A few people drifting on the sea slowly regained some strength, and Team Cao had already climbed up and sat next to us, although they didn't fully believe Ding Jian's words in their hearts, they still patted him on the shoulder to show their gratitude.

Xiao Lei finally tied up his simple bandage, and his hanging arms were not idle, and he removed a railing from the underwater hull, tied his coat to it, made a simple flag, and held it with difficulty, looking around, hoping that a ship would pass by.

Huansheng struggled to turn over, I don't know if it was seasickness or just lost his myopia glasses, covered his head and seemed dizzy for a while, and lay back down.

I suddenly caught a glimpse of my backpack at the stern of the boat, half of it was submerged in the water, and suddenly remembered that the bag was tied to the railing and covered with a plastic bag when I escaped from the East Star, and I thought of the agreement with Lu Binglin, could it be that Lu Binglin had turned back halfway and left something in the bag?

I hurriedly dragged the bag over and opened it layer by layer. Although the backpack has the function of waterproofing, there is a plastic bag on the outside, I put on another backpack on the dinghy, under the multiple protection, there is still a lot of water in the bag, the outermost is the logbook I hastily stuffed in, half wet by the seawater, the corners are completely wrinkled. After flipping through it, Ding Jian's pencil drawings have faded, and the originally heavy background has faded a lot, but has a foggy and mysterious artistic conception.

Ding Jian, who was next to him, saw the painting on the logbook, he was obviously stunned, his pupils contracted, and the corners of his eyes jumped twice, and then his eyes could no longer leave the painting, and his face was full of surprise. This change in expression is by no means a camouflage, but how could it be the first time he saw it? He once concealed the existence of these paintings, and used them to successfully change his creative style, and even these paintings were his own works in another time and space, he should be familiar with them, has he forgotten everything behind this painting? But why does he remember a few of us, remember the events on the research ship? This is the so-called selective amnesia?

Although Ding Jian's reaction was unbelievable, this was not the most important thing for me now, so I simply stuffed the logbook to him and continued to study the backpack.

Flipping through it further, my notebook, wallet, key case, compass, pill box, and talisman bag were all there, and nothing more. This made me wonder, if Lu Binglin didn't put something in his bag, why did he take such a big risk to run back?

After carefully checking it again, I finally found that there was a piece of paper in my notebook, a piece of paper that I was very familiar with, a little resurgence, a little wrinkled, and a long one, which was a piece of cigarette shell paper, which was almost exactly the same as the cigarette shell paper in the drifting bottle that Wei Zhihua found.

The words on the paper were small and dense, covering almost the entire sheet of paper, without a single gap. This way of writing makes people's scalp tingle a little bit, and I am even worried that after reading it, I will get intensive phobia.

But obviously the person who wrote this note had already expected the approximate number of words, and the pen that had been in his heart for a long time was meticulous, well-organized, and calm. I didn't have time to think about it, so I picked up the paper and struggled to read it.

"Huansheng my brother and the old Cao Jingqi

I don't know if you'll receive this letter, let alone if you'll be able to leave the mirage safely, but judging from the fact that we're in the same boat and on opposite sides of the world, it's far more likely that you'll be able to escape than I am.

All I can tell you is that you must not attempt to enter the equipment compartment of the Eastern Star, the compartments underneath the gantry crane. Wei Zhihua is actually very clear about the role of those electromagnetic emitting devices inside, and the impact that people will have when they enter. For the body, ultra-high radiation is enough to kill people, and for the spirit, although the cognition of the future and the thinking of survival itself will be a great step forward, but it will bring more people the loss of memory and the confusion of the concept of time and space.

I now come to understand that the Mirage Sea is the same thing as the Devil's Sea in the desert, except that the Devil's Sea is a naturally occurring area of time-space disorder, and the Mirage is more likely to be created by man.

Wei Zhihua tried every means to let me enter the scientific expedition team, the reason is actually very simple, the artificially created mirage is extremely unstable, and the location and duration of the appearance are changeable. The point is that the cross-section of the time fragment is random, so sometimes even if it appears, it cannot be observed.

Here, I use a word I invented, because even in the Devil's Sea in Taklamakan it just feels like time will speed up or slow down, but in the mirage, it all becomes very difficult to describe. I always feel that time is no longer a linear progression here, but has become a static fragment, or a different unit. It's as if at the same point in time, an event will evolve in a different direction and produce a different ending. These endings all exist at the same time, but they don't intersect.

When you go into these units of time and try to change it, the whole thing gets really weird.

One becomes an amnesiac and completely forgets the purpose of entering this unit of time, I don't know if this is a loss of self, in short, you can't verify the plasticity of time by the ending or the change of the course. So, people think about the same ultimate question in different units of time: Who are we, where do we come from, where are we going?

Okay, please forgive me for my rambling chatter, in fact, what I want to tell you is, what kind of effort Wei Zhihua is doing, he and I actually know that you will never be able to reveal the secrets of the mirage without entering the interior of the mirage. But we have sacrificed too much for this purpose, and if you can see these words to prove that you have not entered the mirage, that you can return to the world as we know it, then warn all those who come after you that the mirage is not something that can be controlled by humans or technology, and give up unrealistic illusions and all plans related to it. Cut, cut, cut!"

In fact, I only read the beginning of this letter, and I can already conclude that it is from Lu Binglin's handwriting, but this judgment does not give me any relief, on the contrary, it makes me more confused. I had to put down the cigarette shell paper and think about it again from start to finish.

Lu Binglin's handwriting was quite neat, just a few hundred words were written in a small cigarette box paper, and the words had to be very small, and it took me almost twice as long as usual to barely finish reading, but my eyes were already sore and swollen. But writing like this, at least it proves that Lu Binglin's lighting tools still work, but according to the meaning of Lu Binglin's words, it is impossible for him and Wei Zhihua to come out of the mirage, but since he can come back to find my backpack and clip the piece of paper into the notebook, how can he not escape?

Then, I found a new cigarette shell paper from the back pages of the notebook, but it looked even more shabby than the one just now, and the words on it became a little scribbled, and I carefully recognized Lu Binglin's handwriting, but the line spacing was large and small, and some of the beginning and end of the sentence even overlapped.

But after thinking about it, I felt that it was wrong, we were separated from Lu Binglin on the East Star, and until we returned to the position where we put the backpack on the side of the ship, in my feeling, it was only about ten minutes at most, even if my time concept was misjudged on the ship, the deviation could only be less than half an hour. Lu Binglin finished writing the note of a few hundred words, and then returned to the side of the ship to put it away, this time was extremely reluctant, it was impossible for him not to enter the central cabin to check, it was impossible not to do some thinking and analysis of everything he saw, and it was impossible not to go to Wei Zhihua, who had boarded the ship in advance, how could these things be completed in a short period of time?

How could he still have time to write some more words, or was he still in the absence of light? Lu Binglin could not have boarded the Dongxing just to write these letters to us? The huge doubts made me completely lose my judgment of the matter for a while, and countless possibilities flashed and were denied by me again and again. I even forgot that there was another Ding Jian next to me with the same expression as me, holding the logbook and reading it.

I looked carefully at the handwriting on the cigarette shell paper, trying to discern the meaning, and I probably understood that it was an account of some of Lu Binglin's encounters on the East Star: loss of lighting, lack of food and drinking water, attack by seabirds and rats, and the key point was that they had not seen daylight since they entered the East Star, and soon they had completely lost their sense of time.

At the same time, it was a completely silent world, with nothing but man-made sounds, no sound of the waves, no sound of the wind, not even the slightest echo of the sound of people talking between people, the sound from the mouth seemed to have turned into solid, and as soon as it was spoken, it slammed into the ground, and everything was as silent as death.

After that, the mirages who boarded the ship with him could not bear the torture of loneliness and depression, and committed suicide by jumping into the sea one after another, and Lu Binglin himself fell into deep despair.

Even so, Lu Binglin still tried his best to investigate the entire Dongxing, he did not find any trace of Wei Zhihua, let alone a few of us, he looked through all the navigation records, and also checked every electronic device, and no miracle appeared. But something was slowly becoming clear in his mind.

In Lu Binglin's view, the Dongxing has always been wrapped in a strange magnetic field, causing it to be in a state of time standstill. Even though the ship's electromagnetic emitting device has long since ceased to work, this magnetic field has not disappeared. When you enter this magnetic field, on the one hand, there is a loss of the concept of time, and on the other hand, a strange cycle of recurrence.

For example, he will subconsciously check the ship's above-ground equipment, and only after the inspection is done will suddenly realize that it seems to have been done before, but he will never realize it until he goes to inspect it. For another example, he recorded a paragraph in the logbook, and then opened the logbook again, and there was nothing written on it, so he would naturally write it again, until the last word was written, Lu Binglin would realize that it seemed that all this had happened.

At first, Lu Binglin regarded this as his mental disorder in an extreme situation, after all, the surrounding environment, even a person with an iron will, will quickly lose his mind, and it is normal to have some memory disorders. But a discovery soon made him realize that his previous speculation had missed a very important point.

(Holding the elephant, the world goes.) Go and don't hurt, Anping too. Joy and bait, passers-by, the exit of the road, indifferent and tasteless, not enough to see, not enough to hear, not enough to use. --Tao Te Ching)