Duan Yuwen unhurriedly told me the whole story, and I listened attentively, and gradually, a bizarre and mysterious adventure slowly emerged in front of my eyes. In order to ensure the flow of the story, I will recount my father's mysterious experience thirty years ago.

Thirty years ago, the Yunnan expedition team was formed entirely by individuals without any official background. Since my father was already well-known in the academic world at that time, many of my peers thought that my father was the planner of the Yunnan expedition.

And the truth is that my father also participated in that expedition in a daze.

The main planner of the expedition was actually my father's old classmate Wang Chengbao for many years, and it was the expedition team he set up single-handedly. It is worth mentioning that in Wang Chengbao's initial planning, there was no existence of Duan Yuwen. There are two main reasons for this: the first is because Duan Yuwen is a good friend of my father in academia, but Wang Chengbao does not know him; The second point is because Duan Yuwen was still young at that time, although my father was very optimistic about him, but Duan Yuwen was just in his early twenties at that time, and Wang Chengbao didn't look up to him in his heart, but under my father's repeated requests, Wang Chengbao reluctantly agreed.

Speaking of which, I should briefly introduce Wang Chengbao and his person. He was a classmate and friend of my father back then, and both of us had different talents. At that time, my father was well-read and memorable, and he was able to put forward new ideas on many old historical events, so he was highly valued by the older generation. Wang Chengbao, on the other hand, had a very different hobby from my father, he did not like to study official history, but rather to study some wild history or folklore, and many old gentlemen said that he wasted his talent. Moreover, Wang Chengbao has more of a market atmosphere than my father, he is often disrespectful and alone, and he has no other friends except my father. But even though my father was his only friend, Wang Chengbao never really spoke honestly to my father, in my father's words, "Wang Chengbao's eyes always seem to tell you that you are not worthy of my trust." However, my father has always been very keen on field research, so when Wang Chengbao told my father to go to Yunnan to investigate the geological features of the ancient Dian Kingdom, my father readily agreed.

Of the five members of the expedition, three were professionals in history, while the other two were complete laymen. Those two people are a pair of brothers with the same surname, the eldest name is Qin Guiren, and the second name is Qin Guihe, the two of them are not from Liaoning, nor are they from Yunnan, but from Chengdu, Sichuan. My father didn't know these two Qin brothers, and it was only after my father's inquiry that he learned that those two people had been soldiers before.

However, what I didn't expect was that in order to explain the whole thing in a clear and logical way, I had to start with a bizarre experience of the Qin brothers on the battlefield in China and Vietnam.

The Sino-Vietnamese War was the closest Chinese war to my generation, and I remember hearing it on the news when I was a child.

Throughout the eighties of the last century, there was almost constant friction between China and Vietnam along the border, and there were occasional skirmishes and skirmishes, but everyone knew that the real large-scale conflict occurred only in the short period of one month from February to March 1979.

Due to the hostile relations between China and the Soviet Union and the provocation of Vietnam at that time, almost all of China's major military regions were in a state of imminent war, and in China's war against Vietnam, the seven major military regions also adopted the method of sending troops to fight in turn, and a total of 200,000 soldiers rushed to the battlefield in Vietnam. As soldiers of the 13th Army of the Chengdu Military Region, the Qin brothers were also transferred to the battlefield to carry out tasks.

Although China was almost absolutely superior in the war that year, quickly occupying many major cities in northern Vietnam in just one month, there were still many soldiers who died on the battlefield, and a very small number of companies lost contact with the large army on the battlefield and fought alone, and their specific whereabouts are unknown to this day.

The Qin brothers were fortunate to be assigned to the same company, but their company lost contact with the main force completely after the soldiers in charge of the radio station stepped on a mine during a mission, and all the machinery and equipment were destroyed. In a heavy rain, they had another encounter with the fierce and ruthless Vietnamese soldiers, and after a fierce battle, the whole company was left with only seven or eight men with good skills.

The rest of the people wandered through the jungle all day, and they did not know the specific direction of the road, let alone where they were, whether they were in Vietnam or China. However, the instinct to survive tells them that they must walk, or they will inevitably die in the jungle.

Suddenly, one day, the soldiers found a small village in a deep ravine, and the village did not seem to have been attacked in any way during the fighting. The village is not large, it is estimated that there are only a dozen or so households, and the two Qin brothers and other soldiers did not dare to enter the village rashly at first, because in their eyes, the village is very likely to be a trap set by the Vietnamese. After all, during the Sino-Vietnamese War, Vietnam's militia was sometimes even more difficult to deal with than the regular Vietnamese army, and many of its soldiers would rather die in battle than fall into the hands of the Vietnamese, who are known for their mistreatment of prisoners of war.

However, the Qin brothers and their family reconnoitred around the village for many days and did not find anything unusual, the villagers were very simple, at first glance they looked no different from other remote mountain villages in China, and sometimes they occasionally heard the residents communicate and found that they did not speak Vietnamese. So, the Qin brothers and they entered the village with confidence.

Although the Qin brothers kept raising their hands when they entered the village, indicating that they were not hostile, they still caused a commotion among the villagers. The young men in the village all came out to surround them, of course, the Qin brothers were not afraid, they thought that even if the mountain people were strong, they didn't have to be afraid of them if they had guns in their hands, but after all, they didn't want to cause bloodshed, and the soldiers still hoped that they could return to their hometowns safely.

After the two groups of people stalemate for a while, an old man in the village who looked like a village chief appeared in front of them, the old man had a blue turban wrapped around his head, and a gray beard.

In the company, Qin Guiren had the highest military rank, so he stood up and replied: "Old man, we are the People's Liberation Army of the Anti-Vietnam Army, and we have lost contact with the troops, and we want to get some dry food from you, and I hope you can show us a way out of the mountains and forests." ”

To Qin Guiren's surprise, the people in this village didn't know who the Ludao People's Liberation Army was, and just asked, "Are the distant guests Han Chinese?" ”

Qin Guiren and the others nodded, and the village chief thought about it and let them stay.

The village is full of dilapidated grass houses, Qin Guiren and the others were arranged in one of the larger houses, the whole village seems to be very backward, and the productivity is extremely low, a few children even look a little deformed, probably due to the problem of consanguineous marriage, there seems to be nothing else special.

But soon, Qin Guiren and others discovered the strangeness of this village, the most abnormal place is that all the utensils in the entire village, such as pots and pans, are made of bronze, and the cup they use to drink water is a three-legged bronze bottle, which is the three-legged cup used by the pre-Qin nobles we often see in TV dramas.

Qin Guiren has a high military rank and has received some good education, he can see at a glance that these cups are definitely not trivial, although the appearance of the bronze bottles is still very bright, and they have not received any serious damage, but judging from the feel of the touch, the age of these bronze bottles is definitely calculated in thousands of years.

A thousand years ago? The fact that a bronze bottle from a thousand years ago is still in use in an unknown village on the border of Yunnan Province in China is already inconceivable.

Qin Guiren quietly took a bronze bottle and hid it on himself, because he secretly sensed that this village might be hiding some huge secret.

That night, the village chief called Qin Guiren to his house, and then asked, "Distant guests can stay here for a few days, and in three days, someone in the village will go north, and then you can go back as long as you follow them." ”

Qin Guiren agreed, and went back to his residence, not taking this matter too seriously, but he also strictly warned the other soldiers that they should not let their guard down no matter what, because Qin Guiren always felt that the people in this village had some strange feelings.

What happened three days later was something that Qin Guiren had never imagined. On the night of the third day, the whole village was in mourning, and the Qin brothers and others went out to take a look, and found that the old village chief was dead.