desert abyss

It is rumored that doing these few things is easy to bump into ghosts:

Hanging wind chimes by the bedside, going out at night, playing ghost games, yelling names, looking back, and taking pictures.

I am a good young man from the motherland with a strong root, and I have never done any of these things.

However, starting from that night in the desert, I realized very clearly that there must be some kind of mysterious force in the world secretly manipulating my life, just like hitting a ghost.It’s hard to accept this conspiracy theory conclusion, but once I accept it, many things will become clear, because I can encounter so many bad things, no matter how I think, it’s not my fault.

A few years later, I met a fortune teller in Tibet who claimed to be blind and had to touch my hand to tell my fortune.He was wearing a pair of dark glasses, and I couldn't tell if he was really blind, so I gave him my hand.The fortune teller touched my palms, the back of my hands and the phalanges, and then asked me solemnly if I had any accidents or injured my hands.I said it's okay, don't care, if you want him to read it like this.The fortune teller shied away for a while, and I forced him to read it. He said something about your own plans, but I couldn't afford it, so he got up and left.I laughed out loud, frightening the people around me for a moment.

But that was years later. When I was 24 years old, I didn’t realize that I had become enlightened. In the days to come, according to Li Zhen’s words, “the old mother fell asleep and ate dried bacon”—it was just a little bit of (thing).It's like walking on a Möbius loop, always one thing after another, and my life has become an anti-entropy process, which makes me very sad.

I actually regained consciousness for a while before I opened my eyes.The only thing I clearly remember at this time is the nebula swirl I saw in the sky earlier. (This image is etched in my mind, and I will never forget it for the rest of my life, nor will I lie to myself that I was dreaming.) I waited for my thinking to clear up, and then took some time to assess my situation.

I was lying on something hard, and felt like a smooth, hard stone with my hands.The surrounding temperature is very low, it may have reached zero degrees.This sets off the warmth of the stone behind it, which is more pleasant.But there was no sound in the ears, only deathly silence, which was not good.Even with my eyes closed, I can feel that even if I open them, the surroundings should be pitch black.

I opened my eyes and found my thoughts confirmed.Unpredictable darkness enveloped me, I waved my hands in front of my eyes, and could only barely see a little outline.Countless questions rolled in my mind: How long has it been since I fell into a coma?Where am I?Where are the others?what should I do?Is there any danger?

I dare not make a sound because I feel something else lurking in the darkness around me.When a person loses sight, other senses become more acute.In other words, although I can't see or hear, I know I'm not alone.So I just kept lying still for a while, until I felt my body temperature slowly drop.I was only wearing the clothes I wore when I slept in the tent the night before I passed out. Although I had all the clothes, shoes and socks, and the survival kit in my pocket, it was not warm enough.

I shivered, and immediately panicked, and couldn't help but sneezed.

This sneeze was earth-shattering, my lungs almost ran out of my nose, the sneeze sounded like a thunderbolt, and created a circle of echoes in the environment I was in.

I slapped myself twice in my heart and cursed myself for being thirteen o'clock.

However, this sneeze let me know that I was indoors, and according to the characteristics of the echo, it can be calculated that this indoor space is relatively large, but it is not infinitely large.Nothing hit me in the dark after I sneezed.I knew that lying on the ground could only be waiting to be frozen to death, so I sat up and began to carefully explore the mysterious world I was in like a blind man touching an elephant.

During this whole process, I was unusually calm and calm, so calm that I wondered if I had hit my head.Not only calm, but also a little excited.But if you really want to get to the bottom of it, I have always been such a cheap character. When I was a student, I was arrested by the Moral Education Department to write a review because of fighting, falling in love, being late and leaving early, asking others to take my name for me, and cooking hot pot in the dormitory. It's the same face.So my mother kept saying that I was a bit dubious.

At this moment, I, who was neither three nor four, started to touch in the uncertain darkness.I didn't want to mess around when I couldn't see the road, so I lay down on the ground first, and took the position of my feet as the center and my body length as the radius to sweep out a circle.Fortunately, I was so smart, because halfway through the sweep, I stretched out my hand and touched the boundary of the stone platform I was lying on. Outside the boundary was nothingness. into the pit.

After scanning around, not far from me, with my sixth sense, I found something that didn't seem to belong to the stone platform below me.I hadn't touched it then, and could only vaguely feel something on the ground.But since it had been standing still for so long, I let go of my guard and ventured to touch it.

When I touched it, I felt that something was wrong, because I seemed to touch a cold leg.

There's nothing more disgusting than touching something like that in the dark.This temperature close to room temperature cannot belong to a living person.I got goosebumps, but also realized that touching a dead person is more normal than touching a living thing or something.

But if it's a dead person, why don't I smell corruption?

I swallowed.

Dead people probably have clothes on them, and I need clothes right now.It may also have other objects on its body that can be used for heating or lighting.This is all I can think of now, so I clenched my teeth, slowly crawled to the corpse, stretched out my hand, and touched it again.

It was a relatively small body that probably belonged to a woman.Unexpectedly, her whole body was naked.But there is a backpack beside her, which is a shape I am familiar with, so it is likely to be my companion.I fumbled in the backpack for a long time, taking out all the things and regularly laying them on the ground.This backpack has all the equipment we carry uniformly, but there are no flashlights and headlights for lighting.

I draped a piece of clothing I took out of my backpack over my shoulders, then gritted my teeth and touched the corpse's hand.Sure enough, a flashlight was tightly clutched in the left hand of the corpse, and it was impossible to pull it out because of the convulsions after death.The surface of the corpse felt strange, like old leather.Suppressing my nausea, I cut off the corpse's fingers with a pocket knife, and brought the flashlight over.After doing all this, I feel a little detached, and there is no disgusting thing I dare not do since then.

I held the flashlight in my hand, took a deep breath, and flipped on the switch.

Before I describe what follows, I think we need to take a step back and look at the world we live in.Because soon everything I know, everything you know, will be broken.

It is said that there is an enduring theme in ghost stories, which is to secretly change appearance.Such as the famous "lend me your face" story.

Good friends Xiaoqing and Xiaohong have very similar bodies, but Xiaohong is beautiful and popular with many people, while Xiaoqing is ugly.The two live in the same apartment.Gradually, Xiaohong found that she became lethargic and often couldn't remember what happened after waking up.Later, Xiaoqing developed psychological problems, not only lost her memory, but also tried to strangle Xiaohong to death.People said that she was jealous of Xiaohong's beauty and was driven crazy.Xiaoqing was sent to a mental hospital.Xiaohong also seemed to be a different person, not as likable as before.Xiaohong's childhood sweetheart had a big fight with her when she came to see her.Later, he accompanied Xiaohong to the mental hospital to visit Xiaoqing, and was surprised to find that the birthmark on Xiaohong's left shoulder was gone, but Xiaoqing had a birthmark on her left shoulder.Soon he discovered that Xiaoqing had no mental problems, and her thinking was very clear.She didn't lose her memory either, but her memories were all what Xiaohong should have.Every time he saw Xiaohong, Xiaoqing would ignore the doctor's obstruction, rush to grab her and shout, "Give me back my face!"

At this time, if you were Xiaohong whose face was taken away by Xiaoqing and then sent to a mental hospital, or if you were Xiaohong's childhood sweetheart, what would you believe and what would you do?When you don't know who you are, when your appearance, memory, past and future have been taken away, what else is worthy of your trust, what will you do?

I turned on the flashlight and saw the dead body in front of me.

It was an old man.

I was mentally prepared, but not so well prepared.I crouched suspiciously beside the corpse, turning it over and examining its face.The body belonged to a white woman.Her skin was extremely old, her hair was gray and thin, and her eyes were closed.I had cut off the fingers of the corpse's left hand, but other than that, the corpse was in good condition.The old man did not die long.

I looked at the backpack next to me and found that this was the one I had lost.

I felt a twitch of nerves.I thought the corpse on the ground belonged to one of my companions, but she seemed to have nothing to do with me.But it was too strange for an old man to die naked in this strange place.When I tried to find things on the corpse that could prove the identity of the person and the cause of death, I suddenly found that the calf of the corpse was covered with dense scars. These scars turned out to be recognizable handwriting, like marks carved into the flesh by a knife.

I focused my flashlight on those marks.The scars are old because the body structure has been stretched out of shape with age.Even so, I recognized it as Russian, and it was vaguely readable.

The left leg of the corpse was engraved with the words: "The way up has been blocked. I can only go down the whirlpool. Time: September 2009.9. Name: Ye P. Lifshitz. Job number: 110010119870323. Blood type: B. Religion: Agnosticism."

On the right leg of the corpse, there is a clearer writing, which seems to be a professional tattoo, rather than a random inscription: "I am running out of time. I will try to return to the vortex under the desert to find those people. Time: 2059.9. Name: Ye Peter Sidorov. Social security number: 3100787198703239733. Blood type: B. Religion: Buddhism."

2059.The future 50 years from now.Genia would have been in her early seventies then, matching the corpse's age.The format of the information on her lap resembles the format of the information on the dog tag ID card worn by American soldiers, which is left for others to read in the event of her accidental death.Judging from these texts, she later returned to Russia to get married, and for some reason she changed her surname to Buddhism.

Fifty years in the future, Genia returns here.

I knelt beside her dead body.She should have been frozen to death because she had no clothes.

"The way up has been blocked." "I will try to go back to the vortex under the desert to find those people."

In 2009, this year, like me, she went down in a "vortex" in the desert, and it seems that she walked out of this ghost place, lived for 50 years, and found it again in her old age .

She traveled through time.

This is impossible.I rubbed my temples.There must be another explanation for this incident.What is the vortex under the desert?Am I in that vortex right now?

Only then did it occur to me that I should look at my surroundings.

Wherever the flashlight swept, I could see that the space I was in was about the size of an auditorium.It was a grotto, surrounded by unusually smooth stones.I am standing on a smooth stone surface.The stone surface slopes downward like a slide, while spiraling downward round and round.I was standing just a little away from the edge of the stone steps.Outside the stone steps, it was dark.

Here is an abyss.The spiral stone stairs lead to the abyss below and the desert above, forming a whirlpool shape.

I knelt down and looked again at Genia's body.

"The way up has been blocked. I can only go down the vortex."

I used the flashlight to take a picture up and down, and there were endless stone stairs on both sides.

There is a psychological test question, which asks that if you are locked in a room, you will have sufficient supplies to survive every day, but you will never be able to get out of this room; and there is a small hole in the wall of the room, you do not know that this small Where the hole leads to, it may be a dead end, or it may lead to the outside world, and this small hole is only big enough to crawl forward, not enough to return.So do you go into that hole, or don't you?

If it were me, don't give me time to think, I will definitely drill.

I picked up my backpack, got dressed, and counted the contents of the bag.There is a week's worth of food, and the water can still be drunk for two days.The flashlight looks like it can last a long time.enough.

I tried to scratch the stone wall with a knife.The stone is extremely smooth, the tentacles are warm and moist, and it is so hard that the knife can't leave any marks at all.I had to reuse Genia's corpse.

"Time: 2009.9 Name: Yang An. Job number: 110010119850129. Blood type: O. Religion: Down with all ghosts and snakes. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, animals are not allowed to become fine." I carved it on Yenia's stomach.

I put the knife in the waistband of my trousers, straightened out the body of Genia, and folded her hands on her breast.Then he turned and walked down the stone steps into the abyss.

I have been walking for a long time.My watch didn't work for some reason, and the time on the LCD kept jumping back and forth between ten o'clock at night and two o'clock in the morning.I can only calculate my walking time based on my walking speed and the number of steps I take, which is around five hours or so.During these five hours all around me was silence and darkness.This particular stone appears to absorb light and sound, and perhaps smell as well.

This huge staircase is about eight meters wide, and its shape is very neat, obviously it was built by man.At regular intervals there will be a huge stone pillar, three meters high, erected in the middle of the steps.

After walking for five full hours, I was exhausted physically and mentally, but the scenery around me was no different.When I came to the next pillar, I was surprised to find that there was a raised carved pattern on the pillar, like a huge dragon-like creature, wrapped around the pillar, with exquisite details and vivid.

I sighed, sat down under the dragon pillar, and ate some biscuits and water.I know I'm probably going to freeze if I fall asleep, but I'm very, very tired.I don't give a damn about where this is or what it has archaeological or geological significance.I only care about how I can get out.

I thought about the rest of the team.Fortunately, Li Zhen did not go with us, he is probably still alive.Liao Xiaodan should be able to take care of herself, she is much more capable than me.But Xu Jin...Xu Jin is still a child, a child who follows us all day long, writes everything in his notebook, and finds everything interesting.I don't know how she is.

Do they have family, where is their family?Do they have lovers, partners and children?

As I thought about it, I shone the flashlight on the dragon pillar.Looking at the exquisite carving, I couldn't help reaching out and touching it.

When I touched it, I felt something warm and soft.The hand I pressed on the "dragon carving" directly pressed into the "dragon meat".Then the whole dragon body moved.

I jumped up in a panic, when the "dragon head" that had been hidden in the darkness above suddenly swooped down and was right in front of my nose.The body of that thing is translucent, about ten meters long, with countless tiny legs and feet, like a giant centipede.

I yelled "Mom!" and ran away.At first, there was a rustling sound from behind, and then the sound stopped suddenly.I looked back and saw that the centipede was half-hidden in the darkness behind me. Instead of chasing me, it began to hit the ground heavily and regularly with its feet, and crawled back to the pillar while beating.Then, its body lit up, emitting a soft white light.

White Dragon.

Then, the ground under my feet vibrated rhythmically.Every few meters in the vortex, a white light spot lights up.

It turned out that there was a huge bug on each of the next pillars, emitting a shining white light.The four characters "Welcome" popped up in my mind.The sight was so majestic that I was almost suffocated.Because the road ahead has been illuminated, I see that I am not far from the ground.After the ladder spirals downward for more than a dozen spirals, it seems to have reached a bottom.

At this time, I heard a voice coming from the ground.

"Yang An? Yang An, are you there?"

I am shocked.

"Li Zhen!"

I jumped down and then suddenly fell.