When I came back from the South China Sea, I was seriously ill. At first, it was just a simple cold and fever, but after taking medicine and injections, it did not improve, but I felt more and more weak, and my head became heavier and heavier. Within two days, Huansheng, Xiao Lei, and even the Cao team, who was known to be invincible, also fell down one after another, and the symptoms were almost identical.

I couldn't help but have a foreboding feeling in my heart, could it be that we, like the unfortunate ship boss, had something wrong with our immune system because of an overdose of radiation?

Soon we were transferred to a high-security hospital in western Beijing, where we became patients for half a month. All kinds of tests, all kinds of drugs, all kinds of treatment plans changed and changed, but we were almost isolated. But after a week, everyone was getting lighter and moving around with each other. Except that you can't leave the hospital, everything else is free.

When we had nothing to do, Huansheng and I carefully sorted out the South China Sea incident from beginning to end, one by one, one by one. After chatting for a few days, we felt that our bodies had recovered a little, so we simply drew a huge table, categorized and analyzed them one by one, hoping to find out the logical relationships, but also for fear of missing any subtle clues.

But to our disappointment, all the clues related to Ding Jian and Lu Binglin, as long as they enter our general table, the whole incident becomes confusing and illogical. The two of them are like two huge variables that allow the whole event to go in any direction, but create a lot of new contradictions. In the end, we had to come to the frustrated conclusion that only Lu Binglin's cross-sectional theory of time could make those two variables normal and everything explainable.

Neither I nor Huansheng are willing to accept it, not because this theory shocks our worldview, but because we both realize that if this theory is true, then we ourselves become part of a variable, a variable that does not know where to substitute us.

But what puzzled me and Huansheng was that we tossed around in the hospital like this, and it didn't seem to arouse much interest in Team Cao, he hardly participated in our discussions.

After tossing for half a month, we finally came the reassuring news, our physical indicators were normal, not contaminated by radioactivity, the doctor thought that we were infected with some unknown cold virus, although no effective treatment was found, but after a week or two, the virus will be destroyed by our own antibodies, and it will soon be cured.

Everyone was overjoyed to hear the news, Team Cao got two bottles of Jian Nanchun out of nowhere, we took a few dishes from the cafeteria, and secretly ran to the small garden at the back door of the hospital to celebrate. It is early autumn, the sky is high and cool, the wind is light and the clouds are light, the garden is faintly wafting with the faint aroma of osmanthus flowers, and the sunlight leaks down in the leaves of the tall trees, which makes people feel relaxed and idle, and it is a good day to drink.

That day, perhaps because he hadn't drunk for a long time, Team Cao drank the most, almost killing a whole bottle by himself, and soon became a little drunk.

When Huansheng and I couldn't help but lead the topic to a mirage and start a new round of arguments and speculations, Team Cao suddenly took out a pile of files from his bag and handed them to me, and he didn't speak, just picked up his wine glass and touched it with me.

I understood that the dossier he had only taken out at this time must be of great significance, so I threw down my wine glass and quickly opened it to look through it carefully.

I had a sense of déjà vu in the first half of the dossier, which recorded Ding Jian's first observations and descriptions on the Dongxing. But when I turned to the back, I realized that things were a little bit beyond my imagination.

The later file records that Ding Jian was secretly sent to Beijing a month after encountering the Dongxing in the South China Sea, and underwent a one-month physical examination in a hospital directly under the ministry, according to the results of the physical examination, Ding Jian had been exposed to ultra-high radiation radiation, but it did not cause the failure of body organs, nor did it cause blood problems, on the contrary, some of his body structures have undergone special changes, for example, the metabolic ability exceeds that of ordinary people several times, and the cerebral blood supply is far greater than the normal value, and the most peculiar thing is that his cell renewal is not a constant value, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, but there is no law at all。

But the cause of these phenomena is a mystery, and the effect of these phenomena on the body is even more mysterious.

Based on the phenomenon that Ding Jian's cerebral blood supply is different from that of ordinary people, the hospital specially did a brain CT examination, and found that Ding Jian's cerebral sulcus gyrus lines are much deeper than those of ordinary people, and the brain volume is slightly larger, so it is obvious that the brain thinking is more active. But this state generally only appears in the light sleep state of normal people, and it lasts for a short time, but Ding Jian is in this state almost most of the day, which is an extremely abnormal situation, and the average person's brain can't bear this load at all.

So the hospital specially gave Ding Jian a hypnosis test, hoping to unravel the secret, but unexpectedly, the results of these tests surprised everyone.

During the hypnosis test, the doctor first found that Ding Jian's description on the Dongxing had changed a lot from before. He no longer only stayed on the Dongxing for about half an hour, but for two whole months, if you follow the memory in Ding Jian's brain.

At first, the doctor thought that Ding Jian's time consciousness was confused under hypnosis, but as the hypnosis deepened, how he searched for traces of life on the ship, how he tried to figure out the strange electronic devices in the bilge, how he recorded abnormal celestial phenomena and the still sea, and how he spent every day in the dead darkness, scenes slowly emerged.

In particular, he described in detail his understanding of the strange phenomenon on the Eastern Star: the Eastern Star seems to be in a state of time standstill, although it can move and think, everything around it is stationary, and there is no change. Ding Jian didn't know how to solve this dilemma, and the darkness made him slowly collapse on the verge of collapse.

Eventually, he found that it was only through the paintings he was familiar with that he could calm himself. What surprised him even more was that it was difficult for him to write in the dark, but it was not difficult for him to draw, and even from his creative ideas to painting skills, Ding Jian had a sense of rapid progress. After creating a large number of works, Ding Jian could only briefly admire them with the remnants of the matchsticks, but he soon realized that perhaps these paintings could serve as a bridge between himself and the real world.

Ding Jian found a lot of empty cans and empty wine bottles, sealed his works into bottles, and threw one into the sea every once in a while, he only hoped that these paintings in bottles could float out of the mirage, even if one of them was picked up, maybe everything would change differently after that.

After that, it was a long wait, purgatory-like torture, until one day, Ding Jian finally noticed that a red light appeared on the skyline, the Dongxing began to shake rhythmically, and the hull began to slowly be wrapped in dense fog, just like when he boarded the Dongxing. But when he stepped out of the cabin to check on the deck, he suddenly bumped into several people in strange costumes.

Ding Jian's brain suddenly had memories that didn't exist: he was locked up in a gloomy, high-security hospital, and different doctors began to give him strange examinations, from head to toe, from the inside out. And as the examination deepened, the doctors began to be more and more interested, ready to dig more secrets out of his brain. Dante Jian felt like a guinea pig, with no room for resistance, only to lie on the operating table and watch his body organs be taken out one by one. And the final outcome can only be to become a specimen in a glass jar.

Ding Jian didn't know where this memory came from, but a fear that was even worse than darkness surrounded him, and he didn't have time to think about it, only one thought, run, run, run in the direction of the light.

So Ding Jian ran in front, and those white-clothed men chased after him, until he was almost at the bow of the ship, Ding Jian tripped over some coral shells, and when it was difficult to get up, the captain of the boat suddenly came out of the thick fog somehow, and desperately dragged him down the soft ladder on the side of the ship and climbed down the East Star.

After reading this record, my brain became extremely chaotic again, and I couldn't tell whether Ding Jian's old time and space were interspersed with our time and space, or whether we were stuck into that old time and space, but the trouble was that what happened in these two time and space was cause and effect each other, interacting with each other, making it impossible to think normally at all, and the back of my head ached violently again.

My reaction seemed to have been expected by Team Cao, he poured some wine into my wine glass, handed it over, and said softly, "Lao Chang, don't blame me for hiding it, these files, especially the inspection report about Ding Jian, are highly confidential, I really can't reveal them to you, my task is not to monitor Wei Zhihua and ensure the implementation of the scientific expedition, but to bring Ding Jian back." ”

Seeing that I muttered and didn't speak, Team Cao added: "Lao Chang, in fact, I read these contents before I left, although the doctor in charge of hypnosis has repeatedly determined the authenticity of Ding Jian's statement, but I always feel that it is just a dream of his, on the ghost boat, many things are artificially amplified, and Ding Jian can't tell which ones are real and which ones are his own feelings." However, as the South China Sea operation deepens step by step, more and more things are being verified one by one, especially the efforts you have made, and the decisions you have to make with anxiety are actually just proving what is irreversible and what is predestined. Do you think it's a boring day?"

At this time, I finally understood a little bit of the reason why Team Cao was silent from beginning to end.

(Those who talked about the Tao in the past were either said to be silent, or deep, or clear, or empty, or obscure, so be careful not to retreat in fear when encountering this.) The world is reasonable, but it is not words. Gou knows that the non-words are not intended to be above the subtle words, but Qiwu said. --"Guan Yinzi")