The mound of gold in the basement wasn't in the form of ingots or coins—it had all been smelted into round disks.
Their surfaces were oxidized, covered in a thin layer of brown or blackish patina.
Satan picked up one of the gold plates and scraped at it a few times with his dagger. At once, a gleaming golden hue emerged from beneath the tarnish.
Martin gave him a look. "Satan, mind if I borrow that?"
Satan casually tossed the dagger over.
Martin caught it, spun it smoothly in his hand, and began cutting along the edge of a trunk buried in dirt. Once he found a gap beneath a corner of the lid, he wedged the blade in and pried upward.
The trunk was made of palmwood—treated to resist decay. Even after centuries, it remained intact.
With a few more prying motions, nails creaked loose, and Martin had the lid off in no time.
A strong smell wafted up—aged parchment, tinged with the sharp tang of lime dust.
He leaned in. Inside the chest was a neatly stacked collection of scrolls and books made of goatskin parchment. His face lit up with joy.
No doubt about it—these were the legendary "vanished tomes" from Timbuktu.
He grabbed a goatskin scroll—though calling it a scripture might've been more accurate—untied the fiber twine binding it, and unfurled a portion. The lines of ancient Arabic script were still clear and legible.
"Nature is the name given to both the entirety of existence and nonexistence. It is the knowable, the understandable, or the transcendent—an essence that can embody all things..."
Martin, fluent in nearly every language and script on the planet, had no trouble reading classical Arabic.
His eyes lit up in recognition. "This is On the Division of Nature by Johannes Scotus Eriugena!"
(Note: Johannes Scotus Eriugena, also known in Latin as Johannes the All-Loved, was an Irish philosopher of the Carolingian Renaissance. A master of Greek, he translated works of pseudo-Dionysius into Latin—most famously, The Divine Names. His own major works include On the Division of Nature and On Divine Predestination.)
Eriugena's most famous contribution was his "Ontological argument" for the existence of God—arguing that reason and faith were not in conflict but symbiotic.
To him, belief must submit to reason.
After skimming a few more lines, Martin carefully rolled the scroll back up and returned it to the chest.
Then he turned to look at the rest of the sixteen trunks, his eyes gleaming with delight.
These texts were the true treasures of the place. Gold had a price—knowledge was priceless.
Through these scrolls, one could trace the intellectual, cultural, and economic pathways of Europe, Africa, and the Arab world in that era.
And even setting aside their academic worth, their value as antiquities alone surpassed the entire pile of gold.
"Call everyone here. Stop searching the rest of the area. Focus on packing all of this up first," Martin ordered, visibly pleased.
He didn't notice that while he was absorbed in reading the scroll, a little creature in his backpack had almost wriggled completely free.
As he was giving instructions, two tiny paws suddenly pushed outward, and with a determined kick from its hind legs, the cub popped out and landed on the ground.
"Meow-oo!"
With that cry of freedom, the little lion cub took off sprinting like a maniac.
"Arthur, get back here!" Martin barked, but the cub was already gone.
"What the fuck!?" he muttered, stunned.
Snatching up his dagger, Martin rushed over to where the cub had disappeared. He looked down and saw a narrow, pitch-black crack in the ground—Arthur's cries echoed from within.
Martin stomped on the ground.
Thump, thump, thump.
A hollow echo answered back. The space below was empty.
He crouched down and pried at the floorboards with the dagger.
A square wooden panel popped loose.
"There's another basement beneath this one," Satan remarked, clearly surprised.
"Arthur!" Martin called out.
"Chiip chiip! Meow-oo!" came the muffled reply from below.
Without hesitation, Martin jumped down.
He had already scanned the structure with magic earlier—it was shallow, around two meters high and roughly ten square meters in size.
As he landed, something pounced on his legs.
Startled, Martin looked down—it was the frightened lion cub, clinging tightly and whimpering.
"Let's see if you'll still run off next time."
He scooped the little one back into his backpack, then finally looked around the space.
It was dim, but not dark enough to bother him.
There wasn't much in the basement—just a table, a chair, and on the table, a stone box.
Martin walked over, picked up the box, inspected it, then rotated the lid a few times before pulling it free.
Inside was a strange-looking fabric pouch.
Asbestos? he realized immediately.
No wonder it had survived over 600 years in pristine condition.
The pouch was slightly puffed out—something was stored inside.
Martin didn't open it right away. He searched the rest of the chamber first, then left with the cub in tow.
…
After a tough and careful extraction, all sixteen trunks had been loaded into the off-road vehicle. The vehicle's cargo area had been modified with a massive canvas canopy, large enough to hold everything from the lower chamber.
On the return journey, Martin finally opened the asbestos pouch.
Inside were two items:
One was a brilliant, golden book—a copy of the Quran written on gold leaf. What stunned Martin was that the script used wasn't Arabic... it was Classical Mongolian.
The second item was a travel journal, written on asbestos-paper sheets. The author's name was Rabban Sauma, and the journal was also written in Classical Mongolian—formatted in traditional vertical script, top to bottom, right to left.
Martin glanced at the golden Quran, then gently set it aside.
He began reading the journal.
"My name is Rabban Sauma, though I also have a Huaxia name—Sauma. I was born in the Eastern Capital of the Great Yuan—Dadu (modern-day Beijing)..."
"My father, named Xugan, was a patrol inspector in the capital district..."
"At age 30, I became a monk of the Church of the East, and in the monastery of Tuwin, I became well known throughout the Great Yuan..."
"Before long, a fellow monk from Shanxi's Huoshan—now called Dongsheng in Inner Mongolia—joined me in discipleship. His name was Markos..."
"In the 13th year of the Yuan dynasty (1276), our nation launched a war against the southern Song. It was also the beginning of my journey..."
—And so began the tale of Rabban Sauma: a Chinese-born Nestorian Christian monk, who would go on to become one of the first recorded Eastern envoys to the courts of Europe.
[GodOfReader: I'm too tempted to delete the paragraph above, but yeah nvm. it might be important later on.]