Ten minutes later, Zhao Yuan sat at the empty dining table and happily enjoyed a hearty breakfast with Lu Yingyi, Zhuo Yang, and Fang Liwen. Li Jingshu stood at the table with a smile and waited for everyone to eat,—— Zhuoyang had tried to let him sit at first, but later found that the old man seemed to enjoy watching everyone happy because of his service, so he gave up. As for Zhang Xuebi, he was naturally sleeping upstairs day and night.

I have to say that Zhao Yuan is a very likable person. Although judging from his dress, he is not a rich man with status and status, but from his conversation to his demeanor, people can feel comfortable and at ease, and his relaxed temperament is not deliberately flattering, but truly from the heart, without pretentiousness.

Zhao Yuan finished eating the noodles that Li Jingshu made for him, even drank the soup, put the bowl down, and then wiped his mouth and thanked him sincerely: "Uncle Jing, the noodles you made are so delicious, too, so delicious, I can't even give up a drop of soup left!"

Li Jingshu stopped him with a smile and said, "If you like to eat, come back next time, just leave the bowl for me." ”

Zhao Yuan said: "Then how can it be done, you have worked the first half, and the second half will be handed over to me!" he said, and went to collect the bowls in the hands of others and said, "I didn't pay for the meal, such delicious noodles, let me be rewarded for my labor." Rest assured, I worked in a restaurant, and I kept it clean and water-saving. ”

His words made Fang Liwen, who was not very good at interpersonal communication, laugh, and Fang Liwen said: "Zhao Yuan, you are our guest, how can there be any reason to let the guests wash the dishes, or I will come." As he spoke, he reached out to take the bowl in Zhao Yuan's hand.

Lu Yingyi hurriedly touched his stomach and said, "Hey, don't toss housework in the old house, as far as your hands-on ability is concerned, I'm afraid that the bowl won't be enough to fall, so let's hand it over to Uncle Jing." ”

Li Jingshu took the bowl from the two of them and said: "That's it, this is my job, don't rob me of my rice bowl one or two, I have already brewed tea and put it in the reception room, you go over and talk about business." ”

Zhao Yuan scratched the back of his head and said, "Then trouble you Uncle Jing, by the way, I have fresh watermelons picked from the countryside there, they are big and sweet, and I will send you a few later." ”

Lu Yingyi smiled and quipped: "Okay, we will naturally accept watermelons, but you also have to make it clear to us first, that's the big one!"

Zhao Yuan hurriedly said: "Hey, yes, I almost forgot about business." A few mermaids walked into the reception room and sat on the sofa, Zhao Yuan said, "Let me introduce myself first." ”

"Your name is Zhao Yuan, you work at the construction site opposite, I already said it when I had dinner just now. Lu Yingyi said.

Zhao Yuandao: "Hey, this is a rough idea, I have to be more specific, because this has something to do with my commission later." He thought about it, probably reasoning his thoughts, and then spit out a fluent string of words with a mouth, "My name is Zhao Yuan, I am 27 years old this year, and I work as a worker in Tiangong Construction Co., Ltd." Tiangong is Liu Wenjun's boss's company, and he introduced me to you when I came to you. ”

Zhuo Yang poured tea, put cups in front of everyone, and asked, "Boss Liu is friends with you?"

Zhao Yuan waved his hand and said: "I want to, but how can I be, I am a small worker under Boss Liu, but our Boss Liu is a good person, so I take good care of the brothers below, so I will introduce you to me." ”

Zhuo Yang knew it. Liu Wenjun can't be regarded as a traitor, but to say that others are good is absolute nonsense, at best, he is a typical underworld man who values interests but still has a bit of righteousness. The relationship between Zhao Yuan and Liu Wenjun should not be bad, this must have something to do with Zhao Yuan's likable character, but there should be some other reasons. Zhao Yuan said that he was a worker, but he did not have the lime and sand stains that ordinary construction workers have, but the smell of engine oil was heavier.

Zhuo Yang thought of this, Lu Yingyi had already taken a sip of tea, and said slowly: "Ah Yuan is not a construction worker, I think you look like a mechanic." ”

Zhao Yuan opened his eyes wide and said, "You can see this, Mr. Lu, you are really powerful!" Immediately, he said a little embarrassedly, "I didn't make it clear just now, I'm sorry." I really don't work on the construction site, usually I mainly help Boss Liu maintain his car, if the machinery and equipment on the construction site breaks, I am also responsible for repairing it, and occasionally Boss Liu is short of manpower, I will go to drive for him. ”

"It's a technical job. Fang Liwen said. is also engaged in "technical work", in Fang Liwen's eyes, whether it is machinery or microbial science, they are all very interesting fields, but it is a pity that he has no talent in the former aspect, otherwise he would like to learn it.

Zhao Yuan touched his head and said, "How can my little ability compare with Dr. Fang." I read less, I didn't study to the secondary school, after the school came out of the beginning of the society for two years, did not learn well, fortunately, there was no chaos, after the age of 24 to let my grandmother worry, in the boss Liu to get a job, to do now there are three years. You should know that Boss Liu has an auto repair shop in the suburbs. He nimbly pulled the topic back again, this time looking at Zhuo Yang accurately.

Zhuo Yang was slightly stunned, and after thinking about it, he understood, and said, "I know, it's where Boss Liu's Harley 883 is parked." In order to send Fang Liwen to City B, Liu Wenjun borrowed a motorcycle for Zhuo Yang twice, and the car was parked at the transit point designed by Lu Yingyi to smuggle Fang Liwen - a remote repair shop, which turned out to be Zhao Yuan's territory.

Zhao Yuan smiled and said: "I am in charge of the repair shop, in addition to helping the boss maintain the car and help the company repair things, sometimes I will also take some work from friends, and occasionally go to the garbage dump to buy some scrapped cars and pull them back to practice." The commission I'm talking about today has to do with a scrapped car. He took a stack of things out of his coat pocket and placed them on the table. Lu Ying asked with his eyes, "Is it okay?" and saw him nodding, so he picked up the thing. It was a whole stack of letters wrapped in three layers of plastic bags, all in old-fashioned cowhide envelopes, which looked like there were more than twenty of them.

Zhao Yuan said: "I found these from a scrapped Santana glove box, I guess the owner of the car may have wanted to send the letters, but I forgot them, so that these letters reached my hands, so I want to entrust you to find the recipient." ”

Lu Ying said "um" and said, "Can I open it and take a look?"

Zhao Yuan said: "Of course, you are free. ”

Lu Yingyi first looked at the plastic bag outside, and then reached in and took out the stack of letters. There are twenty-nine letters in total, and judging from the appearance of the envelopes, there are old and new, the old edges have been worn out, and the new ones are relatively smooth. Lu Ying reached out and touched them one by one, each letter case contained letterheads, some thinner, some very thick, but yes, the strangest thing is that although the person who wrote the letter wrote so many letters and sealed them well, all the envelopes had neither a zip code nor the recipient's detailed address, and there were only five short words "Brother Tongzhou (Qinqi)".

As soon as Lu Ying opened these envelopes one by one on the table, there were twenty-nine "brothers in the same boat".

Fang Liwen looked at it for a while and said, "These words don't seem to have been written by one person?" The reason why he said this is because among the 29 letters, some of the handwriting on the envelopes is clear and powerful, some of them seem weak, and some are completely messy, and they can hardly be seen clearly if they don't look hard, in addition, the pens used by the letter writers are also different, some are written in blue-black fountain pen ink, some are traces of ballpoint pens, and even two of them seem to be charcoal, and the envelopes are black and pasty, and it is difficult to distinguish the handwriting.

Zhuo Yang only glanced at it and came to a conclusion: "No, it was written by the same person." He pointed to the hook of the word "brother" in the "same boat" and said, "The style of the last stroke of the vertical hook is the same." ”

"How can there be such a big difference?" asked Fang Liwen suspiciously.

"Because it wasn't written in the same era. Lu Yingyi compared the envelopes and lined them up, and said, "You see that the ones written with a fountain pen and the clear handwriting are all written by this person when he was in high spirits and very healthy, and this part of the ballpoint pen is probably either seriously ill or old enough to tremble, as for the use of charcoal, it may be because of what happened at the time, so it is impossible to use regular stationery to write." Now you take a look. He said, gesturing to the letterhead lined up on the table.

Fang Liwen looked down and couldn't help but let out an "ah". I didn't feel it when I looked at it piecemeal, but when Lu Yingyi consciously arranged it, this feeling of age change was indeed very obvious. Not only the change in the handwriting of the letter writer, the change in the use of writing tools, but also the change in the brown paper envelope itself, from the beginning of the vertical red frame format, to the current horizontal and postal code box form, so that just looking at these letterheads, there will be a sense of time flies.

"There's also the difference between simplified and traditional. Fang Liwen also found a corroborative evidence, because the three words "Brother Tongzhou" are written in the same way regardless of whether they are simplified or traditional, so there is no problem, but the two words "pro-qi" have changed significantly, from the initial traditional "pro-qi" to the later simplified "pro-qi".

"What year did the simplification of traditional Chinese characters take place?" he asked.

"Twice. Lu Yingyi said, "In modern times, China has made two large-scale reforms to the simplification of traditional Chinese characters, the first time was in 1935 during the Republic of China, when the first batch of simplified Chinese characters published in the "first batch of simplified Chinese character list" has the word '啟' but does not have the word '親'. The second time was in 1956, when □□ issued the "Resolution on the Publication of the Simplified Scheme of Chinese Characters", and at the same time published a "General List of Simplified Characters", which was divided into three parts, in which the words "親" and "啟" were included, so there was this change you see. ”

Zhuo Yang looked at the letters and said, "There are a total of twelve letters that use 'pro-enlightenment', and the rest are 'pro-enlightenment'. Seven of the 12 letters were clearly written, while three were so shaky that they were difficult to distinguish, and two letters written in charcoal were also written in 'Qinqi', and no letters using 'Qinqi' were found. ”

Lu Yingyi said: "That's because the simplified Chinese character reform of August 1935 was not carried out, and the simplified Chinese character list was withdrawn in February 1936 the following year, because of extreme opposition. ”

Fang Liwen said: "I understand, then this person must have been born before 1935, and at least the age of being able to write '親啟' at the time of the first simplified character reform in 1935, that is to say, at least seven or eight years old, so he was not affected by the reform in just over half a year." ”

Lu Yingyi shook his head with a smile and said, "No." ”

"Isn't that right?"

Lu Yingyi said: "In 1935, when the then Nationalist Government implemented the first batch of "General List of Simplified Characters", it also issued 9 articles of the "Measures for the Implementation of Simplified Chinese Characters", one of which mentioned that 'all textbooks of primary schools, short-term primary schools, public schools, children's and people's reading materials should use simplified Chinese characters issued by the ministry. At the same time, the printing houses were also informed that from January 1936 onwards, textbooks and reading materials that did not use simplified Chinese characters would not be approved. ”

Fang Liwen was even more confused and said, "What does this mean?"

"What he means is that this person could not have been a student in 1935," Zhuo Yang said. The reason is simple, although the reform was only half a year, the government at that time paid special attention to students, and it can be said that the simplified Chinese character reform started with students. On the contrary, if a person is an adult, and it is much more difficult to instill new things and cultivate a new habit, so if this person is at the age of study, it is very likely that he will write the word 'Qinqi' in the later period. ”

"Then I'm not wrong, I said at least, that is, this person was at least seven or eight years old in 1935, and more likely an adult!"

Lu Yingyi shook his head again and said, "No." ”

"Why isn't it?!" Fang Liwen was a little anxious and said, "Don't sell it, you can make it clear." ”

Lu Ying smiled and said, "You guess again." ”

Fang Liwen really couldn't guess, and looked at Zhuo Yang for help. Zhuo Yang said: "Pen." He looked at Lu Yingyi helplessly and said, "Dr. Fang has been living abroad, and he doesn't know some things so clearly. ”

Lu Yingyi said: "Then you can talk about it." ”

Zhuo Yang said: "Most of these letters were written with fountain pens, which were only widely used in China after 1930. ”

Fang Liwen suddenly realized: "That is to say, if this person has become an adult before 1935, then he will definitely be more accustomed to writing with a brush, even if he uses a fountain pen, he will have some writing habits of soft pen calligraphy." ”

Lu Ying nodded and said, "That's right this time." ”

Fang Liwen said: "Then this person was neither a student nor an adult in 1935, so he was either under the age of 6 in 1935 when he entered primary school, or he was simply born after 1935, and he used to use 'pro-qi', so he must have been born before 1956." ”

Zhuo Yang said: "The most scribbled envelopes are all written 'Kiss', which proves that this person has inadvertently used the old-fashioned writing method due to childhood habits when he is old and in poor physical condition." ”

Fang Liwen said: "In other words, when the second simplified Chinese character reform was carried out in 1956, this person was at least fifteen or sixteen years old, and it was not easy to change his habits, so this person should have been born between 1929 and 1941." ”

Zhuo Yang said, "Yes. If you were born between 1929 and 1941, you are 74-86 years old today, which also conforms to the handwriting form of the last few letters. ”

Zhao Yuan nodded repeatedly while listening, and finally spoke: "I see, you guys are really amazing!"

Lu Yingyi smiled and said: "Ah Yuan, Ming people don't do dark things, since you have found us to entrust, I think we might as well open the skylight and say something bright, who is the original holder of this letter, what is the background and status, if you don't tell us the real situation, it will be difficult for us to complete the commission for you." ”