My name is Chen Yu, I am 24 years old and I work as a temporary worker in the county library with a monthly salary of 2,800 yuan.
After grandpa left, I dug out an iron box from the bottom of his camphor box. There is a diary from 1987 and a hand drawing.
The picture shows the outline of the Hengduan Mountains, with a dozen marks circled in red pencil. Some of them read "immortality", "seeing the flesh", and "wuqi", and some were empty. A line of text in the corner of the picture reads: "Find all the markers and the door will open."
Grandpa said in his diary that "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" is not a myth, but a map. Thirty years ago, he followed this picture into the mountains. Five people went in, but he was the only one who came back.
I just trust him.
I quit my job, took my diary and pictures with me, called Mr. Zhou from Shangfa, Su Qing, an archeology doctor I met online, and a guide named Achuan, and walked into the valley that was not on modern maps.
The water flows to higher places, the trees glow at night, and the "people" who eat the soil sit up from the ground. Things recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas appear before us one after another.
And Ah Chuan, the taciturn guide who never ate our food, didn't seem to be human either. He didn't need sleep and would sit by the fire all night long. I gave him half a bottle of water and he looked at me for a long time. I took him to eat a bowl of hot beef noodles. He took the initiative to pick up the chopsticks for the first time and showed an expression similar to "delicious" for the first time.
We follow the hand map and move from one mark to the next.
Every time you unravel a place, you get closer to the truth about immortality. But I also gradually discovered that the three months when my grandfather did not come back were far longer than what was written in the diary.
And on that picture, the last blank circle
