HLM – Chapter 83 The Heart of Wealth

Time passed, and soon it was February 1st. After breakfast, Wang Bo opened the lottery disk again and habitually gave it a tap. To his surprise, the pointer immediately began spinning rapidly.

Seeing this, Wang Bo was overjoyed. It had been a long time since the disk had moved at all, and its color had even turned dark green. These past days, he had feared it had become useless. Now that it finally worked again, he was ecstatic.

“Stop!”

The pointer began to slow down, making its final rotations on the disk: Heart of Territory—passed; Heart of Enhancement—passed; the pointer gradually came to a halt at Heart of Wealth…

It was Wang Bo’s first time obtaining the Heart of Wealth, and he immediately perked up. Could this be one of those that just directly gave him a pile of cash?

But just then, the four words “Heart of Wealth” shifted and transformed into “Heart of Secret Chamber.” Wang Bo tapped on it again, and a box about the size of an adult’s fist appeared.

The box was also light green in color, square and compact. Just as Wang Bo was about to grab it and examine how it worked, the box flickered—and then disappeared!

Wang Bo stared wide-eyed. Where did the Heart of Secret Chamber go? Why is this different from before? I haven’t even used it yet!

He opened the sandbox, and everything became clear.

Now, most of the sandbox’s surface was rendered in a translucent crystal style. Within it were three green-hued regions: the castle to the north, the homestead to the south, and the pasture to the northwest.

But these green regions only glowed faintly on the surface. For example, the castle’s rooms and courtyards still appeared as they did in real life—the gray marble of the inner courtyard was still gray on the sandbox.

However, now a section in the northeast corner of the outer courtyard had turned completely light green.

Wang Bo zoomed in on the northeast corner of the outer courtyard. There was a well, and in the middle of its inner wall was a door. At the door’s threshold began an underground passage leading westward. At the end of that passage was a light green chamber—the secret chamber.

The chamber was about a hundred square meters in size. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all reinforced with stone slabs, with a layer of wood on the outside. Lime was scattered across the floor.

Clearly, the lime was used as a desiccant to keep the air dry. Now, having absorbed moisture and dried up, it had turned into hardened lime boards.

In the center of the chamber stood two brown-gray wooden treasure chests, each about half a person tall and a meter long and wide.

Behind the chests was a table and a wooden shelf that resembled a bookcase. On the table sat several small treasure boxes, while the shelf held various vases and statues of different shapes and sizes.

Seeing all this, Wang Bo instinctively drew a sharp breath—So this is what happens when you use the Heart of Secret Chamber? Turns out it’s meant to uncover hidden chambers in the castle!

But what puzzled him was this: he had long suspected that the castle might contain a treasure room. He had inspected every room and both courtyards thoroughly in the past and had found nothing like this.

No matter—what mattered now was that he had found it. And everything inside was his.

He zoomed in on the chamber and first examined the shelf.

It had two tiers. The first tier was filled with vases, pots, and other ceramic wares. He couldn’t appreciate them or judge their value, but their antique style suggested they weren’t ordinary.

The second tier, however, contained items that were clearly valuable: five statuettes, each about the size of a beer bottle, all made of metal—some yellow, some white. Clearly, they were gold and silver!

“Damn! God bless! Buddha bless! I’ve struck it rich!” Wang Bo was ecstatic.

He tested the statuettes—they were heavy. Even if they had no artistic value, the gold alone would fetch a fortune.

After that, he opened the small boxes on the table. These held mostly gold and silver coins, jewelry, pearl accessories, pocket watches, snuff bottles, and even ivory pistols.

One pocket watch was particularly eye-catching. Its case was a dazzling gold color, engraved with a ring of English letters: Henry-Graves-Super-complication.

When he opened the golden cover, the platinum hands had already stopped. The hour markings on the dial looked like they were made of diamonds, and the face contained several smaller sub-dials. Wang Bo studied them but couldn’t figure out what they all meant.

Then came the two large chests. He opened them with high expectations—but was actually a bit disappointed. One was filled with neatly stacked gold bars, and the other with silver ingots wrapped in kraft paper.

Wang Bo touched the gold and silver. The hard metal felt icy cold. Wells were naturally damp and chilly places. Who knew how many years these metals had been sitting there? The cold practically seeped into his bones.

But he didn’t care. Today’s haul was enormous. The Heart of Wealth truly lived up to its name. After using it, his net worth skyrocketed.

And this was on top of his current fortune of twenty million! He didn’t know the precise value of the jewelry, antiques, and coins, but just the two boxes of gold and silver probably amounted to over a hundred million New Zealand dollars!

Just as he had always believed: a lean camel is still bigger than a horse. The Roberts family had once been the largest British colonial family. Even a broken ship has three pounds of iron—let alone the Roberts family, which was more like an aircraft carrier!

Now that aircraft carrier had just begun to reveal the tip of its iceberg. Wang Bo was convinced the castle had other hidden chambers and treasure rooms—it was just a pity he hadn’t found them yet.

The chill of the gold and silver gradually cooled his excitement. For the rest of the day, he took inventory of everything in the secret chamber until every item was clearly accounted for.

The chamber held:

• One chest of gold
• One chest of silver
• Two golden statuettes
• Three silver statuettes
• Fifteen ceramic items
• One snuff bottle
• One gold pocket watch
• One cane of unknown wood
• Two ivory pistols
• A complete set of jewelry
• Twenty-four assorted gold and silver coins

There was also a painting, but sadly, it hadn’t been well preserved. The canvas was already in tatters and crumbled to pieces when he picked it up.

Aside from the painting, everything else looked like priceless treasure. At last, Wang Bo had the confidence and resources to start building a town!

Driven by the exhilarating joy of suddenly becoming a millionaire, Wang Bo spent the entire day giggling foolishly. He skipped both lunch and dinner—some Mexican food was tossed together by Juan.

His strange behavior worried the others. At dinnertime, Juan called him out and asked at the table, “Boss, you okay?”

“Mhm.”

“Wang, did your brain short-circuit?” Charlie frowned.

“Oh.”

“Ah! Senile dementia! Ah! Senile dementia!” the commander flapped its wings and muttered, though no one knew where it had picked up that phrase.

“Ah.”

Seeing how absent-minded Wang Bo looked, Bowen saw an opportunity to be cheeky and snickered, “Boss must’ve overheated. Or maybe he’s been with too many women—caught syphilis or AIDS that fried his brain?”

“F**k! Just because I’m not talking, you think I’m a damn toy?!” Wang Bo snapped out of his stupor, still grinning like an idiot, and lunged at Bowen. “Where’s the goat milk I need for tomorrow morning? Go milk it for me now! If I wake up tomorrow and don’t see my goat milk, I’ll smash your skull and drink your brain instead!”

“Sh-shit! Let’s talk this out, man…” Bowen nearly wet himself in fright…