In the 1960s, as one of the first geological surveyors of New China, we were secretly selected to join a certain geological engineering team.

With a confidential order, we set out without knowing the purpose, the location, or the reason, arriving at a primitive border jungle whose location could not be confirmed. After enduring anxiety and even facing what we thought was certain death, we watched a top-secret "Film Zero" intended only for the highest central authorities. The images on the screen were suffocating—the information returned by seismic waves, restored on film, clearly showed that embedded in the earth’s crust 1,200 meters underground was a Japanese heavy bomber!

Was this a conspiracy or a supernatural force? With doubts and confusion, we summoned immense courage to enter the strata, but this exploration ended with an indescribable outcome. We were stranded in a sunless base, experiencing all sorts of extraordinary events, and finally, we boarded a plane to once again enter that vast void...

Everything was more bizarre than the worst we could have imagined.

Desperate Exploration

Preface

Before writing all this down, I thought for a long time, because many things cannot be explained in just a few words. Some things, even now, I still don’t know what really happened. Many things do not fit the worldview of that time and should not have been passed down to later generations.

The reason I finally decided to record this is because I feel that if I don’t speak of such things, it would truly be a regret, and even an irresponsibility to certain people, or even to history itself.

I am a retired geological surveyor, formerly part of the PLA Geological Survey Engineering Company. In those crazy red years, we were both lucky and unlucky to be outside the storm of the "Great Revolution," traveling through China’s mountains and rivers in search of the treasures buried deep underground. In over twenty years of exploration, we crossed 80% of China’s uninhabited regions, endured extreme monotony and hardship, and also encountered many incredible and shocking events. You will never find these things in any official records. They are all facts that "should not exist," sealed away forever.

Some of these things I experienced myself, some I heard from older comrades. Many of us have kept our promises from those years and never made these things public. I cannot present them in the form of reportage, so please remember, what you are reading is just a novel.

1. The 723 Project of Those Years

My geological exploration career lasted twenty years, during which I experienced hundreds of life-threatening situations. But in my early memories, the most deadly thing was not the raging torrents, but the indescribable monotony. For a long time, just seeing the endless mountains and jungles would make me feel suffocated. Thinking that I would have to travel through them for another ten years, the pain was something only those who have experienced it can truly understand.

But that feeling disappeared without a trace after the incident in 1962. Because after that, I realized that within these monotonous mountains, many mysterious things are hidden—some of which you could never understand, no matter how hard you try to imagine. I also came to understand that the words of awe spoken by the older generation of explorers about the mountains were not just alarmist talk.

The cause of the 1962 incident is probably known to many veteran explorers. If young readers have parents who worked in exploration, you can ask them. At that time, there was a very famous geological project called the Inner Mongolia 723 Project. It was the general name for the exploration teams searching for coal mines in the mountains of Inner Mongolia. Three exploration teams entered the primeval forests of Inner Mongolia one after another to conduct block-style surveys. Two months after the work began, the 723 Project was suddenly halted. At the same time, the project headquarters began borrowing technical personnel from other exploration teams. For a while, almost all the top technical experts from various teams were screened—some filling out forms, some transferring files—but no one knew who ultimately collected those forms and files.

In the end, a group of technical experts was indeed selected and seconded to the 723 Geological Engineering Team.