Liang Lan nodded, and said to us in a hurry, Stein began to study everything related to this palace at that time, and soon he found many exciting things in the murals he brought back.

The flying sky with the skull scepter has appeared in several murals, but the age of these murals spans a large span, and there is no inheritance between the two, Stein speculates that the palace in the Western Regions is real, and even the flying sky with the skull scepter may not be a mythical celestial, but a real person.

At the same time, Stein saw in a mural that this flying sky stood on top of a unique ancient city in the Western Regions, and the bottom was full of devout worshippers, but the shape of the ancient city in the Western Regions was very different from other Western Regions architectural styles, more like a palace, so Stein deduced that there should be two unknown palaces in the sand sea of the Western Regions.

"Two?" We looked at each other blankly, one of which could be sure of the Vientiane Shrine, and what the other was.

"The construction scenery of these two places is completely different, and the last mural found, in the ancient city where Feitian stands, there should be a towering altar, and at the top of the altar there is a sign that has not appeared in the Western Regions culture at all." Jim said.

"What sign?" Ling Zhihan asked.

"An oriental dragon, but this dragon has two outstretched wings behind it."

All of us were stunned at the same time, and I took off the necklace and opened it in front of Jim: "Is it such a dragon?" ”

Jim and Liang Lan glanced at each other, their expressions as shocked as ours, and then kept nodding: "Yes, it's such a dragon." ”

Feathered Dragon!

The symbol of the Nine Dragons Boat of the Moon Palace, I have long guessed that the Vientiane Divine Palace built by Ling Xuan is related to the Nine Dragons Boat of the Moon Palace, which is enough to confirm from the tattoos on Ling Zhihan's body, but I never expected that this feathered dragon would appear in an ancient city somewhere in the Western Regions.

"Xue Xinrou!" The palace lord whispered in our ears.

In fact, I have already thought of her, in what Xue Xinrou told us, it is not the first time that Yulong has appeared in the Western Regions, at least once in Lop Nur.

I hurriedly asked Tian Ji to take out the map, of course we couldn't say it in front of Jim and Liang Lan, my eyes fell on those places where the clues of the Nine Dragons Boat of the Moon Palace and the Feather Dragon appeared in them.

Lop Nur, Maijishan, Dunhuang, Yumen Pass and finally Hongbai Mountain......

"It's all in a straight line!" Ye Zhiqiu should also go with me.

The necklace I am wearing now is Ling Xuan's, I don't know why my father got this necklace, but at least it shows that Ling Xuan has a direct connection with the Nine Dragons Boat of the Moon Palace, and I have been thinking about finding out the enemy who killed my father every moment for more than ten years, but I didn't expect to go around and everything back to the place where it first happened.

What exactly is there in Lop Nur and what is going on?

The mystery grew heavier and heavier in my mind.

"And then, Stein didn't pursue it further?" The general's questioning interrupted my train of thought.

Jim didn't seem to hide it, and perhaps the whereabouts of his father and uncle were far more important to him now than these vague things, and he told us in great detail.

Since then, all of Stein's archaeological research has been carried out around the mysterious flying sky and the palace in the sea of sand, and the last time he entered Gansu for many reasons, he did not return to it for many reasons, and then he was unable to solve the mystery that plagued him all his life until his death.

But Stein did not make this discovery public, but wrote down all the findings and gave them to his children to secretly search until everything was revealed.

"Twenty-five years ago, my father and two brothers went to Dunhuang together and visited many people, but no one knew the rumors and origin of that palace, and even the strange pattern of a two-winged flying dragon had not been seen until they met two Chinese who were proficient in tomb robbing in Dunhuang, and the matter finally made a major breakthrough." Jim looked at us and said. "All this was learned later, from the notes kept on the body of the uncle who was lucky to be rescued."

"Someone who is proficient in tomb robbing?" The general took out the cigarette and gave us a meaningful look. "Outsiders don't know Yulong, but there are many people who know about it."

"Who are these two people, do you know what they are called?" Gong Jue asked.

Liang Lan shook his head and said to us that James, the only surviving man, was an extremely strict person, and he recorded the events he experienced in Dunhuang in great detail every day, and also lost his records, so that they did not know what happened back then.

In fact, the two Chinese were not together, the two appeared at different times, but according to James's account, the two should have known each other, and with the help of these two Chinese, they made a major discovery.

Previously, Stein's belief that there was an unknown palace in the Western Regions was only based on speculation, but twenty-five years ago, they found something that confirmed it.

"What did they find?" Tian Ji asked.

Jim pulled out two photographs from his backpack, which had been found in James' notes, and we were all speechless in surprise when the photos were pushed in front of us.

The first photograph is of a mural of five flying beings holding different ritual vessels, which we are all too familiar with to be taken in Cave 126, where we have visited.

Jim identifies his father and two other brothers in the photo, and crouching in front of the mural are the two Chinese mentioned in James's notes.

But my eyes did not stop at them, but at the mural in the photograph, which was not damaged at that time, and I could see a clear pattern on it.

When the second photo was placed in front of our eyes, I opened my mouth in shock, it was when they dug up the mural, the position happened to be the middle of the flying sky holding the door, and the most shocking thing was that one of the Chinese in front of the mural was holding a bronze mirror.

……

When Song Wenjie took us to Cave No. 126, although the wall of the mural was mottled and peeled off, the whole was intact, and it can be seen from the photos that this mural had been excavated and destroyed 25 years ago.

And the bronze mirror inside was also taken out, that is the only key to finding the stone chamber outside the Yumen Pass, but why does the bronze mirror appear behind the mural again, who put the bronze mirror back again, and what is the purpose of doing this?

"In James's account, they found a Tang Dynasty bronze mirror from behind the mural, and at first they didn't know the purpose of this copper mirror, but after repeated pondering, one of the Chinese actually cracked the secret hidden on the copper mirror." Jim said.

The front of the bronze mirror hides the interpretation of the hexagram in Zhou Yi's gossip, and the luminous ink jade behind it corroborates each other and alludes to the jade gate, and ordinary tomb robbers will never be able to decipher such a mysterious clue.

The four inscriptions on the back of the bronze mirror, if you can know the situation of the Jade Gate Pass, the first three sentences are still easy to crack, and the last sentence is not a question of whether it can be deciphered, but a specific person must appear in the stone room to know the real secret.

However, judging from the corpses we found in the stone room, someone really cracked the mystery on the bronze mirror, found the Yumen Pass and also found the stone room, but what still puzzled me was why these people did not enter the passage just one step away.

"James's notes say that after one of the Chinese cracked the copper mirror, he told him that the place he was going to was at Yumen Pass, and my father wanted to return the copper mirror at that time, but the Chinese refused, so he couldn't do it." Jim said to us with a gloomy expression. "The notes are gone, and no one knows what happened next."

Liang Lan then told us that a few days later, he found the dying James in the desert outside the Yumen Pass, fortunately the treatment was timely or he would not have escaped death, and later found that he was shot from behind at close range.

Judging from the location of the gunshot wound to the heart, but coincidentally, James was born with an ectopic heart, so it was difficult to pick up a life, and when he found him, he was holding a backpack tightly in his hand, and his life was rescued but left with sequelae that caused him to be completely unable to remember what had happened.

"Twenty-five years ago, tomb robbery was extremely rampant in Dunhuang, and I dared to find two tomb robbers to lead the way, this is not deliberately looking for death." The general put the rolled cigarette roll to the corner of his mouth.

"At first, we thought it was a murder for money, but the warhead that could be taken out of James made us realize that things might not be as simple as we thought."

Jim said as he put a warhead on the table, Tian Ji took it in his hand and looked at it carefully for a long time, and suddenly his face changed: "This is a military bullet!" ”

"The bullets, of course, are military, what's all the fuss about." Gong Jue said disapprovingly.

"In the 60s, there were bandits in the northwest, but they were not the remnants of horse bandits, but the local people were fierce, and they were thieves in case of famine, and there were many types of folk guns, but most of them were self-made native guns, the most famous of which was Hualong." The general lit a cigarette and took a puff, pointing to the warhead in Tian Ji's hand and said. "This is a pistol bullet, and it is also a special bullet for military May Fourth pistols."

"This kind of pistol was only equipped with the army at that time, although a large number of it was lost to the black market later, but at that time the May Fourth pistol was quite strictly controlled, and it was impossible to have this kind of gun unless it was the army." Tian Ji put down the warhead in his hand, looked at us and said suspiciously. "It was the people in the army who shot it!"

"Yes, we also discovered this detail later, so we have not dared to find their whereabouts openly, and after discovering clues this time, we can only trace them secretly." Jim nodded solemnly. "But after all, it happened more than twenty years ago, and we can't trace anything with these clues, so we plan to go to the grottoes to see, originally thinking of coming out of the grottoes and visiting near Dunhuang to see if anyone knows those two Chinese, maybe there will be some breakthroughs."

"There are only two backs on this photo, and they don't look like them, who can recognize who it is by looking at the back." Gong Jue said.

"We also found a photo in James's notes with the two Chinese on it." Liang Lan replied.

"Got a picture?" I hurriedly looked over, and I also wanted to see what the person who could unlock the secret of the bronze mirror looked like. "Did you bring the photos?"

Jim nodded, took out an old yellow notebook from his bag, flipped it open, and took out a photo and placed it in front of us.