During the Great Leap Forward, from 1959 to 1962, villagers in Chenjiagou, deep in the mountains of Chongqing, Sichuan, ate Guanyin clay to survive the famine. As they teetered on the brink of despair, Chen Jiuyue, the village’s old hunter, spoke of the ancestral legend of the “Black Valley Mysterious Coffin.” According to the tale, Chen Zhongren, a famous general who fought the Qing at the end of the Ming dynasty, was buried in Black Mountain Valley. His tomb held a secret treasure that could end the famine, but the tomb was cursed, and all who dared enter met violent deaths…
In truth, the story of Black Mountain Valley began with the discovery of uranium ore at the Daye Iron Mine in Hubei in 1958. Once we uncover the secret research conducted by scientists such as Qian Xuesen and Zhao Jiuzhang during that extraordinary era, we will understand that the science-fiction roots of the Bashan Secret Records series were laid long ago…
Bronze artifacts from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, a Warring States tomb excavated in Suizhou, Hubei, were found to contain anomalous uranium elements. This work uses that discovery as the basis for a scientific fantasy, paying tribute to Chinese archaeologists and the pioneering spirit of scientific archaeology.
