I pondered for a while and asked my mother, "Mom, can you tell me about my dad?" ”

She was clearly taken aback by this question, which I hadn't asked for so many years, and suddenly asked that she might really be unprepared.

But she soon said calmly: "You have grown so big, and you know what happens between men and women. I became pregnant with you shortly after your dad and I got married, but before we could get married, he left because he had to do something. But your father is not a negative man, and he is not sorry for our mother, but your grandparents don't understand, so you don't have to think about it. ”

I nodded, I knew that asking these things was tantamount to revealing her scars, and it was not easy for my mother to pull me up for so many years, so I didn't ask any more.

But my mother asked me instead, "Why did you remember to ask this today?" ”

"I—" I was speechless, not knowing what to say.

Mother sighed and said, "For so many years, I raised you alone, and I understand that you want to have a father..."

"No, Mom, it's not like that."

I wanted to explain, but my mother stopped me: "Son, you remember, no matter what your father or your family is, it will not affect you to be a good person. ”

On this day in late August, I said goodbye to my mother, put on my luggage, and boarded the carriage that was far away, feeling a little melancholy that I was going to a distant place alone.

Along the way, in addition to watching the scenery change, I just thought about some questions, especially about my father.

But I think of Ma Daoren's words again, he brought me special qi? What exactly does this mean, I really don't understand it anymore. At this point, he doesn't look like a normal person.

The car I was sitting in had to change in the middle and go west to M City. To be honest, I don't understand why I want to go to M City, I read that most of the explorers in the book write articles saying that going to LL and XH Cemetery is to go to R County in the south of X Province.

I've also looked at the map, and County R is indeed the closest place to that barren land. But people have arranged it like this, and it's useless to think about it.

I had to wait seven or eight hours at the turnaround station, so I deposited my luggage and went for a walk outside the station. It was the first time I had actually come to the Northwest, but the city looked the same, except for the loess hills and ravines I had just seen on the wagon, which I had never seen before.

When I was in school, I used to eat ramen with the name on it, and I thought that when I came here today, I would definitely have an authentic meal.

So I walked around the city and found a shop with an older façade and a lot of people inside, which is generally a time-honored store that the locals like. I didn't ask for anything else, so I ordered a bowl of beef noodles.

This shop is not very big, I can see how busy the chef is in it, two masters dressed in ethnic groups are pulling noodles wildly inside, and there is a young man cutting beef on the side, oh no, this is the authentic beef noodles, it is really cut with large pieces of beef.

After waiting for about ten minutes, my noodles were served, and I looked at my heart and said, "Mom, how much does it cost to have so much beef?" But if you want to ask for it, you can't stop eating, right? So I didn't think much about it, the noodles tasted very fragrant in the mouth, not only beef, maybe there was beef sauce or something in the soup, in short, the meat was fragrant.

I quickly cleaned up, wiped my mouth, and went over to ask for the price. The aunt who collected the money told me a number in Chinese like a foreigner.

What? That's less than the cost of two bowls of Yangchun noodles. I was so happy that I took out a double and said to her, "Another bowl." I sat down again. Not only did I eat a lot of meat, but I also had a lot of noodles, but I hadn't eaten properly in the carriage for several days, so if I had another bowl, it shouldn't be a big problem. The kind aunt also added a side dish to me, onion mixed with fungus, and said to me, "Rice, rice."

I nodded and took it with a smile.

If it weren't for the carriage passing, I think I would have been able to eat every day. I think of eating at the home of a fellow villager in City C, maybe the people in these places are more realistic, while there are many people doing business in our south, and the interests of buying and selling things are the first. The same brand of dumpling restaurant, the same price, is 20 in the school and 12 in the hometown.

After eating noodles and soup, I walked to the post station and lay down in the waiting room to rest for a while. In the intermittent shouting, I finally waited for my carriage, at this time many of the people on the car did not look like Han people, but I met the ethnic compatriots are very kind, and two uncles saw my heavy luggage, got up and helped me put it in the car, I only smiled and thanked the people, I don't know if he understands, anyway, I don't understand their communication.

After another night's sleep, I'll be in M City, M City, this city has only one thing in my mind - M melon.

After getting out of the carriage and leaving the station, I saw someone holding a sign with my name held high, no need to ask, looking at him like that is "Senior Brother Chen" in the mouth of Mr. Shen, because he is the excavation leader, I call him "Team Chen".

I walked over to say hello to him, introduced myself, and he enthusiastically took my luggage and took me into a two-pull carriage, where he talked to me, especially about the various things in the school, and it was obvious that he had also been there and was very interested in the changes around the school.

It didn't take long for us to arrive at our destination, which was their temporary station, and we relied on the return to the palace in M City.

It turned out that although the destination of our trip was the XH cemetery, there were still some things to do back to the palace where their cultural relics were located. So I asked to meet here, just to take a look along the way, to understand and understand.

I told him the stories I had read about the explorers in the book, and he listened to me with a smile, and when he was done, he said, "Don't worry, I am familiar with the roads here, and I have agreed with them on the time and route, even if the car breaks down and cannot be repaired halfway, we will wait for someone to come to rescue us in two days."

He asked me how much I knew about the gold and stone here, and I said in my heart that I almost didn't know, but it would be too embarrassing to say so, so I thought of a symbolic fact but sounded very modest: "It's nothing more than what I see in books, and I don't know much about it."

He said: "Well, it doesn't matter, the excavation conditions in the desert here are a little more difficult, but it is far less troublesome than digging in the soil. I nodded.

It was time for lunch, and he led me to a restaurant not far away to eat roast lamb shank bibimbap, but I didn't think it was appropriate for me to call it because the leg of lamb wasn't mixed in. An arm-thick leg of lamb is held and gnawed. I didn't eat much before I was full.

In the afternoon, he took me to visit the Huiwang Palace, which is a complex of buildings with distinctive religious characteristics. Chen said that the complex is divided into three parts and is the largest mosque in the M City area. This is my first time in a mosque, and it is indeed very different from Buddhist and Taoist places, and I can't see much else.

The next day, Team Chen got up early, packed up my things, and took me on the road. This time I know why he drove a double-pulled carriage, and the back was all for food and drink, and of course it was mainly water. I looked at it, calculated it again, and said in my heart that with so many things, even if we are trapped in the Gobi, it will not be a big problem to survive for a few months on these.

On the way, I asked him, "Are all these brought to the LL Cultural Protection Station?"

He nodded: "That's not all, there will be some more supplies in LZ Town at that time." The workers on the LL side are really hard, one person and one dog, nothing else, just two people work monthly shifts. And the pressure of work there is not to endure loneliness. In the next door, there were not only explorers, but also tomb robbers. ”

"What's there to steal there? It's not all earthen walls or anything like that. I asked him.

"Haha, that's all on the one hand, in fact, there are many tombs in the ancient city of LL, and there are a lot of dried corpses, have you ever heard of LL beauties? Just like Princess XH from the XH cemetery, there are at least 1,000 taels of dried corpses abroad. ”

One thousand taels? Oh my god, that's outrageous. It seems that not only the cultural relics are valuable these years, but also the dried corpses. But when I thought about it, after all, dried corpses are also a kind of cultural relics, but they are quite special. Why are some foreign people willing to spend this money to buy such a thing?

Since I don't know how to drive a carriage, it's going to be hard for the team, but he doesn't care, he said that he hasn't come in alone once or twice, and he eats, drinks and rests quite casually along the way, so don't be too anxious.

We left the downtown area of M City and headed south, and what caught my eyes was the vast Gobi.