Chapter 2: Being a Guest

  When I woke up, I was lying on a bed. I sat up with a start and looked around the room. There was only me in the room, which seemed to be an ordinary hotel room. The facilities were general but complete. I suddenly remembered the wooden box and hurriedly searched for my backpack. Fortunately, it was under the bed. I opened it and found the wooden box quietly lying inside, along with the sheepskin paper.

  I let out a sigh of relief, but my mind was full of doubts. Was this a kidnapping? It didn't seem like it. Then who brought me here and what for? Since that letter arrived, I've had a ton of questions, only I don't know who can answer them.

  I gently pushed the door, and found that it wasn't locked. Who cares about anything else, I'll just run out first, I thought to myself. I quickly opened the door and rushed out, heavily colliding with someone's body. I was shocked and retreated several steps, then sat down on the ground with a thud. The person, however, stood there as stable as Mount Tai, staring at me with a smile.

  "Is that Zhou Junyang? Young man, where are you headed in such a hurry?"

  I thought I was done for, colliding with the kidnapper like that, but he stretched out his hand to help me up. At this point, I took a closer look at this person, probably in his 40s or 50s, wearing very ordinary casual clothes, with gray hair and a kind face, not as ferocious as I had imagined. What puzzled me most was that his body seemed to be shrouded in a thin layer of white mist, like an illusion, which looked familiar, and I seemed to have seen it somewhere before.

  "Who are you? Why did you bring me here?" I asked bravely

  "Arrest?" He seemed surprised. "I was going to ask you to assist us, how could I arrest you?" Then he seemed to suddenly realize, "They must have misunderstood my intention."

  I was so angry that I couldn't catch my breath, "Did you mean to? Luckily it just made me dizzy, if I had misheard, I reckon I would have met the King of Hell by now."

  He smiled foolishly and explained, "Don't be angry, kid. I'll treat you to a big meal later as an apology. Let's hurry up and discuss the important matters. Don't you want to see your parents and grandfather?"

  Hearing this, I quickly asked: "Who are you? How did you know these things? Where did my parents go? What happened to my grandfather? What is your purpose?"

  "You ask me so many questions at once, where do I even start answering? And the questions you're asking are also what we want to ask. Oh, right, I haven't introduced myself yet, you can call me Mother Director." He continued to maintain that benevolent smile.

  I looked him up and down and said, "No matter how I look at it, you're a good public security chief."

  He burst out laughing: "My surname is Mu, this surname is relatively rare. I am the director of the Secret Matter Investigation Bureau, and this is our investigation bureau."

  "What? Our great motherland also has such a high-end investigation bureau? It's almost like the American Shield Bureau!" I exclaimed in surprise.

  "Kid, aren't you hungry? Let's eat and chat." He said that, I was actually a little hungry, basically didn't have lunch all day. Director Mu took me to their cafeteria, which looked more like a buffet restaurant. I randomly picked up some dishes I usually liked and sat down to devour them.

  "Slow down and eat, no one is rushing you. Time really flies, it feels like just a few decades ago your grandfather and I were sitting here eating together."

  My mouth was stuffed with food, and I mumbled unclearly: "Do you know my grandfather?"

  "It's not just an acquaintance, when I joined the Intelligence Bureau back then, your grandfather was already the deputy director. He had a mentorship and friendship with me, if it wasn't for him, there probably wouldn't be today's me." He replied thoughtfully.

  "By the way, you haven't told me what's going on yet?" I asked.

  "It all started thirty-five years ago," Director Mu said, taking a sip of water. "Your grandfather was not only the deputy director of the Hidden Bureau, but also an archaeologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. One time, while excavating the ruins of a king in Loulan, we found that the king's corpse was clutching a scroll of sheepskin paper. The Western Regions were always a place where Eastern and Western cultures converged and blended, so it wasn't unusual to dig up the sheepskin paper. But what puzzled us was why this king still clutched it tightly even in death. This scroll of sheepskin paper was very strange - although it had gone through thousands of years, it didn't rot or decay, and must have undergone special treatment. The content of the sheepskin paper was even more baffling - it used a language we'd never seen before, similar to Latin but with hieroglyphics mixed in. What's even stranger is that all the other experts were stumped, but your grandfather deciphered it in just a few days." Director Mu's eyes seemed to gleam with an unusual intensity as she spoke.

  I was so absorbed that I almost forgot to continue eating, and Director Mu handed me a slice of bread, continuing: "The contents of this sheepskin volume are roughly about an ancient country in the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang, which your grandfather called the Dahuang Ancient Country."

  "Sounds like a salty old country?" I chimed in.

  The other side of the cloud is Bi Qu Ge

  The mother said without looking at me: "This ancient country is probably within the borders of Dayuan."

  "Is that not an ancient country in the Western Regions? It's about the same time as Loulan, isn't it? This ancient country is even earlier than Dayuan?" I asked.

  "Yes, that's the problem. According to your grandfather's translation, the ancient country of Daxia is already 10,000 years old. 10,000 years ago, our ancestors were still in the Stone Age, but they already had writing. This is simply unthinkable. There is a section on that sheepskin paper that your grandfather did not translate. When I asked him why, he said he didn't recognize this part either."

  "What does this have to do with my family's disappearance?" I asked in confusion

  "Your grandfather once said that this sheepskin should have two volumes, and another volume is a picture, he suspected it was hidden in the Great Yuan State." He said to this point, I subconsciously grabbed my backpack. "The Hidden Bureau and the Chinese Academy of Sciences formed an expedition team with a few people, and later you knew that only your grandfather came back, and from then on went mad." As he spoke, his eyes seemed to be filled with tears.

  "Director Mother, I still don't understand, what's the connection?"

  "Have you eaten, I'll take you to see something." I nodded, and he took me into a room that looked like a conference room. He turned on the TV in the conference room and said to me: "This is the video of your grandfather's disappearance from the nursing home, take a look."

  As he spoke, he started playing the video. Although it was only a few minutes long, I was left stunned. The video was in black and white, apparently recorded by the surveillance camera in the nursing home's hall. From the screen, I could clearly see a person who looked exactly like me walking out of the nursing home with my grandfather. The way he walked, his gestures when speaking, even the clothes he wore were all identical to mine. If I hadn't been certain that I had never escorted Grandpa out of the nursing home before, I would have thought that person was really me.

  "This... this person isn't me, why does he look just like me?" I stuttered in surprise.

  "I know this person is not you. We checked according to the date at that time, and you attended school for a day, and both the teacher and the school's surveillance can prove it."

  "Who is this person?"

  "Another you, a person wearing a human skin mask, or rather, not even a human being at all." The mother's tone began to turn serious.

  I was chilled to the bone by what he said, and a layer of goosebumps rose: "Director Mother, how do you know that I am real now."

  Mother smiled triumphantly: "I think you felt it too, your grandfather also felt it, look!"

  Following his gesture, I saw that in the picture, Grandpa had a short knife tucked at his waist. I heard Dad mention that after Grandpa returned from the Western Regions, he always felt that everyone was not real and wanted to use the short knife to harm people around him. After several years of treatment, Grandpa's illness improved, and when we three were alone with Grandpa, he would never pick up the short knife. The fact that Grandpa had a knife meant that he discovered that person was not his grandson, but why did he still follow?

  "You want to ask, knowing it's fake, why I'm still following, right?" The mother director seemed to see through my thoughts. "Your grandfather should have had a reason that he couldn't not leave. We just received the news that he got on the train to Xinjiang with that mysterious person."

  "Then where did my parents go? Do you know? Were they also deceived by this fake son?" I asked.

  "That's not true. According to our investigation, your parents bought plane tickets to Xinjiang and have been gone for a week now, also losing contact for a week. We don't know what their current situation is."

  "Why did they go to Xinjiang without telling me?" I suddenly felt uneasy, everything was too sudden.

  "I don't know about this either, but one thing is certain, your grandfather must be pretending to be crazy." He gazed at me with a piercing gaze that seemed to see through my heart, making me feel an icy chill in an instant.

  "Do you know now why we asked you to come?" The Director of the Mother's Bureau resumed her benevolent smile.

  I nodded: "En, you want me to go to Xinjiang with you?"

  "Yes, I've always felt that you have a deep connection with this matter. Perhaps the solution lies with the person who created the problem. Don't worry about safety, I'll assign the best personnel from our agency to accompany you. You'll also be able to get information about your parents and grandfather in real-time. It's better than worrying alone at school. As for school, don't worry, I've already made arrangements. Your final exams will be postponed until next semester. Of course, you can refuse me, it's your right." The director of the agency fell silent, looking at me.

  I thought for a moment and replied firmly: "I'll go! Can I be exempt from the exam?"

  The mother nodded: "Don't think about this anymore. Since you agreed to go, I'll prepare in the next few days and we can set off as soon as possible."

  At night, so quiet, in a dimly lit room, the mother director faced a three-headed and six-armed god statue, muttering: I'm going to take him back...