Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

"This is probably a secret church, or even an ancient Christian holy place." Looking at the patterns painted on the ceiling, Liang En explained to his companions.

"Ever since the Ottoman Empire occupied the Anatolian Peninsula, local Christians have been able to retain their original beliefs for a long time."

"However, with the passage of time and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the empire's management of people's beliefs became more and more strict, even to the point of harshness."

"Under such pressure, most people choose to change their religion, while others choose to hide their beliefs to avoid persecution. This is the case for this church in the mountains, for example."

"Based on the style of this church, it is likely that this church was built for some reasons during the Byzantine era, and was renovated many times and added new elements in the following days."

"Your guess is very reasonable. I even suspect that this church may have experienced the experience of being abandoned and then reused." Pierce, who had just dimmed the brightness of his headlights to observe the patterns on the ceiling, pointed to the roof and said .

Liang En quickly walked up to him and looked at the place where he was shining his headlight. He saw that a palm-sized piece of the mural fell off, and the lower layer of the peeled off mural revealed traces of a mosaic puzzle.

"Your guess should be very consistent with the facts. It seems that a group of people left here and used plaster to block the beautiful mosaic puzzles below, and the people behind them re-drawed various pictures on the plaster without knowing it. All kinds of patterns.”

After turning on the camping light they carried with them and taking pictures of the entire church, Liang En and the others left the room and returned to the intersection, then chose the road on the left and walked in.

The road on the left is lined with small houses on both sides. Judging from the stone platforms left behind, these houses should be where the clergy and visitors lived.

These rooms were also cleaned very clean, which, like the church, shows that the group of people abandoned this place in an orderly and planned manner.

"Let's go and have a look on the right." After finishing the shooting and returning to the intersection just now, Liang En glanced at the darkening sky outside and said, "After watching this, I can just rest in this cave for a night."

Compared with the surrounding flat lands, this cave is indeed a very good wild camping site. It is not only dry and ventilated, but the high entrance can also avoid attacks by wild animals.

After confirming that tonight's campsite was out of the way, everyone seemed to be in much better spirits, and then dragged their tired bodies towards the passage on the right.

"I think this direction should be the church's warehouse." Liang En said as he walked, "Because for an ordinary church, apart from the residence, the most important auxiliary building is the warehouse for storing various items."

Because those people had cleaned up very well when they evacuated, and even the door panels were removed and moved away, so it was much more convenient for Liang En and the others to inspect.

But when the three of them reached the end of the corridor, they discovered that a large hole had appeared behind a house, with some gravel and broken bricks scattered near the entrance.

"This is -" Looking at the gap, Liang En and the others quickly pointed the light of their headlights in that direction, and saw a broken skull on the ground.

Soon, Liang En and the others walked into the secret room and found seven completely skeletal corpses in the secret room. These corpses looked incomplete, and traces of multiple gunshot wounds could be found on each skeleton.

The light spot that Liang En found through the card appeared on one of the bones. This corpse fell to the ground like the other bones, with its arms tied behind its back by a rotten rope.

Judging from the way the body fell forward and the bullet holes in the back of the head, this man must have been tied up before being killed with a pistol to the back of the head in an execution style.

Over a long period of time, the flesh and blood attached to the bones had completely decayed and turned into ashes, and the clothes on the body had turned into strips of rags. Only some relatively corrosion-resistant things remained.

"The opponent used 9mm Parabellum bullets. And it was most likely shot from a submachine gun." Fan Meng made a more professional judgment after checking the surrounding marks.

"Because if a pistol was used, the foreheads of these skulls should be much more severely shattered than they are now, and the pits on the rocks should also be shallower than they are now."

Submachine gun! It seems that this group of attackers is more complex than we thought. "Liang En said in a low voice as he looked at the bullet that Fan Meng picked up from the ground just now, which passed through the person's head and then hit the stone wall and deformed.

In addition to the corpses, there were two large boxes placed in the corner of the room. The boxes were both open. Inside were a pile of decayed textiles, some rusty cups, jewelry and other items placed on the textiles and dropped. Pieces of rust.

While Fan Meng was inspecting the bones, Liang En and Pierce came to the box and inspected the things packed in the box.

Although the textiles were so rotten that their original appearance could no longer be seen, after simple processing of the metal items, one could still see that almost every item had a double-headed eagle and the uppercase letters XP stacked together to form a logo.

"If Mr. Conrad's previous notes are correct, these two boxes contain the last wealth of the Eastern Roman Empire royal family. In other words, these are the royal items that cannot be sold for a price and bear the royal symbol."

After the inspection, Liang En sighed and said. In his hand, he was holding a rusty copper cup inlaid with a circle of colored transparent crystals.

The reason why this copper cup is rusty is because someone used a sharp tool to scrape off the gold on the surface, and those colored transparent crystals are not gems, but some colored glass.

"Is this kind of scrap metal the last treasure of the empire?" Fan Meng showed an expression of disbelief as he looked at this pile of things that were worth mentioning in terms of workmanship and materials.

Because he had visited many palaces that had been turned into museums before, and now this pile of rubbish obviously could not be connected with the precious royal jewels he imagined in his mind.

"Because when Constantinople fell in 1453, this country had exhausted its last bit of resources." As a standard Jingluo, Pierce explained to Fan Meng before Liang En.

"When Maimet II was preparing to capture Constantinople, there were only two thousand defenders left in this city, once known as the Queen of Cities, and these defenders were paid through the emperor's sale of all the money. Wealth is gained.”

"According to records, the royal family melted down the silver candlesticks and scraped the gold from the gilded items. They also replaced all the precious stones with cheap stained glass. All the money from this was spent on the army. .”

"It's a pity that they failed to defend this ancient city in the end. Maimet II finally captured this great city and completely destroyed the thousand-year-old empire."