Les trois histoires de fantômes de Jinzhong Deux Tai Sui détruisent la ville

Chapitre 7

Whenever there was a new development in the rehearsal of "Tale", or when Han Shang made new progress in her investigation of Sven Hedin, she would record it in audio form.

The former was simply narrated step by step, without anything surprising. Only two silent listeners knew how unfortunate the final outcome was.

Han Shang's investigation into Sven Hedin, however, took several turns.

Sven Hedin visited China five times, the last time from 1926 to 1935. This makes his role in the Freud experiments even more difficult to ascertain. Since Wilton had already arrived in Shanghai after 1935, his encounter with Sven Hedin must have occurred before 1926. Freud died in 1939; would he have chosen a successor so early?

He could be considered an experimenter, yet in Han Shang's memories of Wilton, he only appeared once, at a party. Could it be because he had been traveling the world for many years on adventures?

No matter how suspicious she was, this was the only rope Han Shang could truly grasp, and she had to try to see what she could pull out.

Sven Hedin had been in China for many years and had contact with hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Most of them had died of old age, but many were still alive. Han Shang visited them one by one, and finally found a breakthrough with someone who had once served as Sven Hedin's translator.

The translator, Wang Zhanfen, was 97 years old and suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Han Shang couldn't hear anything directly from him, but fortunately, he had a filial son who had taken care of him for many years and had told him countless stories about the Republic of China era before Han Shang developed dementia.

Sven Hedin visited China for the fifth time in 1926, leading an expedition composed of Swedes, Danes, and Germans, intending to explore western China. However, the Chinese academic community unanimously opposed such a purely Western-led expedition operating freely in China. After six months of negotiations, the expedition was renamed the Northwest China Scientific Expedition, and its members included five Chinese scholars, four Chinese students, and two translators. The elderly man Han Shang found was one of these two translators.

Without a doubt, Sven Hedin was the most dazzling person in the entire expedition team. His words and deeds, various details of his life, and even his personal hobbies that had little to do with the expedition left a deep impression on the young Wang Zhanfen.

For example, his deep interest in oracle bones.

In fact, oracle bones had already been discovered during Sven Hedin's fourth trip to China in 1907, but he did not show any interest in them at that time.

This seems to explain why cunning antique dealers kept the discovery site of the oracle bones a top secret for nearly ten years, until scholar Luo Zhenyu learned in 1908 that the oracle bones came from Anyang, Henan. Large-scale research on oracle bones began after that, and oracle bones gradually began to flow to the West in various ways, causing a sensation in the archaeological community.

Archaeology and exploration were two closely linked professions at the time.

In Wang Zhanfen's recollection, Sven Hedin had made several solo trips to Anyang under various pretexts, bringing back some oracle bones which he often took out to admire and study. Among these oracle bones, one piece looked very unusual. Sven Hedin told Wang Zhanfen that it was not a tortoise shell, but a human skull.

Listening to these recordings in the long, quiet night, to a stranger narrating her story in a calm tone, the two listeners felt no drowsiness whatsoever. There was no need for coffee to keep them awake; exciting moments, surprising and evoking numerous associations, would always emerge, banishing sleepiness far away.

For example, the wizard's skull—it was only later that I learned this treasure, now in the collection of the Shanghai Museum, was once in the possession of Sven Hedin. And why Han Shang was willing to spend so much money on its research will be revealed in the following recording.

Besides Sven Hedin, another prominent Western explorer active in China at the beginning of the 20th century was Aurel Stein. However, compared to the glory of Sven Hedin's discovery of Loulan, Stein is remembered more negatively by the Chinese. This is because he tricked Wang Daoshi into handing over twenty-nine boxes of Buddhist manuscripts and embroideries from the Dunhuang Mogao Caves—the most tragic loss of Chinese cultural relics since the destruction of the Old Summer Palace.

However, Sven Hedin and Stein had a good personal relationship. After one of their meetings, Wang Zhanfen discovered that the somewhat frightening wizard skull among the oracle bones that Sven Hedin usually played with was missing.

This was in 1930, during Stein's fourth Central Asian expedition in China. The Dunhuang treasures he had previously stolen had already caused a great stir in Chinese intellectual circles. Finally, amidst protests, the Nanjing government ordered Stein, who was in Xinjiang, to stop his expedition, and a batch of cultural relics he was carrying were also prohibited from being taken out of China.

At that time, the Northwest Scientific Expedition was resting in Beiping. On the afternoon that Wang Zhanfen saw the news in the newspaper with great joy, Sven Hedin received a telegram. That evening, Hedin drank a few more glasses of wine and pulled Wang Zhanfen, who was also interested in oracle bone inscriptions, to show him his collection of oracle bones.

Seeing Hedin's tipsy state, Wang Zhanfen boldly steered the conversation towards the wizard's skull. He had already guessed that Hedin had handed the item over to Stein; he had seen the news that morning that the Chinese treasure had been intercepted and kept in the country, stirring up the patriotic fervor of young people. Although he admired many aspects of Hedin, he couldn't help but make a sarcastic remark.

The drunken Hedin was oblivious to the young Chinese translator's emotions, sighing deeply, looking dejected, and muttering something under his breath.

Wang Zhanfen listened carefully, but Hedin kept repeating the same thing: "If we can't take the materials out, what will happen to the experiment?"

Wang Zhanfen found this very strange; he couldn't understand what Hedin was referring to as an experiment. When pressed further, Hedin refused to explain.

Because he couldn't understand it, the incident remained in Wang Zhanfen's memory, and he told his son about it as an interesting anecdote.

Wang Zhanfen didn't know the exact relationship between Sven Hedin, the explorer, the wizard's skull from thousands of years ago, and the unknown experiment, but Han Shang did. Her months of hard work had finally paid off.

Freud's mysterious inner experiments were conducted with the aid of rituals and props. The Metanzo medallion could help the experimenter open the mysterious door to the mind, and there may be more things with this power.

In the distant Shang Dynasty of China, emperors and numerous shamans employed a rigorous set of rituals, using oracle bones to communicate with mystical forces and gain precognition of the future. It would be understandable that such a mystical culture might have been helpful to Freud's experiments.

The shaman's skull and the numerous oracle bone inscriptions unearthed alongside it have been studied by many oracle bone scholars over the past half-century. Oracle bone script is profound and difficult to understand; a large portion of the text remains undeciphered, leading to various interpretations of this particular oracle bone.

The most prevalent view is that the skull shows no signs of being heated, indicating it wasn't directly used for divination. However, its location suggests it was an extremely important artifact. According to other oracle bone inscriptions, in the early Shang Dynasty, a high-ranking shaman's skull was crafted into an instrument with mystical powers after his death, used as a ritual implement in important divination ceremonies presided over by the Shang king. This skull fragment with a round hole in the center of its skull is suspected to be the divination instrument mentioned in the records.

This is the view of the oracle bone community today, but more than seventy years ago, Sven Hedin had already clearly recognized that the wizard's skull possessed mysterious power and could be of great help to experiments.

Once he understood this, Han Shang began to systematically study oracle bone script and turned his investigation towards the Yin Ruins in Anyang, Henan. Wang Zhanfen said that Hedin had visited Anyang several times, where he may have left more clues about the experiments.

Since antique dealers collected inscribed "dragon bones" in Anyang at the end of the 19th century, countless people have come to Anyang to search for oracle bones over the decades, turning every farmer in Anyang into an "oracle bone expert." However, a Westerner might deal more with official organizations, so Han Shang focused his attention on the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica of the Nationalist Government at that time.

From 1928 to 1937, the Institute of History and Philology conducted fifteen excavations at Yinxu, unearthing tens of thousands of oracle bones. How Hedin came into contact with the archaeological team, how he obtained the shaman's skull, and how this treasure ended up in China and entered the Shanghai Museum—there must be many stories behind all of this.

However, Han Shang's subsequent investigation did not go smoothly. Many of the people who participated in the Anyang archaeological excavation went to Taiwan after the Kuomintang's defeat, and most of those who remained on the mainland died during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution. She was unable to interview a single living participant, and the information she obtained from their descendants was vague and unclear.

The only useful clue was that Hedin had a lot of contact with a young archaeologist named Sun Yu.

This Sun Yu is long dead; not only that, but his son and grandson are also dead. The only one still alive is one of his great-grandsons. Generally, a person wouldn't know much about their grandfather's life, let alone their great-grandfather's.

"I'm a little excited these days. I have a feeling that some changes are going to happen," Han Shang said in the recording.

"It's not just because 'Thailand' is about to premiere, but also because I've found out the address of Sun Yu's great-grandson, and I plan to find a suitable opportunity to meet him. I've noticed an interesting phenomenon: from Sun Yu to his great-grandson, there have been four generations of single-lineage scholars. Each one of them is a renowned oracle bone scholar; even the fourth generation, Sun Jing, who is only thirty years old, is quite famous in the field of oracle bone studies today. It's very rare for four generations to have talent in the same area, especially since oracle bone studies are such a niche and dry subject. Perhaps he will bring me some surprises."

This was the last recording. After listening to it, the ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts, and the sky outside the window had brightened.

"What surprise will she get from you?" Xu Xu asked.

Sun Jing spread his hands and shook his head.

"Would such an experiment really happen? A mysterious power hidden within the human heart? This sounds too much like a story."

Sun Jing pressed her thumbs against the inner corners of her eyes and rubbed them.

"Actually, I didn't hear what I wanted to hear," he said with his eyes closed.

"What do you want to hear? What could be more bizarre than what I've heard in the last few hours?"

Sun Jing's Chinese-style invigorating massage lasted for two minutes, and then he opened his eyes.

"Why did she die? I thought I'd find the answer in these recordings. Do you really believe it's a curse?"

"Maybe...perhaps..." She hesitated for a moment, then could only admit, "That guy last night must have been related to her death, but judging from the recording, she didn't seem to realize it at all. All she was worried about was the curse."

"We can't get rid of the danger completely until we figure this out," Sun Jing said.

Sleepiness washed over them, and they both yawned simultaneously.

"Ugh, I'm going back to catch up on my sleep. You need to be clear-headed to deal with danger. Let's get our hands on the wizard's skull first; it might be the key. I'll finish the preparations by tonight, then I'll call you."

"Too reckless. I think that thing is a hot potato. I didn't even understand it before..." Sun Jing only got halfway through his sentence before letting out another yawn, waving his hand, and leaving on his own.

Sun Jing sighed. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back in the chair, but kept turning the ring on his hand.

His phone beeped with a text message, and he glanced at it.

"Damn satisfaction."

Sun Jing smiled, but the smile quickly vanished. He walked to the old wooden cabinet, creaked open the left door, and pulled out a small drawer.

There were two rectangular tin boxes there. He opened one and found some silver dollars, gold and white gold rings, and gold lockets, all of which were heirlooms passed down from his ancestors.

Sun Jing flicked his hand and opened another box.

He stared at the box for a while before reaching out and taking one of the items out.

This is a dark blue-green rectangular bronze plaque, about two-thirds the size of a normal person's palm. It features a relief of an angel with many pairs of wings. His long hair obscures his face, and his lower body is submerged in a sea of flames. On his body, on his wings, and even within the flames, numerous eyes are faintly visible. Some are closed, some are slightly open, and some are wide open; from any angle, it appears as if many eyes are watching you.

Sun Jing stared at it for only a few seconds before a feeling of extreme unease welled up inside him. He flipped the bronze plaque over; in the lower left corner, there was an abbreviation.

"C·C."

Camille Claudel. This is clearly her initials.

This is the Medanzo medal, an essential prop for participants in Freud's experiments to perform mysterious rituals!

Everyone tries to escape when they see a whirlpool approaching. In reality, many times you're already in it long before you even see the crisis.

Note 1: Between 1937 and 1941, approximately 30,000 Jewish refugees who fled from various European countries came to Shanghai. Most of them lived in a dozen or so blocks centered around the Moshe Synagogue (now in Hongkou District, Shanghai).

Note 2: Sven Hedin (1865-1952), Swedish explorer and writer. He visited China five times and spent more than thirty years exploring China and Central Asia. He was the discoverer of the Loulan ruins.

Chapter 04 Testing the Waters

Sun Jing's palms were pale, with a dark blue-black bronze plaque pressed against them, radiating a suffocating, deathly aura. The flames embossed on the plaque burned coldly, and the countless eyes on it coldly observed everything, reminding one of the "ruthlessness of heaven and earth," devoid of any trace of divine mercy.

The bronze plaque was so strange that even the elderly white man with a large hooked nose standing next to Sun Jing was drawn to it.

"Metatron." Sun Jing smiled at him and told him the name of the angel on the bronze plaque. He was clearly Jewish; he certainly knew who Metatron was.

The elderly Jewish man immediately frowned, his expression turning quite displeased.

Sun Jing then remembered that Jewish doctrine opposes idolatry, and any depiction of God's image is strictly prohibited, including angels.

He shrugged, but didn't put the plaque away. The Moshe Synagogue is no longer a synagogue; it's now a miniature memorial museum. For those Jews who once lived nearby, this is an inevitable stop on their return visits to China. The elderly man beside him was likely one of them.

Wilton, a Jewish rabbi, performed mystical rituals daily before a bronze plaque carved with angels for an extended period, clearly violating Jewish doctrine. In this sense, Freud's mystical inner experiments are like a demon tempting people to fall, or perhaps the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Sun Jing was standing in the chapel of the Moses Synagogue, in front of the Ark of the Sacred Relic.

The Ark of the Sacred Relic is a doorless compartment within the chapel, shallow and less than a meter deep. When the synagogue was still a church, the Ark contained the parchment scrolls of the Pentateuch, but now it is, of course, empty.

Sun Jing looked down at the floor tiles, then bent down, took the bronze plaque, and tapped it here and there.

"Thump, thump, thump, thump, boom!"

"What are you doing?" the elderly Jewish man asked him in English.

"It's hollow underneath," Sun Jing replied, pointing to a floor tile. "This tile has small seams around its edges, do you see them?"

The old man bent down in surprise and quickly squatted down in front of the floor tiles.

"Good luck," Sun Jing said, putting the Medanzo medal into his pocket and walking out of the chapel. Behind him, several foreigners who had been visiting inside the chapel gathered around the elderly Jewish man.

No one will be lucky, including Han Shang, who had already unearthed Wilton's treasure.

This is one of the two most easily verifiable pieces of information in Han Shang's recordings: the treasure cave in front of the Ark of the Sacred Relic in the Synagogue. The other is the curse recorded by Zweig in his autobiography.

*The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European*, by Stefan Zweig, published by Guangxi Normal University Press. Sun Jing found it in the biography section of a bookstore, and saw the relevant passage in the first third of the book. The three actors were Adalbert Matkowsky, Josef Kainz, and Aleksander Moisiu, who died in 1909, 1910, and 1935 respectively; the director was Alfred Freiherr von Berger, who died in 1912.

As expected. Sun Jing closed the book and went to the payment counter to buy it. Although he had heard a very bizarre story last night, he was more inclined to believe that a person's self-narration in this situation had no reason to deceive. Human nature is more trustworthy than the world, provided you can see it clearly. As a master con artist, no skill is more important than this.

So Han Shang's experience is real, the curse does exist, and we can only try to believe that the experiments that made these damned things happen really did take place, and maybe they are still going on, who knows.

Sun Jing was curious about the Medanzo bronze plaque in his pocket. If Han Shang were still alive, she would definitely have recorded a new audio message about this major discovery.

For example: "I saw another Medanzo bronze plaque at the home of Sun Yu's great-grandson, which is truly unbelievable. Sun Jing knew nothing of the value of this ancestral relic; to him, the person who possessed the plaque and that era were things from a very distant past. The successive early deaths of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had obscured everything, leaving only this silent piece of metal. Could Sun Yu have been one of the experimenters? A very young Chinese man at the time?"

This was a very important new clue for Han Shang, but she was already dead, Sun Jing thought.

Han Shang would never know that after her death, someone broke into her home and tried to track down the person claiming her belongings. This was the truly important clue, meaning that a huge gap remained in all her previous investigations.

A huge and terrifying blank space.

The street looked even more desolate than when I walked through it yesterday. It seemed that the remaining residents would all move out in the next few days.

The white human-shaped figures on the ground were slightly lighter in color, and the stench of blood in the air had long since dissipated. The main entrance of the four-story old building was wide open, and several people were going in and out, carrying their packed belongings to the roadside and piling them up. They would wait for the moving company's truck to arrive so they could all be transported away.

A middle-aged, balding man wiped the sweat from his brow, resting his hand on a pile of large cardboard boxes to catch his breath. Seeing Sun Jing staring down at the white lines on the ground, he said, "Someone died here yesterday."

Sun Jing looked up at him.

"Such a big flowerpot," he said, gesturing with his hand to make a circle two sizes larger than a basketball, "It fell from the fourth floor. It just lay there on the spot." He pointed to the white line on the ground.