When I saw the huge team in front of me, floating as if my feet were not touching the ground, I immediately sensed that something was wrong. When I was idle with Xiao Mao before, he told me that it was impossible for someone from the mainland to come here to explore the country to organize a team of thirty or forty camels or even more. If it were an official background, then camels would not be used only as a single means of transport.

I squinted, unsure what the hell was going on with that team. Xiao Mao hurriedly ran back to the tent and brought a telescope.

The telescope was still bought by Xiao Mao from other peers before, Soviet goods, bulky but durable, at least more than twenty or thirty years ago, and it is still intact.

Xiao Mao looked at the binoculars, and I was in a hurry next to me but couldn't help it. After a while, Xiao Mao took away the binoculars and said to me, "It's okay, don't make a fuss." ”

"What the hell is it, show me." I took Xiao Mao's binoculars, put them in front of my eyes, and looked in the direction where the team was going.

It was night, only moonlight could illuminate, and the telescopes had no night vision, and I found that after using the telescopes, it was similar to what I had observed with the naked eye. The team, though large compared to ours, was always vague. All I could see was a blurry figure and the silhouette of a camel walking in a row.

Still, I felt that the team was not walking, but rather drifting.

It was like seeing a ghostly procession wandering in the desert under the moonlit night.

"There must be yellow quartz underneath that desert." Xiao Mao patted me on the shoulder and signaled me not to panic: "It doesn't matter, let's just don't get close." ”

"What yellow quartz?"

"That's a long story." Xiao Mao asked me for a cigarette again, and said: "Many little things here actually have a story behind them that has been passed down for a long time. ”

The yellow quartz mentioned by Xiao Mao is a mineral that is found in many places in the mainland. The first to discover this kind of thing were the Taoists in the Central Plains, who made alchemy, alchemy, and tried to add many things of different natures. In fact, there are many things that Taoist priests accidentally discovered during alchemy.

Xiao Mao is not a professional scholar, and he can't say that the chemical structure of yellow quartz is not clear, but this kind of thing has the function of image storage. That is to say, yellow quartz can "record" a part of the scenes that occur around the ore, and if the conditions are right, these scenes will be presented by yellow quartz to a degree of 20 to 30 percent.

The Taoists discovered the properties of yellow quartz, but they didn't take it seriously at all, because for them, things that can't refine elixir and gold are useless.

This thing was finally discovered by a silk merchant from Central Asia, whose original intention was to go to the south where silk was rich at that time to purchase goods, and accidentally made friends with a Taoist, so that he knew about such a thing as yellow quartz.

After all, he was a businessman and had a lot of business acumen, and this Central Asian merchant gave Huang Quartz a commercial value. At that time, he built a very special kind of carriage, which was specially used to pull yellow quartz, and then hired a coachman to drive the carriage around the water towns in the south of the Yangtze River. After about a month or two of this treatment, the yellow quartz is extruded into composite slabs of various sizes.

There are two main conditions that drive Yellow Quartz to present the "projection" function, one is the change of temperature, and the other is thunder. Thunder and lightning came from nature and could not be controlled by man, so at that time, the gradual heating technique was mainly used to stimulate yellow quartz.

In other words, yellow quartz can be understood as a natural projector at that time. The yellow quartz composite slabs are placed in a fixed position, and the temperature is slowly heated with smokeless charcoal, and when the temperature reaches the most suitable level, a blurry image of the composite slate will appear on top of the composite slate, which resembles a mirage.

This Central Asian merchant made a desperate gamble and processed yellow quartz from the capital originally used to buy silk, and then transported it to Central and West Asia through the Silk Road. Unexpectedly, this thing became popular as soon as it was shipped, and in that era when natural technology and productivity were extremely backward, this kind of thing would make people feel a little scary and interesting. At that time, the aristocracy of Central and West Asia was keen to buy a wide variety of yellow quartz and invite people to come over and "watch a movie". Such entertainment even spread from West Asia to Europe, and the European aristocracy soon embraced it.

For about thirty or forty years, there was a great demand for yellow quartz in West Asia and Europe, and it was the most popular commodity among the aristocracy at that time. Therefore, a large part of the caravans that often traveled to and from the Silk Road adjusted their goods, and at the peak, the price of the same weight of yellow quartz and silver was 2:1, and a hundred kilograms of yellow quartz from the Central Plains could be sold for fifty kilograms of silver after being transported to the destination.

During those 30 years, the peak of the Yellow Quartz trade, the turnover even exceeded the most important commodities of the Silk Road: silk fabrics and spices. (In fact, many people in modern times have a misunderstanding of spices at that time, the spices that were trafficked to West Asia and Europe through the Silk Road were not the kind of things that made perfumes and aromatherapy products, but cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and the spices that West Asians and Europeans were keen to use to cook and preserve food)

After the sales of yellow quartz reached its peak, it quickly slipped into a trough until no one cared about it. As time went on and Europeans became more knowledgeable about yellow quartz, they found that it had no use other than the occasional vague exoticism. The stupid and money-rich yellow quartz distribution system was devastated, and in a short time it was kicked out of the freight list by the caravans of the Silk Road.

"So what do you mean? Underneath that sand, there's a lot of yellow quartz? ”

"It must be so." Xiao Mao nodded: "There is a ninety percent chance that the caravan transporting yellow quartz has been devastated here, and you don't need to look at it to know that there must be a submerged caravan under the sand layer at that time." ”

Xiao Mao said that the locals and people who are familiar with these situations will not approach if they encounter the shadow of a caravan or person floating on the ground. The caravan that had an accident was most likely hit by a strong sandstorm, and everyone and the livestock did not escape, but were directly swallowed by the yellow sand. These buried people, considered by the locals to be "sand ghosts", will haunt the do-gooders who follow them. Therefore, when encountering such a situation, it is necessary to avoid it.

In fact, what is more important is that everyone knows that the caravan is buried underneath, and the goods they carry, whether silk or spices, have been reduced to dregs in time, and even if they are dug up, they have no value, and their efforts are in vain.

Between Xiao Mao and my explanation, I kept looking at the cloud-like team, the team seemed to be constantly advancing, but those shadows were actually only flashing in a small area.

"Alright, it's okay, I'm going to sleep." Xiao Mao stood up, patted me and said, "I don't feel much sleep, at seven o'clock in the morning, I will get up and prepare breakfast, you can take advantage of that time to squint for another thirty or forty minutes." ”

Xiao Mao followed the habits of the locals and did not approach the ethereal team. If I stand on my own standpoint, I would also like to uphold the principle that more is better than less. But at this time, I suddenly remembered the experience when Zhang Momo took me to the Pingxiang Mental Hospital before leaving.

At that time, the person also called "Lian Chengfeng" said to me a very inexplicable thing, he said that if one day, in a desert, suddenly see a team, then no matter how strange and terrifying the team is, follow them to their destination.

At that time, I was so confused by this passage that I didn't know what he was trying to say. But now, his words seem to be confirmed.

No matter how strange and terrifying this team is, follow them to their destination......

It occurred to me that the person who lived in the mental hospital, like a prophet, knew before I set out to rush to the ancient city of Chepan that such a team would appear in my sight.

I didn't hesitate much, and immediately made up my mind to go over and have a look.

I immediately went to wake up Lao Wang and Zhang Momo, and said briefly. Xiao Mao is not very in favor of following the past, he also wants to put safety first, Ning Xiaomei slept in a daze, did not express his opinion, but Lao Wang talked a lot of nonsense, and said that it would be good if he didn't find trouble, but now he wants to find trouble.

"I think it's necessary to follow along." Zhang Momoli overrode public opinion and expressed his support for me. Because she was there when the patient said these words. She knew the inside story, and she knew that it was necessary to go with her now.

Zhang Momo is the goddess of Lao Wang, as soon as she opened her mouth, Lao Wang didn't have any.

"We don't have to go." I asked Lao Wang not to move them first, the first two actions have given me a painful lesson, some things, or do it yourself, especially Lao Wang, if you don't make a move, you have to hang up, I really can't stand that stimulation.

Xiao Mao didn't approve of getting closer, but after I decided, he didn't make a fuss, and the two of us walked briskly in the southwest direction.

However, it may have been that the delay in front was too long, and by the time we were ready to move our feet to chase, the vague team suddenly disappeared.

However, Xiao Mao judged the approximate location of the vague team based on what he had just seen, and we ran all the way over, and there was a bare sand in front of us, without any trace.

"We're late." Xiao Mao stopped, turned back to me, and said, "But even if we catch up while those shadows haven't disappeared, there's no point." ”

I don't agree with Xiao Mao's words, because I think that it is absolutely impossible for a mental patient in Pingxiang to say those words to me for no reason.

"Xiaomao, work hard." I pointed to the sand in front of me, where there was no sign of it: "This place needs to be dug up and seeed." ”