10 Explore Mars Batchi People I

Hearing Cotton's question, Lu Hua blinked blankly and said, "The author of this book? Haven't we already known that for a long time? His name is Mars Bart."

Cotton said, "What I mean is, what kind of person is this Mars Bart? Think about it—if he possessed the same abilities as the great prophet Nostradamus, someone so extraordinary couldn't have gone entirely unrecorded in history, right? Why is Nostradamus a household name, while Mars Bart, from the same country and supposedly with the same supernatural abilities, is completely obscure?"

"Now that you mention it, it really is quite strange," Sean said, frowning. "Why did Mars Bart hide the years in the 'page numbers' of his prophetic poems, yet cleverly hint at the time and place of events within the verses themselves? What's the purpose of such a roundabout approach? And why does every poem have to be expressed in such an obscure and difficult-to-understand way? Some of them could clearly have been written more plainly—if he didn't want anyone to understand them in the first place, why bother writing these poems at all?"

"Well, I actually had the same feeling when I was translating them," Lu Hua said. "It seemed to me that the author was in a state of deep hesitation and internal conflict when writing these poems. He wanted to reveal the content of his prophecies in the verses, but for some reason, he felt compelled to choose a subtle and veiled form of expression. It's as if… there was an emotional struggle between wanting people to know and fearing that they might know. Why would that be?"

Lancy said, "What could he be afraid of people finding out? The end of the world? But that doesn't quite make sense—2012 was far in the future from the time he lived; he had no reason to worry about that. Besides, that 'doomsday prophecy' is probably the most straightforward poem he ever wrote—it doesn't seem like he was trying to keep it hidden at all."

Cotton, deep in thought, said, "Maybe this collection of poems contains an even greater secret… something about how this author came to know these 'heavenly truths.' That's why he included warnings and hints at the very beginning of the book—'Prohibit reading humanity '!"

Sean gestured in the air with his fingers and said, "I get it. Our next step is to find information about this author—maybe by uncovering the mystery of his identity and how he gained knowledge of these 'heavenly truths,' we can make a proper judgment about his 'doomsday prophecy'!"

Lu Hua felt as though his brain had become a rusty gear that wouldn't turn. Troubled, he asked, "But how are we supposed to look for information about this Mars Bart? Are we really going to search through books in the library one by one? You know, finding information about someone completely obscure is even harder than finding a needle in a haystack!"

Cotton widened his eyes in astonishment and stared at him. "Lu Hua, why do I sometimes feel like you're still living in the Stone Age? Just type the name into the search bar on a computer! Why not make use of the free resources on the internet?"

"Ah, right, we could try looking it up online." Lu Hua perked up at the suggestion but maintained a level-headed tone. "But if it's someone too obscure, we might not find anything online either."

"Well, let's give it a shot anyway!" Sean walked over to the desk and opened his laptop.

Lu Hua double-checked the name on the cover of the poetry collection and typed "Mars. Barthes" into Baidu's search bar. Almost instantly, a message popped up:

Sorry, no pages were found related to "Mars. Barthes."

Sean thought for a moment and said, "Try typing in 'Mars. Barthes' the phonetic translation of the name, and see if anything comes up."

Lu Hua quickly typed the characters into the search bar. This time, several related web pages popped up. The four of them huddled together to check carefully, only to find that the pages introduced various individuals named "Mars" or "Bart," including soccer stars, fictional characters… and even a laughable product called "Mars Fitness Tea."

They patiently went through over ten pages of results, only to finally confirm that their "Mars Bart" was nowhere to be found.

Lu Hua closed the browser in disappointment and sighed, "See? I told you, this person is too obscure. There's nothing about him online."

Lancy said in disbelief, "That's impossible! A person as extraordinary as this—can there really be no historical record of him at all?"

Lu Hua replied, "Maybe there is, but the way we're searching—just relying on a name—clearly isn't working. The search results will only show the most famous people with that name. If someone is too obscure, they simply can't be found this way. Sigh… The library does have some rare historical reference books, but the problem is we'd have to go through them one by one, page by page. Who knows how long it would take—maybe years, maybe never!"

Cotton lowered his head and thought for a moment before saying, "If we narrow down the scope of our search in the library, it might not be so difficult."

Lu Hua asked, "How do we narrow it down?"

"If we can figure out roughly what era this Mars Bart lived in, we could limit our search to books or records from that time period. That would make things much easier."

"But the problem is," Lu Hua said, "this poetry collection doesn't have any publication information or release date. There's no way for us to know what era Mars Bart lived in."

Cotton pondered for a moment, then grinned and said, "I think he must have been someone from medieval Europe—at the very least, he lived around the year 1500."

The other three stared at Cotton in astonishment. Sean asked, "How can you be so sure?"

Cotton pointed to the old poetry collection in Lu Hua's hands. "I figured it out from that."

"What? No way!" Lu Hua's face twisted in disbelief. "You mean you can estimate what year it's from just by looking at the yellowing of the paper? Have you secretly studied archaeology or something?"

Cotton lightly waved a finger and laughed, "Who said I was estimating based on the paper?" He reached out and took the poetry collection from Lu Hua's hands, opening it to the first page. Pointing to the word "Cinq" at the bottom, he said, "I figured it out from this. Lu Hua, you told us that 'Cinq' means 'five' in French, right?"

Lu Hua adjusted his glasses and nodded, saying, "Yes, that's right."

"We can do a simple logical deduction," Cotton said. "Imagine that the book we found is the fifth in this collection of poems, and it covers events from 1913 to 2012, a full century. Then we can infer that the previous four books likely follow the same pattern—each one predicting events for a century, which clearly shows the author's careful planning. By working backwards, we can conclude that this author can't be someone from after 1512. Otherwise, how could this collection still be called a 'prophetic anthology'?"

"Ah! Cotton, you're so clever!" Sean exclaimed. "That means we just need to look for Mars Bart in books about the 15th century!"

"I told you, the library is the key to solving this!" Lu Hua suddenly stood up from his armchair. "What are we waiting for? Let's go!"