My parents died in the Qinling Mountains in 1979. They went into the mountains that year to answer one question: Was Zhuge Liang's true tomb at Mount Dingjun or Wuzhang Plains? Nine people went in. All that came back were two orders, three pages of telegrams, and a mountain that had been half-collapsed for half a century. Tomb raiders intercepted them, and something unknown dragged them away. My mother held onto the explosives and died with the thing in the cave. My father, gravely wounded, collapsed beside the radio. His last words were: "If our son asks, tell him we went to bring honor to our country." Fifteen years later, I was twenty-one, studying archaeology, when I received those three pages of telegrams. The question had not been answered, so I would answer it.
