In the security office of the Dunhuang Research Institute, we saw the middle-aged British couple who were arrested in the grotto, the man was an authentic British, and the woman did not look like a foreign devil no matter how she looked.

"Why did you go to the grotto?" I didn't have much time, so I asked straight to the point, and then pulled Ye Zhiqiu aside and asked her to be in charge of translation.

"The murals in the grotto weren't broken by us." The British man speaks authentic Chinese.

"When we went, the mural had been destroyed, and we were just curious to find out." The woman also explained on the side.

"If you can speak human language, that's convenient." The appearance of schadenfreude of the field chicken. "I know that you didn't do it, and I want to go out and ask you something, and answer honestly."

The Englishwoman told us that her name was Liang Lan, and the man was her husband, named Jim, and that twenty-five years ago, Jim's father and two brothers went to Dunhuang for archaeology, but in the end only Jim's uncle James was found, and when he was found, he was seriously injured and unconscious.

Later, James was rescued, but the injuries were so severe that he couldn't remember what had happened, and the whereabouts of the two brothers who went with him were unknown, and they had been searching for more than 20 years but still had no news, this time she followed her husband Jim to see if she could find some clues.

"If you look for someone, you will find someone, how can you find it in the grotto, your father and your uncle have been missing for more than 20 years, could it be that they are hidden in the grotto?" Tian Ji asked.

"In fact, after searching for so many years, we have been mentally prepared that they should have encountered accidents in the process of archaeology, and in the end, we have gradually given up the search in the past few years." Jim said to us. "It wasn't until three months ago, when my mother died, that while sorting through my mother's belongings, I found a box that my father had left in the attic, in which I found a notebook and some photographs from my grandfather Stein."

"Jim......" Liang Lan's expression seemed to remind Jim that he was talking too much.

Listening to Jim's previous words, the appearance of these two people in Grotto 126 was no accident, and there should have been something that led them to come to Grotto for them.

"Evie, do you know this person?" Ye Zhiqiu asked.

Jim and Liang Lan were taken aback when they heard this name, and after the two glanced at each other, Jim looked at Ye Zhiqiu suspiciously: "This is my mother's name, you?" How do you know? ”

It seemed that the two bodies of foreigners we found in the stone chamber outside the Jade Gate were the same people they were trying to find, and I took the ring from my body and put it on the table, Jim was shocked to hold it in his hand, and took a necklace from his neck, and the ring hanging from the bottom was exactly the same as the one in his hand.

"This is my father's ring, how can I be here with you?" Jim stood up and asked eagerly.

"Now I'm asking you, answer our questions first, and then I'll tell you where the ring came from." I tapped Jim on the shoulder and told him to sit down. "And we know the whereabouts of your father and uncle."

"Are they still alive?" Jim was anxious.

We sighed and shook our heads silently, Jim sat down in the chair with a look of loss and weakness, Liang Lan held his hand next to him and comforted them, presumably although they already knew in their hearts that there was no possibility of survival, they had always been lucky, and now they were still sad to hear the exact news.

"This is not the first time my father has been to Dunhuang, he has been here with my grandfather Stein." Jim said in a gloomy voice, burying his head. "Twenty-five years ago, my father returned to Dunhuang to solve a mystery."

"What mystery?" The palace lord asked.

"My grandfather Stein conducted four archaeological excavations in Dunhuang and brought back a large number of precious artifacts, and during a cleanup, my grandfather found a very different mural."

As he spoke, Jim recounted the whole thing as he recounted the whole thing, telling us that the mural Stein had found was very different from many of the artifacts he had brought home, but that the conservation techniques for the murals were not perfect at the time, causing the paint to change color and shatter.

"My grandfather saw that it was too late to repair the mural, so in order to prevent the contents of the mural from disappearing, he took pictures of the mural in time." Jim said.

"The photo is still there?" I hurriedly asked.

Jim nodded, saying that he didn't know about these things three months ago, if it wasn't for his mother's death and cleaning up the relics, I'm afraid this secret would disappear forever, Jim asked Liang Lan to take out a photo from his bag.

The palace lord picked up the photo, and we immediately surrounded it, in the photo we clearly saw a solemn face Feitian, holding a skull scepter in his hand, and under Feitian's body were countless people in black with dull expressions, expressionless but united to build a palace.

It was a splendid and imposing complex.

"Vientiane Shrine!" The general recognized it at a glance.

"You ...... Do you know that this is the Vientiane Shrine? Jim and Liang Lan asked in surprise.

We knew that it was not surprising, and I frowned and looked at the two people opposite: "How do you know that this is the Vientiane Shrine?" ”

"This mural was taken away from Dunhuang by Stein?" Ye Zhiqiu asked in an accentuated tone.

"It's not Dunhuang, this mural was found in Tibet, and my grandfather left a record of the discovery of this mural in his notes."

Jim told us that during his second archaeological excavation in Central Asia, Stein discovered the ruins of an ancient city on the banks of the Niya River on the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, and excavated various precious artifacts from here that had been sealed for thousands of years, and when these artifacts were brought back to the UK, they shocked Western scholars, which is the site of Niya, which is known as the Pompeii of the East.

"This mural was found in the ruins of Niya, I read my grandfather's notes, at the very beginning he found that the content depicted in the mural is incompatible with the Dunhuang culture he studied before, as a Buddhist celestial and human beings are all in a peaceful posture, only have a religious form, and have no special significance." This British couple, listening to his speech and seeing their behavior, they are both very strict people, and both of them are not ordinary, they are both archaeologists at the British Museum, Jim pointed to the photo. "Among the murals found in the Western Regions, there are also murals about Buddhist stories, but this one is completely different, obviously recording something that happened, and it is a real thing."

Liang Lan nodded and continued to say to us, from Stein's notes, at first Stein was only curious about this mural, but did not delve into the mystery, Stein for a long time believed that this mural is also one of the many Buddhist stories, it should be about devout Buddhist believers to build temples to worship the gods and Buddhas.

The only thing that puzzled Stein was the skeletal scepter held in Feitian's hand, which had never appeared in Buddhism, and Stein's understanding in the notes was that Buddhism had combined Eastern and Western cultures since its arrival in the Western Regions to evolve a new magic weapon.

But the reason why Stein was convinced that the content of the mural was only the main story of the story, or because the palace complex depicted on the mural was too large to be built by the countries of the Western Regions at that time.

"It wasn't until he stumbled upon a portrait of the Tang Dynasty in China in the British Museum, a portrait of the Vertical Arch period, which was painted by a British missionary in Luoyang, the capital of the Tang Dynasty at that time, and brought back to donate to the museum, and in that portrait, my grandfather Stein was shocked to find that the missionary depicted the buildings in Luoyang City exactly the same as in the mural."

"The vertical arch is the name of Wu Zetian's year, and when the missionaries described the whole picture of Luoyang, the divine capital, the Vientiane Shrine imitated by Wu Zetian was not burned down." Ye Zhiqiu suddenly realized.

"Yes, it was from that time that Stein realized the strangeness of this mural, the palace that appeared on the mural was built much earlier than the Vientiane Shrine in Luoyang." Liang Lan nodded and said. "Since it appeared in the Western Regions, it means that it is very likely that such a structure was actually built somewhere in the Western Regions, which is far more shocking than any archaeological discovery in Central Asia."

"Then my grandfather Stein returned to Dunhuang for the third time to try to find out the secret behind the mural."

"I really didn't expect that what Stein had been trying to discover turned out to be the Vientiane Shrine." Ye Zhiqiu muttered to himself.

"It's just a mural, and your grandfather is so sure that there is a Vientiane Shrine here?" I asked thoughtfully.

"At first, it was only speculation, but there was no real evidence, until he made a surprising discovery when he made a surprising discovery when he studied twenty-four boxes of Buddhist scriptures and five boxes of embroidery and paintings that he had taken from the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang during his second expedition to Central Asia." Jim replied.

"What did he find?" Ling Zhihan asked.

"Xuanzang's Travels to the Western Regions with a letter written by himself." Liang Lan blurted out.

"Xuanzang? The Tang monk who took the Western Scripture? Tian Ji was stunned and puzzled. Why did Tang Seng get involved in this matter again? ”

Jim 1510 tells us that Stein saw the Chinese Buddhist scriptures translated by Xuanzang himself from those Buddhist scriptures, and also found a copy of Xuanzang's travelogue, in which there is a passage that caught Stein's attention.

Estimated from the time, it should be when Xuanzang returned to Chang'an and passed through the Western Regions, and it was recorded in the travelogue that Xuanzang passed by a place late one night in the Western Regions, when the wind and sand were raging and the sky was dark, and Xuanzang was lost and trapped on a mountain.

And that night, Xuanzang vaguely saw a splendid and magnificent huge palace complex in the wind and sand, Xuanzang described it in his notes as the temple of the Western Heavenly Buddha, and painted what he saw in the travelogue, Stein saw that Xuanzang's painting was roughly the same as the building in the previous mural.

But after the wind and sand stopped the next day, Xuanzang never saw the palace again, but the appearance of the gods and Buddhas was recorded in the travelogue.

"Xuanzang's return to Chang'an was in the Zhenguan period, and the time when the murals appeared was far before, these scattered clues gathered together, which is enough to prove that there are really two unknown palace groups in the Western Regions."

……

I looked up in amazement at Jim and Liang Lan across from me.

"Two?! Why two unknown palace complexes? ”