Chapter 10 Wu Xie’s Story (Part 2)

Wu Xie told Li Cu that his philosophy teacher once said to him in college, “Nothing in the world lasts forever, the only thing that stays the same is ‘change’.” Wu Xie didn’t understand the practical significance of this sentence at that time, but after stepping into society, he soon found that it was extremely correct.

All things were changing, and most things you could only guess but not predict, such as Wu Xie’s encounter with Lan Ting. He always thought that the both of them would only have an ordinary cooperative relationship, but he didn’t expect such a surprising situation.

Wu Xie began to wonder what Lan Ting meant. They met accidentally because of a project, and although this wasn’t the first time they had met, it should be regarded as their first formal meeting. After their conversation at the end of the meeting, she suddenly found him and told him that she had also been to the desert where he had been and had encountered something strange.

This sounded a bit like the beginning of mystery novel. Was she testing whether the beginning of her novel was enticing? Having a good joke at his expense?

But Wu Xie looked at her expression and found that she was very serious.

People who studied photography had a special intuition about people’s expressions. This was because the technology had reached such a level that what the lens captured went deep inside. Immortal photography works often captured pictures of the human soul, so he could tell that there was no hint of teasing in her eyes.

“What was it?” Wu Xie asked, “I’m a photographer, not a desert expert. I wonder if I can even help you?”

She went on, “That’s why I came to find you.”

“Oh?” He was stunned. “Is it a photographic problem?”

She smiled a little reluctantly: “I also hope it’s just a photography problem… do you have time to take a look at it for me now? Let’s find another place to talk. “

Wu Xie looked at his watch. Although he was very sleepy, he was quite conceited about his photography skills, and if someone were to ask, he was still a little vain and wanted to show off.

So he smiled and nodded.

The other party also smiled: “Great, let’s go. I remember there’s a tea shop in front. I’ll tell you what happened.”

When they arrived, the boss of the tea shop was a stout middle-aged man who seemed to know Lan Ting. When he handed them the tea list, he took out a copy of her book called “The Collapsed Sea”. She skillfully signed it and gave it to him with a smile.

It was obvious that she was used to this kind of well-intentioned disturbance.

Wu Xie had met a lot of amazing people and understood that they would experience various kinds of intolerable harassment, which would eventually cause them to give a fake smile at any sign of such harassment.

But Lan Ting’s smile gave him pause, because it was so soft that there wasn’t an ounce of stiffness to be seen.

Then, Wu Xie watched as she took out an envelope from her bag and poured the photos on the table.

There were a lot, and he picked them up and found that they were taken with an entry-level SLR. The photographer was obviously a novice, but the frames weren’t bad and most of them had the desert in the background.

While he was looking through the photos, Lan Ting gave him a brief account of her journey into the desert. A novelist’s way of speaking was different from others, and even if it was casual, it was also very interesting. As she spoke, Wu Xie felt that the photo in his hand seemed to be alive.

Unlike Wu Xie, Lan Ting’s entry into the desert was simply a hiking excursion, and the scenic spots to be visited were pre-arranged. Although the route seemed to have entered the deserted wilderness, it was within the range of human control, and ensured that a Land Rover could rescue them within four hours.

The probability of accidents during such activities was very low, and common accidents were usually caused by the participants’ physical problems. Some girls were too physically weak and easily got dehydrated during the long journey, suffering internal organ failure without getting to the hospital in time. But the current team leader was becoming more of a professional, and the general team was equipped with medical staff, so this kind of situation was now very rare.

Another situation was that the team leader didn’t abide by the rules and suddenly proposed to go to some unplanned places midway through their trip in order to earn some extra money. This was what happened with Lan Ting’s group.

Her hiking group had some high caliber people. When Wu Xie saw them posing in one of the photos, he noticed that one of them was the host of Shandong Satellite TV and another was an illustrator. Lan Ting obviously had a good relationship with the illustrator, and many of the photos were just the two of them posing.

“This is Daodao, my best friend.” She explained to Wu Xie.

Lan Ting said they had a dinner party in the middle of their trip in a deserted village called “Lu Shambhala” about twenty kilometers west of Badan Jilin. “Lu Shambhala” was the Shangri-La for hikers, since it was a place where basically every traveler passed through and rested. Although it was far less mysterious and beautiful than Shambhala, it was still more alive than the lifeless desert.

They met a team there that seemed to be in a daze, and only after asking did they find out that the team had just returned from Gutong Jing. After discussing it, their guide asked them if they would like to go there to have a look.

This group of people were young, bold, and unrestrained. Plus, they were only in the middle of their trip and weren’t tired, so they all agreed unanimously. Gutong Jing was only seven kilometers away from where they were, so it only took them two hours to arrive the next day. They only stayed there for fifteen minutes, however, because the place really had a bad vibe.

As Lan Ting recalled, she couldn’t help but feel heart palpitations and nervousness as she approached Gutong Jing. She couldn’t explain the feeling, as if some instinct in her body was afraid. In the depths of Gutong Jing, she felt a strong sense of discomfort and confusion that was like heatstroke, so she just took some photos and came back.

There was nothing wrong with those photos. They just showed a few low rock mountains that had been eroded into a spiral by the desert wind, surrounded by continuous sand dunes with gentle and beautiful lines like the Goddess Venus’ back. Wu Xie looked at the photos and knew that they should have been taken in the area of Gutong Jing, but he didn’t think the rocky mountains there were so sparse. He couldn’t see anything special about this place from the photos Lan Ting gave him.

Lan Ting told him that she had a lot of nightmares that night, and later, she wondered whether the scenery there subliminally gave people negative thoughts, or if it was because some local legends affected them. But either case didn’t seem to make sense. Without a doubt, that place was really strange, and she believed that she wasn’t the only one that felt like that. When they were in Gutong Jing, she clearly saw that everyone’s faces were different.

The later part of their trip diluted the uneasiness at that time, and slowly, everyone forgot the strange feeling. It wasn’t until Lan Ting returned home and developed all the photos that she discovered the problem.

When Lan Ting said this, she gave Wu Xie another stack of photos and said: “These are all the photos I took after I came back from Gutong Jing. You can compare them and see what’s changed compared with the previous photos.”

The light in the tea shop was a little dim, so Wu Xie held them under the light.

Truthfully, he didn’t see anything wrong with these photos at the beginning, because in terms of photography principles, they were free from any problems. Although the shooting methods and expressions were amateur, that wasn’t considered a “problem” but a “shortcoming”.

He compared the two photos over and over again, and finally found that the problem wasn’t the photos themselves, but the contents of the photos.

One person was missing from the photos taken after they returned from Gutong Jing.

<Chapter 9> <Table of Contents><Chapter 11>