Don’t raise unruly people in extreme cold weather

Chapter 866

At the excavation site of the Temple of Safra, scholars' work is in full swing.

The morning light shone obliquely on the huge stone walls of the temple, making the reliefs that had been eroded by wind and sand for thousands of years appear particularly clear.

On both sides of the towering tower gate, two incomplete statues of Safra stand quietly. Although their faces have long been blurred, one can still feel their former majesty.

Scholars carefully cleaned the sand around the base of the statue and gently brushed away the dust on the surface with a fine brush, for fear of damaging any details that might hide important information.

At the main entrance of the temple, several surveyors were setting up sophisticated measuring instruments, carefully recording the size and position of each stone.

Their workbenches were piled high with survey drawings densely marked with angles and distances.

Deeper inside, several alchemists were manipulating two autonomous robots. Their heavy metal bodies moved flexibly among the ruins, using their mechanical arms to steadily lift the collapsed stone pillars and temporarily place them on special wooden supports.

In the core area of ​​the temple, the Steam Knights are working with scholars to repair a collapsed dome.

They wore heavy steam armor and, with the help of adhesives prepared by alchemists, pieced the broken stone beams back together.

Every time a huge stone is put back into place, there is a cautious cheer - after all, every structure in the temple may hide important clues.

"Look at the angle of the sunlight!" a surveyor suddenly shouted.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked into the depths of the temple.

It was early morning, and a beam of sunlight happened to pass through the temple's carefully designed passage, casting a bright spot of light on the wall at the end of the temple.

The scholars held their breath and watched the beam of light move slowly, eventually landing on a previously unnoticed mural.

Under the sunlight, the content on the mural suddenly became different. The light and shadow filled in the missing parts of some places on the mural and also formed new content.

"It's amazing..." the surveyor muttered to himself and immediately signaled his assistant to record the discovery.

They all knew that this might very well be the key clue that Lord Perfecto had been looking for.

In the makeshift shed, various unearthed cultural relics were displayed in different categories: there were stone slabs engraved with hieroglyphs, gold-plated sacrificial vessels, and even some well-preserved papyrus scrolls.

Several linguists sat around a long table piled with papyrus scrolls, their foreheads almost touching the yellowed papers.

Sometimes they used a magnifying glass to carefully observe the subtle strokes of a symbol, and sometimes they quickly wrote something down in their notebooks. The entire tent was filled with heated arguments.

"This symbol definitely means 'sun'!" An old scholar with a white beard excitedly slapped the table and poked his finger at a golden disc pattern on the scroll. "Look at the radial lines here, they are exactly the same as the murals in the Temple of Heliopolis!"

"Nonsense!" The middle-aged scholar wearing a dark turban opposite immediately retorted, "In sacrificial documents, this symbol is obviously used to refer to 'eternity'. Look at it appearing in this context." He quickly flipped through another broken clay tablet, on which the hieroglyphs were densely arranged.

Such debates happen almost every day.

Although linguists from the French Empire claimed to have cracked the writing system of the ancient desert kingdom 20 years ago, local scholars here have always refused to accept this conclusion. In their view, those arrogant French people do not understand the essence of desert culture at all, and their interpretation is full of prejudice and distortion of the colonists.

Perfect stood at the door of the tent, quietly observing the academic debate.

In her hand, she held a book called "Analysis of the Desert Kingdom's Texts" published by the French Language Institute, but she never took it out.

As a scholar, she understood the national pride of these desert scholars; but as the regent of the empire, she had to consider the issue of research efficiency.

"Sir, do you want it?" the accompanying adjutant asked in a low voice, pointing to the authoritative book with his eyes.

Perfect shook his head slightly.

There are many things that still need to pay attention to a cultural atmosphere. Linguistic interpretation is only one of all the analytical methods. , especially when interpreting hieroglyphs.

Those vivid patterns—falcons with outstretched wings, winding rivers, warriors with spears—are rich in imagery in themselves, and it is entirely possible that people from different cultural backgrounds could reasonably interpret them differently.

Forcing them to accept the views of outside scholars may result in them missing out on truly important discoveries.

She walked slowly to the long table, and the scholars immediately stopped arguing and stood up nervously.

Perfect simply said gently, “Continue your work. Remember, I want the truth, not a particular interpretation.”

After saying that, she gently put down the book that had never been opened, turned around and left the tent.

Behind her, the scholars looked at each other, and then devoted themselves more to the deciphering work.

Some people continued to adhere to the traditional way of interpretation, some began to secretly read the book by the French scholar, and some tried to combine several methods. The debate in the tent became more heated than before.

When the surveyor came running over breathlessly, Perfect was studying the latest architectural restoration drawings in the makeshift command tent.

She looked up and saw that the nearly fifty-year-old surveyor had an unusual blush on his face, his gray temples were soaked with sweat, and he was holding a roll of drawings tightly in his hands.

"Regent, you should come and see! We have made an amazing discovery!" The surveyor's voice trembled slightly with excitement, and his rough fingers unconsciously stroked the edge of the drawing. "Just now when we were measuring, we found that the optical structure of the temple is more sophisticated than expected!"

Perfect looked up at the surveyor. "Be more specific."

The surveyor could not wait to unfold the drawing, which was densely marked with precise angles and dimensions.

"According to your instructions, we were just surveying the temple, and the morning sun happened to shine in from the temple entrance, projecting onto a mural and causing a wonderful change." His fingertips moved along several red-marked lines on the drawing: "We re-measured the mural and the entire passage, and found that these passages would form a perfect light path in certain seasons, just like-"

"Like a designed optical projection? Using light and shadow to show special content?" Perfect took over his words, staring at the drawing with burning eyes.

(End of this chapter)