War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 1954 has a reason that sounds silly.
As April 20th drew closer, Wei Ran's home became increasingly lively as more and more girls arrived.

Fortunately, before the guest rooms at home were full, Sui Sui led the Golden Fleece crew to the film studio outside the city in a grand procession—they had already booked all the guest rooms there.

While the girls were busy attracting investment to start a mine, Dima, who had returned with Mr. Hans and his friends on a private plane, also began making intensive arrangements with Greva's help.

Out of some tacit understanding, whether it was Mr. Hans, or Miguel and others who arrived a little later, or even Nigel who returned from the United States and Qin Ershi who came from China, everyone deliberately did not visit Wei Ran after arriving in Kazan this time.

On April 20th, Sui Sui and a group of girls occupied the largest auditorium in the main building of the film studio.

The group, who arrived in Inta a day earlier on an Il-76 transport plane, also started their "coffee-themed" birthday celebration at the temporarily closed hot spring camp.

Just like right now, the studio is surrounded by a large number of gang vans, and several drones are hovering in the air.

Within a radius of several kilometers around the Inta Hot Springs camp, there were also a large number of hunters driving snowmobiles, tracked vehicles, or even monster trucks, and several An-2 aircraft were constantly circling overhead.

In contrast to the tight security at the two meeting venues, Wei Ran was currently sitting on a small fishing platform on the shore of Lake Kaban, where there was no cover whatsoever. He cast his fishing hook into the lake water, which was beginning to thaw, and waited for his prey to take the bait.

Although various lake fish that had been starving all winter were occasionally pulled up by the fishing hook, unfortunately, he didn't catch any of the prey he was waiting for.

"Boss, your friend has come to visit."

Just as he picked up another small, unidentified fish, Katyusha, the leader of the Baba Yaga security team who was staying at home, arrived on an electric scooter that appeared out of nowhere.

"My friend? Which friend?"

Wei Ran stood up and asked curiously, "Didn't all of his few scumbag friends go to Inta?"
"this"

As Katyusha spoke, she pulled out her phone and showed a photo that appeared to have been taken secretly.

He recognized them immediately with just one glance; the people who had come to his door were Li Yizhong and his girlfriend Lu Yue.

Why are these two here again?
Wei Ran muttered to himself curiously, then got up and handed the fishing rod to Katyusha, saying, "Help me fish for a while."

"give it to me!"

Katyusha took the fishing rod and said confidently, "I'm the best at fishing."

Wei Ran didn't take it seriously and rode back on the electric bike that appeared out of nowhere. He didn't even see the little Russian girl in pink behind him drop her fishing rod and skillfully pull out a stun gun and pull the trigger on the water.

Before he could even park the electric scooter, Li Yizhong and Lu Yue walked out of the library one after the other.

"Why didn't you tell me beforehand?" Wei Ran beckoned the young couple to follow him, asking as they walked next door.

"I already told Sui Sui, didn't she tell you?" Lu Yue asked curiously.

"She's been busy lately, she probably forgot. You guys came here for fun?"

Wei Ran was telling the truth. Sui Sui had indeed been very busy these past few weeks. Sometimes she didn't even have time to go home, and he had to go to the forest farm to spend the night with her in that large office.

"No, we're not here to play around."

Li Yizhong quickly explained, "Ever since that incident, Yueyue and I have been traveling by car in mainland China, and we also unexpectedly met a friend who claimed to know you."

"You know my friend?" Wei Ran looked at the two of them with suspicion. "Who is it?"

He said his name was Zhang Yang.

Li Yizhong explained with great delight, "He said that back in Ganzi, his car was only able to get out of trouble thanks to your and Uncle Jiang's help."

"Oh--"

Wei Ran gritted his teeth and matched the person the other person was talking about with someone he remembered meeting. Damn it, his reputation as a womanizer was all thanks to that bastard's propaganda.

"We got to know him because his car broke down."

As Lu Yue said this, she could barely contain her smile. "His car was stuck in the riverbed by the Yellow River."

“Our car got stuck while trying to rescue him,” Li Yizhong added.

"The excavator we called for rescue also got stuck," Lu Yue added.

"The bulldozer that the excavator operator brought in also got stuck."

When Li Yizhong said this, he could no longer hide the smile on his face.

Fortunately, all the cars were eventually pulled up.

Lu Yue said thankfully, "But Mr. Zhang's car has already been flooded."

"You flew all this way, did you just come here to show off your heroic feat of saving your grandfather, like the Calabash Brothers?"

Wei Ran shook his head, both amused and exasperated. He could tell that the young couple seemed quite pleased with the silly thing they had just mentioned.

"What kind of Calabash Brothers save Grandpa?"

When Li Yizhong saw the dog Belial running over, he instinctively shielded Lu Yue. "We came to find you because of something that Mr. Zhang mentioned to us. I guessed you would be interested, so we came over while we were getting the car repaired."

"Repair the car?"

As Wei Ran hugged the dog Belial, he asked curiously, "When did you get stuck in the car?"

Five days ago

Li Yizhong scratched his head. "Our car also had some problems after it was taken out, but some parts are not available on the mainland, so we decided to come here while waiting for the car to be repaired."

"Tell me, what is it that's worth making this trip for?" Wei Ran shooed the relatively friendly Belial aside.

"We met Zhang Yang in Yan'an, on the east side of Yan'an, on the west bank of the Yellow River, in a place called Panlongwan."

Before Wei Ran could answer, Lu Yue added, "We met Mr. Zhang when we were passing by there."

"Please continue."

As Wei Ran led them into the somewhat deserted house, he asked Liu Bofu, who had arrived early to brew tea, to help pour a cup of tea for each of them.

"Mr. Zhang is searching for treasure along the Yellow River, cough cough, camping, I mean camping."

Li Yizhong changed his tune halfway through his sentence, saying, "In short, he accidentally found a water bottle while camping by the Yellow River."

"Wait a moment"

Wei Ran put down the teacup he had just picked up, his expression strange as he bluntly revealed the politeness in his words, "Camping? Accidentally? How was it accidental?"

"Ever since Mr. Zhang met you and Brother Xia last time, he has been eager to find some war relics."

Lu Yue didn't care about decorum at all. "Then he accidentally found the kettle with a metal detector."

"That was really an accident," Wei Ran said, picking up his teacup again. "Continue."

“It was a Japanese officer’s canteen, the kind with a wine glass lid,” Li Yizhong added. “He found something in that canteen.”

"What is that?" Wei Ran asked instinctively.

At this moment, Li Yizhong exchanged a glance with Lu Yue, and then surprisingly opened his satchel and took out a water bottle with heavy oxidation marks.

"This is the kettle."

As Li Yizhong spoke, he took out several other items from his bag, saying, "These were all found in the kettle."

Looking at the few items laid out on the table, Wei Ran's attitude became much more serious.

He put down his teacup, took out a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket and put them on, before picking up the Japanese officer's canteen.

Besides numerous dents and scratches, the kettle was also engraved with many "正" characters.

Fortunately, although the kettle looked rather pitiful, it wasn't actually damaged at all.

Turning it over, he saw a hand-engraved five-pointed star and the characters "August 1st" next to it on the other side of the kettle. In addition, he saw the name "Wang Cheng" below the five-pointed star and the characters "August 1st".

Carefully unscrewing the glass lid, I found that instead of a wooden stopper, there was a rubber stopper that looked like it was made from a car tire.

Wei Ran gently shook the kettle and tried to pour some out, but there was nothing inside.

"The first thing put in here was coarse salt, which has already clumped together."

Li Yizhong added, "I was worried that the salt inside would cause trouble when it crossed the border, so I cleaned it all out, but I didn't throw away the salt. It's still in the hotel where we're staying in Yan'an."

"What color salt?" Wei Ran looked up and asked a seemingly insignificant question.

"What's wrong with the earthy color?" Li Yizhong asked after giving his subconscious answer.

"Where was this found?" Wei Ran asked, shaking the kettle. "Was there any water inside at the time?"

"Right on the riverbank, on the west bank."

Li Yizhong explained, "At that time, the lid of the kettle was completely rusted shut, including the rubber stopper. It took us a lot of effort to pull it out."

"No water entered the room at the time."

Lu Yue added, "Mr. Zhang used an action camera to film the entire process of finding the kettle and opening it."

"Why didn't he come?" Wei Ran asked as he put down the kettle.

“He thought the airfare was too expensive,” Li Yizhong said, scratching his head. “He’s always been traveling on a budget.”

"Let me look at some other things."

As Wei Ran spoke, he looked at the other items on the table, which looked particularly strange.

A patterned silver hairpin, a deformed bullet, and a string of Japanese soldier identification tags.

This string of identification tags was strung together with a short, shoelace-like cord to form a bracelet-like loop. I counted about twenty of them in the loop. Among these metal pieces, a few appeared to have been deformed after being hit by bullets.

"When Zhang Yang found them, the canteen was wrapped in a canvas cover. The string of Japanese dog tags was in the lining of that canvas cover, and the hairpin and bullets were inside the canteen."

"Where's the canvas cover?" Wei Ran pressed.

"That canvas cover is badly torn."

Lu Yue added, "We were worried about it getting damaged on the way, so we didn't bring it, but we took a lot of photos."

Li Yizhong scratched his head. "Um, Brother Wei, are you interested?"

"You want to find this?" Wei Ran picked up the kettle again and glanced at it. "The royal city?"

"Uh-huh!"

Lu Yue nodded repeatedly. "That Mr. Zhang said that he also wanted to be on TV, but if he could find a job, he would be satisfied even if he couldn't be on TV. Also, he asked us to apologize to you on his behalf."

"Apologize? What are you apologizing for?"

"He said he shouldn't have spread your nickname so casually, and he even spent 1,000 yuan of his own money to buy Douyin's 'Add' service for traffic."

Lu Yue had no intention of keeping Zhang Yang's name a secret at all; "He also said that guy is a frequent patron of brothels."

"Stop, stop, stop, let's not talk about this anymore, Yi Zhong, control your wife."

Feeling extremely embarrassed, Wei Ran quickly stopped the somewhat naive girl from sincerely apologizing on behalf of others, asking, "Do you have any other clues?"

“There are no other clues,” Li Yizhong shook his head. “These are all we have.”

"This used to contain soil salt."

Wei Ran thought for a moment and said, "Let alone soil salt, even refined salt nowadays is prone to clumping, which is why we changed to a rubber stopper."

After a brief pause, he picked up the hairpin and examined it. "I suspect this hairpin was also used to extract clumps of salt."

"But why use a hairpin?" Lu Yue asked, puzzled.

"do not know"

Wei Ran shrugged. "These are all just my guesses. Maybe they're for emergency use so I can buy salt."

"Brother Wei, keep guessing," Li Yizhong quickly said.

"You can recognize this bullet just by looking at its rear end; it's the warhead of the Arisaka bullet used by the Japanese Type 38 rifle."

Wei Ran picked up the bullet and weighed it in his hand. "This kind of bullet has a high penetration depth, but poor stopping power. In other words, it's unlikely that this bullet was dug out of someone's body."

And given how badly it was damaged, I'd guess it was probably a stray bullet that flew from a distance and hit something quite hard, which is why it survived.

As he spoke, he picked up the string of Japanese soldier tags and attached the bullet and several pieces of metal that had been deformed by the impact together.

Sure enough, although it wasn't a perfect fit, it seemed to be just like that.

"So it's something like a lucky bullet?" Li Yizhong pressed.

"This possibility cannot be ruled out."

Wei Ran said, "It is placed in a kettle and can stir the soil salt with movement to prevent it from clumping. I guess that is probably one of its uses. Of course, these are still just my guesses."

"So, is it possible to find that Wang Cheng?" Lu Yue pressed.

"It will take time, and I'm not sure if we can find it."

Wei Ran asked, "Is there any necessary reason for you to do this?"

There's a reason that sounds really silly.

Li Yizhong gave a simple and honest smile, "Grandpa Crazy has finally gone home, but we are greedy and want to send more veterans home."

"I forgot to mention that Ah Zhong and I both joined the CBI family tracing team."

“That’s right, so we joined the family-finding group.” Li Yizhong nodded happily and innocently.

Lu Yue proudly pointed to the Velcro armband of the family-finding team on her arm, "The two of us serve as volunteer photographers in the family-finding team, responsible for taking family photos of the veterans we find, and also continuing to take photos of the mainland for the island to see."

"So you guys."

“We went to Yan’an to send the ashes of an old soldier home. His ancestral home is in Linfen, which is not far from Yan’an, so we decided to go to Yan’an first.”

Li Yizhong scratched the back of his head again to relieve his inexplicable tension. "I didn't know if we were qualified to do this, and then we ran into Zhang Yang on the way."

We met because we drive the same car, and then he recognized Yueyue and me, saying he had seen us on the news.

He also said he knew you, and then, after learning what we were planning to do, he decided to come with us.

"Later, he got stuck in the car, found the kettle, and then they talked about how maybe you could find its owner through the kettle."

"I guess this is fate."

Li Yizhong said, "So I want to try and see if I can ask you for help one more time. Just in case, just in case, this is also a crazy old man who hasn't gone home, we can give him a ride on our way."

“That’s not some silly reason,” Wei Ran said with a smile, shaking his head.

“Zhang Yang said the same thing,” Li Yizhong said with a big smile. “He also wants to join the family-finding group.”

I'll give it a try.

As Wei Ran spoke, he threw the deformed bullet into the spout of the kettle, making a soft "clang" sound.