Qiongshan is in the southwest of Hongjing, it is nearly 1,000 meters above sea level, surrounded by clouds and mist all year round.

When the sun turns to rain, the scenery is at its best, with wet water vapor condensing on the rock walls, brushing over the moss, and finally merging into a bubbling stream.

By the creek between the valleys, there is the Qiongshan Scenic Area campsite, and from a distance, the whole camp is colorful, there are countless camping tents and countless people who are setting up tents.

What's more, among those people, there are many children.

Cao Qianzhi is an ordinary primary school teacher at Fengjing School, and today is the day of the group spring outing of the first-grade students of Fengjing School, and the location is set at Qiongshan Mountain in the southwest of Hongjing.

He stood at the edge of the camp and watched as the staff pretending to be a mountain man brought a goat for the children, and the children seemed to have never seen a moving goat before, and they all gathered around the goat and pointed and poked, looking very excited.

Cao Qianzhi's eyes moved from the goats to the water's edge, and some children were watching the fish by the stream, they huddled together, as if discussing how to catch fish, as a teacher, he did not go over to stop it, because the stream was very shallow, it was a specially created artificial landscape, and he also believed that his children would not wet their shoes and socks in the early spring, which was still cold......

So the qiē looks very peaceful and harmonious.

But the uneasiness in Cao Qian's heart became heavier and heavier.

There was a very rapid sound of footsteps in the distance, and Cao Qianzhi hurriedly followed the voice.

The dean and another teacher who were leading the group with him were running towards him quickly, both of them shaking their heads at him with solemn faces.

"Haven't you been in touch yet?" Although he knew the answer, he still asked subconsciously.

"No, Master Xu's phone can't get through, and Mr. An's phone is also turned off, and the car should have arrived half an hour ago!" The Dean of Education whispered.

Cao Qianzhi looked at his watch, it had been a long time since the scheduled meeting time.

Today's school spring outing, the school rented 6 buses to send the children to Qiongshan. They gathered at the school gate early in the morning, from the school to the Qiongshan car line for about three hours, on the way, because of the high-speed traffic jam, they spent a lot of time, but also because of the traffic jam, the order of the vehicles was completely disrupted, so several cars were separated by more than ten minutes, before arriving at the Qiongshan meeting place.

If it was just that, it would have been a trivial delay in the trip, but after 5 buses arrived at the meeting point, the last bus, numbered 3, was delayed. The bus was accompanied by 26 students from the third class of the first grade of the school and two leading teachers.

They had been thinking that car No. 3 had been left behind because of a traffic jam, and they had tried to contact the driver and the two teachers, but their mobile phones had not been able to connect.

At first, they thought that this was because of the poor signal in the mountainous area, but just now, the teaching director and another teacher went to the scenic area management center to try to call the teacher's mobile phone, and the phone was still a mechanical and cold female voice, and they realized that car No. 3 was likely to have an accident.

"Even if you have a car accident, the phone won't go unconnected!" The female teacher on the side said worriedly.

"Did you call the other side of the highway?" Cao Qianzhi continued to ask.

"Yes, they said they were investigating, but they haven't found it yet."

"Let's call the police." Cao Qianzhi was silent for a moment, and finally said.

―――

In the chairman's office of Hongjing Expressway, three telephones rang almost simultaneously.

Conglian took a half step back from his desk and took out his mobile phone; The chairman breathed a sigh of relief and picked up the landline impatiently; Liu Xing heard the phone ringing in the assistant's office, got up and ran out.

After a while, Xing Conglian looked at Lin Chen; The chairman's face was stiff; Liu Xing rushed back to the room.

On the other end of the line, the worst news.

"The city bureau has just received a report that a tourist bus from Fengjing School has disappeared on the highway." The torturer held down the microphone and said to Lin Chen.

"How can it be missing, there are monitors at the exit of the expressway!" Before Lin Chen, Yang Dianfeng exclaimed.

Lin Chen pursed his thin lips lightly, sat upright on the sofa, and did not speak.

Xing Conglian was still answering the phone, and he didn't have time to answer Yang Dianfeng's question, but after a while, he suddenly raised his head, held down the phone with one hand, pointed to the phone with the other hand, and ticked at Wang Chao again.

Wang Chao reacted quickly, he took out his mobile phone from his trouser pocket and was about to hand it to Xing Conglian, but Xing Conglian signaled and gave the mobile phone to Lin Chen.

"The school teacher will call in right away, and you will pick it up." As he spoke, he called out a number on the other end of the line.

Soon, Dynasty's phone rang.

Dome Mountain Scenic Area, campsite.

Cao Qian's palms were sweating, and the female teacher who was traveling with him was already crying, and all kinds of terrifying pictures kept appearing in his mind, which made him even more flustered.

The moment the phone was connected, he couldn't help but shout at the person who answered the phone: "Haven't you found the car yet, won't there really be an accident, what can I do!" ”

After he finished speaking, there was silence on the other end of the phone for about three seconds before a voice came.

It was a calm and peaceful male voice, like the water of a stream or the breeze of the mountains, slowly pouring into his ears.

"Hello, I understand your anxiety right now, but that requires you to calm down, take a deep breath with me, and answer the next question."

Of course, Cao Qianzhi knows what a deep breath is, but the matter is so urgent, how can there be time to take a deep breath! He thought so, but his body involuntarily followed the calm instructions on the other end of the phone, began to inhale deeply, and then exhaled.

"What time does the bus leave from school?"

"6:30 a.m."

"Okay, I need to remember the last time you saw that school bus."

The voice was still calm and mellow, but this question made Cao Qianzhi panic again: "I don't remember!" His mind was in turmoil, so he subconsciously blurted out, "Every car is the same, I can't tell the difference!" ”

On the other end of the phone, the young man holding the phone seemed to have expected this, he put down the pen, turned the white paper in front of him, and faced the person opposite.

Across from him was a young man wearing a peaked cap, who looked at the white paper, which read "Car, recent photo, call up," nodded and began to tap on the keyboard.

The voice on the other end of the phone disappeared for a few seconds, Cao Qianzhi even felt that the wind in the mountains was getting colder, he fed the phone twice, and the voice on the other end came immediately.

"Hello, I'm here."

The words were as clear as water flowing out again, Cao Qianzhi relaxed slightly, and then, he heard the man say: "Maybe you don't know, but in fact, human memory will not completely fade because of the passage of time, human beings have another implicit memory system, you forget or don't remember things, in fact, our brains are preserved in another form, so, I need you to calm down, recall something, and at the same time I need you to do your best when recalling, which can help us determine the cut-off point of time, which is very important." ”

At the same time, hundreds of kilometers away in the office of the chairman of the highway transportation management office.

Dynasty quickly connected to the Tianyan system and called up the photo of the spring outing team gathering at the gate of Fengjing School at around 6:20.

Six buses lined up on the road, the body is pure white, spray-painted with colorful cloud patterns, and the words "Hongjing Foreign Affairs Vehicle Management Co., Ltd." can be vaguely recognized.

Looking from the outside of a few buses, there was no difference, Wang Chao looked up anxiously, but the person opposite was gone, and when he looked to the right again, Lin Chen didn't know when he was standing beside him.

On the screen, there are white and delicate fingers swiping over and staying on the body of the third bus.

"Zoom in."

Wang Chao enlarged the picture according to his words, and the words "foreign affairs" on the body became bigger and bigger, and the rest of the words became more blurred.

"Here."

The finger tapped a spot above the rear wheel, then quickly pulled away.

Wang Dynasty took a closer look, and at the back of the car, where the huge blue cloud should have been spray-painted, seemed to be missing a piece, and it looked very incomplete. Most likely, the No. 3 car had just come out of the repair shop, and the missing piece had just been repaired, so the spray painting was removed.

He subconsciously looked at Lin Chen, who had already walked to the window and slowed down his speech again: "There is a blue cloud above the rear wheel of car No. 3, but half of that cloud is missing, although you won't notice this, but your brain will definitely record it truthfully." So, I need you to close your eyes now and start reminiscing......"

"It was on a busy highway with a lot of cars around and the sound of children laughing in the cars. Because it's a little noisy, and because you get up early, you will feel sleepy, and when you wander, you will look out the window, and the scenery outside the window is beautiful, where there are reeds all over the sky, and you will see cars passing from time to time. All of a sudden, you see a car, it's weird, it's like there's a piece of the pattern on the wheel behind it, and you might only look at it for 0.1 seconds, but that's really weird, so you remember that picture......"

Following the soft voice, Cao Qianzhi seemed to have really returned to the noisy bus, and he looked out the window and saw that a bus happened to pass by.

"I remember!" He jerked up his voice, "There's such a car, but I don't know when!" ”

"Please try to see if there are any landmarks in that picture, or the green road sign, which will stand on the side of the road, very conspicuous......"

"No, no, there are reeds all around." Cao Qianzhi's brows furrowed, as if he was desperately trying to grasp the image that was about to disappear, "Wait a minute, I remember!" "A child told me that he wanted to go to the toilet, and then the driver said that he would go to the Meicun rest stop immediately!" Cao Qianzhi opened his eyes suddenly.

Lin Chen quickly returned to his desk, picked up the pen, and wrote the word "Plum Village" on the paper.

"You or the teacher next to you, remember what time it is to the rest stop in Plum Village?"

"Wait, I'll ask."

In front of the computer, Wang Dynasty has called up the map of the whole process of Hongjing Expressway, he looked at the map, and calculated on paper: "Meicun Service Station is about 130 kilometers from Hongjing to Qiongshan, the traffic jam occurs after 7:00, if they leave at 6:30, counting the variable of traffic jam duration, arrive at Meicun Service Station, about 8:30." ”

As soon as Wang Chao threw down his pen, an eager male voice came from the phone: "Our director said that it should be 8:30 at the rest stop in Meicun!" I can't really think of anything else! ”

The male teacher on the other end said apologetically.

"It's already good, thank you very much, you helped a lot."

Seeing Lin Chen hang up the phone, Wang Chao breathed a sigh of relief, and felt strange in his heart: "How do you know that car No. 3 will be different!" ”

"I don't know." Lin Chen picked up the calculation paper of the technical nerd, and then said, "But at that time, I can only hope for luck. ”

"What if you're unlucky?"

"If you're unlucky, keep trying your luck."