Chapter 23: The Black Desert

Sand Sea Devil’s Nest 12

Professor Chen shook his hand, “We can’t open it, the coffin in which Prince Pu Mo and his wife were buried together is a national treasure, we don’t have the conditions and the environment is not suitable, once we open it, it will destroy the sealed coffin and the items inside. The purpose of our trip is to submit an evaluation report to our superiors, apply for excavation, or give due protection to these ancient civilization heritage. Just go back and let Aiguo bring Chu Jian and the others to get the records done, the report will be written by me personally.”

It seems that I won’t have the chance to see what good things are in this coffin, knowing that the professor has a point, still inevitably some disappointment, when they climbed back to the upper level of the sacrificial room.

The stone door of the sacrificial room was originally sealed with a lot of animal skins, were I used a flat shovel to cut up, Professor Chen said that these are the skins of cows and sheep, in order to maintain the dryness of the sacrificial room, to isolate the water of the sacred wells, the ancient Po Mo people bring live animals into the sacrificial room to slaughter, and then immediately after just peeled off the animal skins still with hot blood, pasted in the cracks of the stone door, and cattle and sheep’s meat and viscera are cut cleanly, leaving only the bones, the door will not be opened again until the next festival it would not be opened again. This bizarre ritual of slaughtering animals and skinning and boning them, and tying up dried bodies with wooden stakes, was to keep the sacred well watered so that it would never dry up. The people of the ancient desert believed that the soul of life came from the sacred water, which is very close to Darwin’s theory of the origins of life, in a way.

We can not use those animal skins to seal the stone door, in addition to the camel there are no large animals around this, but nineteen camels for us, extraordinarily valuable, since we can not peel camel skin to seal the door, just with several layers of tape.

Archaeological team in the West Night City rested for three days, then set off to the south, finally entered the local people called “black desert” sand sea, here can no longer see the poplar in the desert, there is no high and low undulating sand hills, around the sand dunes are similar to the fall, like a flat bun, boundless, on the ground, to any angle, are the same! The view from any angle on the ground is the same, without any sign of life.

I asked An Liman whether he had ever been in this desert before.

An Liman old man laughed bitterly: “This is the hell of the yellow sand, even Hu Da his old man are not willing to come to the well, I well, only a little to a time, which is not now this time. If it were not for your cadres, and Hu Da’s favorite white camel, I would not have come here even if I had died a hundred times.”

Complaining to complain, An Liman was known as a living map of the desert, by no means a false name, his familiarity with the desert, as a woman fiddling with pots and pans, although he is also the first time in his life into the forbidden Black Desert, but with his two shahoos like eyes, hard to find those sandy dens in the pike grass, Artemisia, and other plants, he is to follow the traces of these plants, as well as his years of experience in the desert crawling and rolling, to lead the archaeological team. He was following the traces of these plants, and his long years of experience in the desert, to lead the archaeological team forward.

The desert has China’s largest inland water system, but the Tarim River and other water systems, many of which have seeped into the sand, the surface of the desert without grass, in the deep underground, may be a raging dark river.

Some plants growing in the desert, with the underground water veins that little bit of water rising to the surface of the desert, tenacious survival. In fact, in addition to a small number of plants, there are also many animals here, but most of them come out to forage for food only on the cold, cloudy nights.

In the Han Dynasty and earlier, the Taklamakan was known as the “ancient homeland”, when the degree of sandiness in this region is not serious, the river has not seeped into the ground, there are oases and towns everywhere, Huxu Fort, Buddhist temples, post, countless caravans carrying silk spices and tea to and from here, until the Yuan Dynasty, the famous Italian Marco Polo, also accompanied the caravan through here to the Central Plains.

China to the Ming Dynasty, the rise of the Ottoman Empire across Europe and Asia, the war blocked the commercial trade between Europe and the Asian continent, that era, belongs to the era of the sea, the navigators opened up new routes, the main routes of trade between the land turned to the sea, this great era is also known as the era of great geographical discoveries.

Coupled with the increasingly serious desert erosion, the poor living environment, the desert in the large and small countries in this complete decline, the former prosperity and splendor were taken away by the gods.

The Black Desert was the first place to be abandoned by the gods, and civilization here ceased by the Jin Dynasty. Legend has it that the wrath of Huda engulfed the pagan cities, and to this day, the Black Desert remains dead.

The first day we set out we encountered a slight wind and sandstorm that blew the sky slightly yellow, but it was not too much and just enough to block out the sun, allowing us to make our way in daylight.

Shirley Yang used the notebook left behind by the British explorers to discuss the route of travel with An Liman as we walked. The notebook recorded that leaving the city of Western Nights, those explorers found a place nearby with a large number of stone graves, which they were going to excavate when they came back, and so a detailed route was mapped out in the notebook.

An Liman’s experience coupled with Shirley Yang’s notebook could not pinpoint the exact location, but it helped us a lot in terms of distance and bearing.

When we camped in the evening, An Liman found a piece of convex land, and the people built a sand wall on the dune, settled the camels down, and then on the leeward side of the dune, we lit a fire to keep warm.

This day walking very hard, mainly because of the sand, although the wind is not big, but blowing people upset, An Liman nagging that now is the wind season, in the Black Desert on average two days on one of these days, no wind, the vicious sun will suck the last drop of water on the body of the traveler.

Fatty said: “hot spot is good, sweating can lose weight, the sun, but also painful, just so non-stop wind, the road can not even talk, really boring.”

An Liman said what do you know, here is the edge of the Black Desert, and then go five days to enter the depths, although I have not been in, but know some friends who have been in, they are from the Black Desert back to the survivors.

The black desert is terrible, not trapped in the quicksand, not the car can gnaw a net light of the gold-eating ants, not the black storm, the legend in the depths of a dream place, people go in, they will see lakes, rivers, beautiful women, beasts, snowy mountains, oasis, those who are thirsty and tired of people naturally run to those beauties desperately go ah go, but until the death of thirst and fatigue, can not go. In fact, that is the devil set the trap, luring people to die in the inside. But Hu will bless us, Allahu ahama.

Shirley Yang said, “What they see may be a mirage in the desert, people who don’t know the truth are easily confused.”

While talking, Ye Yixin came over and pulled Shirley Yang to one side, the two of them quietly muttered a few words, Shirley Yang turned to me and said, “Let’s go to the back of that dune for a bit.”

I knew that Ye Yixin probably wanted to go for convenience, she was too timid to go by herself, and wanted to drag Shirley Yang to accompany her. So I nodded to both of them and instructed, “Bring a flashlight and a whistle, blow the whistle as hard as you can if something happens, go and come back quickly.”

Shirley Yang promised to walk hand in hand with Ye Yixin towards the back of a sand dune not far away.

Fatty asked me if I still had wine.

I said no, even with a bucket of white wine can not hold you so drink, drink a few mouths of hot water and hurry to sleep, after five or six days if you can not find water, then, even the daily ration of drinking water per person to be reduced.

I’m just saying this to scare the fat man, even if we can’t find a dark river in the desert, I have a way to make sure that everyone can have a minimum amount of drinking water.

But that’s a last resort, it’s troublesome, but it does work, I learned desert survival techniques when I was in the military. Without water, it’s a dead end in the desert. Two-thirds of the human body is water, and losing five percent of it produces symptoms of dehydration.

An Liman initially refused to enter the Black Desert, one of the main reasons is that the Black Desert does not have fresh water, although there is a dark river under the ground, but simply can not be dug so deep, from the pikes such as the roots of desert grasses down, three or five meters below, only wet sand and salty water, the more you drink the more thirsty you are.

This method An Liman also understand, I have repeatedly studied with him the feasibility of this approach, and privately agreed to walk to the place where even the pikes are not long, will never go forward half a step, he agreed.

In the army has received desert survival training people have learned, the desert in Xinjiang in the shallow, more mineral content of salty salt water, in the desert plant roots and necks downward digging, you can dig to the wet sand and salty water, through the simple sunshine evaporation, filtration process, you can get a small amount of fresh water, although less, indeed enough to maintain human life.

At this time the wind and sand slightly larger, the opposite dune behind a sharp whistle came over, the people were all startled, and casually copied the work shovels, rifles ran to the place of the incident. Fortunately, it is very close, only less than two hundred paces away, three steps and do two steps, instantly arrived.