Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

Because of the discovery of the cave, Liang En and the others started digging quickly, but Jeanne stopped during the digging process. "I think some of the caves may not have been used as treasure hiding places."

"Isn't it a treasure hiding place?" Liang En took the stone she handed over from Jeanne's hand, then looked at it carefully and found that it was a piece of malachite.

Malachite is an indicator stone for copper mines, which means that where this stone is found, some copper mines are often found. Considering that Sweden itself is rich in copper, these mines are likely to be privately dug copper mines.

Before the Age of Discovery, the entire Europe had been in dangerous deflation. For this reason, people in Europe often had to barter.

Even for most lords, the currency on hand is never enough, and the taxes collected from the people of the territory are basically various kinds of physical objects instead of currency.

The important reason for the monetary tightening is that Europe has traditionally preferred to use gold and silver to make currency. After the fall of the Roman Empire, only a few places used copper or copper alloys to mint currency.

However, one of these very few places includes Nordic Sweden. Because Sweden is located in remote Northern Europe and lacks easily accessible gold and silver mines, it was impossible to mine these precious metals by itself before the industrial age, nor could they obtain them through trade.

Fortunately, this area is rich in copper mines, so successive Swedish kings have a tradition of casting copper coins as auxiliary coins. Naturally, the copper mines are under strict control.

But when copper is money, various private coin minting behaviors emerge in endlessly. For example, small copper mines such as this, which the official cannot know at all, provide sufficient raw materials for this kind of counterfeiting.

As the excavation progressed step by step, Liang En and Jeanne discovered that after peeling off a layer of stone on the surface of the quarry, there was a small copper mine underneath.

Considering the topography of this place and the reserves of copper mines, anyone who wants to mine this place on a large scale will lose money, but nearby residents can make some money through small-scale mining.

After spending more than an hour clearing out a mine entrance, Liang En discovered that it was a very small mine that could only accommodate one person crawling in.

And this is a characteristic of many private mines of that era, that is, after the other party finds the vein, they will only dig a dangerous but not large mine along the vein.

"This doesn't seem to be what we are looking for -" Joan of Arc looked at this mine and shook her head, because this mine only had traces of copper mining and no other traces.

Although the caves they spent time cleaning out were not related to treasure hiding, it also allowed them to determine the characteristics of these local copper mines, so Liang and En's next work went much faster.

For most caves, they now only need to open a small hole for observation to determine whether the cave is an original mine.

"This cave is a little different." Just when it was getting dark, Joan of Arc dug a new cave, but it was different from the previous caves. The sharp-eyed Joan of Arc discovered that there were carvings on the wall of this cave. A cross like no other.

They had seen many crosses carved on cave walls in those mines before. Considering that digging in such crude caves is obviously a high-risk behavior, the miners would naturally choose a method similar to carving crosses. Get spiritual comfort.

But under normal circumstances, the crosses carved by miners are basically Latin crosses, which are the most common and vertical crosses used by churches today.

But the cross carved on the wall of this cave is a Knights Templar cross, which is a cross with four arms of equal length and a short line perpendicular to the arm at the top of each arm.

"It seems that this should be what we are looking for." After seeing the cross, Liang En's face showed a smile, and then he and Joan of Arc cleaned out the cave.

It was already dark when they completed the cleaning work, but this did not hinder their enthusiasm, but after carefully observing the cave with a flashlight, they felt a little disappointed.

The reason for disappointment is that the entire cave is very shallow, less than two meters deep at most, but the entrance of the cave is very large, actually 1m5 wide and 2 meters high. It is more like an alcove than a cave.

"It's a pity that this niche is empty." Joan of Arc sighed as she stood at the entrance of the cleaned cave. Because the cave was so small, the situation inside could be seen at a glance.

"No, there are very valuable things in this cave." After shining a flashlight into the cave, Liang En showed a smile on his face. Then he pointed to a place at the bottom of the cave and said:

"Do you think that groove in the ground basically fits the base of the cross we saw in the Edinburgh Masonic Museum?"

"The base of the cross - yes, these two things are indeed the same size." Joan of Arc carefully looked at the traces on the ground with a flashlight and nodded.

I have to say here that Liang En's card has some magic tricks. For example, after using the cross, it will lead to the place where the cross stone was excavated, not the place where the cross was placed before.

"But what's the value of finding the place where the cross used to be? Is this what made those Freemasons so excited?" Joan of Arc looked at the empty cave and said in confusion.

"There should be some instructions here." Liang En looked at the cave and said, "Let's go in and look for it. I see a lot of moss on the wall of the cave. Maybe these things have covered the words."

Just as Liang En had guessed before, there are indeed some words left in the cave, and they are also written in runes like those in the church. The required words can only be found after a few letters.

"The location of the instructions - what does this mean?" Liang En looked at the translated text on his phone with a puzzled expression, because he didn't find anything related to the instructions here.

"Could it be related to the cross before?" Joan of Arc suddenly thought of something at this time, so she said.

"Yes, that should be the case." After Joanne said this, Liang En immediately reacted. "If you guessed it correctly, this is why the group of Freemasons were so excited, because they were equivalent to finding the key."

But the next work is not very simple. Even if you know that the previous stone cross is the key to solving the mystery, it is not easy to figure out the truth before others tell the key.

Fortunately, the logical thinking ability enhanced by the cards allowed Liang En to quickly recall the anomalies on the previous cross, so he took out his mobile phone and pulled up the photo of the front of the cross, and then placed it in front of his eyes to imitate the cross. Still in the situation.

"I think I know where that thing should be hidden." Liang En suddenly said after staring at the photo and the cave for a minute. "I found the key point."