Chapter 597 - 597: Don’t Panic, It’s Just a Chest of Gold Ingots, Isn’t It?
Chapter 597 - 597: Don’t Panic, It’s Just a Chest of Gold Ingots, Isn’t It?
Chapter 597 - 597: Don’t Panic, It’s Just a Chest of Gold Ingots, Isn’t It?
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The wooden chests, one by one, were dredged up by the salvage team, casting a spell on the netizens watching the livestream. Luo Feng seemed poised for yet another windfall, but the mystery of what lay within these chests remained hidden.
Certainly, even if the contents were ordinary, they would hold value as relics, given their age. In the presence of such a vast array of wooden chests, they must be worth something.
But as more chests were discovered, the situation caught the attention of the executives at Odyssey.
A group of them, gathered in the office, tuned into Luo Feng’s live broadcast once more. This time, their faces were etched with gloom, their mood no longer one of excitement. They had to watch, though the situation made them grimace in apprehension.
With the vast number of sunken ships and chests, the contents couldn’t possibly be mundane.
After all, why use so many wooden chests for ordinary items?
Were they originally part of a transported cargo?
The executives hoped it wasn’t porcelain; such a discovery would fill them with envy.
“Has there been any record of sunken ships in that sea area before?” one asked.
“I’ve checked, it seems there hasn’t!” another replied.
“The locations of these sunken ships are quite orderly; they don’t look like they were sunk in battle!” a third observed.
Many questions puzzled Odyssey’s top management, leaving them utterly confounded and unable to find any clear answers.
Meanwhile, around noon, the last chest was finally dredged up by Luo Feng’s team.
The number of fishing boats was 11 in total, and the number of chests even greater, a sum impossible to tally fully.
Even if the fishing boats contained nothing of interest, the sheer scale of this find was already astonishing.
The increasing number of chests made Luo Feng’s Experiment 1 incapable of holding them all, necessitating storage on the salvage team’s larger ship.
“There are so many chests!” Lin Yueting mused, her curiosity piqued about what lay inside. Since there were over a hundred ships, there should perhaps be a thousand chests? And if they were all filled with official silver ingots, their value would be unfathomable.
“Shall we open them? If we keep them closed, everyone will be restless!” Li Shishi suggested, concerned.
“Alright, I’ll listen to my little girlfriend!” Luo Feng replied, chuckling, playfully scratching her nose.
But Luo Feng’s decision to open the chests wasn’t driven by Li Shishi’s suggestion. Now that all the chests were recovered, the secrecy was no longer needed. Concealing them in previous days had merely been to prevent netizens from sailing over to intercept or steal them.
Comments flooded the chat:
“Whoa, you’re finally opening them?”
“I waited for days, it’s finally here!”
“Hey, host, sell a few wooden chests as blind boxes online. How about 100,000 for one chest?”
“Ehh, 100 thousand is pretty steep for a blind box, what if they’re duds?
Wouldn’t that be a huge loss for us?”
“Yeah, 100 thousand yuan is too much, he should price them at 500 instead!”
Luo Feng, hearing these price offers, touched his head in disbelief. You want me to sell these chests at 500 yuan? At that price, even the value of the chest itself might not be covered.
These were wooden chests from the Ming and Qing dynasties, valuable as relics in themselves, after all.
“Everyone, listen to me. These fishing boats, filled with wooden chests, couldn’t have been used to store fish. Fish wouldn’t be nailed shut. I think the items inside should be quite valuable!” Luo Feng declared, though skepticism lingered among the netizens.
Choosing not to engage further, he began his work, prying off the nails with a rhythmic crack, crack, crack.
Clang, clang, clang went the nails as they fell onto the deck. He preserved even those, knowing that as relics, they held value, though not as much as the chests themselves.
“Whoa, damn, it’s gold bars!” someone exclaimed.
“Gold bars! Yes, gold bars!” another echoed.
“What the hell is going on?” came the bewildered cries.
“If it’s all gold, wouldn’t it compare to the Tsar’s gold from last time?”
The crew, salvage team, and wealthy onlookers all stood aghast as Luo Feng opened a chest, cleaned an iron lump, and revealed a gleaming golden hue.
Though gold can oxidize, these objects, buried in mud, had been naturally isolated from oxygen, preserving them well. Not all were in perfect condition; some had oxidized to a blackish hue.
Luo Feng had initially expected to find official silver ingots, but the appearance of gold bars stirred his curiosity further. The mystery of these thousand or so chests was now even more tantalizing….