Road to becoming the wealthiest: Starting From Treasure Hunting in the Cabinets
Chapter 206 - 198: Destined with People Whose Last Name Is Zhu!

Chapter 206: Chapter 198: Destined with People Whose Last Name Is Zhu!

Even though the words on the cover were smeared, and the original color of the cover could no longer be determined, Sean Knight was still convinced that it was indeed what he thought it was.

According to the Sky Eye, this book dates back about seven hundred years, originating from at least the Ming Dynasty.

Although the words on the cover and the wrapping silk were damaged, the format remained unchanged.

Slowly flipping through the book, Sean saw the orderly calligraphy inside. This must be the so-called Guangeti calligraphy, shouldn’t it?

At this point, the answer seemed to be within reach!

"Yongle Encyclopedia"!

When it comes to ancient Chinese books, the two anthologies that Sean remembers best are the "Yongle Encyclopedia" and the "Complete Library in the Four Branches of Literature".

Both books represent the culmination of Chinese culture, with the former summarizing and the latter sabotaging it.

There are a lot of things in between, and won’t be repeated here. But in Sean’s view, the descendants of the Tungusic boar do not genuinely carry the spirit of propagating Chinese culture when creating cultural compilations.

The "Yongle Encyclopedia" is China’s most famous ancient book and the largest encyclopedia in the world to date.

Its scale far exceeds all the collectively authored books of its time, leaving many rich stories and unsolved mysteries for posterity. It was compiled during the Yongle reign of the Ming Dynasty and records Chinese historical geography, literature, art, philosophy, religion, and encyclopedic documents before the 14th century. With a total of 22,937 volumes, 60 catalogs, divided into 11,095 books, the volume amounts to nearly 370 million words.

Compared to Diderot’s Encyclopedia compiled in France and the "Encyclopedia Britannica" in the UK, the "Yongle Encyclopedia" was created 300 years earlier, qualifying it as a gem of world cultural heritage.

Roughly estimated, the "Yongle Encyclopedia" collected and preserved as many as seven to eight thousand types of ancient books, five to six times the amount of its predecessor volumes such as "On the Writing of Selections", "Taiping Imperial Encyclopaedia", and "Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau". Even the large-scale book series "Complete Library in the Four Branches of Literature" compiled in the Qing Dynasty, only collected a little over 3000 types of books.

Regrettably, none of the original books have been preserved.

The extant copies are from the Jiajing period, and it is rumored that the original copy is in Emperor Jiajing’s subterranean palace. But now, the palace is supposedly filled with water, suggesting that the original version is lost.

The copies also got lost in later periods. During the late Qing Dynasty, due to malpractice, foreign invasion, the Boxer Rebellion, and other reasons, the copies were scattered.

As for the current condition of the "Yongle Encyclopedia", it is such that the Chinese National Library has a collection of 161 volumes, the American Library of Congress has around 40, various places in the UK harbor 51, and the Hamburg University Library and Cologne University Library in Germany have around 5, and several others are preserved in Japan (exact figure unknown). Taiwan’s Imperial Palace Museum preserves 62 volumes.

The reason the number of volumes in Japan is uncertain is due to the prosperity they enjoyed at that time, the Japanese had several opportunities to enter China, particularly the capital city. Under the lead of traitors and spies, they primarily targeted two places: the royal treasury and the book storage.

So, it is a tragedy.

Generally speaking, adding up the available volumes throughout the world, it totals nearly a thousand volumes, which is quite a number.

But it constitutes less than one-eighth of the original volume!

Therefore, to Sean, the five volumes in this box, at least in his view, hold the position of a national treasure!

After all, he is surnamed Knight! Even though his family’s stone-carved family genealogy clearly states that his ancestry is not descended from Emperor Zhu YuanZhang, they have also held the glory of dragon and served as generals.

This object should, by rights, have a predestined fate with those of us named Knight!

Sean Knight joked about himself and then glanced at the remaining five books.

All have hard covers, with yellow silk mounting. However, the words on the cover were destroyed. Even the stiff covers of two of the books were split.

Thankfully, even though some of the words inside were dirty, they should be restorable.

Sean remembers watching a documentary where archaeologists were able to restore bundled bamboo slips that looked like black charcoal. Surely, they should be able to restore this too?

He briefly scanned the contents, some of which were about planting, while others discussed weapon making. They did not belong to the same category.

The categorization of the "Yongle Encyclopedia" seemed to use the rhyming pronunciation of that time, which was different from the present day, so Sean didn’t understand it very well.

However, the most important thing is that it’s a treasure!

Upon closing the box, Sean felt that even if he came up empty-handed on this treasure hunt, it would have been worth the trip!

However, he still needed to make an effort. After all, Hans Hunter trusted him and had given him the items first. If he didn’t try his best, it would have violated his principles.

Returning to the villa, Sean observed Elijah and Lincoln carrying the box into the villa’s warehouse, then asked Elijah to drive the SUV away. He simply couldn’t let the two of them walk or hail a cab home.

Upon leaving the villa, Lincoln whispered:

"The boss is quite generous."

"Sure is." Elijah proudly responded, "Do you know how much I’ve earned from a few missions?"

"How much?" Lincoln asked curiously.

"At least a hundred thousand dollars each time!"

"That much!" Lincoln was shocked, "Then it must be quite dangerous, isn’t it?"

"No no no." Elijah shook his head, "The few times I went weren’t dangerous. But I heard that the boss himself nearly lost his life on his first treasure hunt."

"So what we are doing is akin to risking our lives." Lincoln thought for a while, considering that one trip could earn a hundred thousand dollars, it seemed quite worthwhile.

Elijah and Lincoln left, and Sean directly placed the small box into his spatial realm.

This stuff can’t be lost!

The next step is to prepare to hunt for treasure in the jungle.

Sean made a special trip to the freight yard, called Jason and the others to come over, and told them that he was about to go treasure hunting. He asked them to manage their parts well.