Night fell quickly, and the sky was filled with stars, more than they had seen at night in Base X. There were no lights on the ground, it was pitch black, and people's faces could not be seen clearly from a few steps away.
Tang Long set up dry firewood, lit the branches, and quickly lit up a fire. The blazing firelight shone on his face, and there was a kind of calmness and perseverance between his brows. That look seemed to mean that even if the sun would not rise tomorrow,
Get up, they should also be happy with the dancing flames in front of them.
"I wonder if we can see stars over there at our base..." Xu Xin said to herself in front of the fire. "Captain, do you think people from the base are looking for us everywhere now?" p>
"They must have searched many times, and I believe they must still continue to search at this moment!" Li Hui said. "There's just one thing I don't understand! Captain, even if our Z-9 breaks down, it will land in Wuhan."
It’s an inhabited area, but the base can still use reconnaissance aircraft and reconnaissance satellites? There is no obstruction here. There is such a big helicopter on the ground, how can it be discovered?"
Tang Long pondered and said: "Things may not be simple! Have you ever thought about how we got here? Did we land normally? Why did all the instruments and equipment on the plane malfunction? Your electronic watch also malfunctioned.
Moreover, we can’t see any trace of modern civilization within hundreds of miles around here—railways, highways, farmland, houses, transmission lines, etc., not even a human hair! How on earth is this?
What's going on? This is so abnormal!"
"Yes, we seem to be isolated from the world!" Xu Xin said.
Tang Long pondered what Xu Xin said and felt an ominous premonition in his heart. He walked to a flat place and stepped on the soil under his feet. He felt that the softness was just right, so he placed a stone here.
Then I looked up at the stars.
"Captain, what are you thinking about?" Xu Xin asked.
Tang Long did not answer immediately. He first found the "spoon"-shaped Big Dipper above his head, and then followed the line connecting the two stars Tianxuan and Tianshu at the "mouth of the spoon" and saw the slightly dimmer Polaris.
. He faced the North Star, took two steps forward, and put down another stone. Then he returned to the first stone, squatted down and looked at the sky and the ground, stood up and clapped his hands.
"I was determining the position just now." Tang Long said. "Now, the situation outside is unknown, let's all go to the cabin and stay!"
"Then this fire..." Li Hui hesitated.
"We light this fire in the hope that someone will see it!"
The night in the wilderness is very quiet, except for the occasional howl of wolves that can be heard from far away. As the surface temperature evaporates, I gradually feel a chill on my body.
Tang Long was still sitting in the driver's seat and was taking a nap with his eyes closed. Li Hui was sitting in the passenger seat, tinkering with left and right moves with a flashlight, still mumbling. Xu Xin was tired.
He was leaning on the back row, looking at the fire outside without saying a word.
The firewood she and Tang Long picked up in the afternoon had been basically burned out, and the flames were getting smaller and smaller...
"Ding dong!"
About midnight, the three people heard a sound coming from somewhere in the cabin almost at the same time. They were all stunned! Everyone held their breath and listened for a few seconds, but the sound did not appear again.
"Did you hear anything just now?" Tang Long asked in a low voice.
"I seem to have heard..." Li Hui replied.
"I heard it too!" Xu Xin said. "It seemed like the sound of water drops! But I'm not sure..."
Li Hui was startled, and suddenly thought of something. He groped around for a while, found his mobile phone, opened it, looked at it, and exclaimed happily: "The mobile phone received the message!"
He looked at his phone, and under the weak screen light, his expression quickly faded.
"What is it?" Tang Long asked.
“There is only one symbol, I can’t tell what it is, it’s probably gibberish.”
Tang Long took the phone and looked at it. As expected, there was only a pattern composed of black pixels on it. There were two parallel arches in the upper part, and there was a Chinese character "only" on the left and right below the arch.
"What is this painting? I really can't understand it! But... your mobile phone has no signal, how can you receive this pattern?!"
"That's right!" Li Hui checked the signal strength of his mobile phone again, but it still showed no signal. "Did the signal suddenly appear and then cut off just now?"
This sudden and inexplicable information gave Tang Long and the others a sleepless night...
After receiving a call from Gao Tianjun that Tang Long and his crew members might have landed in the North China Plain, Li Zhanxiong urgently coordinated with the Air Force to dispatch reconnaissance aircraft to conduct multiple 24-hour non-stop searches, and specially deployed helicopter squadrons from the base.
Two Z-9s transferred to an air force base in Hebei to participate in search activities; at the same time, he also ordered the helicopter squadron to increase flight sorties to further expand the search area around the base. However, the above operations have been carried out for a day and night, and Tang Long was still not found
Their traces.
Li Zhanxiong believes that the information conveyed by Gao Tianjun is not groundless. The role of Aisen and Ai Bin as "messengers" has been verified many times. Moreover, the search for the Tang Long crew is far more complicated than the search for the "Fuxi" and "Xiazhi"
Much easier.
"Where are they?"
Just when Li Zhanxiong was eagerly waiting for the miracle to appear again, he received another mobile phone message from Gao Tianjun, saying that Aisen had received a pattern. Ding Yushi thought it was a bit like the word "rainbow" in oracle bone inscriptions, and she didn't know what it meant.
.Gao Tianjun also sent this pattern.
Li Zhanxiong called several people to study and analyze the pattern carefully. After comparing the corresponding writing of the word "rainbow" in oracle bone inscriptions according to Ding Yushi's prompts, everyone basically agreed with her judgment - this pattern may represent the word "rainbow" in oracle bone inscriptions.
The word "rainbow".
They consulted archaeologists online. The archaeologists replied: Rainbow is the scene that appears in the sky after rain. The ancients believed that the dragon in the sky would usually open its mouth to drink water vapor after a heavy rain, and the Fuxi family who lived in the Central Plains in ancient times also
"Dragon" is the totem of the tribe, so the oracle bone inscriptions use the image of two dragons mating and drinking water to represent the "rainbow".
However, what does this "rainbow" mean? And why is it expressed in the form of oracle bones?
The analysis given by archaeologists is: Since the "rainbow" is expressed in the form of oracle bone inscriptions, it may refer to something in reality that is related to ancient legends.
"Fuxi Hao?!" Someone immediately thought of this.
"It doesn't seem that simple." Li Zhanxiong denied. "We have been searching for the 'Fuxi' for a year, and Eisen has received a lot of information about the 'Fuxi'. If 'Marginal Space' wants to tell us where it is, why
Why should we keep it secret like this?"
"Is there another possibility?" a staff officer said, "It is related to the Tanglong unit we are looking for? I remember the old man at home once told me that the rainbow is a bridge built by the gods in the sky to help
The lost ones return home."
"'Bridge in the sky'? This is a good metaphor." Li Zhanxiong nodded and said, "I hope it can guide us to find the straight 9!"
"Although the sun is a bit hot, it can help us know the latitude here." Tang Long stood on a flat open space, holding the branch he had cut last evening in one hand and a steel tape measure in the other.<
/p>
"Can you calculate the latitude and longitude with a branch and a ruler? Captain, is this inherited from your ancestors?" Li Hui said jokingly.
Tang Long walked to the place where the first stone was placed last night, took away the stone, inserted the branch vertically into the ground, and lightly smashed it a few times with the stone to make the branch penetrate deeper; then, he measured it with a tape measure
He measured the height above the ground, then picked up a stone and smashed it a few times, and then measured it again... After repeating this two or three times, he finally said with satisfaction: "Now the height of this branch above the ground is exactly 100 centimeters.
."
He squatted down, first visually checked the verticality of the branch, then took off his shoelaces, tied a small stone on one end to make a simple hanging wire, slowly approached the branch, and corrected the branch until it was completely vertical to the ground. "
Everything is ready and we can start measuring in a few minutes."
Li Hui and Xu Xin stood aside, silently watching the captain's operations, still confused.
Tang Long pointed to the branch and the long shadow it cast on the ground, and said to Li Hui and Xu Xin: "The principle is actually very simple. We use the shadow and the branch as two right-angled sides, and draw the distance from the top of the shadow to the top of the branch
The connecting line serves as the hypotenuse, thus forming a right triangle. At noon, as long as we measure the length of the shadow, we can calculate the angle between the hypotenuse and the ground. This angle is also called the solar altitude angle. The closer it is to the sun
At a certain point on the earth, for every degree of latitude difference from the direct point of the sun, the altitude angle of the noon sun will decrease by one degree. Since it is the autumnal equinox now, the sun shines directly at the equator, that is to say
The solar altitude angle at the equator is 90°. Therefore, we subtract the measured solar altitude angle from 90°, and the value obtained is the latitude here."
"Oh! I understand!" Xu Xin shouted happily.
Li Hui thought about it and said: "However, we measure time according to the East Eighth time zone. If we are not in the East Eighth time zone - for example, our base is theoretically in the East Sixth time zone, the shadow does not point to true north at 12 noon.
It's north by west. Now we don't know which theoretical time zone this is. Moreover, even if we know that this is still the sixth east zone, then the shadow at noon is oblique. The angle we measured is different from the actual solar altitude angle.
There will be deviations, but it’s still useless.”
"Yesterday afternoon I compared the time on my watch with the position of the sun. Fortunately, we happened to be in the theoretical East Eighth District!"
"What?! We landed in the East Eighth District? How is this possible!"
"I don't know why this is the case now, but it is a fact. We can confirm it later. You will see that when the hands of my watch point to 12 o'clock, the shadow of the branches is the shortest. If it is in the East Sixth District, the shadow is the shortest.
The time is exactly 14:00 in the afternoon BJ time."
"Strange! The base is obviously in the East Sixth District. Our Zhi-9 cannot cross two time zones. How could it come to the East Eighth District?!" Li Hui was still thinking about this problem.
Time soon came to noon. Tang Long squatted on the ground, holding a steel tape measure, looking at his watch and carefully observing the changes in the shadows of the branches.
The shadow is shortening little by little...
When the watch pointer pointed to 12 o'clock, the shadow of the branch happened to point to the second stone that Tang Long put down last night - that was due north.
Tang Long took out his dagger and carved a mark at the top of the tree shadow, and then used a tape measure to carefully measure the length from the mark to the root of the branch.
"128 centimeters!" He said softly.
The shadow began to grow slowly again, and the watch hand had already passed 12 o'clock.
"Bring the notepad and pen!" Tang Long asked Xu Xin. Xu Xin handed the things to him.
Tang Long continued to squat on the spot, holding a pen and making calculations on his notepad. After a few minutes, he stood up, his face covered with dark clouds.
"The measurement shows that this is 37°05' north latitude!" Tang Long said with a heavy heart.
"Is there any problem?" Li Hui asked.
Tang Long did the calculation again and shook his head after looking at the result.
"It is indeed 37°05′ north latitude!" He said. "Even considering the measurement accuracy, we give an error of plus or minus 0.2′ - which is already very large - it is also between 36°85' and 37°25' north latitude.
'Between!"
"I still don't understand..."
"My hometown is Qinghe County, Xingtai, Hebei. My parents are still in Qinghe now, and I am very familiar with that area." Tang Long said. "The dimensions of the Xingtai area happen to be between 36°50′~37°47′ north latitude.
And it is the theoretical East Eighth District. That area is all plains, with open and flat terrain, just like what we see in front of us. However, now the economy of the entire Xingtai area has been very developed, with railways and highways crisscrossing it.
In rural areas, it is impossible for such a wasteland with a radius of hundreds of miles to exist. To the east along this latitude, within the East Eighth District, is the Dezhou area of SD Province, which is mostly plains and has an equally developed economy; further east,
It is a hilly area, which does not meet the terrain conditions. On the other hand, going west along this latitude is the Taihang Mountains - you can see it in XT City - after passing the Taihang Mountains and going west, you enter the East Seventh District. So
, judging from the latitude and corresponding time zone, we should be located in this plain area from the east of Qinghe County, Hebei to the west of Dezhou, Shandong. I just said that in this area, the economy is very developed, and there will not be such a big
A desolate place covering an area. However, we can see nothing now! No buildings, no roads, no farmland, not even a person! What is going on?"
Li Hui and Xu Xin looked at each other in confusion.
"Could it be that...we have traveled through time?" Xu Xin asked softly.
"Do you still remember that strange pattern received on your mobile phone last night? Could it be Oracle?"
"A bit like it." Li Hui replied.
"Oracle bone inscriptions appeared before the Spring and Autumn Period. If it were during that period, the area from Xingtai to Dezhou might really be so barbaric..." Tang Long fell into thinking.
"Captain, don't you suspect that we have traveled to the Spring and Autumn Period?" Xu Xin asked in surprise.
Tang Long ignored Xu Xin's question and asked Li Hui: "Li Hui, does your mobile phone still have power?"
"There's only one space left, and we're already warning you."
"Enter these words on your mobile phone: 'Dongba District, north latitude 37°05', ±0.2', from Qinghe County, Hebei Province to Dezhou, Shandong Province." After entering, send this message to everyone at your base
Send it to contacts, mobile text messages and chat platforms!"
"There is no signal released!"
"Didn't your mobile phone receive a pattern last night? We might as well try it. If we are lucky, even if the signal only recovers for a few seconds, these messages will be sent out automatically!"
"What if it still doesn't work?"
"We can only do everything we can now, and leave the rest to fate!"