by Xu, Lei
At last, unable to bear the torment any longer, I decided to go find Yuan Xile. I'd already been home for some time, so it wasn't difficult finding a pretext to leave. Although I was heading out onto the open road, I wasn't particularly worried about being discovered. I'd grown a thick beard. No one was going to recognize me. And my military ID meant that as long as nobody checked my credentials too closely, I could eat and ride for free. Given the level of secrecy surrounding the 723 Project, it wasn't going to be easy to find Yuan Xile, but if she was still alive, then I'd find her sooner or later.
Yuan Xile was a Northeasterner, so I went there first. I traveled from city to town to village, visiting nearly every hospital in the region. Even when I wasn't searching I was thinking about her and about those four days and nights we'd spent in the safe room, hiding out from the poison. Our time together had been short, but I remembered each moment perfectly. When I closed my eyes, I could still see her standing before me, clear as day. But when I opened them, she was nowhere to be seen. It was as if she'd vanished from the face of the Earth. No matter where I searched, I couldn't find the slightest trace of her. Eventually I grew frustrated and then finally numb to it all. By the time I ran into Wang Sichuan, after many months on the road, I was certain I'd never see Yuan Xile again.
He too had returned to his hometown, where he once more found work in his father's mine. At this point he was no longer interested in self-advancement. He only wanted to stay in this out-of-the-way place and live peacefully for a time. His father was a powerful man and had no trouble finding his son a new identity. Wang Sichuan guaranteed he could do the same for me, but I politely refused. By then the events that would come to be known as the Cultural Revolution had already begun to unfold. As a tidal wave of activity swept across China, it was difficult to say just what the future held in store. At a time like that, it seemed better not to try anything.
I told Wang Sichuan of my fruitless search for Yuan Xile. He suggested she'd most likely ended up in a military hospital, after which her family must have come and taken her home. But Yuan Xile was an orphan. It was up to her military unit to look after her, which meant they'd probably placed her in a local psychiatric hospital.
Yuan Xile's unit was headquartered in the South. There I traveled from hospital to hospital, asking if they had a patient named Yuan Xile and stalking the corridors to see for myself. She was nowhere to be found. In fact, the name Yuan Xile was so unusual I never came across another like it. By the end, I began to feel as if fate was toying with me. Still I continued on, numb from my failure, yet unwilling to give up.
At last, I arrived at the Shuangliu Psychiatric Hospital on the outskirts of Chengdu. By then it was winter. I had already been searching for two years. This was my final stop in Sichuan and I was anxious to keep going. Winter in Chengdu was notoriously freezing and that day an icy rain was falling from the sky.
I had just presented Wang Sichuan's father's letter of introduction and had started down the hall towards the patients' quarters when I saw a woman standing beside a window with her back to me. She was watching the rain. Even from a distance I could see her face dimly reflected in the glass. I walked over and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned.
Our eyes met. I wanted to speak, but in that moment, I found I couldn't say a word.
Epilogue
That was my story. Specifically, it was the story of my youth. Over the last few turbulent decades, these memories of fear and love and adventure burrowed deep into my subconscious. All along I expected that, sooner or later, they would be worn away and forgotten. However, in writing this tale, I found that once I located them and blew the dust from their surface, it felt as if the events took place only yesterday. I'm sure this story is difficult to believe. Many people have asked me whether it's really true, whether there really was a 723 Project and an enormous void beneath the forests of Inner Mongolia. Although I want to give a simple answer, I cannot. Now that you've finished reading, though, I feel the question should no longer matter.
At the beginning of this tale I warned you to take what follows as mere fabrication. In this I had no choice. When events are barred from the history books, who would dare say they are real? So I must ask you not to investigate anything I've said here. You will find nothing but trouble.
Of course, mine is not the only book that purports to tell the truth through a veil of fiction. This is fine. I did not write this story to be unique or to make others believe. I did so because, for me, this is far more than just a story. It is a memory of the best years of my life and the greatest people I have ever known.
Perhaps some of you will want to know what happened with me and Yuan Xile, but I feel that is also unimportant. For in that final moment, as I stood before the window with the rain falling outside, I realized a truth about the world. There's no reason for so much of what happens in a lifetime. Events don't occur because of some past action or to precipitate a future one. They just occur. And if anything matters, it is the moments themselves, not what comes next. If you and another person have ever shared a moment like this, you will understand what I mean.
***
Four years later, I obtained a new identity and once more passed the test to become a prospector. Two years after that, I was transferred to a local school to lead their training course for future prospectors. The Cultural Revolution was already in full swing and China was a dangerous place. Wang Sichuan and I no longer even communicated for fear of being found out. Still, fate wasn't quite done with me yet.
For a long time I tried to learn what happened to the 723 Project, but all I found was that it had ended in 1965. Yet I was certain that the story wasn't over, that some sign would eventually appear and force me to return to the cave. But although I waited, nothing came.
Then, in my second semester as a teacher, a new student joined my class. He said he was here for a final assessment before going to the Northeast to join something called the 347 Project. Prospecting work up there had begun winding down and, though I'd heard 347 was supposed to be enormous, it was meant to be the final wrap-up for the region.
The student took his seat. I glanced down at my attendance sheet. There was his name, all the way at the bottom: Mao Wuyue, 28-years-old.
I rubbed my eyes and looked at it again. Could someone else really have the exact same name? For some reason, no matter how crazy it sounded, I knew it had to be him. That afternoon I made a point of sitting near him in the dining hall. His face was familiar, although much younger. He didn't recognize me at all.
When he saw I was watching him, he gave me a curious look and asked, "Teacher, is there something you wanted to tell me?"
I studied him for a long moment before replying. "Yes. More than you can possibly imagine."
That was my story.
Postscript
Hello everyone, I am Nanpai Sanshu (Xu Lei).
Please accept my apologies for taking so long to finish this series. These two novels were supposed to be no more than a single novella, but the more I wrote, the more I liked the material, until at last it became the story you just read. In fact, now that I think about it, this series is my first complete work. I finally "filled the pit," as they say. Since I've never finished a series before, I've never had the opportunity to write a postscript. Now that I'm finally done, there are a few things I want to say. (Translator’s note: In Chinese Internet parlance, long web novels, such as the Dark Prospects series, are known as "pits." When an author begins writing a web novel, he has started "digging the pit." When a reader begins reading a web novel that has not yet been completed, he has "fallen into the pit." When the author posts a new chapter, he has begun "filling the pit" or "shoveling dirt." When the novel is complete, the pit is now "level." And if the author heartlessly decides to betray his readers and cease updating his story, he has "abandoned the pit.")
Dark Prospects was an odd series to write. My ideas about where it was going were different at the beginning, middle and end. As time pas
sed, the things I wanted to express changed as well. At first, it was merely a very strange adventure novel. Later on, I discovered I could transform it into a story unlike anything I had anticipated.
When I finished writing Dark Prospects: Search for the Buried Bomber, I considered what direction I should take the series. Should its structure be open-ended, with strange event following strange event, or deliberately sealed, with a definitive conclusion? I chose the latter because I wanted to try writing a story in which every detail ties together. Normally this technique is only attempted from the third person. Trying it from the first, in which the "I" is doing the writing, surely amounts to a kind of self-torture. Still, I hope this experiment turned out well and you enjoyed reading it.
I have always felt that, with fiction, it is better to drop a few clues than to spell everything out for the reader. A novel isn't a textbook, after all. I have found, though, that many people are accustomed to having the author himself dispel all mysteries, and won't be satisfied otherwise. Therefore, I have decided to list a few of the official possibilities concerning the events of the book:
Yuan Xile and the special emissary were enemy agents. Their mission was to transmit a telegram into the abyss. After sabotaging both prospecting teams, the special emissary entered the abyss and made his way to the signal tower. Because he knew about the superheated atmosphere at the bottom of the abyss, he was wearing a special heat-resistant suit. He was stealing the ID card and supplies from one of the near-dead soldiers in the tower when he was discovered and chased back to the cable. A fight broke out and the special emissary's suit was torn, exposing him to the hot steam. The other soldier, who was already severely burned, died atop the cable. In his final moments he tried to destroy the cable, but perished before he could finish the job. All parties involved in this incident died or fell comatose, so the narrator could never have known what happened.
As for that enormous statue, it was created by an ancient civilization. Just as Pei Qing said, it eventually fell underground during an earthquake. (Initially I wanted them to discover Megatron!)
What force was hidden within that vast abyss? In the area beyond the statue there existed an asymmetrical relationship between space and time, causing the latter to flow backwards and an entire Shinzan to be transported many months into the past.
What were the Japanese after? At first they were in the cave only to mine mercury, but once they discovered the abyss, they became curious as to what was inside. They built a fighter plane and flew in to find out. The plane passed through the time vortex and when it returned the Japanese may not have even completed construction of the dam. Perhaps, just as they had finished hauling the parts for the plane underground, the thing itself came flying out of the abyss. From this it wouldn't have been hard for them to figure out what happened. That's why they lined the river with buffer bags: because they knew that, at any time, another plane could emerge from the darkness. This put them in a difficult—and rather absurd—situation. Say the Japanese officers held a meeting to plan for an upcoming flight. Who was to say that, halfway through the meeting, the plane they were preparing to fly wouldn't come soaring back out of the abyss?
Before the Japanese could fully explore the abyss, their nation surrendered. Undaunted, they still managed to parachute a group from a bomber into the abyss, research supplies in tow. They also set to building a runway on the first level of the abyss, but before they could complete it, something unexpected happened and they left. The base still had not been discovered, so whatever caused them to clear out must have occurred underground. I leave it up to you to determine what this was, for I have left more than enough hints throughout the books. I could never come right out and say what happened. That would entail the narrator deducing this information himself, which I find highly unlikely. I could also tell you the answer now, but that would be much too easy.
There is, however, no need to investigate the source of the lights in the abyss, or the question of whether the Japanese survived down there. The thing that makes this underground world interesting is that anything is possible. That said, if you find this response unsatisfying, if you insist on being logical, then only one thing could really be down there: rocks. That's right, nothing but rocks. What answer could be more logical than that?
I'm sure you have many other questions, for example: To save Yuan Xile, how many times did the narrator have to travel back in time? What ended up happening to the 723 Project? How many other things were going on behind the scenes of this simple yet complex story? And what was the meaning of those scraped-off marks on the wall of the safe room? If you've read carefully, you should be able to guess the answers to these questions, though I haven't left things black and white. I'm sure by now you've realized I could have eliminated all this suspense by making things clearer in the story itself, but had I done so, the series would have lost that air of mystery that makes you ponder what happened even after the book is over. In this style I'm not alone. There's a recent movie in which it is left unclear whether a top will finally stop spinning—and everyone ends up with different opinions. My intent isn't to leave you unfulfilled, but to give you something to chew on.
On another note, I imagine there are some who will feel the love story in this book isn't a "real" love story. To this I say that, for the majority of men, their first time falling in love was probably a good deal as I described it. Given how unrealistic most fictional romances are these days, I'd say getting to read a fairly authentic one is actually a pretty good deal.
Thank you everyone. I hope my explanations were neither too complex nor too simple.
Nanpai Sanshu
12/10/2010
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With over a million subscribers to his microblog and five million books sold, Xu Lei is one of China’s most popular and highest grossing novelists. Born in 1982, he was inspired by his parents’ travel stories to write fanciful tales about tomb raiders, which he then posted online. The series became Secrets of a Grave Robber, which now boasts eight volumes in print, three of which have been published in English. Search for the Buried Bomber, the first book in the Dark Prospects series, was hailed as China’s most spectacular suspense novel of 2010. Xu Lei currently lives in Hangzhou, China.
