In ancient times, if all the queens were faithful, then a siege would indeed last ten years.
———French poet
"Everyone, get ready, I'm going to take a picture!" A tour guide dressed in national costume stood in front of a tripod camera, dancing with his hands and feet.
A few tourists from various countries immediately smiled and stood in front of the ruins of a colonnade, ready to leave some photographic records of their trip.
The time was the evening of October 18, 2013. Giresun, a small city on the northeastern border of Turkey and adjacent to the Black Sea, is also a small tourist attraction. The undulating hills and valleys, the rough coastline, and the lush cherry and hazelnut trees are more tranquil and rural than the famous Crimea Peninsula across the Black Sea, which is full of warm sunshine.
Just as the tour guide was about to press the shutter, he frowned and saw a young man in the group of tourists who was always out of place. The man was about twenty years old, about 1.75 meters tall, from East Asia, with black glasses and black hair, a gray casual jacket, long but neat hair, and a pair of black-framed glasses. He looked like a typical college student. At this moment, it seemed that he did not hear the tour guide's invitation for a group photo. He was standing alone in front of a cliff that was tens of meters high, with his back to everyone, looking up at the cliff, as if in deep thought.
"Sir, please come and take a group photo. After it's done, we will board the bus and go to the hotel in the city to rest." The tour guide was not happy, but still politely approached and walked to the man's side.
Out of curiosity, other tourists also gathered around the cliff. The fracture was actually a giant statue, a common sight in Asia Minor - Anatolia, as the Turkish poet put it, "This region is like the head of a beautiful mare, sprinting from distant Asia and plunging into the azure Mediterranean." If compared to a palm, the wrist is the towering peaks in the east of Asia, the inwardly curved thumb is the Taurus Mountains, the palm is the undulating plateau and salt lake, the more westward, the more flat the terrain, it is a densely populated area of market towns, and finally, the fingers are the various rivers, gently extending into the Aegean Sea. The head of Asia and the belly of Europe, countless people or empires have left their footprints here, the chariots of the Hittites, the kings of Lydia, Greek philosophers, Persian emperors, Roman eagle flags, Byzantine monks, and Turkish herdsmen, according to Sir Hamilton of the Royal Geological Society in the mid-19th century - "Anatolia, even the smallest place, has traces of the ancient."
Seeing that the guests all came up, the tour guide then looked at the statue: a tall male figure, wearing a crown that stretched out like a scorpion, fully armored, holding a strange scepter in his hand, and a group of soldiers carved in a deliberately reduced size at his feet, either riding horses or carrying spears and bows, lining up in formation, charging towards the direction pointed by the man's scepter... The whole statue gives a sense of majesty and oppression of the emperor.
"Oh, everyone, notice, this is the legendary statue of Alexander." The expressive tour guide, also began to explain with his hands and feet.
"No, this is not a statue of Alexander at all." The young man turned back and denied the tour guide, which made him extremely embarrassed. But before the tour guide could argue, the young man pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, a proud expression, speaking fluently in Turkish, "The existing statues of Alexander the Great in the world are all images of young men without beards, but the master of this statue is full of braided beards, a standard Indo-European appearance - but his armor, including the armor and weapons of the soldier's relief, are a mixture of Greek Corinthian style and Persian style - look at his scepter!"
All the tourists were attracted by the man's words, and couldn't help but follow the direction of his finger, which made the tour guide even more embarrassed, "This scepter top is a sun, and there is also an inscription - Mithra, Mithra, yes, it's the name of the Persian sun god, this is the scepter that Mithra, also known as the descendant of the god, can have. So, the master of this relief is -"
The young man exhaled, paused, and then said word by word: "It was the first century BC, the ** monarch of the Black Sea, the rival of the Roman Republic, who claimed to be the descendant of the Persian Darius, the leader of the Greek Pontus, Mithridates VI!"
Then, he continued to speak quickly: "Yes, Giresun, the ancient Greeks called this place Karabi, which means a mountain range where cherry trees bloom, and the Romans called it the city of the friends of the gods, meaning this place is full of temples. King Pontus Mithridates turned this place into his palace, where everyone is standing, was originally a large palace, hunting ground and fortress..."
In front of this excited young man, the tourists were stunned, even if they were domestic tourists, their knowledge was limited to Alexander the Great, Cyrus, etc., who was Mithridates? They soon lost interest, one of the fat women raised her hand and said to the tour guide, "Can we go down the mountain and go to the hotel for dinner?"
At this point, it was the tour guide's turn to smile mockingly at the young man, asking, "Are you here for an archaeological expedition?"
The young man, a college student, ran his hand through his hair, looking unperturbed, and said, "I am a Chinese student from X University, my name is Lepidus, and I major in linguistics."
The tour guide shrugged his shoulders, clapped his hands, and turned to the other tourists and said, "Let's go to the bus first and gather there. Maybe Mr. Lepidus wants to stay here for another five minutes and continue to communicate with Mithridates." The surrounding tourists chuckled a few times and left the cliff one after another.
Only Lepidus was left alone, still lingering in place. The evening wind came slowly, and the sunset slowly filled the valley. The broken columns and reliefs were covered with gold, and the air was filled with a thin coolness. At this moment, Lepidus suddenly found that the giant statue of Mithridates, the sun god's scepter he was holding, and the sun symbol at the top of the scepter, seemed to be not ordinary stone carvings, reflecting the setting sun, and emitted extremely dazzling light. The light gathered into a divergent beam of light, making Lepidus unable to open his eyes. Soon the light came to Lepidus and enveloped him. Before he had time to be surprised, his body turned into billions of particles and disappeared!
Five minutes later, the impatient tour guide grumbled and walked to the cliff where Lepidus had just stood, and then was inexplicably shocked, opening his mouth wide.
Under the cliff, Lepidus had disappeared without a trace, not even a single hair was left, and there was no trace to be found within a radius of several miles, only a pile of clothes, trousers, and a wristwatch were left. The tour guide trembled and touched the pile of clothes with his hand, only picked up a pair of glasses, black-rimmed glasses - the shadow of dusk gradually covered the canyon, and the surroundings were filled with indescribable weirdness.
A few days later, Lepidus became one of the more than 5,000 tourists who disappeared in Asia Minor every year.