Dr. Bai sighed and shook his head and said: "If anyone can decipher this ancient text, except for Dr. Fan, I won't think twice about it!"
I stood up suddenly and said, "Where is he serving his sentence? Take me to him."
Dr. Bai said: "You wait for me to make arrangements, we will set off immediately!"
Dr. Bai led us back to the desert non-stop. I remember that there was a prison specifically for serious criminals in the Gobi Desert, and Fan Chongyi was imprisoned there.
I looked at the vast desert outside the car window and said, "How long has Fan Chongyi been imprisoned?"
Dr. Bai said: "It's been about fifteen years! I heard about him from my tutor. Although Fan Chongyi is much younger than my tutor, my tutor respects him very much. Moreover, he also approves of it very much. Some of his views. It was because my supervisor admired Fan Chongyi very much and made his research a project for me that I knew there was such a person."
Dr. Bai sighed: "Fifteen years have passed, and no one in the academic community remembers Fan Chongyi, right? In academia, failure to leave outstanding research results means that you will be eliminated and can only be called a scholar. You can’t become a scholar!”
Dr. Bai was obviously sighing, but I did not try to enlighten him. I directly changed the subject and said, "What does Fan Chongyi mainly study? Does he study Dunhuang culture?"
"No!" Dr. Bai shook his head and said: "Fan Chongyi claims to be cracking the code left by his predecessors in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang? He feels that someone has buried a secret in Dunhuang. As long as the secret is unlocked, it will cause a stir in the archaeological community. Unprecedented shock.”
I wondered: "What secrets can Dunhuang have? Is it also a mythical forbidden area?"
Ren Tianqing took Dr. Bai's words and said: "There are no restricted areas in Dunhuang. The Detective had similar doubts, but later directly rejected this idea."
"According to historical records, the first large-scale excavation of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes was during the Sui Dynasty, and the first golden age was during the Tang Dynasty. The second golden age started from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and ended at the end of the Yuan Dynasty."
"These periods, in addition to the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, were also the heyday of the God-Detecting Hands, especially the Tang Dynasty, which was also the first golden age of the God-Detecting Hands. If the imperial court began to excavate the Mogao Grottoes on a large scale, there would definitely be God-Detecting Hands following. If , Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes is a forbidden area in mythology. Even if there is no official record, there will be a corresponding code to detect the gods. There is no record in the documents about the Exploring Hand, which means that it is not a restricted area. "
I nodded slightly and asked Dr. Bai again: "Then Fan Chongyi, why do you say there is a secret code hidden in the Mogao Grottoes?"
Dr. Bai said: "Did Fan Chongyi deny the founder of the Mogao Grottoes from the beginning? The academic community generally believes that the first person to excavate the Mogao Grottoes was a wandering monk named Le Zun. Le Zun lived in the pre-Qin Dynasty During the period, he traveled to the Mogao Grottoes and excavated the first grotto as a place for meditating and worshiping Buddha. After that, people began to excavate the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang one after another."
"Fan Chongyi thinks this statement is not correct. His reason is very simple, that is, no one has discovered the location of Lezun Grottoes so far. This is equivalent to the loss of the holy land by later generations of disciples, which is extremely impossible in religion. "
"Furthermore, academic circles generally believe that Buddhism was introduced to China during the period of Emperor Ming of the Han Dynasty, which was the end of the Western Han Dynasty. This is a large time span from the legendary Lezun who built the Mogao Grottoes in the Pre-Qin Dynasty. Therefore, he always believed that Lezun It does not exist. In other words, the cave he dug is not in Dunhuang."
Dr. Bai paused here: "Fan Chongyi believes that the real founders of the Mogao Grottoes should be a group of businessmen traveling to the Western Regions. They built the Mogao Grottoes in order to ask the gods and Buddhas to bless them to enter and exit the desert smoothly. And , this merchant organization spanned the changes of dynasties and continued to fund the construction of the Dunhuang Mogao Caves at different times and under various names.”
"The real purpose of those businessmen is to find a secret buried in the desert. Every time they find a clue, they will record it in the form of murals or sculptures in the Mogao Grottoes. He has always believed that the secrets in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang are There is a huge wordless book hidden there. It contains secrets that can shock the world."
Dr. Bai said: "His statement has been scorned by many scholars. Some people say that he is sensationalizing, while others think that he is making up stories based on his whims. However, there are also people who support his idea, and my supervisor is one of them. .”
"At that time, my mentor also joined forces with several scholars to secure personnel and funding for Fan Chongyi, allowing him to continue studying the secrets of the Dunhuang Book. Fan Chongyi stayed in Dunhuang for five years. During this period, he also obtained many academic achievements, but None of it has anything to do with the Dunhuang Book of Heaven."
I can understand what Dr. Bai said. After all, no one would unconditionally support Fan Chongyi's fruitless or even whimsical research. He took back some academic results just to continue to fight for research funding. However, his main energy was still in studying the Dunhuang Book of Heaven.
I asked: "What happened next? He brought back the research results?"
Dr. Bai said: "The last time Fan Chongyi appeared, he brought back the Fragmented Heavenly Book. He said that it was his most important research result, and the secret of Dunhuang was in the Fragmented Heavenly Book. Shortly after that, he killed someone? "
I turned to look at Dr. Bai: "Who did he kill? And why did he kill?"
Dr. Bai said: "He killed his assistant. I don't know what the assistant was called. Fan Chongyi killed his assistant with an ancient dagger in the research room. The fingerprints on the murder weapon and the blood stains on his clothes can prove that Fan Chongyi He committed the murder, and he himself confessed to the murder.”
"According to his own confession, his motive for killing was that he discovered that his assistant was stealing his research results, and he accidentally killed him when he was enraged. However, this kind of reason for stealing research results was unimaginable in the era in which he lived. Many people think it was a murder of love. However, Fan Chongyi himself has never admitted it."
"Originally, Fan Chongyi should have been sentenced to death. However, in the last few months before execution, he came up with a patented invention. His sentence was commuted to death with a reprieve. The next year, he was commuted to life imprisonment and sent to the Gobi Desert Prison to serve his sentence. After that, there was no news about Fan Chongyi."
I tapped the lighter with my fingers and said, "Can you help me check Fan Chongyi's origin and background?"
Dr. Bai said: "Before departure, I asked someone to collect Fan Chongyi's information. There should be news soon."
Not long after, the research institute sent Dr. Bai information: "The information I can find is that Fan Chongyi was an orphan. He was fostered in an orphanage before he was eight years old, and was adopted after he was eight years old. The person who adopted him was just An ordinary working-class family does not have any flaws from the information."
I squinted my eyes and said, "The more perfect the information, the easier it is to fake it. Do you think that an ordinary person would have some kind of leaping thinking and directly change his thinking from studying Dunhuang culture to studying the Dunhuang Book of Heaven? ?”
"No!" Dr. Bai hesitated: "Unless he was inspired by something, or... or he had a secret that others didn't know from the beginning."
"That's what I mean!" I continued: "Let's put aside the second possibility for now. What if, someone inspired him? Who inspired him to explore the Dunhuang code? And why should he be asked to explore the code? ?Who did Fan Chongyi have the closest contacts with before he was imprisoned?"
Dr. Bai said: "There is no information to investigate this matter. After all, it happened fifteen years ago. The criminal policeman who handled the case at the time may have retired. It is quite troublesome to verify these details."
"Yeah!" I also knew that I was a bit pushy. Just lean on the car seat and stop discussing these things.
When we arrived at Gobi Prison, the warden said with a troubled face: "The Fan Chongyi you are looking for escaped from prison a year ago. The warden at the time was also punished..."
"Escaped?" I asked in surprise: "How did he escape?"
In the eyes of outsiders, prisons look pretty much the same. In fact, there are different levels of prison. Generally, small local prisons are only used to hold light-duty prisoners with a sentence of less than five years. Those who have served a sentence of more than five years will be sent to larger prisons. For example, serious criminals sentenced to life imprisonment will be sent to In a remote prison.
Just like the Gobi Prison we are in now, it is a place used to hold serious criminals. These people know that they may not be able to leave prison for decades. In addition, they were all extremely vicious criminals before they were imprisoned, so the possibility of escaping from prison is very high.
Only by imprisoning them in a desolate place like the Gobi Desert can they completely eliminate the thought of escaping from prison. The only safe place in the vast Gobi desert is prison. Even if they escape, they can't get out of the desert outside and can only stay and serve their sentence.
In fact, similar prisons exist in every country, such as Alcatraz Island in Meiguo and Siberia Prison in Russia. Although Fan Chongyi committed murder, he was still a scholar after all. How could he escape from a heavily guarded prison and survive in the Gobi Desert
The warden said awkwardly: "Fan Chongyi has always behaved very well. Besides, the previous warden took good care of him. No one expected that he could escape from prison."
"Show me the file!" When I got the file from the warden, I didn't have much hope at first, but I just turned a page and stood up suddenly: "It's him!"
When Ye Xun came up, his expression also changed: "Bring me all the files of Fan Chongyi!"
This is not because we were surprised, but what we saw was so amazing. Fan Chongyi was our guide when we entered Tianshakou.