Ian Lawson’s fingers gently slid over the surface of the box. Closing his eyes, he carefully savored the sensations transmitted through his fingertips. After one pass, he discovered several suspicious spots. Ian Lawson used his camera to photograph these suspicious areas, transferred the images to his computer, and enlarged them for closer inspection.

“It’s here,” Ian Lawson said, picking up the metal box. He gently applied pressure with his fingers, trying to twist, press, and fiddle with it in various directions. Suddenly, the box emitted a dull click, and the lid lifted slightly.

The camera whirred softly as it rotated. At some point, the noise in the living room had subsided. Ian Lawson let out a quiet sigh: women really can’t be left idle—give them something to do, and they won’t stir up trouble. Now they must have moved to the kitchen, busy installing the dishwasher and tormenting those dishes and utensils.

After taking a few deep breaths to calm himself, Ian Lawson slowly lifted the lid of the box.

A ring of cork was inlaid around the edge of the box, serving as its seal. A hardcover diary lay quietly inside; judging by the size of the box, there was no room for anything else.

Ian Lawson grabbed his camera and took a few photos, then carefully used tweezers to extract the diary, turning its pages one by one.

On the first page of the diary, the date was written: April 12, 1795.

Ian Lawson took a deep breath.

The best time for expeditions in the Grand Canyon region is from August to October, when the geological environment is most stable. Even so, landslides, collapses, and mudslides still occur daily, though on a smaller scale. In April, however, with the spring snow beginning to melt, it is the most inconvenient time to travel there.

He turned the diary page by page, taking several photos with each turn. The last entry was dated July 6. After that, there were long stretches of blank pages.

Ian Lawson turned back to the first page and, picking up an English dictionary, began laboriously deciphering the diary.

The language and grammar used in the diary didn’t seem to be English. Ian Lawson had originally thought it was written in Old English, but the very first word proved problematic.

British aristocrats often wrote in cursive, much like ancient Chinese scholars, making their writing difficult for ordinary people to read as a symbol of their erudition and noble status. Ian Lawson puzzled over the word for a long time, finally identifying each letter. Consulting the dictionary, he discovered the word was Latin, meaning “sacred mountain.”

The second word stumped Ian Lawson for quite a while; it wasn’t in the dictionary at all. At first, he almost thought he’d misread the letters. After much deliberation, he still couldn’t make sense of it, so he skipped to the third word and found it was another Latin word, an affirmative particle.

“I see, this is very likely a diary written in Latin, perhaps with many ciphers hidden between the lines,” Ian Lawson sighed, immediately worrying that his breath might cause the diary to oxidize. In his haste to turn away, he moved too abruptly, causing a dull ache in his neck.

Ian Lawson continued to flip through the blank pages until he reached the very end, then closed the diary with a sense of resignation.

Suddenly, just as he was closing the diary, Ian Lawson caught a glimpse of something odd out of the corner of his eye. On the last few pages, there were several faint indentations that flashed before his eyes as the diary closed. Ian Lawson quickly turned to the final pages, tilting them under the light to carefully examine the marks.

It was a string of words written with a pen tip but without ink, leaving only indentations on the paper. Seeing the pages gradually oxidize and darken, Ian Lawson hurriedly took out a packet of talcum powder and gently blew the powder onto the pages.

Talcum powder is commonly used in gymnastics, allowing athletes to coat their hands to prevent slipping from sweat. Antique collectors also often carry talcum powder, rubbing it on their hands when examining important items to avoid dropping them due to sweaty palms.

The fine talcum powder settled into the grooves of the indentations. Using a soft brush, he gently swept away the excess powder, and lines of writing appeared. Applying the same method, he photographed all the content on the last few pages. Ian Lawson blew away the talcum powder and locked the diary back in the box.

“Latin—nowadays, it’s probably very hard to find someone who understands Latin,” Ian Lawson’s mind grew ever more confused. “An imperialist colonizer, traveling to such a remote place as Tibet between the 18th and 19th centuries—what was he doing there?”

With the box now open, not only had his questions not been answered, but they had multiplied. Ian Lawson had spent years dealing with antiques and was accustomed to probing the essence of things. Now, with the mysteries piling up, he found it impossible to stop, as if he’d been interrupted halfway through making love—so frustrated he could almost cough up blood.

Ian Lawson’s father was a middle school teacher. Perhaps because he had a child later in life, he was more patient than most fathers. When Ian Lawson was very young, his father often took him out into nature to observe flowers, trees, birds, animals, insects, fish, green mountains, and clear waters, guiding Ian Lawson to observe, think, and explore, in order to spark his curiosity and thirst for knowledge. His father often said: If you want to go further in life, you must always keep a childlike curiosity.

It was precisely because of this strong curiosity that Ian Lawson was more perceptive than other children, better at discovering problems, and enjoyed getting to the root of things and thinking independently. In the eyes of his classmates and teachers, Ian Lawson was very different, but he considered himself quite ordinary. He understood that he simply had a stronger curiosity than most people.