While Lin Youde is bored in Germany, his subordinates all over the world are busy realizing his grand plans.

Photojournalist Iron Ball is one of them.

As part of the Lin family's propaganda plan, American journalist Snow is collecting news in the Persian Gulf.

"I couldn't believe it," he told the photojournalists who followed him, "and I always thought Iraq was all desert." ”

"Actually, I think so too."

As they spoke, the two were sitting on the water patrol plane of the African Army, flying along the small Yangtze River as the African Army said, and the military reclamation farm under the wings was endless.

"I got information from the meteorological department of the African Army that there has been a small increase in rainfall in the last two years, and I thought it was just a normal climate fluctuation, but now it seems that the pride of the meteorological experts of the African Army is not unfounded, and if there is so much green, it is not surprising that the environment will change because of this. After all, this is where one of the earliest human civilizations was born. ”

"Civilization will be born, does it mean that it was very humid at that time?" The photojournalist asked curiously.

"No, before the birth of the Two Rivers Civilization, it was a semi-arid climate." Snow immediately explained, "The early civilizations of mankind were born in semi-arid regions, not in humid climates with more fertile soils and abundant water. This is because those areas that are well watered are either covered with large forests or have a dense network of rivers and swamps, which early human civilizations had only stone tools and could not have cultivated at all. Human large-scale development of humid areas is after the popularization of metal tools, the Chinese iron tools popularized the earliest, so they began to migrate south from the Yellow River Basin two thousand years ago, thus maintaining civilization, although the Indians popularized iron tools late, they gradually migrated from the birthplace of the Indus River Basin to the wetter and more fertile Ganges River Basin in the Bronze Age. ”

Snow spread his hands: "But Babylon and Egypt are more miserable, and after having the bronze, I looked around and found no more fertile land to migrate." The Egyptians finally learned that there were fertile lands in Europe on the other side of the Mediterranean, but by this time the ancient civilizations of the Balkans had risen, and the Egyptians had lost the opportunity to migrate. Babylon was even worse, and until they were swallowed up by the desert, they didn't know where to go to find more arable land. ”

"But," the photojournalist said, "it at least shows that the valley of the two rivers could support an ancient civilization, doesn't it?" ”

"Perhaps, there are meteorologists who believe that the two river basins were more abundant in water than they are now at the beginning of Babylon's birth, but no one can come up with evidence to prove this, and can only come up with some ancient riverbeds as evidence that there was once a dense river network here."

"But now, the Chinese have turned the two river basins into vast tracts of farmland."

"Yes," Snow nodded, "the farming people are terrible. ”

"Look over there!" The photojournalist pointed to the underside of the wing, "That looks like an irrigation project." ”

"It's not what it looks like, it's an artificial irrigation canal."

As Snow spoke, the photojournalist picked up his camera and snapped it. In the sound of the shutter, Snow could be faintly heard muttering: "In just ten years, Chinese built such a water conservancy project here......"

"They're really natural builders."

The two Americans were admiring when the pilot's voice came from the cockpit: "We're about to land, and then you'll have to go in the African Army helicopter." ”

"Do you hear Snow, helicopter! We're going to call it the newest air vehicle of mankind! ”

"I heard it, I heard it clearly, don't shoot me like that, I heard it too."

With Snow's words, the seaplane roared and landed on the surface of the river that had been specially widened and deepened.

After landing on the pier, Snow jumped out of the plane with some eagerness, walked across the long dock, and climbed onto the riverbank. Two ugly-looking helicopters were parked on a wide, flat tarmac on the bank of the river.

"Armed?" Snow frowned slightly.

"The Arabs have been making a lot of trouble lately," the officer in charge of greeting Snow and his party immediately said in fluent English, "It's all the work of you Americans, you give the Arabs weapons, train them, and then send them to battle, and we are responsible for killing them, it's really a perfect genocide, the Americans naturally don't have to take responsibility, and we just fight back in self-defense and kill our attackers, which seems so reasonable, doesn't it?" So no one will condemn us, no one will have to face international accusations, no one will have to carry moral baggage, but the Arabs are still dying. ”

Snow looked at the African Army officer in front of him, his expression was very complicated, he was silent for a few seconds and then asked, "Is this a personal opinion?" ”

"Of course it's my personal opinion, and it is impossible for the official to hold such an opinion, right?" The officer shrugged his shoulders, "If you want me to say that we are each half of the responsibility in this matter, we need oil fields so we have to drive the Arabs away, and the Americans also want oil fields, so we need to use Arab lives to drive us away." ”

Snow bit his lip, then nodded, "You're right, it looks like it's true." But I'm not here to report on this, I'm more interested in your construction in the two river basins. ”

"And we want to show you what we've done in the valley." The officer made a gesture of please, and stepped back to get out of the way.

The helicopter's propellers were already spinning, and the wind swept across the ground, forcing Snow and his partner to lower their bodies and hunch over to the plane.

The machine-gun shooters on the plane grabbed Snow and dragged him onto the plane.

"Do you have to endure the wind every time you board the plane?" Snow asked casually.

"Of course," the machine gunner spoke English, but not as slippery as the officer just now, "every time, it's windy, whine." ”

As he spoke, the machine gun shooter gave Snow an honestly silly smile, but Snow actually liked this unpretentious smile.

"When are we going to take off?"

"Huh?" The shooter clearly didn't understand Snow's question.

So Snow slowed down his speech and asked word by word, "When will you take off?" ”

"NOW!" The shooter came with such a sentence.

Immediately after that, the plane lifted off the ground and into the air, and in the process the sound of the aircraft's engine could be clearly heard.

"It's been a lot of bumps." The photojournalist commented, "Is it going to be like this all the way? ”

"Maybe, just bear with it...... What's wrong? ”

The photojournalist pointed under the ass of the machine-gun shooter. Snow looked through his fingertips and saw that the machine gun shooter was sitting on top of a steel helmet.

"Why are you sitting on a steel helmet?"

"Huh?" I don't know if it was because the English was too bad, or because of the loud noise of the plane's flight, but once again the machine gun shooter didn't hear Snow.

"Why, do you sit on a steel helmet? Helmet! That's ......," Snow gestured with his hand, then pointed to the steel helmet under the shooter's butt.

"Ah, this one, it's to protect my EGG." The shooter came out in strange English, but Snow immediately understood what the EGG meant.

He laughed, as if he thought it was a joke, and the shooter laughed too, and the three of them laughed like that for a few seconds, and then Snow took off the steel helmet of the African Army that he had received when he came to the Persian Gulf and put it under his buttocks. Seeing this, the photojournalist hurriedly did the same.

"If EGG is good, people are good." The shooter also explained in his broken English, with a thumbs up.

In the first ten minutes of the flight, Snow saw the same scenery as he saw on a seaplane, but as the helicopter descended into the desert, the scenery began to change.

A number of separate two- and three-story bunkers can be seen in the desert.

"Those are military strongholds?" Snow asked, pointing to the buildings.

"That's the turret," the shooter understood Snow's words this time, "a turret, a platoon, the Arabs, there is no way to take the road." ”

Snow nodded, indeed, in his field of vision, a series of turrets were basically visible to each other, and Snow estimated that if there were artillery or large-caliber machine guns in the turrets, they could even support each other.

"Can't you fly closer and see?"

The shooter obviously understood this sentence, and he immediately held down his microphone and said a few words to the pilot in Chinese - Snow estimated that in the current noise, without internal calls and headphones, the pilot could not hear what was said later, in fact, he and the shooter were yelling at each other.

The plane then veered off course, approaching the road so that Snow could see the turret and the small courtyard that came with it below.

Snow saw the 88-mm cannon and the 40-mm Bofors, and he quickly summed up the pattern: the two-story turret and the three-story turret were estimated to be different in terms of level, and the three-story turret was equipped with a larger courtyard with curved guns in the yard. The two-story turret is generally equipped with 88 mm guns on the top of the turret.

There was really nothing the Arabs could do with such firepower, and Snow could already imagine the Arab cavalry suffering heavy casualties in these artillery fires.

Snow wanted to continue to observe the configuration of the turrets, and the planes left the road, and the Great Wall of turrets gradually left Snow's sight.

"Where the hell are we going?" Snow asked, confused.

"Go to a good place." The machine gunner squeezed his eyes at Snow as he spoke.

Snow's partner whispered, "I hope this good place isn't paradise." ”

"We're reporters hired by Vale's newspapers, we're our own people, and we'll be fine."

At this time, the red light next to the helicopter hatch came on.

"." The shooter said a Chinese word that Snow could understand, and then pressed the butt of the machine gun to his shoulder.

At this time, Snow also saw the reason for the shooter to curse.

A caravan of camels was walking in the desert – far from the Chinese farming areas, so the landscape was finally getting a bit of an Iraqi flavor.

Machine guns rang out.

The shooter continued to fire three or five shots, and each time he fired a succession, he shouted "grass mud horse", "grass mud horse", and "draft uncle", accompanied by the sound of machine guns, people and camels continued to fall, and the whole caravan scattered and fled.

"Shouldn't the target be identified before firing?"

"I don't need to!" The shooter replied loudly, "No Chinese will use camels to deliver goods, we, advanced!" Camels, backward! ”

"But maybe they are not hostile Arab caravans?"

"It's very easy to tell if they are guerrillas or not." The shooter stopped firing, turned his head and grinned at Snow, "Just fire at them, if they scatter and flee when they hear the gunshots, it must be Arab guerrillas; If they are calm when they hear the gunshots, they are well-trained Arab guerrillas. ”

Snow stared at the shooter, and it suddenly occurred to him that the man's honest, silly smile now looked a little scary.

He suddenly had the urge to interview the shooter, so he asked, "Have you killed a lot of people like this?" ”

"What?"

"Killing, a lot?"

“YEAH！ I killed the five Khan Zhuor (500)! It's all GOODKILL! ”

“…… Are there women and children in there? ”

"I'M NO SCHURE, BECAUSE YOU KNOW, THEY ALL HAVE THEIR HEADS WRAPPED AND THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME IN THE AIR, HAHAHAHA."

"What about children, children can be judged by their height."

"Maybe kill more than a dozen, I don't remember."

"How can you kill a child?"

"It's very simple," the shooter paused, and solemnly taught Snow, "when aiming, calculate a little more in advance, the child runs fast, hahahaha." ”

Apparently, the shooter misunderstood the meaning of Snow's HOW question here, thinking that Snow was asking how to shoot the child.

Snow licked his tongue.

"We are journalists hired by Vale." The photojournalist whispered a reminder to Snow.

"I know, I know, so I will go all out to report on the construction of the Chinese in Iraq, but I will use another pseudonym to report the other side of the Chinese army in Iraq."

The photojournalist seemed to try to persuade Snow, but in the end he stopped talking. He knew Snow's personality too well, and the things he decided were unlikely to change.

"We're almost there." The shooter suddenly shouted, "Ready, Yankee, you're going to be surprised." ”

Anyway, the ground under the helicopter's rotors suddenly "disappeared".

"Shet," Snow whispered, "I never knew there was such a rift here. ”

The rift valley below the helicopter is 30 to 50 meters deep and about a kilometer wide, which is certainly not comparable to the Grand Canyon in the United States, but Snow had never heard of such a rift in the depths of the Iraqi desert before.

Immediately afterward, Snow saw something that shocked him even more.

"Shet." He muttered quietly, "Is that ...... The remnants of the ancient Babylonian kingdom? ”

"Like," the shooter laughed, "the experts I've shipped in the last few weeks have said the word Babylon when they see it." ”

The photojournalist was already clicking and shooting, saying to himself as he took the film: "I don't know if I have enough film." ”

A few minutes later, the helicopter landed at the bottom of the rift valley.

Snow jumped out of the plane and ran to the officer who greeted him.

"Welcome, both," the officer held out his hand, "just call me Jack Chen." ”

"What is this, Mr. Chen?"

The officer did not seem surprised by Snow's eagerness: "Based on the initial excavations, we believe that this should be the mausoleum of the kings of the dynasty founded by the Sumerians. ”

Snow's partner frowned and asked, "Sumerian what?" Another name for Babylon? ”

Snow shook his head, apparently outside of his knowledge.

And the officer in front of him explained with a smile: "The Sumerians were the original masters of the two river valleys. ”

"So ......"

So this discovery will move the history of the two river basins forward, and historians have only speculated that there was a civilization that developed to a considerable distance before Babylon, but no evidence has been found, and many people believe that the Sumerians were invaders, and the Semites who founded Babylon were the orthodoxy of Iraq. But now the discovery of this mausoleum can prove that the earliest owners of the two river basins were Sumerians, and the Semites were invaders. ”

"This is indeed a very great discovery," Snow nodded repeatedly, "but we have been tasked with creating public opinion for the Chinese to occupy the two river valleys, and this archaeological discovery is ......"

"The Arabs, a branch of the Semites." The officer explained with a smile.

"Ah, I see." Snow nodded repeatedly, "I totally understand, so what you need is to remove the historical legitimacy of the Arabs' possession of the two river valleys?" ”

"Yes, that's it. We are outsiders, but so are the Arabs, and the Sumerians were the original owners. The Arabs are latecomers, and since the Arabs can occupy the two river basins as latecomers, then we Chinese can too. ”

"Sounds like a bandit." Snow shook his head slightly, "However, it doesn't seem to be a problem, I mean, if you think about it purely logically, this logic is self-consistent. ”

"Of course, we've always been very logical."

"So, can we visit the remains of this ancient civilization that predates Babylon?"

"Absolutely. I'm here to show you the way. By the way, due to the lack of stone and wood in the valley of the two rivers, the Sumerian buildings were basically built of mud, which is significantly different from the later Babylon and the later Arab Empire. ”

"I'll try my best." The photojournalist replied somewhat absent-mindedly, his attention was already completely absorbed by the magnificent mausoleum.

Snow looked up at the mausoleum, and he suddenly remembered a rumor that was widely circulated in Vale, so he asked, "Could it be that the discovery of this relic is also Mr. Lin'......?"

"No," the officer shook his head, "this time, Mr. Lin didn't give any instructions in advance, and I think it must have been a pure accident. ”R1148