50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 802 Golden Treasure
Once you leave the port and enter the city of Kochi, it's immediately apparent that it's different from other parts of India.

Not only is it the largest city in Kerala, but it is also an excellent seaport with highly developed water transport. Historically, it was the spice trading center of the Indian subcontinent and was known as the "Queen of the Arabian Sea".

After entering Kochin city, Sun Zhiwei found a hotel to stay in and then strolled around the city like an ordinary tourist.

The old town of Cochin retains many buildings from the colonial periods of Portugal, the Netherlands, and Britain.

Because Kochi was historically a colony of these three great maritime powers.

Moreover, one can see many traces of Chinese cultural influence here, as Zheng He visited Kochin multiple times during his voyages to the Western Ocean.

The local architecture, temples, house decorations, dietary habits, cooking, tea drinking, art, gardens, language, ships, wheels, and agricultural tools all bear the influence of Zheng He's fleet.

Kochi has a famous attraction called "Chinese Fishing Nets," which are said to have been introduced from China by Indian merchants during the Yuan Dynasty under Kublai Khan.

This fishing tool was quite advanced at the time, and it remains an effective tool for fishing today. As a result, it has been passed down and has become a unique feature of Cochin.

The news reports from that year only mentioned that the Padmana Bhaswamy Temple was located in Kerala, but did not specify which village it was near.

Sun Zhiwei spent three days visiting all the local attractions before finally getting the location of the Padmana Baswamy Temple from a temple guide.

If you're not a local, you really wouldn't know the exact location of the Padmana Baswamy Temple.

The place is completely abandoned, and few people go there normally. Many of the temple buildings have collapsed into ruins.

For safety reasons, local children were also warned by adults not to approach the site to avoid being injured by falling debris.

After confirming the location of the temple, Sun Zhiwei did not delay. He took out his motorcycle from his spatial storage, slung his camera over his shoulder, and headed towards the Padmana Baswamy Temple.

When he encountered locals near the temple, he pretended to be a tourist and said he was going to visit the temple. He was not stopped by the locals. Some kind people even reminded him to be careful of the building collapsing.

Sun Zhiwei rode his motorcycle through a large jungle before finally finding the Padmana Baswamy Temple deep in the rainforest.

He parked his motorcycle at the entrance of the temple ruins, slung his camera over his shoulder, and went inside. The temple grounds were enormous, and indeed, it was a complete ruin, teeming with snakes, rats, insects, and ants.

The outer perimeter was in better condition; it hadn't completely collapsed, and he could still find a passage to go inside. However, when he reached the main temple complex, there was no way to proceed further.

He decided not to go any further inside, but instead opened the spatial portal and began to examine the underground of the main temple.

As the space opened up, the underground scene came into view. Centered on the main temple building, a passageway stretched out to the left and right underground.

The passageway is three meters wide, with two large palace gates on each side, spaced 10 meters apart. A total of eight underground palaces stand there in two rows.

He had already seen through his X-ray vision the situation inside the eight underground palaces. The doors to the palaces were all sealed off, and the insides were filled with all kinds of gold ornaments and jewelry, as well as a lot of gold coins, diamond crowns, and so on.

What caught his eye most was a 1.2-meter-tall elephant statue in the No. 1 underground palace near the entrance. It was made entirely of gold and inlaid with many large carat diamonds, making it sparkle brilliantly.

This single golden elephant weighs over 20 tons.

Even disregarding the value of the diamonds and gemstones embedded within, and ignoring its historical value as an antique, the gold alone, at the current price of $400 per ounce, is worth over $282 million. This is just the price of this one golden elephant; all eight underground palaces are already filled with gold and jewels. A rough estimate puts the total value of the treasure here at no less than $50 billion.

Sun Zhiwei, who had thought the trip would be of some use, was also stunned by what he found.

He wasn't unfamiliar with money; he'd even visited the Federal Reserve's vaults. But seeing so much gold and silver jewelry laid out before him was truly a first.

Moreover, the joy of finding such a treasure is incomparable to stealing gold from the Federal Reserve's vault.

Such tangible treasures can be taken out without question. As long as he doesn't reveal that they came from the underground palace of an Indian temple, even the Indian government can't do anything about it.

Regardless of how to convert these things into cash, he couldn't wait to use his spatial ability to collect all the treasures from the eight underground palaces.

Looking at the vast array of gold and jewelry in the space, the glittering treasure filled him with genuine joy.

This trip was definitely worthwhile. If this huge gain were calculated based on the value of antiques, the price would easily be several times higher.

Unfortunately, these are all antiques from India, and their value has little international influence.

This is unlike China, which has a strong attachment to the cultural heritage of its national treasures and antiques, and will buy them back no matter the cost if they are lost abroad.

The ancient Indian kingdom of India has a cultural gap with ancient India, and they don't even share the same ancestor.

Therefore, when it comes to ancient Indian artifacts, the Indian kingdom is very pragmatic; they would never spend a lot of money to buy back these ancient Indian gold artifacts.

The harvest this time seems plentiful, but it only amounts to a few hundred tons of gold, which is indeed insignificant compared to the more than 2 tons of private gold reserves in India.

There are countless temples throughout India, and each temple has its own underground palace where gold is stored. However, the locals may not actually care about these gold artifacts.

In any case, I'm really happy that I've gained so much in just a few days on this trip to India.

He lost interest in staying there any longer, so he left the temple and drove his motorcycle back to Kochi city.

That afternoon, Sun Zhiwei took a local flight to Bangalore, the economic center of southern India.

The international airport there has direct flights to Singapore, making it easy to get back to Subi Island from there.

On October 16, after two transfers, Sun Zhiwei successfully arrived at Singapore Changi Airport.

At this moment, his escort fleet is passing through the Strait of Malacca and will pass through the Singapore Strait tonight.

Considering that they were attacked by missile boats from Batam Naval Base when they arrived for this mission, Sun Zhiwei decided to take the opportunity to resolve this security threat.

After leaving Changi Airport, he took a car directly to East Coast Parkway, the southernmost point of Singapore, from where he could see Batam Port across the strait in the distance.

(End of this chapter)