Li Cu had numerous questions and wanted to keep asking them, but Wu Xie obviously didn’t want to answer any more. After that, he stopped talking, sat down, and began to smoke.
Li Cu also sat down beside him, and thought about the results of their arrangement. The main thing he wanted to ask about was Wu Xie’s analysis of the situation, but it seemed that Wu Xie hadn’t made one. This was the second time he had felt that Wu Xie was struggling with something in his heart. Moreover, it seemed that the closer they got to Gutong Jing, the more obvious Wu Xie became.
Li Cu wanted to figure out what that reason was, but at least one thing was certain: Gutong Jing was a strange place where an apparently valuable tomb was, but all the people who went there ended up having problems after coming back.
No one knew what had happened to those people in Gutong Jing, so did that mean that they would encounter the same situation when they entered? At the thought of this, he couldn’t help but be vaguely worried. If it weren’t for my family possibly being dragged in, I wouldn’t have kept my promise to really come here. I hope none of that is true, and that I can go home safely.
Just then, Wu Xie looked at him strangely and said, “Stand up. What are you doing just sitting here?”
“I also need a break.” He stammered.
“The camels need to rest, what do you need to rest for? The scenery here is so beautiful. Go, take pictures.” Wu Xie said, “The photographer’s job is very important in this expedition, so don’t blow your cover.”
“But I can’t shoot.”
“Figure it out yourself.” Wu Xie said, “The photographer’s job is very important in this expedition, so don’t give up.”
Li Cu left angrily and went back to his camel. He found a hidden place in the aluminum alloy box and opened it, seeing a set of SLR cameras inside that looked quite awesome. He picked one up and fiddled with it a few times, quickly discovering that it was actually very easy to operate. He held the camera up, looked at the scenery around him, adjusted the focal length, and took several scenic shots, which he decided were quite beautiful. It turned out that with a camera like this, professional-level photos could be taken without any skills.
Li Cu got excited and climbed onto a sand dune, constantly changing the focal length and rotating the shutter in different directions, taking hundreds of photos. Suddenly, he stopped. He had seen a flash in the lens, but when he put down the camera and looked in that direction, there was only a strip of yellow sand.
He frowned. Since he was quickly rotating the camera, and the focal length was also switched very fast just now, it was only a momentary feeling. But Li Cu didn’t think that he was hallucinating, so he immediately stopped and looked in that direction. However, the setting sun was already on the horizon, and things in the distance couldn’t be seen clearly under this light.
Li Cu picked up the camera again and pulled it to its maximum focal length to look for the thing that had just flashed, but still couldn’t find it. He was just about to check the camera’s SD card to see if the thing had been photographed just now, when someone in the nearby camp let out a surprised cry. He looked back and saw a man in the grass shouting: “Quick, quick there’s something here!”
The others all gathered around the shouting man, and some people asked, “What is it? Why are you shouting?”
Li Cu also slowly climbed down from the sand dune and walked to where the crowd had gathered. He found that while they were digging a hole in the sand for the bonfire dinner that night, they dug something else up.
Li Cu squeezed in and saw that there were indeed some unusual things in the excavated sand pit. Most of them were pieces of black flakes made of plastic and metal, and there were even some colored flakes mixed among them.
“What is it? Garbage?” Someone asked.
Wu Xie pushed the crowd aside, squatted down, picked up one of the pieces, and looked at it. Everyone immediately recognized it.
It was a camera that had been burned.
Wu Xie then fiddled with the plastic and metal sheets, and Li Cu was surprised to find a large number of burned cameras of various types— including SLRs and ordinary digital cameras— buried under the sand.
“What’s going on?” The people on the side whispered, “Why are there so many destroyed cameras?”
“Dig it out.” Wu Xie said to Wang Meng behind him, “Dig everything out.”
More than forty destroyed cameras of various models had been dug up. By the time they had been sorted out and lined up on tarps spread on the sand, it was already completely dark. Although the desert at night was extremely cold, the group members simply put on their coats and gathered around the cameras.
“There should be two or three tour groups.” Wu Xie said, “All their cameras are here. They must have collectively destroyed all of the cameras as they passed through here.”
“Why? Is it because those people were so rich that they had no regard for these cameras?” One professor asked.
“I don’t know, probably because they photographed something that made them feel uncomfortable.” Wu Xie said, “Let’s see if there are any memory cards in them that can be used. That way we’ll know what they’ve photographed.”
Li Cu helped Wu Xie check through all the camera debris to see if there were any intact storage cards. The professors seemed totally incompetent at these things and just kept watching from the side.
They finally removed six SD cards that could be used, and after inserting them into the computer, they found that the first few had problems, and only two were recognized by the computer.
Li Cu thought to himself: These people must have been especially panicked if they wanted to destroy the cameras, because all they would need to do is burn the SD card if they only wanted to destroy the photos.
But he soon realized he was wrong.
In these two SD cards, there were a staggering number of photos. Most of them were landscapes, but a few had people in them. It was obvious that the owners of these two SD cards were both professional photographers and not ordinary tourists taking pictures everywhere. Everyone looked on silently as the photos suddenly showed different scenery. The officers and soldiers that were with the team pointed to the photos and told them that these were all scenery shots of Gutong Jing.
Sure enough, the owners of these SD cards had been to Gutong Jing.
At that time, Li Cu asked, “What kind of place is Gutong Jing exactly?”
Just after he finished asking, everyone looked at him, and someone who looked like a student said, “Haven’t you read the information? You don’t even know where we’re going?”
Wu Xie looked at Li Cu and said in a teasing tone: “Yeah, you would ask such a question.”
Li Cu was embarrassed for a moment and said: “I’m not saying I don’t know what kind of place it is, I was just sighing with emotion.” Then he put on an act and asked again, “What kind of place is Gutong Jing exactly?”
Wu Xie patted him and said, “If you don’t do your homework, it can’t be helped. Don’t pretend. The professors are all here, so let one of them tell you something.”
When Wu Xie said this, he looked at a middle-aged man who seemed to be in his fifties, but his muscles were very developed and he didn’t look like a scholar at all. Li Cu remembered that the information had said that this person seemed to be the leader of the team, and was called Wang Daming.
Wang Daming’s name made him sound like someone from Hong Kong or Taiwan, but he was actually from Shandong and seemed to be an expert in remote sensing. When he heard Wu Xie say that, he said, “In fact, the definition of that place is quite vague. All I know is that Gutong Jing is an area surrounded by three haizi, which have a zigzag shape. And those three haizi are elusive. Even in this era, satellites often can’t find them, and it’s almost like they’re alive. It’s said that someone saw them once during the Qing Dynasty, and after the founding of the People’s Republic, someone saw them from a plane during a geological exploration. That person dropped a signal flag, but when they went to look for it later, they only found the desert and didn’t see the three haizi.”
“Is this the legendary haizi that can move by itself?” Li Cu asked.
Wang Daming nodded: “Many people speculate that the three haizi actually don’t move, but only appear at certain times. After that, they sink back under the desert.”
“In that case, why’s the place we’re going called Gutong Jing?”
“That’s where the plane dropped the signal flag.” The man beside Wang Daming said, “Didn’t you read any of the information?”
For the first time, Li Cu felt somewhat humiliated in this group and stammered, “I have a bad memory.”
“Don’t ask anymore. If you want to know, go back and read the data.” Someone in the team added, obviously a little unhappy. Li Cu looked over and was initially impressed by the person, but when he looked at the data, he found that this guy wasn’t an easy character to get along with. His hair was naturally curly and he was probably a little younger than thirty. Although he was one of several students, he had made a few achievements, so he had equal status with the professors during their day-to-day activities.
He couldn’t remember this person’s name, so he decided to call him Curly.
Curly continued, “These photos are normal, ordinary landscape photos. They wouldn’t burn the cameras because of these. Besides, why did they bury them, too?”
“What if the objects to be destroyed weren’t the photos inside the camera, but the cameras themselves?”
“Do you mean they suddenly became collectively disgusted with the cameras?”
“Is there such thing as a camera phobia in this world? I’ve never heard of it.”
“I’m telling you, anything can happen in this world. There are even people out there who are afraid of hair. Hitler had a phobia of body hair and shaved all of it off, except for his mustache and the hair on his head.”
“But it’s impossible for so many people to have a phobia at the same time.”
As everyone was talking noisily, Li Cu felt a little embarrassed since he obviously couldn’t participate in such discussions with his knowledge. After all, he was still a student. Even though he was pretending to be twenty-seven, his past habits still made him afraid to discuss problems with adults so easily.
Wu Xie also ignored him and flipped through the photos over and over again. In the end, he made a noise to quiet everyone down. “There’s only one possibility for such a thing to happen.” He said.
“What?” Asked Curly.
“Nothing else but the cameras were buried in this pit, which shows that it had nothing to do with weight, theft, or trash. This matter must only be about the cameras themselves. However, there are so many cameras here. The probability of each camera owner having the same idea to destroy their camera at the same time, or of someone planning to destroy the cameras, is very small. In other words, it’s impossible for everyone in the group to feel that the cameras have to be destroyed at the same time. It’s also unlikely that the tour group’s leader would tell them that all the cameras had to be destroyed, because not everyone would be willing to follow such orders.”
“What’s your conclusion?” Professor Wang asked.
“The people who destroyed these cameras weren’t the entire tour group, but may have been a subgroup of only two to three people. They took and checked all the cameras, and then destroyed them.” Wu Xie said, “We can recreate what happened at that time. When one or more tour groups were stationed in a certain place, someone stole or took away the members’ cameras in some way, checked the contents here, and then destroyed them.”
“If so, then we can also conclude that they may have thought that one of the many cameras probably captured what they wanted.” Professor Wang said, “So, did they find the photo they were looking for?”
“When we searched the cameras just now, did we find one that didn’t have a memory card?” Wu Xie asked.
Li Cu and Wang Meng both shook their heads, and Li Cu plucked up his courage and said, “I think since they burned all the cameras instead of just the memory cards, they would have taken away all the cameras containing the photos even if they had found the photos they were looking for.”
“It makes sense.” Wu Xie took a few puffs of his cigarette, fiddled with the debris a few times, and said to Wang Meng, “Check it again to see if you missed anything.” He also said to the others, “Let’s get to work first. Those who are interested can stay and help, but we can’t all stop working. It will cool down soon.”
MereBear's Translation 