Chapter 144 The Gold King and the Secret Treasure
Dark didn’t expect that Emma could really find the origin of the murals in such a short period of time. She found a broken mark in the corner of a mural and then restored the mark with the help of a senior sister. She then estimated the age of the murals based on the era in which the mark was used, and was then able to figure out the history of the murals thanks to the complete historical records available in the library.
The murals were from the super ancient time four eras ago and it described a complete story.
Emma excerpted the story in a notebook.
After Dark flipped through the notebook carefully, he couldn't help asking in confusion, “The destruction of the Kingdom of Gold?"
"Yes." Emma pondered, "In fact, before I found these murals, I was already looking for information related to the Kingdom of Gold, so the progress was fast." While saying that, she handed over another book.
Dark took a closer look at the book. It was a novel called ‘The Gold King and the Secret Treasure’.
Dark has long noticed that Emma would sometimes read biographies. This ‘The Gold King and the Secret Treasure’ was the book she read before Halloween.
Dark flipped through the book a little, suddenly a little stunned. "Is this the reason why the eight murals appeared in the secret passage?"
This novel was a relatively popular adventure story, set in the era of a certain gold rush.
Someone found sand mixed with gold in a desert and after the news came out, it attracted countless gold diggers.
Joshua, the protagonist from the slum, was one of them.
Joshua's mother died of illness because she had no money to buy medicine.
Seeing his mother closing her eyes forever in pain, Joshua developed a strong desire and obsession with money ever since.
He stole, gambled, and committed robberies, gradually failing into the depths of immorality.
After learning the information about the discovery of golden sand in a desert, Joshua joined the frenzied gold rush without hesitation.
The golden sand gushing from the ground made countless people rich overnight.
Slaves, wine, manors...
Everything imaginable became easily available.
Joshua traveled tirelessly between the desert and the market town, immersed in this carnival day and night.
Until one day.
The desert gushing out the golden sand suddenly collapsed, and all the gold diggers fell into an ancient city.
That city was the City of Gold, the last capital of the Kingdom Of Gold and it was in this very city that the Gold King, the king of the Golden Kingdom, eternally rested.
The surviving archaeologist studied the inscription on the area they fell and told Joshua and the other gold diggers that the Gold King had buried endless treasures in his mausoleum, and this was the secret treasure!
In order to find the Gold King's secret treasure and become the new generation of Gold King, Joshua and the gold diggers who were swallowed up by huge greed went deep into the city unprepared.
...
That was how the story began.
As for whether Joshua finally succeeded in obtaining the treasure, or if he was permanently lost under the ground.
Dark didn't read to the end.
He put down ‘The Gold King and the Secret Treasure’ and picked up Emma's notebook.
The notebook had excerpts of the story described in the murals, that was, "The Fall of Golden Kingdom".
There were a total of eight murals.
They were drawn in a more abstract depiction method.
In the first mural, it was the ragged poor people excavating large amounts of ores from a mine.
The ores in the mural were actually gold.
The second mural was a half-naked blacksmith forging ores into standard square bricks. The square bricks here were gold bricks
In the third mural, it was merchants in commoner clothes selling baskets of square bricks to nobles.
In fact, they were neither merchants nor ordinary nobles. They were actually architects and officials.
Since it was officials that came to collect the gold bricks, it meant that this was the king's order.
In the fourth mural, nobles in rich clothes used square bricks to build a tower above the altar.
Under the orders of the king, the officials began to build the golden tower. The golden tower here was the ‘altar’ built for a sacrificial ritual. Or maybe, the entire golden tower was a sacrifice!
In the fifth mural, thousands of humans were praying under the altar for the coming of a being.
People prostrated in front of the golden tower and started the sacrificial ritual.
In the sixth mural, the shining giant beast emerged from the black hole in the sky during the sacrificial ritual.
The golden beast god responded to the sacrificial ritual of human beings and woke up from a deep slumber.
In the seventh mural, the golden beast god roared and devoured all sacrifices and humans.
Everyone and everything became sacrifices.
In the eighth mural, human blood and corpses formed a strange pattern on the ground, seemingly representing eternal death!
...
The story itself was very simple. The king at that time called God for a certain purpose, but only to be devoured by God in the end.
The so-called "God" was originally a title created by human beings for individuals far stronger than themselves.
Whether it was a human-shaped intellectual god, or a beast-shaped ferocious and cruel god, they were all gods.
In super ancient times, because of the preciousness and immortality of gold, human beings linked it with ‘eternity’ and constructed the equation of ‘Gold = Eternity’.
The Gold King, who had infinite wealth, followed this equation and built a tower of gold and offered it as a sacrifice in exchange for eternal life.
But obviously, he failed.
And finally led to the demise of the Kingdom Of Gold!
...
Emma excitedly shared her insights:
"The Kingdom of Gold had another name in historical records, it was the Kingdom of Eternity!"
"The Gold King is referred to as the earliest alchemist in many documents. He refined gold in pursuit of eternal life, and the Kingdom of Gold is only a by-product of the research process."
"The Kingdom of Gold was originally a Kingdom built on desire, and ultimately it was destroyed by desire."
"The beast god depicted in the murals was not necessarily a real god, but may also be the embodiment of desire."
"And the essence of the entire set of murals is this last mural!"
"I suspect that it's a magic refining circle!"
...
"The Gold King and the Secret Treasure, the demise of the Kingdom of Gold, the earliest ancient alchemist Gold King and a suspected magic refining circle made of human blood and corpses." Dark couldn't help but wonder.
When he copied the murals in the secret passage, he felt that the eighth mural was very strange, so he put the greatest effort into copying, and the description was very detailed.
But even so, it was still a huge project to restore a complete magic refining circle from a set of murals.
It could even be an entire academy subject on its own!
