The ninth year of the Republic of China, November 1920.

The Sino-Swiss joint archaeological expedition followed the southern edge of the Tarim Desert and crossed the heart of Eurasia. Archaeological excavation is different from tomb robbery, the tomb can be hollowed out overnight, and the archaeologists have to work intensively for several weeks, according to a complete set of processes, without letting go of any details. Sven Hedin's journey along the Silk Road was naturally much slower than that of the average traveler.

"I don't know where Qin Beiyang is now?"

The little king gazes at the Altyn Mountains to the south.

"The heavens are above! I hope Beiyang is still alive. Wang Jiawei, a professor of history at National Peking University, said, "Although he is not a student of Peking University, I like this clever little craftsman, and it would be great if he could be my student." ”

As he spoke, more than a dozen camels carrying fresh water and supplies arrived at the ruins of Milan - this Milan is not Milan, but an ancient city that was abandoned thousands of years ago, but it makes people feel like they are in the ruins of ancient Rome......

Professor Wang believes that this is the new capital of Shanshan Kingdom after Loulan was abandoned. The archaeological team excavated in the Buddhist temple and found many Tibetan wooden tablets, indicating that the Tubo Dynasty had replaced the Tang Dynasty to rule this area, which must be the result of the fall of Longyou in Hexi after the Anshi Rebellion.

Li Longsheng saw a painted mural - seven winged little angels, with European classical faces, wide watery eyes, red cherry lips slightly constricted, beautiful.

"Thirteen years ago, Stein discovered this mural." Behind it is Sven Heding's exclamation, "This is the image of an angel in the West, but guarding the Dharma in the desert of the southern Silk Road." ”

The South Road of the Silk Road, starting from Dunhuang in the east, passes through Loulan, Jimo, Jingjue, Kuami, Khotan, or intersects with the middle road of Shule, or directly crosses the Pamir Plateau. This time, Sven Hedin did the opposite, crossing from west to east.

"Lop Nur is just to the northeast."

The Swedish explorer climbed to the top of the stupa, and in the cold wind, raised his binoculars to look out at the monotonous and barren wilderness.

As the sun shines brightly, the skyline rises with a thick heat. The white cloth covered Li Longsheng's face, like an Arab prince, revealing only sharp eyes. At the end of the line of sight, a cloud of cotton wool emerges, vaguely highlighting the wide surface of the water.

The sea in the desert?

Clear fresh water, vast smoke waves, dense reeds. Snowflakes of reed flowers flying. A girl walked by the water, dressed in red, with a skirt like a cloud, and three thousand green silk naturally draped behind her head. She was not standing in front of Li Longsheng, but floating outside the desert horizon, like a flying immortal suspended in the air. At most eighteen or nineteen years old, his eyebrows and eyes are not Han Chinese, with a high and straight nose, thin and upturned lips, and a soft chin line, like snow skin. And there was something hidden in her brown eyeballs that made her feel a certain uneasiness.

It's not an illusion.

The archaeological team saw it and pointed to the girl hanging in the sky. A cloud obscured the sun, the desert became gloomy, the lake evaporated, and the maiden vanished without a trace, as if she had never come to this world.

"Mirage."

The king of the small county of Ordostoro, Timur shouted, only to wake up Li Longsheng, a doctor of physics at Cambridge University, actually forgot about this stubble.

In the sea, snowfields, and deserts, this kind of illusion can appear, and the ancient Chinese believed that it was formed by the breath exhaled by a mirage, named "mirage", and the source of the illusion may be far away - it is even possible to see the ancients thousands of years ago, and the scientific community denounced it as an absurd heresy, like a "soul machine".

Li Longsheng closed his eyes, and his mind was full of the red-clothed girl in the sky - a village girl thousands of miles away? Or a princess from a thousand years ago?

The camel caravan restarted, like the caravan that set out from Chang'an more than 2,000 years ago to sell silk.

Xiaojunwang said in Li Longsheng's ear: "I don't think Sven Hedin and the Hungarian Stein, the Russian Pzhevalsky, and the Japanese Tachibana Ruichao are all the same way, and they are here to excavate Chinese cultural relics." ”

Li Longsheng gave him a blank look: "Aren't we?" ”

Sven Hedin's gaze became more and more serious, and he pointed to the cracked ground under his feet with his cane: "In 1900, I crossed the desert and came to Lop Nur and discovered the ancient city of Loulan, which had been annihilated. According to my records at the time, it was this latitude and longitude. There should be a large area of water, and the Qing Dynasty people called it Luo Bu Naoer. There are also the isolated Luobu people, all of whom are descendants of the Loulan people...... Is it only 20 years since it has completely dried up? ”

Professor Wang Jiawei got off the camel and couldn't see any signs of life, so he couldn't help but sigh: "Lop Nur is originally in the Peacock River Delta, with poplar and red willow forests and reeds all over the field. The Book of Han says, 'Three hundred miles wide, its water pavilion dwells, and it does not increase or decrease in winter and summer'. Loulan country has thousands of green fields, and there is more than enough food; The Merchant Road Inns are always full of tourists; The temple bells and drums are melodious. Li Daoyuan's "Notes on the Book of Water" records that after the Eastern Han Dynasty, Loulan lacked water, and soon became a ruin, and the southern Silk Road was cut off.

"I have a theory of 'wandering lake' - the Tarim River is like a pendulum constantly diverging, and Lop Nur is the hammer on the pendulum, swinging back and forth, each cycle is about 1,500 years. The river carries a large amount of sediment deposits, raises the bottom of the lake, and the lake overflows to the lower places. After a thousand years, the bottom of the dry lake was eroded by strong winds, and the water returned to the original basin. ”

Sven Hedin couldn't explain why, twenty years later, Robnaoer disappeared.

The north wind brought the overwhelming yellow sand. Everyone covered their faces with gauze, but the sand kept burrowing into their mouths and noses.

Li Longsheng let the horses be submerged in quicksand, and changed to a camel to ride, but he didn't expect to run out of control. Sven Hedin ordered not to stop, but to keep going. It was too late, and once the camel was frightened, it galloped no less than a horse......

I don't know how long it took, the wind and sand finally stopped, and Li Longsheng thought he was dead.

He opened his eyes in the morning light.

There was a camel on the lead, a young girl, wearing a red dress and long black hair dragging back her head. Her hand holding the reins glowed golden in the sunlight.

Like a dream, or, a mirage.

She turned her head and revealed a pair of Persian beauty-like faces, which were the Flying Immortals she had seen in the mirage a few days ago.

Li Longsheng almost fell off his camel.

Only then did he realize that the entire archaeological expedition was gone. Sven Heding, Professor Wang Jiawei, and the little prince of the gentlemen were all swallowed by the desert? And yourself are the only survivors?

Alone, completely unaware? Which latitude and longitude? Or is it another dimension?

"You're awake."

The girl actually speaks Chinese, with a thick northwest accent. But from her mouth, it was not as rough as the Northwesterners, but soft and crisp.

She walked with a camel, she was healthy and natural, and only this inaccessible wasteland could give birth to such a woman.

In the desert rises a green landscape of poplars, red willows and reeds, and a vast expanse of water.

Water.

There are even waterfowl that fly over the winter waters, causing ripples, like a dream paradise, the Garden of Eden in Genesis - the legendary Rob Naoer, the inland lake discovered by Sven Hedin twenty years ago.

The camel walked to the water's edge and leaned over to drink a big gulp. The girl helped Li Longsheng down and poured a bag of water. He craned his neck and drank it all, and the real clear and sweet spring, like a jade liquid, ran down his throat and esophagus, and brought him back from a dying root.

He was finally able to speak: "What's your name?" ”

"Inka."

The corners of her mouth are slightly upturned, and she doesn't know how to write Chinese characters? Perhaps there is no way to write Chinese characters, Li Longsheng thought of the ancient Incas in the Americas, which happened to be very appropriate to the ancient kingdom of Lop Nur and Loulan.

There was a canoe by the water's edge, incredible, a canoe in the desert.

Inka gestured, and he sat down irresistibly at the bow of the boat. The girl grabbed two oars and rowed, setting off waves like shattered mirrors. Li Longsheng participated in the Cambridge University rowing team and won the Oxford and Cambridge races. He took the oars from Inka's hand, turned his back to the direction of travel, and rowed in the manner of a row. He was very fast, and the girl held her cheeks and looked at him with interest, as if she were watching a child play.

Come to the small oasis in the center of Rob Naoer, there are dozens of houses made of dirt, reeds and poplar wood. The villagers are all half-breeds. Everyone brought out a sumptuous feast of grilled fish, and the hungry Li Long feasted on it, but he didn't expect the fish in the desert to be so delicious. However, Inka has no relatives and lives alone in a small cabin.

On this night, the moonlight in the desert was very beautiful, and Li Longsheng spent it in a small hut by the lake.

He thought that after twenty years, Sven Hedin returned to his hometown, only to find that Lop Nur had disappeared out of thin air, perhaps not because of the "Wandering Lake", but because of the existence of some special aura, which made the machine malfunction, and even made the memory wrong......