Chapter 216: Snake Swamp Ghost City (Middle): Wenjin's Notes (Part 2)

September 6, 1990

Today, the "Wang's Theory of Relativity" encountered a problem. In Wang Zanghai's final mural, we discovered the following content: (Below is a sketch, roughly a copy of the mural. When I saw this, I remembered those sketches similar to children's drawings that I saw when flipping through the table earlier—they turned out to be copies of the murals they had made.

The content of the sketch is difficult to describe because it's very poorly drawn. I could only roughly make out what seemed to be a high-ranking official seeing off another person. The background is a large palace gate, surrounded by neatly lined-up animals like "camels and horses," though they were drawn completely like dogs and rats. I am familiar with ancient landscape and animal paintings, having received strict training in this area, so from the brushstrokes and forms, I could guess that these oddly shaped animals were actually horses or camels. Behind the palace gate were groups of attendants arranged in a ceremonial procession, indicating that the painting depicted a rather grand scene.

After that, there were two or three more pages of paintings, which I had no interest in and skipped over, directly reading the following content.) These murals should depict events after Wang Zanghai turned sixty-eight, after he had completed his final project. The content of this mural probably describes that he accepted the emperor's order to set out for a place, something like a diplomatic mission to another country. The composition of this mural was clearly imitating the Tang dynasty murals of Xuanzang's journey to the Western Regions, which was very peculiar. However, we checked all the porcelain pieces but never found any porcelain painting corresponding to this.

Some people said that this last experience of his had no corresponding architectural works, but others insisted that a person like Wang Zanghai would not have such an exception. The lack of corresponding porcelain paintings might have some special meaning or reason—perhaps his works were carved somewhere else.

Indeed, subsequent research revealed that Wang Zanghai's final years were very mysterious, with no historical records left at all. The last period of his life could be said to be a blank.

Where was he during those years? What did he do? This is a big question.

December 6, 1990

Over the past few months, we have been investigating Wang Zanghai's whereabouts in his final years and finally got a clue. We found that after his last project, Wang Zanghai accompanied the emperor to Changbai Mountains for a mountain worship ceremony. After that, there were no written records at all.

Changbai Mountains? Could it be that he went into the mountains? We are very suspicious.

December 7, 1990

There was no way to investigate from here, so we changed direction and started with the emperor. In the Ming records, there are detailed accounts of diplomatic missions and grand ceremonies. We wanted to find the grand ceremony depicted in Wang Zanghai's mural or records of his mission to another country.

The result was very surprising. We found that in the two years before the emperor's death, there were seven grand ceremonies. Six of them were normal, but one was very strange, recorded very simply with no annotations: "In the twenty-ninth year of Hongwu, guards forty-six, scholars twelve, horses one hundred twenty-six, pearls ten dou, gold thirty jin, etc., sent to Tamutuo."

The grand ceremony and diplomatic mission—this was the only record that satisfied both conditions. However, this record did not mention the officials sent. But the most puzzling thing was, where is Tamutuo? Is it a country? There is no record in official history. However, it's possible that among the countless small states around the Ming dynasty, in Southeast Asia and the Western Regions, this could be one of them. But it was strange that Wang Zanghai would go as an envoy to a small state. His age was not suitable for such a long journey.

February 11, 1991

The investigation continued, during which we held two discussions.

(In between are ten pages of nonsense, all discussions and speculations that later proved wrong, so they were deleted.) Because the Ming history suffered a catastrophe during the Qing dynasty, this investigation was very difficult and yielded no results for a long time. Later, we changed our research angle and solved a problem. We compared the items carried on the mission to "Tamutuo" and found that the types of gifts indicated it should be a Western Regions country. Moreover, the quantity of gifts seemed very small for a gift. However, there were many horses, which made it look more like a caravan than an envoy team.

March 6, 1991

Completely no clues, no breakthrough to be found. Research is stagnant, everyone is in a bad mood.

This is the first part. Obviously, there should be content before this, but no traces of torn pages were found earlier. It seems this is not a standalone notebook but one of a series of notebooks.

The content described in the first part is about their research on Wang Zanghai, discovering "Tamutuo," studying "Tamutuo," and finally research stalling. From this content, we can see many things. They were studying the murals and porcelains in the underwater tomb, and the research seemed very orthodox and systematic, a classic archaeological process (that process of checking materials seems very boring, but it's the main method of daily archaeological work: archaeology is dig—restore—check). But when Third Uncle and the others went there back then, they couldn't possibly have had such conditions. Wang Zanghai's tomb is so large, with just a few people, how long would they need to record everything in the tomb? So when did they do this work?

This is a big clue, but I didn't have time to think about it and continued reading. At the time, I thought the following would continue in the same vein. However, after the entry of March 6, 1991, a puzzling phenomenon appeared.

From this point on, there are about six pages of statements about data collection, which I skipped. After flipping through them, the next work diary entry jumps to January 19, 1993.

Then, looking at the recorded content, you'll find it quite different from the previous part. This section runs from January 19, 1993, to February 8, 1995—a longer time span than the previous section, but not much was recorded. The content is as follows: January 19, 1993, after the previous discussion, the matter of Wang Zanghai became clearer. It seems his trip to Tamutuo was indeed related to the emperor's mountain worship at Changbai Mountains. He should have returned to the Cloud Summit Palace, then set out for Tamutuo. This Tamutuo must be related to the situation in the Changbai Mountains.

April 18, 1993, from the murals we sorted out three routes to the Cloud Summit Palace. We decided to go to the Changbai Mountains to investigate. May 30, 1993, entered the range of Changbai Mountains, the weather is very bad.

(After that, there are about a dozen pages of adventure novel-like travel records, similar to our content when we entered the Cloud Summit. Until entering.) June 15, 1993, lost contact with them, the two of us continued forward.

June 17, 1993, we reached the bottom of the Heavenly Palace, the situation is very bad. The others are likely in grave danger, we have no time to hesitate. We decided to enter the bronze door and see what is inside.

June 18, 1993, it seems, I saw the ultimate! (It ends here, with no content. The next diary entry is the last section. Apparently she didn't record anything for nearly a year and a half.) The last entry is February 8, 1995, we began planning to find Tamutuo. What is all this about? I must figure it out.

This is the second part, about thirty pages in total. Clearly, several years of content are missing between the first and second parts. By the second part, they directly started the journey to the Cloud Summit Palace. Seeing this, one doubt in my mind became clear. It seems that the people who died in the pile of gold in the Cloud Summit Palace should be this group. And looking at what they carried, the "we" Wenjin mentions here should be the group from Xisha.

So it seems they didn't have any other particular difficulties and seemed to live fairly comfortably? But these are secondary. What shocked me most is that Wenjin apparently also discovered that bronze door and entered it.

"I saw the ultimate!" I broke out in a cold sweat when I read this, thinking, what does this mean? What does this "ultimate" represent? Looking at the recording time, after she entered, she kept no diary for almost a year and a half, which is inconsistent with her personality. I feel it's very possible that she saw something in the bronze door that was so shocking she had no time to think about notes.

Throughout the second part, the biggest feeling I got is that Tamutuo should have a great relationship with the bronze door. Wenjin only developed the idea of searching for this "Tamutuo" after entering the bronze door.

After that is the third part. This part is very long but spans a short time, from February 8, 1995, to June 8, 1995. Among it, only one section is worth mentioning.

February 8, 1995

According to that dragon vein map, we can now determine the location of Tamutuo. We are going to conduct an exploration, hoping to find the answers to that series of mysteries during this exploration. To be honest, I never expected there would be so many things behind this. If what I saw in the bronze door is true, then this whole affair is too terrifying.

After that, it is entirely content about their journey to that place called "Tamutuo." From the description, this "Tamutuo" should be an oasis in the Gobi. Wenjin followed a camel caravan, starting from Dunhuang in early 1995, going deep into the Qaidam Basin for this journey.

They were led into the Gobi Desert by a female guide named Dingzhu Zhuoma, then at a rocky mountain they parted ways with her and entered a place called "Tamutuo." That oasis seemed extremely dangerous; many people died along the way, and the route map in the notebook was marked with numerous hazard symbols. Eventually they arrived at Tamutuo, but she had a disagreement with another person and ultimately turned back without going further.

I skimmed through this section very quickly without reading it in detail. After this content, the rest was blank, with no more writing. This part was about thirty pages long, very detailed, with extensive route maps and descriptions of equipment shortages, weather, and so on.

Throughout the whole notebook, there was no mention of how they obtained information or conducted investigations, nor anything about their disappearance in Xisha or what happened at the sanatorium. All the information was related to "Tamutuo." Nearly half the pages were analyses of the artifacts left by Wang Zanghai and Tie Miansheng, from which they discovered clues pointing to "Tamutuo." What bothered me was that these three sections had obvious gaps between them, as if the notebook had been rebound or recopied.

I forcefully pulled at the gaps between pages and found no traces of rebinding or torn pages. This was a complete notebook. That meant it might be a recopied version by Wenjin. She seemed to have selected content about Tamutuo from several notebooks, copied them out, and gathered them into one notebook.

Why would she do that? It was yet another baffling thing. Why did these people always have to be so secretive? Could it be that the other contents of the notebooks contained things she didn't want others to know?

Moreover, just looking at this notebook gave me a strong feeling that someone wanted me to know that "Tamutuo" was a key place, as if they wanted me to go there.

So many questions swirled in my mind that I couldn't sort them out. I rubbed my temples, flipped the notebook back to the beginning, and prepared to read it carefully from the start, hoping to find more clues through close examination. But then the lighter in front of me began to dim. The flame shrank, and the light grew very dim.

I realized the lighter had been burning for quite a while and might die out soon, so I decided to light the newspapers along with the drawer to make a bonfire, so I wouldn't be stuck in darkness if the lighter failed. I stood up with the lighter, stretching my arms and legs.

Just then, I felt something was off. Something had changed in the room. I raised the lighter higher to see if it was an illusion. I was better off not looking—I almost scared myself to death. Opposite the table, at some point, a "person" had appeared. This person was sitting in the chair I had just been sitting on, looking at the mirror and combing their hair.