"Xiao Yuan, can you..."
"Uncle Tan, I’ve sorted it out for you."
"Good, thank you for your hard work, Xiao Yuan. Are those phonetic symbols dialect words?"
"Yes, but I don’t know where they’re from."
"Don’t worry, we can find out.
Hehe, if the dialect is from our Jiangsu or our Nantong, it would be much easier to pinpoint the location.
Many places have one dialect for half or even the entire province, and although there might be small differences, it’s more or less the sa. In Nantong alone, there are four or five different dialects, and they can’t understand each other."
"Mhm, when I attended the city’s math competition, the teachers from various schools chatted together in Mandarin."
It’s not because the teachers wanted to promote civility; if they spoke in their own dialects, they might as well have been speaking different languages.
Li Zhiyuan opened a can of drink and handed it to Beibei.
Beibei sniffled and held the drink, took a couple of sips, and then cried and laughed.
Li Zhiyuan couldn’t help but reflect: Kids are indeed easy to comfort.
Similar expressions and gestures, he also made as a child, focusing even more on details and rhythm.
To any other parents, this would seem only normal and endearing, only Li Lan kept dragging him to the psychiatric hospital.
Tan Yunlong drove seriously.
Li Zhiyuan silently flipped the paper; the back contained Beibei’s mories of Granny Yu.
"People flying in the sky, many people flying."
"Fire man, fire man, fire man."
"Gone, disappeared."
"Seven dwarfs."
"Playdough."
These descriptions are a bit too fantastical.
Li Zhiyuan knew not to analyze with overly complex and ticulous thods but to find a sort of feeling.
Yet, this feeling was not easy to find.
Let’s leave it for now, Li Zhiyuan turned the paper back over and started organizing Beibei’s mories about his hotown.
After finishing, Li Zhiyuan copied the information to another piece of paper and handed it to Tan Yunlong, who was driving.
"That fast?"
"Mhm."
Tan Yunlong glanced over the information: "Hiss... seems like so place in Shannxi? I’m not sure; I’ll let the station verify it."
As the car pulled into the station, an officer ca over to ask, "Brother Tan, why are you only back now? They were waiting for you."
"We had to fix a tire on the way."
Tan Yunlong led Li Zhiyuan and Beibei out of the car.
A female police officer took Beibei, who kept looking back at his brother while walking away with the officer, but his brother turned away, not sparing him a glance.
"Xiao Yuan, wait here for for a bit; I’ll deal with things here and then we’ll go back to school together and have supper with Binbin, I’ll make it quick."
"All right, Uncle Tan."
Unsure, Tan Yunlong signaled to a young officer up front, "Xiao Zhou, this is my nephew, keep an eye on him."
"Okay, Brother Tan." Xiao Zhou approached Li Zhiyuan, "Co, little brother, let’s go to the rest room."
Li Zhiyuan followed.
He thought the rest room would be a quiet place, allowing him to think things through.
But upon opening the door and entering, he found that there were over a dozen children inside, so of the younger ones sitting on the floor playing with toys, while several around Li Zhiyuan’s age and so older were sitting at tables and chairs doing howork.
So this place is a temporary daycare in the police station for parents to pick up their kids after work?
And he was sent here.
At this mont, all the children, both those doing howork and those playing with toys, looked up curiously at the new face.
"Little brother, co, I’ll get you sothing to eat."
"No, thanks, Officer Zhou, I’m not hungry."
"What grade are you in? Should I get so books for you to read?"
Li Zhiyuan smiled and did not respond.
An empty seat by a desk had a thirteen or fourteen-year-old girl sitting in it; Li Zhiyuan took the seat:
"Officer Zhou, I’m fine, you can go ahead with your duties."
"Oh, okay, Tiantian, take care of the new little brother."
"Mhm."
The girl casually responded, then tucked her hair behind her ear with the hand holding the pen and continued to concentrate on her howork.
Though there were many children, the place was generally very quiet, even the children playing with toys were doing so quietly, and they spoke in hushed tones to each other.
Li Zhiyuan decided to continue studying the "Beibei Code" here.
After a while, the girl nad Tiantian turned her head to look at the boy beside her, and once she did, she couldn’t stop staring.
Whether male or female, there’s an instinctive favoritism towards beautiful things.
Just as when Li Zhiyuan first saw Alii, now, he was soone else’s "Alii."
After all, his clothes were personally tailored by Liu Yui, and his hairstyle was cut by Aunt Liu.
Just as she was about to ask who this boy was, she saw him turn his head towards the children playing with toys on the ground.
Then, the boy closed his eyes, and then picked up a pen, starting to write quickly on the paper.
"People flying in the sky"—tied to ropes or stepping on fraworks, spinning around overhead.
"Fire man"—fire breathing perforr.
"Gone, disappeared"—Magic, making living beings vanish.
"Seven dwarfs"—actors with dwarfism.
"Playdough"—performance of flexibility skills?
This is... a circus!
This ans, Beibei was abducted while with his family watching a circus.
And since these descriptions appeared repeatedly and frequently in Beibei’s mory, it signifies that he must have spent so ti in the circus.
Therefore, there is reason to suspect that Granny Yu is hiding within a circus.
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