Chapter 37

The moment Zhang Lin stepped onto the stage, the audience below began to cheer.

Zhang Lin, as usual, first exchanged a few pleasantries with the audience.

"Yo, everyone here? Didn't go squat in front of the archaeology team's livestream?"

Hearing this, the crowd burst into laughter.

The archaeology team had set out two days ago, and the livestream had been running since the moment they departed.

They had originally planned to head to Old Changsha's Biaozi Ridge, but just before departure, the research on the rubbing suddenly made a breakthrough.

It turned out that Warring States silk-script rubbing was actually a map.

Professor Chen led the archaeology experts, and it took them half a day to figure it out!

This breakthrough also caused the archaeology team to change their itinerary on the fly, preparing to head first to the location indicated in the silk script.

Professor Chen's reasoning was that the silk script had been brought out of the Blood Corpse Tomb.

And the Blood Corpse Tomb had already been proven to be very dangerous!

Since the purpose of the archaeology was to study the Warring States silk script, and the script now offered a clue, going to the location on the script was perfectly reasonable.

The public had no objections to the archaeology team changing their destination.

But they were all very curious about how the team had managed to read a map from the Warring States silk-script rubbing.

The official attitude toward archaeology had always been encouraging.

Especially against the backdrop of Xia Kingdom's nationwide archaeology craze.

The Archaeology Institute published the contents of the rubbing on the very next day after obtaining it.

They even posted a bounty: anyone who could unravel the silk script's secret would receive a huge reward!

So, for the past two days, most people in Xia Kingdom had basically been glued to their phones, studying pictures of the rubbing.

When they heard that the officials had found a map in the silk script—

—many were still baffled, because to them the rubbing was just covered in characters, and they couldn't see any route map at all.

This also drove the archaeology team's livestream to attract over ten million viewers.

Everyone was eager to see whether the team had decoded it wrong!

So, when Zhang Lin asked at this moment why the audience hadn't gone to watch the livestream, they all laughed knowingly — a Xinlingshen Society moment.

"The archaeology team only just entered the mountains, preparing to take the water route to their destination. When I watched yesterday, they were still looking for a boat with a local!"

"Right, the livestream's been pretty boring these past two days — nowhere near as fun as listening to Mr. Zhang tell stories!"

"I've been watching for two days too. The terrain in that area doesn't look like it has any ancient tombs. I reckon the archaeology team's got it wrong this time."

Hearing the audience's lively chatter, Zhang Lin smiled.

The archaeology team definitely wouldn't get it wrong. At their current pace, they'd probably find the entrance to the Warring States tomb recorded on the silk script in about two or three days!

Just then, he heard someone start asking questions.

"Mr. Zhang is learned and talented — I wonder if you've managed to read the map in the silk-script rubbing?"

"Yeah, I've stared at it for ages and can't make it out. Mr. Zhang knows so much, surely you can see it, right?"

"If Mr. Zhang really can see it, tell us the tricks behind it!"

Zhang Lin glanced at the time and saw the show hadn't started yet.

He turned to the crowd and said, "Since everyone wants to know, and storytelling hasn't begun yet, I can also tell you a thing or two about the key to this silk-script rubbing."

"You've all got the picture on your phones, right? You can pull it up and take a look."

"You can see the silk script is covered in characters. Actually, this thing is called the Eight-Formation Script Map, also known as Hidden-Picture Writing."

"It's a way of writing out the detailed geographical location of a place using a special grammar."

"It looks like a pile of meaningless text, but the information inside is actually extremely rich."

"This thing was a kind of cipher used in ancient times for military campaigns."

"It's basically lost to this day. I reckon there aren't more than ten people in the whole world who can read it."

"From this, you can see our official archaeology team has some capable people too!"

…….