi wanted her alive.

If something really happened to Ren Zhiling, Liu Yi and others would be more anxious now that they have discovered that creating a parallel world can delay the destruction of their own world.

And for them...

"The clue is with Ren Zhiling's mother. The key is to take this opportunity to go directly to her parents." Bai Jinshu glanced at the room and looked at his watch. "Her parents should not have gone to work yet. It's not too late to hurry up now."

"You still have time to watch last night's video on the way."

Bai Jinshu walked towards the door. The exploration team members behind him looked at each other and followed him.

Although this sounds cold-blooded, for them now, Ren Zhiling's life or death... is indeed not that important.

Even if she showed up as usual this morning, everyone would just be trying to get more information about Ren Zhiling's mother from her.

The only clues about Ren Zhiling herself are how she became the key to the split of the parallel world and why her genes survived five hundred years later.

They didn't need Ren Zhiling's help to split the space, and Ren Zhiling knew nothing about the two clues they wanted to investigate.

"Should we call the police?" Yin Liantao hesitated for a moment and looked at Song Jirou and Xu Zichen.

"Report it," Song Jirou said affirmatively, "I don't know if Liu Yi and the others still know that Ren Zhiling is missing. Call the police to remind them."

They can only see it after the incident becomes a big deal.

*

The only person who appeared in front of Ren Zhiling's parents yesterday was Yin Liantao, so the excuse became logical.

"We are the police," Song Jirou stood at the front and showed her ID to Ren's parents who opened the door after hearing the knock. "We received a call from Miss Yin this morning, saying that her best friend Ren Zhiling had been missing for 12 hours, so we came to investigate."

"Missing?" Ren Zhiling's mother was standing at the door in her pajamas. When she heard this, she showed a somewhat surprised and panicked expression, but this expression only appeared on her face for a moment and was quickly suppressed.

"Ms. Yin said that there is a huge and irreconcilable conflict between Ren Zhiling and her parents. Since I accompanied her home yesterday and was kicked out by her parents, I haven't seen Ren Zhiling since. I can't contact her by phone or social media, so I called the police," Song Jirou said in a businesslike manner, "So Ren Zhiling is not here, right? Can you allow us to go in and take a look?"

"You suspect that her father and I have locked her up at home?" Ren Zhiling's mother spoke softly, but an unreasonable expression appeared on her face. She stepped back a few steps and said, "My house is so small, how can I hide a living person?"

"We'll know if it can be hidden after we see it," Song Jirou nodded slightly, "Then let's go in. If Ren Zhiling disappeared after leaving here, we need to know what you talked about yesterday?"

"What can we talk about? Parents and children only talk about normal topics," Ren Zhiling's mother said with a slightly dissatisfied look on her face. "My daughter is missing, and you are investigating her parents instead of others?"

"According to the procedure, this is how it works," Bai Jinshu and Xu Zichen quickly squeezed in from behind Song Jirou, "After all, Miss Yin said that there is a huge and irreconcilable conflict between you and Ren Zhiling."

"Is there a conflict between my daughter and me?" She showed an absurd expression. "Rather than saying there is a conflict between us, it's better to say that this Yin is deliberately sabotaging my daughter's work, right?"

Before Song Jirou could continue to ask, Ren Zhiling's mother frowned and continued, "My daughter was doing well in research. She has been trained in this direction since she was young. She will definitely become a leading expert in the relevant field in the future. Now, with just a few words from her, she has deceived my daughter into resigning and taking up some messed-up job. You actually believed her words?"

"Excuse me, have you finished looking?" She turned to the exploration team members who had already entered the room and said in a gentle tone, "This room is so small that it can't hide an adult. I'll help you. You want to know where my daughter is more."

"Please be patient." Bai Jinshu stood at the bedroom door, raised the small camera in his hand, and took a picture in the direction of Ren Zhiling's mother.

The bright light suddenly dazzled her eyes, forcing her to close them for a few seconds.

"Collect evidence as usual," Bai Jinshu turned around and patted the living room a few times with a normal look on his face. "We have colleagues going to investigate Miss Yin, too. Don't worry."

"According to our investigation, you and Ren Zhiling's father are the only ones living here," Xu Zichen poked his head out, "Why are you the only one here now?"

"He went to work," Ren Zhiling's mother replied.

"Go to work?" Fu Yandong asked, "Then you don't have to go to work?"

Even if one has a good temper, they would get irritated by their interrogation tone, but Ren Zhiling's mother remained calm and said, "I had a conflict with my daughter yesterday. I was in a bad mood, so I asked for leave."

The three of them looked at each other.

In yesterday's conversation, it would be more credible to say that anyone was in a bad mood than to say that Ren Zhiling's mother was in a bad mood.

Rather than saying that she was in a bad mood because of a conflict with her daughter...it would be better to say that she was in a bad mood because she was holding the unknown liquid at midnight last night but "couldn't see it", right?

The six people present exchanged glances without any expression. Song Jirou spoke again, this time with a hint of suspicion in her tone: "So that's how it is. But since we told you that your daughter is missing, you haven't been anxious at all?"

"Of course I'm worried, more than any of you, but this isn't the first time this has happened," Ren Zhiling's mother was distracted. "She had been missing for a long time before, and her father and I contacted her a month later and learned that she had gone abroad to study alone. Although we had an argument this time, you didn't ask her if she went to a friend's house, but instead came here to question her parents. Isn't that inappropriate in your approach as well?"

This emotion is indeed stable enough.

However, although her tone sounded calm, the surprise and panic that flashed across Ren Zhiling's mother's face when they mentioned that Ren Zhiling was missing could not deceive anyone.

This incident was definitely beyond her expectations.

Because she didn't "see".

She might not have been unaware that Ren Zhiling had mentioned without saying a word about pursuing a master's degree or a doctorate. Perhaps all the choices Ren Zhiling might have made at that time were within her predictions. For someone like her who could see the future two months, three months, or even two or three years later, disappearing for a month was nothing to worry about.

But this time it was different, this time she "couldn't see" the future.

"Can I look around?" At Bai Jinshu's gesture, Ning Xiao raised his voice and asked.

"Go ahead." Ren Zhiling's mother nodded.

"But you said she went to a friend's house?" Song Jirou continued, drawing her attention back, "Don't you know that Ren Zhiling has no friends?"

A trace of confusion flashed across Ren Zhiling's mother's face: "She's grown up now. Her father and I don't want to control her too much. What friends she has is none of our business."

This is not the attitude of "not wanting to manage her too much"...

Everyone who heard this twitched their lips inwardly.

【Isn’t this enough? 】

[Ren Zhiling hasn’t even quit her job at the research institute yet. How can she be so in charge of something when she doesn’t care much…]

[But thinking about it, maybe she really feels that she doesn’t care much. ]

[After all, their desire to control seems to be really only in Ren Zhiling's career choice. You see, she doesn't even bother to care about what kind of friends Ren Zhiling makes, what kind of clothes she wears, etc...]

…

It seemed that the only thing she cared about was the achievements that Ren Zhiling would achieve. Apart from that, what happened to her had nothing to do with her.

There is no new information if you ask further.

Bai Jinshu looked around and walked towards the painting. It was the first time he stood in front of the painting at close range.

There was no text on the screen, but the size and pattern distribution were similar to the peach blossom talisman worth 30,000 points that he had just exchanged, except that all the words on it had been removed, leaving only the line part.

It seems that there is no information to be found on the screen.

Bai Jinshu reached out and touched the surrounding frame. This painting should have picture nails driven into the wall and the back of the frame, and then they were nested and hung up.

Bai Jinshu gave Xu Zichen a wink, and Xu Zichen came over and helped him lift one side of the painting carefully.

Behind the painting is a clean white wall with nothing on it.

"What are you doing?" Just as the two of them put the painting back, Ren Zhiling's mother, who was standing at the door, looked over with a frown.

"Just observing it," Bai Jinshu nodded, "This painting doesn't seem to match the atmosphere of your home."

This type of painting is usually chosen for decoration in rooms with simple or modern décor. For rooms like Ren Zhiling's parents' house, which looks old, hanging a painting like this would seem somewhat out of place.

Moreover, the frame is visibly old, so the painting must have been in existence for at least a dozen years.

"Does this have anything to do with my daughter's disappearance?" Ren Zhiling's mother tilted her head. "This room is so small, there's no way an adult woman could be hiding there. You have time to rummage around here. Why don't you go somewhere else and investigate?"

"Okay," Song Jirou received the signal and nodded, "If we find your daughter's whereabouts, we will inform you. If you have any clues, you can also contact our colleagues."

The few of them decided to quit while they were ahead and left the apartment building with Ren Zhiling's mother watching them.

After walking out of the community, Song Jirou said, "Strange...Why didn't she get angry when I touched that painting?"

If she could really only "see" through the painting, then why wasn't she angry when Bai Jin told them that they touched it without permission?

Unless what she saw was not because of the painting, and the painting itself had nothing special about it, or she was fully sure that Bai Jinshu and the others would not be able to see what she could see even if they touched it.

"Have you gone to find Fu Yandong?" Song Jirou looked at Fu Yandong.

"I looked for it, but it wasn't in the refrigerator," Fu Yandong also shook his head, "and there was no opaque liquid in the bathroom that looked like the one in the video. I don't know what it was."

"Ning Xiao, what about you?"

"There's nothing special about the bedroom." Ning Xiao shook his head.

Ren Zhiling's mother's reaction today was that she was not angry when she saw someone touching the painting without permission. She also did not seem to be very worried about Ren Zhiling's disappearance. Instead, she was more surprised and panicked than worried.

"What should we do next?" After asking a circle of questions, Song Jirou clearly felt that there was something wrong with Song Jirou's mother, but now, based on the means that could be used under normal circumstances, they obviously could no longer obtain information.

"Three clues..." Bai Jinshu lowered his eyes and thought for a moment, "One is a hanging painting, one is Ren Zhiling's mother, and one is Liu Yi."

"Why don't we force Liu Yi out? Since Ren Zhiling is missing, we can start with Xi Enze and see if they can just sit there and watch Xi Enze die. Once Xi Enze dies, even if Ren Zhiling is safe and sound, the parallel world that is split off will be a world where no disaster will happen."

"Or we can start from the painting and steal that thing out."

"The only one left is Ren Zhiling's mother," Bai Jinshu frowned, "but if we want Ren Zhiling's mother to tell the truth now, we may have to use some extreme means..."

Among these three clues, the one that seems most feasible and has the highest success rate is to attack Xi Enze and force Liu Yi out.

Anyway, Liu Yi and others must have discovered the clues by now. As long as Liu Yi is forced out, both parties will know each other well and can get to the point directly without beating around the bush.

The most inexplicable and unknown thing to do is stealing paintings.

After all, no one knows how to use this thing, and Ren Zhiling's mother was also acting weird last night. What can they do with it if they steal it?

The faces of the exploration team members around seemed to be moved. It seemed that under such circumstances, everyone was more inclined to directly kidnap Xienze as a solution.

"Which one do you mean to choose?" Xu Zichen looked at Ye Dian who proposed these three options.

Bai Jinshu thought for a while and said, "Hang the painting."

Under the surprised gazes of all the exploration team members, he pinched the bridge of his nose and said, "Try hanging the painting first."

He didn't believe that Huai Jiamu's leaving this clue would be of no use.

Killing Xi Enze could certainly force Liu Yi out, but what if Liu Yi, who travels through the timeline, has never seen the full picture of the world?

The author has something to say:

Hiss, it's too late, the first 20+ will get a random 20 red envelope

I have an idea for a new dungeon for Brother Brown these days, but it may not contain tomb-raiding elements in the universal sense, because I cannot write about it, and if I write about it, it will be locked. So I am struggling whether to expand the idea of ​​this dungeon that still cannot be tomb-raided and open a second round for Brother Brown, or change the plot direction and give Xiao Ao, who can relatively enter this dungeon, to make up for the haste of Blizzard's dungeon...