Coach: Coaching the Grizzlies at the beginning, playing the bantam

In the rearview mirror, the Great Wall was being blurred by the dusk. The pottery squirrel in Lu Yong's trouser pocket was poking its head out - it was secretly pinched by Hannah while she was feeding the squirrel, and there were still her fingernail marks on its belly.

When the tunnel lights passed by the car window, he quietly held her hands as she drew the array diagram. Their reflection in the windshield was like a heart-to-heart lock on a beacon tower that would never be separated.

Early morning hours.

"Are there grape seeds from the Yongle period hidden in your collar?" Hannah's fingertips brushed across the wrinkles of Lu Yong's shirt. The morning light from the Drum Tower in the ancient city of Xuanhua was spreading over the newly grown clover in the cracks between the blue bricks.

The willow branches stuck in the side pocket of his backpack were still wet with moat water - they were souvenirs he had picked from a 600-year-old tree when he climbed over the iron fence.

Before the morning mist dissipated, the gate at the west city gate made a creaking sound.

Hannah stood on tiptoe to touch the grape pattern on the gate, and Lu Yong suddenly pressed her wrist: "Listen!"

Amid the vibrations of the rusty chains, the sound of the twenty-first morning bell could be faintly heard - exactly the month and day when they met.

The bell keeper, Lao Zhao, poked his head out from the gatehouse and said, "You two are the only ones who can tell that the sound of the bell contains the song Liangzhou Qu."

When Hannah turned around, her ponytail swept the locust flowers off Lu Yong's shoulders, and the petals happened to float into Lao Zhao's purple clay teapot.

Later, they found the words "In the fifth year of Xuande, Chen Sanniang struck the bell to send her husband to guard the border" engraved by a former bell keeper in the dent of the bell pestle.

The century-old grape trellis downstairs of Qingyuan Building was dripping with morning dew, and Lu Yong suddenly squatted down to tie his shoelaces.

Hannah walked around five times holding the guide map and found that his sneakers were always circling around the seventh vine pillar.

"The Xuanfu Town Chronicle says there is a 'Lianli Vine' here." Before she finished speaking, her sun hat was blown to the top of the trellis by the wind.

While climbing an old vine to get her hat, Hannah's silver bracelet got stuck in the crack of a tree knot.

Lu Yong used a willow twig to pry open the spider web, and found half a mandarin duck brick hidden in the crack - a Ming Dynasty garrison soldier and his wife each held half of the brick as a token of trust.

He took out his Swiss Army knife and scraped off the moss, revealing a mark on the brick surface that read "In the 16th year of Zhengde, Wang buried vines and prayed for his return home."

In the wine cellar, the winemaker suddenly stopped Hannah who was trying the wine and said, "Young lady, solve this problem first."

The Xixia combination lock on the pottery jar glowed faintly. Lu Yong rubbed his fingertips on the jar and suddenly dipped his finger in wine and wrote "1227" - the year when Xixia was destroyed.

"Wrong!" The winemaker laughed and lifted the wooden lid, but Hannah smelled a familiar lavender scent wafting from the bottom of the jar - it was the scent of the sachet she bought at the City God Temple yesterday.

The scorching sun at noon softened the camel's hoof prints on the bricks, and Lu Yong suddenly grabbed Hannah and rushed towards the horse path.

"At three quarters past noon, the sun's shadow will cut open the secret door of the soldier's cave!" The kettle on his waist emitted a medicinal aroma as he ran - the anti-inflammatory soup cooked with grape vines last night would heal her rubbed ankle.

When Hannah's sun-protection jacket was blown into the arrow tower by the wind, the light spot that Lu Yong mentioned was cutting her collarbone - the light blade piercing through the observation hole illuminated the tooth marks he had bitten last year.

In addition to the moldy grain bags in the darkroom, there is also a maintenance log from 2018, one page of which shows the silhouette of a girl wearing a sun hat.

While experiencing plant and wood dyeing in the intangible cultural heritage workshop, Lu Yong pressed Hannah into a pile of grape leaves.

At the moment the white cloth covered the leaves, a three-wheeled vehicle collecting waste suddenly rushed in from outside the window.

Hannah jumped up in shock, and the dye vat was overturned. Indigo and gamboge were splashed into an abstract nebula, with the complete outline of her buttocks printed in the middle.

"This is the newly discovered Hannah Nebula in the Milky Way." Lu Yong held back his laughter and cut off the dyed cloth.

Later, this piece of cloth became the curtain of his apartment. Whenever the setting sun shone, the flying hair of her when she ran away would always appear where the blue and yellow colors overlapped.

Standing in front of the "Chahar Dutong Stele", Lu Yong suddenly took out two copper coins and said: "I bet you can't recognize all the Xixia official titles in the inscription."

Hannah's fingertips traced over the words "Crossbow Gold Reward", but he grabbed her wrist and said, "The loser will learn to sing "Song Under the Moon" like a Tangut bride."

As dusk fell over the pavilion, the restorer, Lao Zhou, passed by with a flashlight and said, "Young people, don't touch it. The Xixia script "Auspicious Bianzhi Kouhebenxu" that I copied just last month is missing half a page!"

When the two men fled, the copper bells on the eaves flew flying, and the dust that fell was mixed with the raisins that Lu Yong had hidden.

When the sheepskin lanterns were lit up at the night market, Lu Yong's camera bag was already filled with preserved sand fruits.

Hannah stopped in front of a stall selling Xixia porcelain, and the reflection of the glaze reflected his hand as he stuffed something into her waist bag.

"We've caught the culprit red-handed!" She held up a carved porcelain pillow, and suddenly half a grain coupon fell out from the bottom of the pillow.

The stall owner smiled with narrowed eyes: "This item is destined to be with you, I'll give it a lucky number of 88."

When scanning the code to pay, Hannah found that the porcelain pillow was engraved with the number "1987.6" - the year their parents got married.

Later, this porcelain pillow became Lu Yong's cervical vertebrae therapy device, padded with a grape-patterned pillowcase embroidered by Hannah.

When taking a shortcut back to the inn, Lu Yong's cell phone flashlight suddenly went black.

Hannah touched the astrological marks on the bricks of the city wall: "According to the records of "The Pearl of the Palm of the Han-Fan Joint Time". " Before she finished speaking, Lu Yong covered her mouth: "Professor Xixia Wen, please shut up!"

When Yinhe fell on the wall, they stepped on the fluorescent mark of the archaeological team.

The purple arrow pointed to the inn, and Lu Yong suddenly picked up Hannah and said, "Hold Princess Xixia tight, I will break through the space-time barrier."

The vines in her hair brushed across his Adam's apple, and the tickle startled the night watchman's dog into barking.

When packing her luggage the next day, Hannah found a ceramic grape seal in the mezzanine.

Lu Yong was wrapping a piece of broken brick with rice paper: "I bought it on credit from the restorer last night. He said it contains the air from the Ming Dynasty that we breathe."

She turned the pottery seal and found the Xixia characters "长相守" engraved on the bottom.

When the taxi passed through the Qingyuanmen Bridge Arch, Hannah felt an extra hard object in her bag - a bronze bell pestle model that Lu Yong had secretly stuffed into her bag, with the date engraved on the handle. She pretended to put on makeup, but the mirror reflected the screen of his mobile phone in which he was secretly photographing her profile. In the viewfinder, the morning light was cutting through the ancient city gate, casting their shadows into a newly unearthed pair of terracotta warriors.

…………

After leaving Zhangjiakou, the two headed to their next stop, Langfang.

"Your cuffs are stained with cinnabar from the Guangxu period." Hannah's fingertips lightly twisted the sleeves of Lu Yong's rolled-up shirt. The locust flowers in front of the ceremonial gate of Dachang County Government fell all over the bluestone steps.

The canvas bag he was carrying across his body was bulging with edges and corners - it was the hotel notepad he had secretly hidden when he checked in his luggage. At this moment, the corners were lifted by the afternoon breeze, revealing the itinerary map he had sketched at Zhangjiakou Railway Station last night.

When passing through Jieshifang, half a tile suddenly fell from the eaves, and Lu Yong embraced Hannah and turned to avoid it.

The fallen pottery fragments broke into three pieces on the blue bricks, revealing the vague marks on the inner wall. Between the words "Renovated in the second year of Xuantong" there was a star map. When Hannah squatted down to piece it together, she found a curled copper wire hidden in the broken part - exactly the same as the pigeon whistle fragments found in the bricks of Xuanhua City three days ago.

"Please stay!" A cultural relic officer in a dark gray jacket came hurriedly, and his badge flashed the words "Intern Zhou Ming" in the sunlight.

He leaned over to pick up the fragments with an awkward reverence, "This tile was just reinforced last week. Those night owls must have been fighting on the roof again."

Hannah noticed that there was a locust leaf stuck to the back of the young man's neck, with light blue ink stains showing through the veins of the leaf, which looked very much like the marks on the back of their high-speed rail tickets last night.

A muffled creaking sound came from the wing room on the east side of the ceremonial gate, and a map of the county government during the Guangxu period was displayed behind the half-open lattice door.

When Lu Yong used a notepad to hold the door that was about to close, Hannah's scarf was blown into the room by the draft, and happened to cover the "gift room" sign in the sand table model.

The yellowed "Complete Book of Taxes and Services" behind the model suddenly turned the pages automatically and stopped at the entry "Silver for Craftsmen". The ginkgo leaf bookmark sandwiched between the pages raised dust and danced into tiny gold foil in the beam of light.

"There is a hidden movable type box in the ceremony room." An old administrator in a double-breasted jacket suddenly appeared outside the window, turning two patinated walnuts in his hands. "There are only three pairs of original copies of the Huiwu Jilue in the past ten years."

When Hannah turned around, she knocked over Lu Yong's canvas bag. The scattered sticky notes fluttered like white butterflies. One of them floated to the "household" position on the sand table, revealing the Langfang food map that he had outlined with a highlighter last night.

As the two men walked up the creaking wooden stairs to the filing cabinet, the slanting sunlight cut through the dust.

Hannah's fingertips brushed across the criminal files of the 30th year of the Guangxu period, when Lu Yong suddenly grabbed her wrist and said, "Look at this!" Next to the faded transcript of the "Theft of Official Willows Case" was a rouge-red fingerprint - which perfectly overlapped with the light spot reflected on her collarbone through the stained glass window at this moment.

A groaning sound of wooden boards being squeezed came from the west side of the attic. Among the twenty-seven wooden grids for movable type, only the grid for the character "回" was slightly raised.

The moment Lu Yong used the hotel key to pry open the drawer, Hannah's hair hooked on the adjacent "膳" character grid, and the entire wall of characters suddenly rose and fell like piano keys, pushing out the thread-bound books in the secret box.

When I turned to the "Tea Lesson" chapter, a cigarette label of Zhang Minguo fell off the interleaving page, and on the back was written in pencil "On the eighth day of the fourth month of the Dingchou year, I bought two yuan on credit from Zhaoji Tea House."

As the breeze carrying the scent of locust trees rushed into the pavilion, a gilded bookmark suddenly slipped out from between the books. Lu Yong reached out to catch it, but the bookmark brushed past his fingertips and fell into the skylight, where it was caught by the shadow of a swallow flying in from the side.

When she chased to the second hall platform, the swallow was perched on the plaque "A Bright Mirror Hanging High" and preening its feathers. A gold foil bookmark was stuck in the spider web at the right corner of the word "Mirror", reflecting the sweat on Hannah's neck when she looked up.

"Excuse me!" The restorer holding the rubbing box pushed open the door of the West Flower Hall. The linen bag hanging on the corner of the box brushed against the back of Lu Yong's hand, revealing half of a Luoyang shovel wrapped with a red string.

As Hannah leaned over to help pick it up, the wet ink from the rubbing left an imprint on the inside of her wrist, winding into the shape of the old course of the Yongding River.

While Lu Yong was flushing with mineral water, he discovered that the ink line actually matched the grape pattern he had traced on the Xuanhua city wall yesterday.

The sun was setting in the afternoon, stretching the shadow of the Liuke Gallery into the shape of a harp string.

Hannah was leaning against the pillar of the clerk's room and reshooting "Ya Shi Zhi". The camera suddenly caught the silhouette of Lu Yong behind the window lattice of the opposite punishment room - he was aiming an airplane folded with sticky paper at the beam of the household room, and the tip of the paper was stained with cinnabar that he had just touched.

At the moment when the paper plane hit the "Hu" plaque and startled a flock of swallows from the beams, Hannah's shutter froze the light and shadow magic: the light spot held by the flying swallow was exactly like the route arrow that Lu Yong drew on the bedside table in the hotel last night.

As dusk fell over Jieshifang, warm yellow spotlights lit up in the stele corridor on the east side.

Lu Yong was so focused on squatting and studying the rubbing of the "Exemption from Military Service Stele" that he knocked over the vertical display case with the back of his head.

Inside the shaking glass cover, the bronze weight from the Guangxu period almost fell over. When Hannah tried to save it, she pressed down the sign with her elbow, and the red fingerprints happened to cover the words "Weights one hundred and twenty pounds".

The security guard who came to check swept his flashlight over and cast a shadow of the bronze weight on the pink wall, which matched the outline of the hotel key card in Lu Yong's sweatshirt pocket perfectly.

As the lanterns of the night market lit up one after another, Hannah turned around in front of the screen wall of the county government office: "Today's biggest unsolved case——"

She pointed at the notepad sticking out of the side pocket of Lu Yong's backpack and asked, "How many time and space codes have you hidden?"

Lu Yong smiled and took out the piece of paper covered with arrows. On the back was a copy of the wood grain of the beams in the torture chamber, and their entangled fingerprints were embedded in the cracks.

On the way back, the taxi ran over broken locust petals, and half a piece of hemp rope leaked out of Lu Yong's sweater pocket - it was the binding thread of "Huiwu Jilue" in the secret compartment, which he replaced with Hannah's broken headphone wire.

In the rearview mirror, the eaves of the county government office gradually disappeared in the twilight, and his hand was covering her palm, with the scent of aged pine smoke and ink from deep in the wooden frame of the movable type still stained between his palm lines.

.........

The next morning.

"Your shoelaces are stained with rammed earth from the Yongle period." Hannah pulled at Lu Yong's worn canvas shoes. The wild roses at the base of the wall of the Sanhe ancient city were poking out from the cracks in the blue bricks.

The zipper of his cross-body camera bag was half open, revealing the map of the ancient city printed out at the hotel last night - the edge was stained with coffee, outlining the "Three Rivers and Eight Scenic Spots", and was now rustling in the morning breeze.

The breeze from the south city gate was filled with the scent of locust flowers, and the hem of Hannah's sun-protection jacket was blown into the drain hole by the wind.

Lu Yong lay on the ground and dug three times, and took out a piece of pottery jar wrapped with a red rope.

"A time capsule buried by the archaeological team in 1983!" He held up the muddy fragment and shook it towards Hannah. On the inside was engraved "Zhang Jianguo loves Wang Xiulan 1962.7.16" - the day when the city wall restoration project started.

"Be careful of mines." Hannah smiled and poked him in the back with her parasol, but the tip of the umbrella got stuck in the crack of the wall tiles.

Half a yellowed grain coupon was stuck on the back of the brick that was pulled out. Under the words "one catty" from 1972, there was a pencil written on it saying "buy vanishing cream for Xiulan who is repairing the city wall."

Lu Yong suddenly took out a lipstick and wrote the date on the back of the food coupon. The handwriting overlapped with the old words to form the amber of time.

When climbing up the enemy tower, Lu Yong suddenly squatted down to study the dents on the wall. "This is a bullet hole from a Type 1945 rifle," he stroked his fingertips over the mottled brick surface, "left by the Jizhong troops when they recaptured Sanhe in ."

Hannah took a closer look and found a few dark brown grains of sorghum embedded around the bullet hole - as if they were scattered by the soldiers when they were hungry.

"And this!" She suddenly pointed to the inside of the parapet and scraped away the moss with her fingernails, revealing a blurry mark with the words "Li Gousheng was here".

Lu Yong tried to hold back his laughter as he took out his cell phone's flashlight. The beam of light penetrated the gaps between the bricks and illuminated the counterattack declaration written on the wall next door: "Zhang Cuihua, down with Li Gousheng."

As the two were laughing and joking, there was a rustling sound on the wall, and a gray squirrel ran over with half a peanut shell in its mouth.

In the rubbing experience area of ​​the Cultural Relics Protection Institute, Lu Yong spreads rice paper on the "Sanhe County Chronicles" stele.

Hannah had just rolled the rubbing bag twice when she suddenly heard the shouts of someone selling sugar paintings outside the window.

The startled ink splashed all over the table and spread out on the front of his quick-drying shirt to form an abstract map - marking the "food red and black list" they drew in the hotel last night.

"This is an abstract version of the Three Rivers map." Hannah tried to hold back her laughter and wiped it with a wet wipe, but ended up smearing the ink into a grinning cartoon bun.

Cultural relics conservationist Lao Chen passed by with a camera in hand. At the moment the camera was frozen, Lu Yong was using his ink-stained finger to dot a mole on Hannah's nose. (End of this chapter)