Well of Mystery

Like the letter, the map is already in tatters.However, the black and white photo was barely intact.

Bai Xiuqi looked carefully, the photo was horizontal.The background is a rockery, a gazebo, and a beautiful outdoor garden.The foreground is divided into two rows, the front and the back. There are [-], [-] or [-] people in the costumes of the Republic of China standing in the front.

Look again, there is still a banner behind the photo, and only a few words in it can be vaguely recognized.

"Aiwanxuan Jinshi Painting and Calligraphy Association..." Jiang Chenglu read out: "What?"

"A patriotic literary group."

Bai Xiuqi answered his doubts, "If I remember correctly, when I was in college, the teacher of Chinese art history once mentioned it. At that time, I wrote it down just to prepare for the exam, but I didn't expect such a fate to meet."

After the end of the Qing Dynasty, with the arrival of foreign powers and the rise of the Anti-Japanese National Salvation Movement, such patriotic calligraphy and painting associations appeared in many parts of the country.After all, Ai Wanxuan is not the most famous among them, but because the base camp is in this city, the teacher specially picked it up as an example.

This semi-religious calligraphy and painting club is said to have some connections with the China Academy of Construction and "shares" some members from the province, but Bai Xiuqi has long forgotten the specific member list, and only vaguely knows that the members used to be in this Calligraphy remains in many temples and Taoist temples in the city.

Listening to his intermittent recollection, Jiang Chenglu raised a very important question.

"Since it is the Patriotic Gold Stone Calligraphy and Painting Association, why did it mix with Japanese letters and appear on the body of the strange corpse?"

"Perhaps the members of the calligraphy and painting club were targeted by the Japanese invading army." Bai Xiuqi speculated and expressed his thoughts: "For example, the Japanese want to find out the religious relics in this city and then plunder them, so it seems to find a local artist to lead the way." It couldn't be more appropriate."

"The only inappropriate thing is that Aiwanxuan is a patriotic group." Jiang Chenglu followed his words and thought about it: "Of course, the possibility of traitors in the group is not ruled out."

"I personally think that the possibility of being a traitor is unlikely." Bai Xiuqi continued to analyze: "If the members of the club do have connections with the Japanese army, wouldn't it be more convenient to obtain photos of a single person?"

"That's right." Jiang Chenglu shrugged: "Rather than the two of us guessing here, it's better to send it to a professional to see the content of the text..."

Having said that, he was ready to put the photos, maps, and letters back into his pockets again.

"Wait a minute!"

Bai Xiuqi, whose gaze was still on the photo, suddenly grabbed Jiang Chenglu's wrist.

"This person..." His gaze stayed on the second person from the right in the back row: "Why does he look a bit like you?"

Jiang Chenglu was taken aback for a moment, and then realized that Bai Xiuqi was right.The young man in the gray mandarin jacket with the hair parted in the middle was actually at least seven or eight points similar to himself.

Moreover, the similarity is not limited to just this face...

"Let me tell you, don't bother looking for me." Jiang Chenglu couldn't help but point to another part of the photo: "Isn't your old man participating in it?"

"what?!"

Bai Xiuqi was taken aback, and then saw a young man in a light-colored suit with his legs crossed sitting on the wicker chair in front of "Jiang Chenglu" in the photo, with his hair combed back, revealing a handsome and elegant face.

Perhaps because he was not sensitive to his own face, he looked at it several times before he had to admit that this person really looked like himself.

"So what's going on here?" He was speechless: "Could it be just a coincidence?"

"The so-called inevitability is actually the superposition of many coincidences."

Jiang Chenglu rarely showed a serious expression: "I believe that our encounter is not just a coincidence in this life, but an inevitable result of many coincidences. Thinking about the bright side... time does not seem to be an obstacle to our reunion barrier."

"Maybe so." Bai Xiuqi nodded with emotion: "Anyway, we have time to find out the truth."

Having said that, he paused for a moment, emphasizing: "But there is one thing to make clear—I absolutely cannot be a traitor!"

"No, no, I'm not either." Jiang Chenglu smiled and patted him on the back to express comfort.

The corpses that were removed from the elevator were searched and placed in the boiler room on the right side of the north building for incineration.In the past, it was the central heating place for Xuanjing Apartment, but now it has been transformed by Jiangcheng Road into a base camp for all kinds of corpses and traces.

After finishing, Jiang Chenglu simply cleaned the bricks and dust inside the elevator car, and informed A Tu that he could contact a professional to measure the size.Bai Xiuqi went back to the room and made a phone call. After contacting a Japanese translator, he agreed to meet the next day and ask him to interpret the contents of the letter.

After finalizing the specific meeting time, Bai Xiuqi ended the call, but did not put down the phone.He opened the browser and entered the words "Aiwanxuan Jinshi Painting and Calligraphy Association".

The results of the search engine jumped out quickly, but unfortunately not many were really useful.He casually clicked on a webpage and checked it carefully.

Ai Wanxuan didn't exist for a long time, and it was interrupted for a few years.Even if the front and back are added together, there are only less than 15 years and about forty members.According to the data, Aiwanxuan finally ended in the early days of the Japanese occupation, and there were only five members left at that time.

Bai Xiuqi continued to read, and the article also mentioned the life experiences of some members of Aiwanxuan—going south to fight against Japan, going abroad to avoid disaster, committing suicide after going bankrupt...even being assassinated, and their whereabouts are unknown.

A handful of people with very different destinies, intertwined together is the precarious history of a hundred years ago, which makes people feel heavy.Bai Xiuqi lay down and continued to drag the article page, and then his eyes suddenly fell on a photo.

It was exactly the same as the photo that fell out of the envelope just now!

Bai Xiuqi's heart skipped a beat, and he hurried to look at the description under the picture, and sure enough there was an introduction of the people who took the photo.He counted down one by one with his fingers, and quickly found the name of the guy who looked almost exactly like himself.

"Bai Xiuqi"

He was so frightened that his heart was about to burst. That person was also called "Bai Xiuqi".

It is absolutely impossible to be another coincidence. What's going on? !

Bai Xiuqi took a deep breath, and quickly realized what the problem was—her grandfather gave her name, so her grandfather must know something.Perhaps it may not be a coincidence that the old man came to Xuanjing Apartment and found Jiang Chenglu.

Another point, Bai Xiuqi once heard his grandfather mention that the Bai family was in business in the early years, and they were engaged in silk brocade trading. Many of the flower and bird landscapes on the fabric were created by the Bai family themselves.So, could the person in the photo, Bai Xiuqi, be his ancestor?

...Bai Xiuqi continued to read with doubts. It is a pity that there is no more detailed introduction to this mysterious figure in the article.He opened a new page to search for the name Bai Xiuqi, and all the results that popped up were his own introductions.

It looks like this thread is going to be hard to follow.Bai Xiuqi sighed, and then prepared to study the man who looked like Jiang Chenglu.

But... he was surprised again!

In that photo, behind Bai Xiuqi, where "Jiang Chenglu" should have been standing, stood a completely unfamiliar middle-aged man.

what happened?

Bai Xiuqi's first reaction was "these are two photos", but when he reopened the envelope for comparison, he found that his thinking was too simple.

Except for the person behind Bai Xiuqi, the other details in the two photos—clothes folds, sitting posture, shooting angle, etc.—are exactly the same.In fact, Jiang Chenglu and that person seemed to have exactly the same body, only their faces were completely different.

What's going on here?

Bai Xiuqi knows that photo editing techniques in photo studios have been around for a long time, and extremely complicated modifications can be made as early as the era of glass negatives.But his question is, which one is the real photo, this one or that one, and what is the purpose of modifying the face?

The most intuitive understanding is that someone should not appear in the photo.

But is it Jiang Chenglu who shouldn't appear, or that strange middle-aged man?

--------------------------------

Curiosity is sometimes a torture tool. Fortunately, Bai Xiuqi has a relatively strong endurance, but he can't hold back after thinking wildly all night.

At six o'clock in the morning, he sat up from the bed with bloodshot eyes staring at him. First, he carried a plastic bag to Jiulihuai to buy random food, and then cooked breakfast when he came back. At any rate, I stayed up until [-]:[-], and rushed out again.

Because she had to go to the hospital to remove the sutures on her feet, Bai Xiuqi made an appointment with the translator at a cafe near the hospital at [-]:[-].They were all on time with each other.

Bai Xiuqi said hello and said that the thing might be a bit scary, and then took out the blood-stained letter. The lady translator acted quite calmly, but frowned when she saw the contents of the letter.

"First of all, I can be sure that this letter is indeed written in Japanese, but the words are messed up, so I really can't read what it means."

Bai Xiuqi was taken aback when he heard the words: "That is to say, this is the ciphertext?"

"...It should be counted."

The female translator reluctantly nodded: "The practice of disrupting the order of words to encrypt them is very basic and common. As far as I know, there was a kind of secret text in ancient Japan, which was specially written on long strips of paper. The paper is placed on a bamboo tube or other cylindrical utensils, written vertically, and then the paper is unfolded, and the words and characters are disrupted."

In order to crack this ciphertext, the most urgent task is to master its encryption method.Neither Bai Xiuqi nor the lady translator is an expert, and the letter paper has been damaged and seriously defaced. It is actually an impossible task to fully interpret it.