The Lost Tomb : Restart (The Sound Of Providence)

Chapter 115: Mysterious Meteorological Team

At this time, 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 me 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 time, almost a week had passed and I was completely dumbfounded. The information in these journal entries was absolutely incredible. There seemed to be more information hidden in the sequence of events at that time than I originally thought.

The journal started with Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin going on a meteorological expedition in the countryside. In Uncle Three's words, people in the mountainous countryside at that time didn't see any distinction between archaeological teams, the agricultural college, and meteorological teams. They could only tell the difference between those who were there to film movies and those who weren't.

Uncle Three and Chen Wen-Jin were doing some fieldwork for their organization at that time, 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 members of the previous meteorological team.

The locals told them that the meteorological team came there, set up the weather station, and then left. After that, they would come by once a year, bringing some 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 time, because the meteorological team was conducting a country-wide climate survey, which was a national project that had been carried out since liberation. By that time, the geological survey and population census were almost complete, so it was strange that a meteorological team would go to the countryside.

And the fact that they came back every year showed that someone had been monitoring the climate in this area for a long time. If the weather station in this village was already working, then why did a team have to come here?

While Chen Wen-Jin was dealing with the villagers, Uncle Three opened the temporary weather station's air temperature box [2]. He found that it didn't contain meteorological instruments, 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 wasn't a weather station, but a shrine to worship the ashes. And the ashes weren't buried, but elevated in the air so that they could thrive in the rain and the dew. Whether it was sorcery or something 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 weren't 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 didn't 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 come 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 meteorological team when they came 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 something weird and crazy.

Uncle Three returned to the village half a year later and got into position. At that time, the weather station had been demolished by the panicked villagers, but Uncle Three felt that the meteorological 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. 

****************************************

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.

[2] It's also called a Stevenson screen or instrument shelter. It's a shelter or an enclosure to protect meteorological instruments against precipitation and direct heat radiation from outside sources, while still allowing air to circulate freely around them. It looks something like this: