This is a wrapper for a cigarette box, and cigarettes are also the cheapest liqun that is common. The paper was a little crumpled and seemed to have been soaked in water, and the patterns and words printed on the front were peeling off a lot. But the back of this little cigarette paper shocked me and Huansheng.

It was a simple pencil drawing. The reason why it is called a painting rather than a painting is entirely because whether it is from the composition, the lines, the light and shade, the reality or the unique emotions expressed from the brushstrokes, this is not a simple graffiti, but can only be completed by an artist with deep skills and unique perspectives. Crucially, the painting depicts the mist on the sea, and the huge ships that emerge from the mist. We are all too familiar with the shape of this giant ship, because we are already on it.

If it weren't for the previous experience and preconceived notions, even if we saw this cigarette box paper painting for the first time, I think Huansheng and I would still be shocked by it. It is hard to imagine that the fog on the sea could be depicted so eeriely, as if it were alive, as if it were about to rise out of the paper, with only a pencil and no other coloring. And every line in the picture seems to be tight, so tight that there is a nervous twitch, and the desperate and gloomy mood makes people feel chills all over the body.

But this painting seems to be a bit old, because most of it has been soaked in water, and many places show the effect of ink smudging, and there are thin salt lines on the edges after drying, but the unique painting style is still very recognizable.

At the bottom of the piece of paper, a line of small characters was written with extremely fine strokes, but there were more than 20 orthography, and the last one was only written with three strokes.

At this time, Huan Sheng's hand holding the flashlight couldn't help but tremble slightly, and he turned his face to look at me with a shocked face, I knew that he also thought of the author of this painting for the first time, although there are countless painters with exquisite skills, but it is difficult to find a second one with Ding Jian's unique style, and it is impossible for someone to imitate him as an unknown painter like him.

The problem is that judging from the damaged condition of this cigarette box paper, it has experienced both wind and sun exposure and seawater immersion, and the edge of the paper has obviously been rolled up for a long time to form a paper roll, plus the three words "drifting bottle" written by Lu Binglin without a head or brain, I immediately reacted that this should be a bottle in a glass bottle.

Do the orthography represent the time of the painter's stitching? Why doesn't he just mark the time, using the original method of orthography? unless he loses the ability to judge the date. If you look at the artistic style of the painting, there is no doubt that this is Ding Jian's work, but Ding Jian does not have the memory of being trapped in the East Star, and the fishermen who were with him can also prove that Ding Jian only disappeared on the East Star for one night, which seems to have an obvious contradiction.

After Ding Jian returned to Hainan Island, although I didn't know his whereabouts, Wei Zhihua started the mirage plan, and being able to find him at the first time proved that Ding Jian had not left the sight of the relevant departments, and it was even more impossible for him to regain the East Star and be trapped on it.

Another important point is that Ding Jian had talked to me about the change in his art style the day before, and the experience of the Dongxing was undoubtedly that key point. A painter's unique artistic style requires a long time to precipitate and accumulate, and like scientific research and immortal cultivation, it is a process of quantitative change to qualitative change, and the length of the process is determined by one's own understanding and talent, so there are many painters who have painted for a lifetime and still have not found their own style, which is the reason.

So this painting on the cigarette box paper, the time of appearance must be after Ding Jian left the East Star, if those orthography, each stroke represents one day, this is already more than a hundred days, put it in a bottle and throw it into the sea, until someone accidentally finds it and picks it up, God knows how much time it takes, which contradicts the time of Ding Jian and other East Star stars.

Suddenly, I remembered a detail that Wang Huzi had mentioned, the last few pages of the logbook that Ding Jian and the others had found, there were a few pictures of charcoal strips, why did Ding Jian deliberately conceal it? This is only one explanation, one explanation that is full of contradictions in itself, Ding Jian, who boarded the Dongxing, saw the painting he had drawn in the logbook and realized that he had lost a memory, the memory that he had been trapped on the Dongxing.

So how did Ding Jian get on the East Star? Could it be that Wei Zhihua had known Ding Jian before? This also seems impossible, Wei Zhihua could not bring a painter to join the top-secret investigation project, right?

"If each new piece of evidence is found that overturns the previous conclusion, then something is wrong with the direction of the original inference. Thinking of this, I can't help but ask myself, what is the Mirage Project? Who is Ding Jian? Is his personal experience real? Does not being present mean that it will not happen?

All this flashed through my brain, and I could only put my doubts aside and began to read the neat handwriting on the notebook. If this is Wei Zhihua's handwriting, then there must be a secret of the intersection between him and Ding Jian.

Although the sea was overcast, almost all light was obscured, day and night were indistinguishable, and I had long lost my sense of time, but subconsciously, I always felt that it should have begun to fall into the night, at least the temperature was slowly dropping. Although it was enclosed in a closed radiation shield, the fog that began to accumulate outside the mask gave me a clear judgment.

Although Huansheng was holding a condenser, the words on the cowhide book were so small that I almost had to stick the book on the mask to barely read the handwriting on it.

"Paper Roll No. 1, June 2000, East of Orange Mountain Reef, South China Sea, Fishing Vessel 36524. The cigarette paper used was batch numbered and was one of the 10 boxes purchased by the Star in February 2000. Except for the orthography, there are no text symbols. The glass bottles used were the outer packaging cans of tangerines in sugar water purchased by Donglin Canning Factory in January 2000, with a production batch number. “

"The technical department determined that some of the paper rolls were watered, which was caused by the poor sealing of the bottle cap, and the water contact time was between two years and four months to nine months. There are obvious traces of sun exposure and discoloration on the back of the paper roll, and it is inferred that the formation time coincides with the water time. “

It can be inferred from this that the drifting bottle should have been dropped by the trapped personnel of the East Star, but there are two important doubts, one is that the time does not coincide, and the time difference is about two years. The second is why the trapped people did not write a distress message or indicate the location of the trapped person, but instead drew an illustration that did not have much meaning, and there did not seem to be a person with professional ability to draw on the East Star. “

These paragraphs are followed by several big question marks.

If it is assumed that these words are written by Wei Zhihua, then he basically asked the same confusion as me, and it also indirectly proves that Wei Zhihua and Ding Jian did not know each other before. I hurriedly flipped to the back of the leather notebook.

In the following pages, each of which contains a piece of paper illustrated with a black-and-white sketch, the same cigarette box paper as the first, a more damaged can label, and two pieces of drawing paper with light blue checkered lines at the back, for a total of nine.

The content depicted on each piece of paper is different, like a comic book, telling a confusing story. In the picture, there are not only foggy skies, huge ships going to sea, but also some detailed depictions on the East Star, and even a few figures standing or sitting on the bow of the ship.

What is impressive is a close-up of the cabin, the messy workbench is littered with all kinds of objects, charts, record books, books are piled up high and collapsed, empty cigarette boxes, empty cans, lunch boxes, and cutlery are placed everywhere, and everywhere is a rotten atmosphere, except for a candle on the corner of the table that is about to burn out, and it still emits a faint light.

In the center of the workbench was a thick hardcover book, perhaps the logbook of the Eastern Star, and the page that opened seemed to be illustrated. It's just that the size of this painting is too small, and although the author's realism is super strong, he still can't tell what is painted in the hard cover, but I prefer to believe that it is the last few pages of the logbook mentioned by Wang Huzi, which is also what Ding Jian has been able to cover up.

I carefully looked at the text on the leather book again, similar to the first page, which detailed the time and location of the discovery of each drifting bottle, through these accounts I probably knew that after the first drifting bottle was discovered, Wei Zhihua and the agency behind him had begun to attach great importance to it, after all, this was an important clue to find the East Star. After that, they began to send out forces to search for the Drift Bottle in a large area.

As a result, in the next two months, eight more drifting bottles were found one after another, of course, these drifting bottles may not have been all dropped from the Eastern Star, but at least many important clues can be deduced from them. At the end of the kraft book, the recorder made a summary and analysis.

"All the drifting bottles were dropped from the Eastern Star, but from the analysis of the location of their discovery, there is no necessary connection with the distribution of the South China Sea Current, and there is no logic in their appearance. ”

"From the analysis of the orthography in the lower part of each chapter, because there is no repetition, the orthography should indicate the temporal relationship between the pieces of paper, or the order in which the illustrations are completed, but the logical relationship between all the pictures is not clear. ”

"The picture should be depicted as a scene or event that has occurred on the Eastern Star. ”

"All the illustrations seem to depict scenes at night, or is it an illusion created by the style of painting?"

"The painter's use of pictures to record the conditions of the East Star is not in line with the behavior of the technicians and crew members of the East Star, who is the painter? Why don't you use words or numbers to describe the content of the rescue cry? If the bottle is not for help, what is the meaning of these illustrations, and what is the purpose of the bottle?"

"Why didn't this happen to the missing Ningbo and Changchun? Could it be that the appearance of the drifting bottle is related to the multi-frequency electromagnetic transmitter on the Dongxing?"

"There is nothing wrong with the identification of the time of the flooding of the paper, and there is only one explanation for the contradiction with the time of the disappearance of the Eastern Star, which is that we know too little about the mirage. ”

"The disappearance of the Eastern Star should be the beginning of the success of Project Mirage, but this success will probably never be known......"

(I don't know how to live happily, I don't know how to die, so I don't know how to die; I don't know my relatives, I don't know how to neglect things, so I don't know how to love and hate; I don't know how to rebel, I don't know how to obey, so I don't have any interests. --"Liezi")