50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 201: Yongle Encyclopedia

In addition to Chinese cultural relics, the British Museum also contains many cultural relics from all over the world, most of which were looted or swindled. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a museum of stolen goods.

This time he planned to take away the best treasures here. Of course, he was not stupid and would not focus on Chinese cultural relics only. Instead, he took a part of cultural relics from various countries.

Most of the cultural relics he selected were small in size or difficult to preserve paper relics, such as the Rosetta Stone, the Admonitions of the Court Instructress to Women, the Dunhuang Murals, the Book of the Dead of Yani, the Arab Bronze Hand, etc.

It was not until the afternoon, when the museum was about to close, that Sun Zhiwei left reluctantly.

After having dinner nearby in the evening, he changed his clothes again and hid in the woods near the University of London campus.

At this time, the woods were already silent. He used the space next to a big tree to start digging downwards, and temporarily put the excavated soil aside.

After digging 10 meters underground, he began to dig towards the southeast, and the excavated soil was filled into the tunnel behind him.

It is about 400 meters from the University of London to the center of the museum, and he replaces the fresh air underground every 10 meters.

The excavation speed was extremely fast. In less than half an hour, he had reached the underground of the museum.

It was only then that he discovered that there was more than one floor underground in the museum. It was already 10 meters underground, but there was a storage room further ahead.

After calming himself down and re-ventilating the tunnel, he expanded the space and began to explore the boundaries of the museum's underground building.

It took him a long time to finally confirm that there were three floors underground, which were smaller from top to bottom. There were at least hundreds of warehouses, which were basically filled with cultural relics.

However, most of these cultural relics have not been sorted, and are simply classified according to their country of origin. Many paper cultural relics are actually stored in the open air without any protection measures.

Feeling a little stuffy, he changed the air in the tunnel again and then began a detailed investigation.

Finally, it was discovered that there were two warehouses filled with books, calligraphy and paintings from China, which had not even been sorted out and were just piled up in the warehouses.

I guess one reason is that there is no money and personnel to organize them, and another is that they don’t realize the value of these things.

There were about 20,000 to 30,000 ancient books, and he didn't have time to sort them out one by one, so he simply put all the ancient books in the two rooms into the space at once.

Then use the identification function of the space to find the Qing Dynasty part and throw it back to the warehouse, and take away the rest.

Of course, he couldn't just take the Chinese ones, so he searched the underground warehouse and found smaller ancient books and gold and jade utensils from various countries and took them all away.

After finishing his busy work, when he stopped, he realized that he had not yet achieved the main goal of the day, but had already collected more than 5000 cultural relics, and half of the cubic meters of space had been occupied.

We can’t take any more. This much is enough. It’s useless to take more foreign things.

At this time, he had already arrived at the east side of the museum's underground area following the excavation.

Just now when he was collecting things, he discovered a special warehouse that was more than ten meters long, with many instruments buried in the middle of the wall.

He roughly identified them and found that most of these instruments were used to control temperature and humidity. This treatment was obviously different from the warehouses just now.

He immediately became alert and began to identify the items in the room. Most of them were paper books, and the most conspicuous were dozens of books lined up in a row.

He saw the words "Yongle Encyclopedia" written on the covers of these books. He had an impression of this, remembering that in 2020, their director had clearly stated in an interview that they had 49 volumes of the "Yongle Encyclopedia" in their collection, but he only saw 22 volumes here.

Where are the others? After searching the room, there are no other copies of the Yongle Encyclopedia.

As if he thought of something, he quickly focused his attention on the space. He had just collected tens of thousands of paper artifacts, and the other "Yongle Encyclopedia" was very likely among this batch of ancient books that had not been counted.

That interview was conducted in the 21st century, and it is only the 20s now. It is very likely that the other parts have not been sorted out yet.

It is very convenient to find things in the space. The paper size and age of the books are very clear. He quickly found similar books through the identification function of the ring. There are more than 200 books in total.

He identified these more than 200 books one by one and determined that 127 of them were "Yongle Encyclopedia". Including the 22 books in the room just now, the total number was 149.

That damn curator lost 100 books without batting an eyelid in front of the reporters. Sun Zhiwei was almost furious. He didn't expect that in the report of the 21st century, he would find out that he had been cheated in his previous life.

There's nothing more to say at this point, just take it.

With a thought, he gathered more than 400 treasures in the room that had been sorted into the space.

Afterwards, he aimed the space at the exhibition hall on the ground, and made sure that the patrol personnel were resting in the guard room. He began to quickly collect the cultural relics he had selected in the exhibition hall into the space.

In less than 10 minutes, everything was completed. He did not stop and started to return quickly along the same route.

While using space to clear a path in front and filling the back with soil, a few minutes later, he returned to the hole next to the tree that he had dug when he set out.

After returning to the ground, he buried the hole. Looking at the obviously different ground, he used the space to dig up some weeds scattered around and planted them at the location of the hole he had just dug.

It was already late at night and there were few people outside. In order to avoid being questioned by the police patrolling at night, he found a bar and stayed there for half the night.

The next morning, he did not return to Cambridge, but continued to visit attractions in the city and took some photos. He did not return to Susan's house until the evening.

On the morning of the third day, the front pages of major newspapers in London all published the same article with the headline "Hundreds of treasures stolen from the British Museum."

Sun Zhiwei paused on the number 'hundreds' for a moment and raised his eyebrows.

The British Museum is really interesting. Did they really not discover anything or are they covering up something?
I took more than 200 pieces, including more than 400 pieces from the ground exhibition stand, more than pieces from the underground treasure room, and more than pieces of cultural relics that had not been counted in the warehouse.

It is normal that nothing was found in the uncounted warehouse. Even they themselves don’t know how many things are in there. But why were the hundreds of items in the underground treasure house not reported?
He didn't quite understand, nor did he want to understand. Anyway, it must be something shameful.

He guessed that they were afraid that too many reports of lost items would cause people to lose confidence in the museum's ability to protect them.

They have not only their own cultural relics here, but also many cultural relics on loan from all over the world for exhibition.

Lending cultural relics to other countries for exhibition is something that is often done in the cultural relics community, and our country also often does this.

However, since there were incidents of loaned cultural relics being damaged, the country has drawn up a "List of Cultural Relics Prohibited from Leaving the Country", and many of the most precious cultural relics are no longer allowed to be loaned out for exhibition.

(End of this chapter)