Chapter 532 (1/2)

“Huh?” Hao Ren looked curiously at the small wooden box in Vivian’s hand. The thing was glowing with a black and red luster. The fine carving on it was of a 300-year-old European style. Due to its age, the edges of the wooden box had some fine cracks. Aside from that, it was not much different from an ordinary jewelry box from that era. “Maybe this is the only valuable thing you had back then, that’s why you were solem when you passed it to your servant.”

“Yes, I was poor, but I’ve never really cared about stuff like this.” Vivian opened the wooden box and looked at the velvet lining inside. “My main concern has always been filling my stomach. What’s so special about this box?”

She put the box under her nose and sniffed it. “There’s a slight stench of blood—my own blood. It must be a sign. It’s been 300 years, and the stench has thinned out. The runes in the box contain no special information.”

Hao Ren took the box in his hand and shook it slightly. Suddenly, a thought came to his mind. “Perhaps there’s an interlayer… Do you want to take it apart?”

Vivian was a bit hesitant. Actually, she had this idea a few days ago when she received the box, but she could not make up her mind on ripping the box apart: after all, the item looked elegant. She knitted her brows together as she had been struggling internally for a long time before she finally nodded softly. “Instead of preserving it, I think we may find something by ripping it apart. But, be careful not to break the board. Maybe we could put it back together.”

Hao Ren twitched his mouth, knowing that Vivian was experiencing heartache despite saying she did not care.

Hao Ren put the small wooden box on the table, and took out a small guillotine knife as well as a screwdriver. He then pried open the box very cautiously, lest he would damage the interlayer. After removing a few small planks, he discovered something inside.

There was really a hollow layer at the bottom of the box.

“Is something really hidden inside?” Surprised, Vivian extended her nail so that she could reach inside the crevice. She then pulled out a yellow-white cloth, which felt like satin along with a blood-red crystal, which was only a few millimeters thick. It was smaller than the size of a thumb.

Hao Ren looked at it expectantly, he felt that the whole matter was magical: from the three-century-old ancient jewellery boxes, a hidden interlayer, the hidden secret knowledge of the witch, the three-hundred-year-old immortal custodian of the treasure box, and the basement where they did the unboxing; aside from the fact that the witch was a poor bat, everything was jaw dropping.

Vivian carefully unfolded the strange ‘fabric’. It was unexpectedly thin and tough, the kind of material which was far beyond the reach of ancient human textile technology. It was nearly three square feet when laid unfolded, letters written in dark red ‘pigments’ covered a third of the fabric while the rest of the fabric had simple drawings on it and large blank area seemed to be reserved for future use.

“This is… a fabric used by the Egyptian gods. I remember that Horus once gave me something like this and asked me to help him treating a plague.” Vivian looked at the three-square-foot ‘satin’ thoughtfully. “These fabric was not something that humans of that era could produce.”

Hao Ren found that the colour of the handwriting on the fabric was somewhat strange and inconsistent, not a one-time writing but was written over a course of many years. “Did you write this?” Hao Ren asked.

“It’s my handwriting, and the writing materials are of my blood, otherwise it wouldn’t last for so long,” Vivian diligently examined the text to find its logical sequence. “…My handwriting at that time was really ugly. It’s written in an old language which no one can read today.”

Hao Ren: “…..”

“This is the beginning,” Vivian pointed to the corner of the fabric and slowly read it out. “Some records were lost, disappeared with the memory, and could no longer be found. I couldn’t even know for sure what I’ve lost. Keeping records in a dormant place or burying them was unreliable and unattended. They could be damaged by changes in the natural environment, and I wouldn’t be able to remember them after waking up. So I made a duplicate of them before losing everything and put them in custody of my trusted servants, or in a human museum. That way even if I lost my memory, they were at least preserved and might be rediscovered one day.”

Hao Ren frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean these manuscripts. It seems that I have kept other similar text, and saved copies of them. But each time I woke up I would find some of my manuscripts were lost,” said Vivian as she tried to recall her memory. “I tried to keep them with me by burying them underground before I hibernated. But I found out at least that if these manuscripts were left unattended, things would went wrong. So in the end I chose to give them to servants, or induce human archaeologists to put them in museums.”