Chapter 144: The Golden King and the Secret Treasure

Chapter 144: The Golden King and the Secret Treasure

Dark had no idea Emma could uncover the murals' origins in such a short amount of time.

She found a partial insignia on the edge of one of the murals, then restored it with the help of a senior student.

Using this insignia, she pinpointed the murals' possible era.

It was also thanks to the library's thorough documentation that she was able to cross-reference the era and find the correct historical accounts.

The murals originated from the Hyper-Ancient Era, four epochs ago, and depicted a complete story.

Emma had transcribed the story into her notebook.

Dark took the notebook and flipped through it carefully, then couldn't help but hesitate: "The Fall of the Golden Kingdom?"

"Yes," Emma mused. "Even before I found these murals, I was already researching information related to the Golden Kingdom, which is why I made such quick progress."

As she spoke, she picked up a book from nearby and handed it to him.

Dark took the book and saw it was a novel titled The Golden King and the Secret Treasure.

Dark had long noticed that Emma sometimes read novels and biographies. This book, The Golden King and the Secret Treasure, was one she had been reading even before Halloween.

"So this is why those eight murals appeared in the secret passage?"

Dark briefly flipped through the book, a hint of melancholy suddenly washing over him.

This novel told a rather popular adventure story, set during an era of a gold rush.

Someone discovered gold-laced sand in the desert, and news of it attracted countless prospectors.

The protagonist, Josiah, from the slums, was one of them.

Josiah's mother had died of illness because they couldn't afford medicine.

Watching his mother's eyes close forever in pain, Josiah developed an intense longing and obsession with money from then on.

He stole, gambled, and robbed, gradually falling deeper into an abyss.

When news of the golden sand spread, Josiah didn't hesitate to join the frenzied ranks of prospectors.

The golden sand gushing from beneath the earth made countless people rich overnight.

Slaves, fine wines, estates...

Everything imaginable was easily acquired.

Josiah tirelessly traveled between the desert and the settlements, immersing himself in revelry day and night.

Then, one day.

The desert, from which the golden sand had flowed, suddenly collapsed, and all the prospectors fell into an ancient city.

That city was the Golden City, the last capital of the Golden Kingdom.

And the King of the Golden Kingdom lay forever within the Golden City.

Surviving archaeologists identified the inscriptions at the collapsed site, informing Josiah and the other prospectors that the Golden King had buried endless treasures in his mausoleum—that was the secret treasure!

To find the Golden King's secret treasure and become the new Golden King, Josiah and the prospectors were swallowed by immense greed, venturing deeper into the city unprepared.

Thus began the story.

As for whether Josiah ultimately succeeded in obtaining the treasure or was forever lost underground?

Dark hadn't read the ending.

He put down The Golden King and the Secret Treasure and picked up Emma's notebook again.

The notebook contained the story transcribed from the murals, namely "The Fall of the Golden Kingdom." There were a total of eight murals.

They employed a rather abstract style of depiction.

First Mural: Tattered commoners excavating cartloads of ore from a mine. The ore was actually gold. It depicted miners extracting ore from the mine.

Second Mural: A shirtless blacksmith forging the ore into standard square bricks. This was actually the casting of gold bricks!

Third Mural: A cloth-clad merchant selling block after block of bricks to nobles. In reality, it wasn't a merchant, nor were they ordinary nobles, but an architect and ministers. The ministers collecting the gold bricks symbolized the King's command.

Fourth Mural: Nobly dressed figures using the bricks to stack a tower on an altar. Under the King's command, the ministers began constructing a Golden Tower. The "altar" symbolized that the Golden Tower was being constructed for sacrificial rites, or rather, the entire Golden Tower was the offering!

Fifth Mural: Tens of thousands of humans praying for the descent of some entity beneath the altar. People prostrated themselves before the Golden Tower, commencing the ritual.

Sixth Mural: A colossal, shimmering beast emerging from a black hole in the sky during the ritual. The Golden Beast God responded to humanity's offerings, awakening from its slumber.

Seventh Mural: The ferocious, gluttonous beast roaring and devouring all offerings and humans. Everything would become an offering.

Eighth Mural: Human blood and corpses forming a bizarre pattern on the ground. Only death is eternal!

The story itself was quite simple: the King at the time summoned a god, only to be devoured by it.

The so-called "god" was originally a respectful term coined by humans for individuals far superior to themselves.

Whether it was a humanoid, intellectual god, or a bestial, cruel god, they were all gods.

In the Hyper-Ancient Era, due to gold's preciousness and imperishability, humanity linked it to "eternity," and established the equation "Gold = Eternity."

The Golden King, possessing infinite wealth, followed this equation, building a tower of gold and offering it as a sacrifice in exchange for eternal life.

But clearly, he failed.

And ultimately led to the downfall of the Golden Kingdom!

Emma enthusiastically presented her insights:

"The Golden Kingdom has another name in historical records: the Eternal Kingdom! So-called Alchemy—the refining of gold—is the pursuit of eternity, the pursuit of immortal life!"

"The Golden King is referred to in many texts as the earliest Alchemist. He refined gold to seek immortal life; the Golden Kingdom was merely a byproduct of his research process."

"The Golden Kingdom was originally founded on desire, and ultimately, it was destroyed by desire."

"The Beast God depicted in the murals might not necessarily be a true god; it could also be the embodiment of desire."

"And the essence of this entire set of murals is the very last one!"

"I suspect it's an Alchemy Array!"

"The Golden King and the Secret Treasure, the Fall of the Golden Kingdom, the earliest alchemist, the Golden King, and that last mural, an alleged Alchemy Array formed by human blood and corpses."

Dark couldn't help but ponder.

When he had copied the murals in the secret passage, he had already found that eighth mural particularly bizarre, which was why he had sketched it with the utmost effort, rendering it in extreme detail.

But even so, attempting to restore a complete Alchemy Array from a single mural would still be an immense undertaking.

It could even serve as a lifelong academic project for an entire academic career!