Hyde took out an old-fashioned notebook, which I held in my hand, a little heavy, as if with a sense of heaviness that had traveled through time.

You don't have to ask to know that this notebook and that black-and-white photo are products of the same era.

The notebook is only slightly larger than the palm of the hand, and the outer cover is a thicker rough cowhide, black and brown, and after the baptism of time, the surface of the leather has become dull and hard, but from the touch of the fingers, you can still imagine its original delicate, oily leather lines.

The booklet was tied thinly with a black oil rope, I gently untied it, and before opening the notebook, I felt my heart beat twice, and I subconsciously looked at Shen Tangzhi.

She tilted her head sideways, her delicate eyebrows raised slightly, and motioned for me to open it with her eyes.

I took a deep breath and opened the notebook in my hand.

The paper in the booklet was yellowed and incomplete, because the front and back pages had been torn off, and only a dozen pages remained in the middle.

The contents of the pages are written in handsome black pen font, similar to a diary, but there are traces of malicious alteration and cover-up.

For example, at the beginning of each diary, there is a record of "a certain year, a certain month, a certain day/what is the weather", but the time, month, and day in it have been altered or even directly destroyed, and other contents have also been deliberately destroyed in this way, leaving an ugly bar hole on the page.

Shen Tangzhi said to me that this notebook was already like this when it came into her hands, and they also tried to restore and decipher the destroyed text information, but because the paper was originally a fragile object that was difficult to preserve, and because of the long period of time, under the premise of not using scientific instruments, even trace science could not help, and could only rely on guessing - in other words, we could not know the missing text content for the time being.

Although I regretted it, I had no choice but to read the mutilated diaries, but after reading only the first one, I was immediately attracted by the strange content.

(Note: Missing text in the diary is replaced with the [###] symbol.) ）

[Diary 1]

19##年#月五日, the weather is fine

I got up at half-past four, and finished packing my tent at five. At this time, there was a breeze and a slight coolness, but the distant sky was already white, and the morning glow was red - this means that today will be a difficult journey, since entering the desert, the sun is scorching every day, everyone is suffering, because of the lack of water, some people have shown symptoms of severe dehydration, and, in ####之后, Kang Shiming is still in a coma.

I proposed to Mr. Xu a plan to rest day and night, but Dr. Hedin rejected it, because the foreign expedition members agreed that the night was in ###行走将会遇到不可测的危险, and as for the source of danger, they were reluctant to talk about it, and even Dr. Hedin, I suspect that he knew this was the result, and just pretended to be a discussion to show us.

Mr. Xu and I were not satisfied with this treatment, and Dr. Hedin re-established his plan to start early, stop at sunset, and repair at noon.

According to Mr. Xu's instructions, I wrote to Xi Che of the rear team, asking him to be sure to equip more water, because it turned out that the wells along the way were not reliable.

After seven o'clock I had crossed a hill when the wind suddenly picked up and a sandstorm blew.

When the sandstorm stopped, we found that we had lost two camels, and they were carrying exactly what little water we had left—about a third of the weight.

Mr. Xu was very worried, and he proposed to take a break and wait for the rear team to deliver supplies.

With a third of the water lost, if we don't get a supply at the next water source, we all run out of water to drink.

But Dr. Hedin was very resolute, he was convinced that the rear team would catch up on time, and the horse gang guide he hired also said that there would be water at the next water supply point.

We left two Mongols to search for the lost camel within a few dozen miles of the future, and the group continued on its way.

At noon, strong winds again lifted, knocking down several tents.

But Dr. Hedin and his guide, Lao He, seemed very excited, and I saw them take out a map that I had never seen before, and there were words such as "phoenix eyes", "underground palace", and "###" in their words.

However, the purpose of our scientific expedition is to prove that Mr. Xu's ##的猜想 does not seem to be in line with it.

At this time, I began to suspect that Dr. Hedin and the foreign scientific expedition led by him seemed to have an unspeakable secret.

……

This concludes the first diary.

I almost couldn't wait to flip through the next diary, but Shen Tangzhi stopped me.

She said, "Don't rush yet. There are many things that Hyde and I don't understand about the events recorded in this notebook, and I hope you can help us solve our doubts. ”

This whole incident has developed to the present, and it is estimated that everyone in this room will inevitably follow me to investigate.

In this case, information sharing, mutual discussion, and confirmation are also the proper meaning.

Suppressing my curiosity, I spread the notebook flat on the table: "You ask." ”

Shen Tangzhi was a little surprised: "Do you understand everything?" ”

"Pretty much."

Hyde was also quite surprised, and he spoke in a Chinese with a very foreign accent, and said: "But, Ji, this diary is missing a lot of words, and it is all in a very critical place......

Now it was my turn to be surprised: "It's normal that you can't understand Haide, but Shen Tangzhi, you should always be able to find information, right?" ”

Hyde is a foreigner, so that's fine, how could Shen Tangzhi know nothing?

Shen Tangzhi glanced at me: "I've been studying abroad since high school, so you can treat me as an ABC." ”

"Okay, get down to business."

First, there is the place where the events in the diary took place.

This is not difficult for Shen Tangzhi and Hyde, they only need to calculate according to the seasons and sunrise time recorded in the text, plus the information of "desert", it is basically the same.

I agree, this geographical scope is not large, but it can be basically determined that it is in Yuzhou.

Yuzhou is the province with the most dynasties in China, the longest history of building the capital, and the largest number of ancient capitals.

"Is the 'conjecture' mentioned at the end of the diary related to the location? However, Yuzhou is the birthplace of Chinese civilization, from the Xia Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, there have been more than 20 dynasties here to make their capitals - the scientific expedition team in the diary, is it going to look for the relics of which dynasty? Shen Tangzhi had already thought of this problem.

"The 'Mr. Xu' and 'Dr. Hedin' in the diary, if they don't have the same name and surname, should be the two celebrities I know."

I tell you that I suspect that the two people in the diary are obviously the leaders of the scientific expedition, one is Xu Xusheng, a famous scholar and archaeologist during the Republic of China, who served as the provost of Peking University and the president of Beijing Normal University, and the other is Dr. Wenya Heding, a famous Swedish explorer and geographer.

When I said these two names, Haide's eyes suddenly lit up: "Is it Xu Xusheng who 'recovered a thousand years of history?!' ”

In the twenties and thirties of the 20 th century, there were quite a few criticisms at home and abroad about the "5,000-year history of China."

In particular, at that time, there was a "suspicious ancient school" headed by Gu Jiegang in China, which took the "Ancient History Debate" as the central argument and put forward the view that "there is no history above the Eastern Zhou Dynasty", denying the history of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, which was popular in the academic circles for a while.

Xu Xusheng not only wrote "The Age of Ancient Chinese History and Legends" as a counter-attack, but also really found and excavated the "Xia Ruins" later, and traced Chinese history back to almost a thousand years in the category of archaeology.

At the end of 1926, Dr. Wenya Heding, a well-known Swedish explorer and geographer, led a large expedition to the northwest of China to conduct scientific inquiries.

At that time, the Beiyang warlord government signed an unequal agreement with Wenya Heding, during which the rules forbade the participation of Chinese scientists, and all the collected goods were shipped abroad.

When the content of the agreement came out, public opinion across the country was in an uproar.

More than a dozen academic societies in Beijing jointly established an association of academic societies in China, announced an oath to express their opposition, and sent Xu Xusheng and Liu Bannong as representatives.

The "Northwest Scientific Inquiry Group" was set up by agreement, which was divided into two teams: Chinese and foreign.

Xu Xusheng resigned as the provost of Peking University to serve as the head of the Chinese delegation, and the head of the delegation was Wenya Heding, which was also the first Sino-foreign cooperative scientific expedition in the history of China.

After listening to this, Shen Tangzhi showed a puzzled expression on his face: "You are a spirit detective, how can you know so much archaeological knowledge, could it be that you are a part-time tomb robber?" ”

I was so impressed that I got up and walked to my desk and grabbed an old book that had been placed on the table.

"Look at this, and you'll understand."

Lao Dao glanced at the old book I threw on the coffee table and read out the title: "Xu Xusheng's Journey to the West Diary"? ”

"Didn't you repair your house some time ago and move home twice? I pulled out a bunch of my master's old books, which I used as bedtime reading. What I just said is in the preface to the reprint of this book, who knew that it was such a coincidence, and it is now being learned and used. ”

"No wonder, I thought you kid was a rich man and knew everything." The old knife smacked twice, "It turned out to be the old man's manifestation." ”

"This book, known as the pioneering work of China's archaeological community, has almost finished reading it - according to the records of this book, Xu Xusheng and Wenya Heding should only have the experience of forming a cooperative scientific expedition once, and I am not sure whether it is the one recorded in this diary."

Shen Tangzhi nodded: "You continue to look down." ”

I opened the second diary.

[Diary 2]

19##年#月九日, the weather is fine

I got up at four o'clock and got up at half past five.

Seven days after we walked into the desert, and there was still no end in sight of the wasteland, and I almost began to wonder if we had taken the wrong path.

However, the direction shown by the compass is correct, and the results of the theodolite, after referring to the map, are basically in agreement.

We could only travel less than ten kilometers a day, because of the lack of supplies, we had to save, the camels were so hungry that every time we came across good grass on the road, we had to stop and let the camels eat some, and the sun was so fierce that at ten o'clock in the morning, the sun made people faint, so the whole team stopped and walked, and marched very slowly.

I had been suspicious of Dr. Hedin before, but these days, nothing unusual happened to them.

I didn't tell Mr. Xu what I saw, I didn't want to affect his mood, these days, the hardest and most troublesome person in the entire expedition team is Mr. Xu.

Not only did he have to lead and unify Chinese and foreign teams, but he also read at night, checking out the "Geographical Chronicles" and "Western Regions" sections in the Book of Han, the Book of the Later Han, the Book of Jin, the Book of Sui, and the Book of the Later Tang Dynasty, and reading them repeatedly—I understood that he was looking for ##存在的痕迹, which was his long-cherished wish.

Kang Shiming passed away yesterday because of his serious injuries, and a Dutch adventurer named Fran from the foreign team, also died of dehydration shock due to continuous high fever.

We buried their bodies in the shade of a mound and marked them so that the bones could be removed if needed.

The morale of the entire expedition was somewhat affected, and most importantly, we were running out of water, and if our guide did not find the oasis he was talking about in the next few days, we could all die in the wasteland.

At lunch, Shaowu quietly asked me, we are #遇到的那些怪蛇 ##, what is it?

He would never believe that such a huge snake could live in the desert.

As always, I said that this was an illusion, like a mirage, Kang Shiming fell and injured himself, and Flange died of illness, and they had nothing to do with any strange snake.

Shaowu asked me: How did the more than 20 people who belonged to the front team disappear?

I still used the excuse of getting lost and sent Shaowu away, and I felt that his eyes were becoming more and more terrifying, and there was a kind of neurotic madness in them, which kept breeding.

I can't tell him the truth, of the three surviving members of the front team, Fran is dead, and the other two Mongols have become a little insane - fortunately our members don't understand Mongolian, and they have lost their words several times.

When a camel went missing the other day, Dr. Hedin arranged for three Mongols to search for the camel, including the two survivors.

But so far, there is no news from the people who are looking for the camels.

I'm beginning to understand a little bit of Dr. Hedin's intentions, but I'm not going to expose him, because it's something that has to be done, and the whole expedition can't collapse.

Now, there are only a limited number of people left who know this secret, who are absolutely safe.

Perhaps, I should discuss the matter of Shaowu with Dr. Hedin?

……

This concludes the second diary.

After reading it, I began to have a fever in my spine - I can now be 100% sure that the things recorded in this cowhide diary and the Northwest expedition record recorded in "Xu Xusheng's Journey to the West Diary" are completely different things!

In the diary, the scientific expedition team encountered a terrible thing, which led to the almost annihilation of the entire "front team", and what is even more terrifying is that in order to cover up this "secret", the "I" and Wenya Hedin in the diary actually began to deliberately design to kill those who knew about it!

The "strange snake" mentioned in the diary is the "Shaowu" who would never believe that "such a huge snake can survive in the desert"? So what is it exactly?

What is the "secret" that the protagonist and Wen Ya Heding have to cover up at the cost of human life?

However, while thinking about these questions, another even bigger question suddenly occupied my whole mind-

What exactly are they looking for?!