Chapter 38: The Lewis Chess Piece

Just as Liang En stepped onto the beach, a light drizzle began to fall from the sky. Although this kind of weather was quite common in England, it still prompted the tourists on the beach to leave.

For Liang En, this was good news. Even though he had paid for the permit to excavate on the island, he wasn't too keen on having an audience while he searched for treasures.

"According to records, those treasures should be hidden in a small stone chamber beneath the sand dunes," Liang En thought, pulling out the slender steel chisel he carried with him.

"In my previous world, these chess pieces were found by cows while grazing. This suggests that the chamber must be relatively close to the surface and covered with vegetation."

"If that's the case, there aren't many suitable spots in this bay. It shouldn't take more than a few hours to explore the entire area."

An hour later, Liang En used the probing rod in his hand to explore all the sand dunes in this not-so-large bay. He then narrowed down his destination to three specific dunes.

Because after inserting the probing rod about half a meter into these three dunes, he could clearly feel the presence of relatively large and solid objects inside.

Digging up all three dunes to inspect them wasn't a practical idea. So, to save time, Liang En decided to use his "Detection (N)" card.

The first "Detection (N)" card was wasted, as it didn't yield any response after he used it. This likely meant that the hard object in the sand dune might just be a large rock.

However, when Liang En moved to the second dune and used the card, an image formed in his mind of a space less than a meter deep underground, along with a glowing point within that space.

"My luck is truly on my side," Liang En exclaimed with excitement upon seeing the glowing point. A rush of joy surged through him. For him, this was the first national treasure he had actively located after gaining this supernatural ability.

With the location of the underground space confirmed, Liang En immediately took out a shovel and began to dig. As he removed layer after layer of topsoil, he unearthed traces of human disturbance.

For example, amidst the dirt, he found several fragments of seashells. Considering that this sand dune was some distance from the sea and elevated about seven or eight meters above the high tide level, the presence of these shells was clearly connected to human activity.

Due to the surrounding sandy terrain, Liang En had to dig a fairly large pit, big enough to prevent the sand from collapsing around his target.

As he worked on digging the pit, the rain gradually stopped. A few curious beachgoers approached to observe Liang En's work.

However, since he was only digging a pit at this point, the tourists watched for a while and then returned to playing in the water.

Interestingly, a local elderly man watched Liang En's excavation and offered him some advice. He mentioned that many treasure hunters with metal detectors had explored the area before, but they hadn't found anything.

After expressing his gratitude to the old man, Liang En continued to swing the shovel and dig downward. After all, in his understanding, this batch of relics didn't contain any metallic objects, so a metal detector wouldn't be of any use here.

Finally, after digging for nearly an hour, the shovel hit a hard object. Upon further cleaning, a stone slab with artificial carving marks appeared at the bottom of the pit.

This stone slab was very crudely carved, devoid of any patterns. It was even possible that someone had simply removed this stone from its original place and placed it here.

In the instant he saw this stone slab, Liang En felt his heart start to race. Not because he thought the rough stone slab held much value, but because it represented that his memories from another world were also applicable in this world.

After taking a few deep breaths to steady his emotions, Liang En began to dig downward along the edges of the stone slab. Soon, he realized he had come across a small ancient chamber.

The entire chamber was embedded within the sand dune. The people who had built it had made the walls and ceiling of the chamber quite thick to prevent the sand dune from collapsing onto it.

Although the stone slab above the chamber, which was less than a meter in diameter, could be pried open with force, Liang En decided to search for the entrance to the chamber. This was because he believed this location was a treasure cache rather than a burial pit, and the original depositor would likely have made the treasures easy to retrieve rather than sealing them off.

As he considered this, he scrutinized the small sand dune beneath his feet and became even more convinced. Despite its modest height, this dune was the farthest from the coastline among all the others.

The moment had come to open the chamber. Given that these artifacts had survived intact from the early 19th century to the 21st century without special preservation methods, the state of preservation within the chamber should be quite good and opening it wouldn't require any special tools.

With this in mind, Liang En exerted effort to move the large stone that was serving as the chamber's door and then pulled out a dim flashlight to shine into the chamber.

Inside the chamber lay a plethora of white sculptures of various sizes. After a quick scan with the flashlight, he quickly reached in and grasped the small sculpture that was emitting a faint light—his guide to the location.

In an instant, six cards appeared in Liang En's mind: a silver one, two copper ones, and three black ones. However, he didn't have time to inspect these new cards; his attention was fixed on the small sculpture in his hand.

The sculpture he held depicted a noblewoman in a robe, seated on a high-backed chair and wearing a crown on her head. What stood out was that the woman's right hand was raised to her cheek, as if she were suffering from a toothache.

Yes, the object Liang En now held was the Lewis Chess Piece, hailed as a British national treasure in his previous life. Specifically, this was the most famous among them, the Queen Chess Piece.

Of course, the posture of the sculpture wasn't meant to indicate toothache. In the tradition of antiquity, covering one's face with a hand was a symbol of contemplation, representing wisdom.

This detail further proved a point: during the medieval era when these chess pieces were crafted, royal women weren't merely decorative but were regarded as intelligent individuals.