Dawn in the West

Disclaimer: This book is self-made based on online search information and news from previous years. Any similarities are purely coincidental. If there is any infringement, please inform us in time. My name is Chen Yan, I am fifty-eight years old this year. Before retirement, I was a veteran in the field of geological research. I have been running in no-man's land for more than thirty years with a geological hammer in hand. People always like to dig through old things in their old age. When I was sorting out the wooden boxes last year, a yellowing document bag fell out of the canvas science bag with white edges. The seal in 1990 had not yet completely cracked, and the red mark of the word "confidential" on it was blurred, just like the sunset on the Lop Nur Gobi. I was twenty-eight years old that year and had just returned from a scientific expedition to the glaciers in the Kunlun Mountains. I was even tanner than the local herdsmen. I had traveled through uninhabited lakes in northern Tibet and searched for ancient river channels on the edge of Taklimakan. I never thought that one day I would receive such a weird task: when the director pushed the document bag over, he pinched the corner of the bag with his fingers like a hot iron, and only said, "Cooperate with Professor Zhang's team and check the documents in detail," without even mentioning the duration of the task. Now that the confidentiality period has passed, I can finally talk about the things that have been pressing deep in my heart: the expired compressed biscuits, the compass with tripping needles, the strange metal fragments under the salt crust, and the strange situations we encountered deep in Lop Nur that went far beyond the scope of "potash exploration" - those things still make my back shiver when I think about them.