Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

"350,000, my friend." Carter thought for a while and said, "I bought this thing four years ago. It cost 300,000 at the time. Taking into account inflation, I think it is more appropriate to calculate these things as 350,000."

"Let me take a look at this whole thing, okay?" After hearing the quotation, Liang En was silent for a few seconds, and then made a request.

Soon, through the deliberately dim lights, Liang En discovered that there were probably more than 800 bamboo slips, and there were some words written on them that should be from the Chu State during the Spring and Autumn Period of China.

After confirming what these words were, Liang En knew why the Japanese were willing to sell this thing for more than 300,000 US dollars.

You know, today less than half of the Chu characters have been deciphered. Therefore, the Japanese who cleaned up these things probably did not recognize the text above.

In other words, the Japanese collector most likely didn’t figure out what these bamboo slips were written on, and then he disappeared.

Considering that the collector died suddenly in an accident, his heirs apparently regarded the untranslated item as an ordinary bamboo slip and mixed it with other collections for sale.

After all, the value of such items is closely related to the contents above, so selling it for US$300,000 is already a high price without knowing what the contents recorded above are.

In particular, Carter specifically told Liang En that the heir did not understand antiques at all, and the auction was conducted privately to avoid paying taxes. Before, only two people were invited to briefly inspect the auction items and price them.

However, in Liang En's eyes, these bamboo slips were obviously not as simple as Carter said. After careful inspection, he found that these bamboo slips were probably the legendary water-filled bamboo slips.

Water-saturated bamboo slips refer to bamboo slips that have an internal water content as high as 80% due to long-term soaking. Such bamboo slips are often as soft as noodles when discovered, cannot be lifted whole, and are very fragile overall.

But after a series of complex treatments and dehydration, these bamboo slips will return to their original yellow color, look like new, and can be displayed normally.

This kind of water-soaked bamboo slips usually appear in some seriously flooded cemeteries in southern China. Because water can cut off oxygen, these organic matter can be preserved for a long time.

After taking out several compartments with bamboo slips inside the box, Liang En discovered that there were several large plexiglass plates placed at the bottom of the box, and inside were some pieces with red and black paint on them to form a pattern. thin wooden board.

"The person who sold this thing said that these things should have been lacquer boxes that contained these bamboo slips, but they rotted and fell apart over time, so he kept the remaining ones like this."

Seeing Liang En staring at the pieces of wood with paint on them, Carter immediately explained beside him. "You know, it's difficult to preserve these things completely after being buried underground for a long time-"

"Okay, I want this." Liang En said immediately before Carter finished explaining. Then he put everything in the box as it was, and then closed the lid of the box.

In the next moment, Liang En seemed a little absent-minded, so for the remaining 30,000 US dollars, he chose some very common street goods, such as silverware or porcelain, and filled two large boxes.

After putting all the things in the car, Liang En shook hands and said goodbye to Carter, and then several people drove to the DHL branch in the city to prepare to mail these things back to Europe.

To be honest, it is not an easy task to mail such things. Fortunately, Pierce often needs to deal with this kind of work, so under his guidance, everyone successfully mailed those things.

"Why did you end up mailing that box of bamboo slips home alone?" Pierce asked casually on the way back, "Aren't you going to sell those things?"

"Of course not, I plan to see what is written on that thing." Liang En said with a smile. "After all, I am an expert in deciphering ancient languages. So when I see something I don't recognize, I always want to see what is written on it."

Liang En's statement easily convinced the two men present. In their opinion, it was very reasonable for Liang En to translate the text on the bamboo slips when he saw Lie Xinxi.

Pierce even felt that Liang En's attempt to translate the bamboo slips should be much easier than translating the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics at that time, because compared with the completely lost ancient Egyptian writing, Chinese characters have at least been circulated to this day, and it should be easier to translate.

Because of the previous work and dealing with various things, everyone was obviously relaxed a lot when they arrived at the hotel they had booked. However, as soon as they put their luggage in their respective rooms, Joan of Arc pulled Liang En to the hotel downstairs. Walked past the attached cafe.

Seeing this scene, Pierce and Fan Meng just smiled, and then went downstairs to the bar to drink together. In their opinion, it is better to avoid being a light bulb when chatting with friends and girls. .

But the reality was completely different from what they thought. After sitting down in the coffee shop and looking around to see if there was no one around, Joan lowered her voice and asked: "Is there anything wrong with the bamboo slip before? I see that after you got that bamboo slip, your whole body... There’s something wrong with everything.”

"Because it was discovered that the Japanese's process of obtaining the bamboo slips was illegal." Faced with Joan of Arc, an absolutely reliable historical follower, Liang En naturally did not need to hide it.

"It's illegal, how did you tell?" A curious expression appeared on Jeanne's face. Recently, she had read a large number of books on archeology and cultural relic identification, but she didn't see anything wrong with those bamboo slips just now. .

"Because those bamboo slips were formed after processing water-saturated bamboo slips." Liang En said seriously. It was normal for Joan of Arc not to know the joints inside. After all, Liang En had never learned this thing before in school.

The reason why he understood this water-soaked bamboo slip was that a few years before he traveled through time, there was a lot of excitement about the excavation of Haihunhou's tomb, and many bamboo slips that had been soaked in water for thousands of years were found in Haihunhou's tomb.

At that time, Liang En was curious about how these bamboo slips survived being soaked in water for thousands of years, so he checked a lot of information. Naturally, these information included a lot of simple popular science introductions about water-logged bamboo slips and how to deal with them. .

On the way here, he specifically used his mobile phone to look up knowledge in this area, and found that the technical levels of the two worlds were almost the same, and even the time points for technological advancement were similar.

In other words, this technology of dehydrating and repairing water-logged bamboo slips appeared after the 1970s. Therefore, the batch of bamboo slips in Liang En’s hands can basically be determined by the Japanese through some illegal and despicable means. What I got was illegally circulated cultural relics.

"So that's the case, but now these things have been cleared, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to send things back by express so easily just now."

After hearing the cause and effect of the matter, Jeanne looked seriously into the eyes of Liang En sitting opposite and asked.

"Do you have any other ideas about these things?"