(a)

In fact, in the life I spent as an idealist, I spent a lot of time searching for the bones of you who died in the Xiyuan Canyon in your previous life.

Since I saw the last moments of your life on the boulder in the middle of the Blackwater River, my unfulfilled wish to collect your bones as Qin'er in my previous life has been stimulated again.

Since then, I've had the idea of searching for your bones.

The direction of my later life was significantly affected by this.

I left the school shooting team for good before my baccalaureate.

Just as I volunteered to join, this time, I also volunteered to leave.

After I left the shooting team, Director Wang talked to me six times in three days through other teachers, hoping to keep my remaining love for the sport. But my resolve is unbreakable.

In fact, after you die in front of my eyes for the second time, I can't go back to that place anyway.

I can't go into that training ground again, I can't go into that instructional office again, I can't hear the kind of gunfire that I hear from live ammunition again, all of which have piercing blades hiding invisibly.

For many years afterward, I couldn't even stand to see the shooting scenes or the words in the newspapers or on TV, and even the airsoft balloon shooting game in the playground made me shudder.

Instructor Wang, as well as all the teachers of the Physical Education Teaching and Research Group, every word they said was like a dull and rusty blade cutting me. Regardless of the content of the words themselves.

The field of sports, for me, has become a no-go zone without air.

Since then, I have been forced to learn how to disguise myself quietly and deeply.

Later, many people thought that I gave up shooting before the graduation examination in order to concentrate on my studies and sprint for the school to be the top in the province, which was influenced by the school's deliberate arrangement.

As everyone expected, I finally won the top prize in the province with a score that was far ahead of the second place in the graduation examination, and I was admitted to the most prestigious university for historical research at that time.

(b)

During my university years, I participated in many research projects related to the period of the Han Dynasty, and I impressed all the supervisors who came into contact with me with my rare dedication to sleep and food and perseverance.

When I was in my third year of university, I was the actual chief writer in the name of my tutor, and published a number of papers in the university's academic journals to examine the history of the Begi National War, one of which won an industry award, which won the school an unexpected honor.

When I was in my fourth year of university, a leading scholar in the field of domestic history came to visit our university and invited me to come for an interview, hoping that I would be able to study as a graduate and doctoral student after graduation.

He wanted me to carry on his mantle and promised me a bright future.

To his disappointment, however, I gave up my history major and enrolled in graduate school in journalism.

Still, he and I maintained a lifelong friendship.

After graduating from graduate school, I joined the magazine where I later worked as a reporter, editor-in-charge, and columnist.

I used my camera and pen to open a popular lace column in this magazine, dedicated to photographing and telling old stories that had happened in the past.

Later, I became very famous in that circle.

My column has become the object of imitation and follower by many of my peers.

In a celebrity radio conversation, the CCTV hostess surnamed Xiao, who later became very famous, virtuous and quiet, asked me with a pleasant face: "Why did you choose such two majors with very different sense of time to study at the same time?" Do you sometimes feel some kind of contradiction in your heart when you make such a choice? ”

I certainly can't answer her.

I have always lived in the middle of two axes of time, and I have always been distorted and squeezed by deep contradictions.

I didn't tell her, of course, that I switched to journalism because I wanted to be a professional who could legally listen to all sorts of things.

I hope to find a justification for my secret search.

I always want to find the bones of your past life that have disappeared in the black hole of time and bury them.

I don't remember how I dealt with her so openly.

(c)

Later, after I had mixed up in the business world, I came to the Ancient Battlefield Exhibition Hall in Xiyuan Canyon for the second time. This time, as a donor.

They had forgotten the little girl who had disappeared here all those years ago.

They received my visit with a hundred times more enthusiasm and answered all the questions I wanted to know.

During that visit, I offered to see again the amulet of you that had led me to my past life. But they told me that the amulet had mysteriously disappeared.

Ever since I was a teenager, the moment I reached through the glass of the display case and grabbed it, the amulet had disappeared inexplicably.

It was later neither in my hands nor on the glass stand in the showroom, and became an inexplicable theft.

Nobody knows, it's back in your neck more than a thousand years ago.

It dawned on me that the reason why it was unearthed from the fog of history was only to guide me in your direction.

It is your mother's last blessing to you.

It will accompany you to sleep in the ground.

With the only surviving photograph of the amulet given to me by the gallery, I traced the archaeological team that had excavated the object in the first place.

I searched for many places and interviewed many people before I gradually settled on the list of people who were at the excavation site at that time.

Then I went looking and visiting one by one, and I made a lot of transatlantic phone calls about it.

Finally, a retired, half-paralyzed old man recognized the photo.

From him, I learned that they had also found shards that looked like thin metal blades and a human radius near the amulet.

He vaguely remembered that the radius bone looked quite thick, and he must have been a brave warrior during his lifetime.

He said they judged the radius to be the remains of a fallen Begi warrior. This bone is of some value for the study of the ethnographic origin of the Begi people and the blood relationship between them and the current local ethnic groups.

But they didn't have the ability to do genetic research at the time, so the radius was later sent somewhere else.

The old man couldn't remember where the radius ended up, but he offered some clues.

(iv)

So I followed the trail all the way down. I have read thousands of archival materials, visited dozens of domestic museums, read countless historical magazines of all ages, and met countless people.

It was so difficult to find a bone in the vast expanse of history that for a while, I could hardly concentrate on this one thing.

I ignored the possibilities for career advancement and kept my eyes on it.

If I did anything else during that time, it was to cover up the fact that it was going on.

Later, just when I was about to despair, by chance, I suddenly learned the whereabouts of your remains.

It turned out that it was sent as a gift of friendship between countries, a gift for the international exchange of oriental history, to country N, which has always been rumored to have developed as a descendant of the Begi people, and they have good conditions for genetic research and a strong foundation for anthropological research.

Subsequently, I crossed many communication barriers of that era, and inquired about the final whereabouts of your bones in the country of N.

I sent countless emails and took advantage of various opportunities to participate in domestic academic activities attended by people from N countries, and later I got to know so many scholars from N countries, and even had the name of N country.

With their joint help, in the end, I found the materials I was looking for at the H Museum.

At that point, you've been on display there for 16 years.

When I finally saw the photo of your bones in a letter sent by a friend in country N, my heart, which had been broken twice in a row in my life, could hardly bear it.

I was hospitalized for 3 months with this photo.

After I was discharged from the hospital, I was desperate to cross thousands of mountains and rivers to see you for the last time.

(5)

That's how I found you little by little. Little by little, I have come back to you.

When I last stood in front of your remains, I was 26 years old, a full 13 years since we first met in Blackwater, and nearly 10 years since you died a second time before my eyes.

On that day, I stood for a long time in front of your bones.

I know that in this life and in this life, I will not be able to bring you back to my hometown and bury you where you wish to be buried.

Once again, I am saddened that I could not fulfill your wishes.

I stood in front of your remains for so long, so long, so long that I finally caught the attention of the security guards.

When I tried to reach for the glass niche box, the security guard finally came over and politely questioned me.

When I had to leave where you were, I had already poured out to you all the endless thoughts and helpless regrets of my life.

I don't know if you hear or don't hear my thoughts, and I don't know if you can understand it or if you can't understand it anymore.

That day, I walked away from where you were, step by step.

I didn't get into the taxi until I was still looking in your direction.

When the taxi drove up, I said to you in my heart, "Goodbye." ”

I know that I will come back in some distant future life and fulfill my wish to bury your bones.