At this ti, I remained very calm and backed up all of the data on the phone. Other than the photos and recordings, I also found a lot of files in another folder. I took a preliminary look at them and found that many of them were short journal entries. Uncle Three had never been in the habit of keeping a journal, so there was a high probability that this information had been specially typed into the phone for to read.
After that, I went to check the monitoring system, but the footage of this good being entered into the warehouse had long been erased.
After I finished backing up the files, I began to read the journal entries. By this ti, almost a week had passed and I was completely dumbfounded. The information in these journal entries was absolutely incredible. There seed to be more information hidden in the sequence of events at that ti than I originally thought.
The journal started with Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin going on a teorological expedition in the countryside. In Uncle Three's words, people in the mountainous countryside at that ti didnt see any distinction between archaeological teams, the agricultural college, and teorological teams. They could only tell the difference between those who were there to film movies and those who werent.
Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin were doing so fieldwork for their organization at that ti, so the locals took them to the work site of the previous weather station. A temporary weather station had been set up in that place, but there was no one there.
The locals only took them there because they thought that Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin were mbers of the previous teorological team.
The locals told them that the teorological team ca there, set up the weather station, and then left. After that, they would co by once a year, bringing so food coupons (1) to the commune. The locals then asked Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin for food coupons.
Uncle Three found it very strange at that ti, because the teorological team was conducting a country-wide climate survey, which was a national project that had been carried out since liberation. By that ti, the geological survey and population census were almost complete, so it was strange that a teorological team would go to the countryside.
And the fact that they ca back every year showed that soone had been monitoring the climate in this area for a long ti. If the weather station in this village was already working, then why did a team have to co here?
While Chen Wen-Jin was dealing with the villagers, Uncle Three opened the temporary weather stations air temperature box (2). He found that it didnt contain teorological instrunts, but a strange urn full of ashes.
A strange little idol had been painted on the outside of the urn and there were traces of people coming back to worship it every year.
Uncle Three asked the villagers if there was anything special about the place where the temporary weather station had been set up.
This clearly wasnt a weather station, but a shrine to worship the ashes. And the ashes werent buried, but elevated in the air so that they could thrive in the rain and the dew. Whether it was sorcery or sothing else, he was certain that there was a motive for picking this place.
The villagers were also frightened when they saw this situation and said that this place was often struck by lightning. That was why there werent any big trees in the area.
Uncle Three took a closer look and found that there was a lightning rod at the top of the air temperature box, but it had been burned to a crisp. In other words, this box had been struck by lightning more than once.
Uncle Three didnt understand it at all. The ashes were already ashes, so why would they have to be struck by lightning so frequently? What was the point? Was the owner of the ashes hated and resented so much that things had co to this?
Uncle Three was completely baffled. The villagers wanted to tear the weather station down, but Uncle Three stopped them. He decided to catch the teorological team when they ca to the village again and ask them what they were doing. He was already certain that they must be kindred spirits; maybe not grave robbers, but sothing weird and crazy.
Uncle Three returned to the village half a year later and got into position. At that ti, the weather station had been demolished by the panicked villagers, but Uncle Three felt that the teorological team didn't know yet, so he stayed in the village and waited for the strange team to arrive. Uncle Three recorded in the journal that when the team first entered the village, they all gave off the feeling like they were attending a funeral. Every one of them was pale and walked like a ghost.
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TN Notes:
(1) Coupons for food, grain, and other goods used in a PRC economic program c. 1955-1993. Also called liangpiao. I guess you can kind of equate it to modern-day food stamps. Brief article here.
(2) Its also called a Stevenson screen or instrunt shelter. Its a shelter or an enclosure to protect teorological instrunts against precipitation and direct heat radiation from outside sources, while still allowing air to circulate freely around them. More info here but it looks sothing like this:
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I think this is super loosely based on Season 2 episode 2 around 30:28-40:45 (will probably go into the next chaptermaybe). Honestly, it's so loosely based that I almost didn't bother hunting through all the episodes for it lol.
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