Central-Northern Faloro, Flotz.
At noon, in the central area of Flotz, the capital of Faloro, stands the National Museum of Faloro. Among the many exquisite Faloro buildings, it is majestic, magnificent, and extraordinarily grand, adorned with countless beautiful sculptures. Also known as the Upper Palace, it was once the inner palace of the king during the Faloro Dynasty, primarily used for issuing decrees, handling government affairs, and holding various grand meetings. If the Temple of Beauty was the king's home and garden, then this was where the king went to work.
After the Cold Moon Revolution, it became the National Museum of Faloro, preserving a large number of cultural relics and archives from various historical periods of Faloro that did not involve secrets or only slightly involved them. Some were from Faloro itself, while others were collected by various means from their colonies. Almost all the archives Sansone had previously given to Dorothy and the others were provided by this place.
Now, at Adele's request, Sansone's subordinates secretly led her into this museum. In a small room by the window, Adele, dressed in casual, bright clothing, sat before an ordinary desk, leisurely waiting for something while flipping through a magazine with her legs crossed.
"Miss, what you wanted is here."
At this time, a man in black, wearing a black suit, walked into the room. After reaching Adele's desk, he placed a wooden box in front of her. The lid of the box was covered with many labels and a thin layer of dust that hadn't been wiped clean, as if it had been placed in a corner for who knows how many years.
"According to the archive you indicated, what is contained within this box should be the corresponding cultural relic. It was obtained from North Wu during the late Bourbons period and has fortunately been preserved until now."
After placing the box in front of Adele, the man in black explained. Adele glanced at the box before her, smiled, nodded at the man in black, and spoke.
"Thank you. May I take a look inside now?"
"No problem, we have unlocked it for you." Facing Adele's question, the man in black responded simply. Receiving the reply, Adele immediately put down the magazine in her hand and shifted her attention to the wooden box before her. After carefully examining it twice, she proceeded to open the unlocked wooden box.
After Adele opened the lid, a layer of shock-absorbing paper padding appeared inside. Adele unhurriedly pushed the padding aside, revealing another paper package within. After picking up the paper package, Adele could feel a certain object with sharp edges wrapped inside.
"Something doesn't feel right... According to the records in that archive, this cultural relic should be a size larger." Observing the paper package before her through Adele's perspective, Dorothy said via the information channel. Adele also questioned inwardly.
"Is there something wrong with this thing? Is it okay to open it directly?"
"Wait a moment for this."
Dorothy said, and then controlled a small bug she had prepared beforehand to crawl out of Adele's sleeve, up her hand, onto the paper package, and then into the gap, burrowing inside the paper package. Soon after, Adele heard Dorothy's slightly solemn words.
"Go ahead and open it."
Listening to Dorothy, Adele began to peel back the paper package in her hand, gradually revealing the contents. It was indeed a Golden object with distinct edges, engraved with complex patterns of various kinds. It was overall triangular in shape, with an open eye symbol engraved on one face. The four corners of the triangle were missing, leaving only a finely structured groove.
As soon as she saw this object, Dorothy immediately recognized it as the Golden main body of the cultural relic 'Groove-Inlaid Crystal Golden Engraved Triangular Pyramid' that she had seen in the cultural relic archives. Its appearance was almost identical to the sketch in the archive, but it was missing the four crystals inlaid on it.
"This is it... but the crystals on it are gone. Keep looking inside the box." Dorothy said to Adele through the information channel. Adele immediately did as she was told and carefully searched the box filled with padding, but after searching for a long time, she couldn't find any crystals. So she looked up at the man in black who was still standing not far away and asked directly.
"Is this all? You didn't take the wrong one, did you?"
"That's correct, item B0047, Groove-Inlaid Crystal Engraved Triangular Pyramid. This is it, we didn't take the wrong one." The man in black answered Adele earnestly, and Adele continued to speak.
"There's Golden, there's a groove, but where are the crystals? Can you explain where the crystals went? Were they categorized separately into another item box?" Adele asked the man in black. Hearing Adele's words, the man in black fell silent for a moment. Just as he seemed to be contemplating how to respond to Adele, a familiar voice sounded within the room.
"It wasn't categorized separately. What you have in your hand is the entirety of this item."
Hearing this voice, Adele was slightly startled. She then turned her head to look in the direction the voice came from. She saw a slightly overweight middle-aged man standing there, wearing a trench coat, leaning on a cane, wearing a short hat, and holding a cigar in his mouth. It was Sansone, the fourth Governor of Faloro.
Seeing Sansone enter, the men in black in the room immediately bowed respectfully to him. Sansone, after seeing them, also slightly waved his hand, and then gestured to his subordinates with a look. Upon receiving this signal, his subordinates also left the room one after another and finally closed the door, leaving only Adele and Sansone inside.
After dismissing his subordinates, Sansone slowly walked over to Adele and sat down at another table opposite hers. Looking at Sansone, who had calmly taken a seat before her, Adele spoke softly.
"I didn't expect that the Honorable Governor would have the interest to come here personally at this time. It seems the recent government affairs haven't tied you down to the point where you can't move." Looking at the suddenly appearing Sansone, Adele said with interest in her expression. Her meaning was simple: she was asking why Sansone wasn't dealing with the assassination attempts against him and putting pressure on his political enemies, but instead came here.
"Heh... On those matters, I am temporarily in a proactive position, but this proactivity is only on the surface... In the entire Faloro political arena, my disadvantaged position has not changed. I cannot simply push them too hard just because I have a little initiative, accelerating their next move against me. The right path now is to slowly use this initiative to gradually entangle with them and gain more allies... There's no need to rush this, so I also have enough time to pay attention to some other matters."
After listening to Adele's words, Sansone responded with a relaxed expression. Then, after tapping the ash from his cigar into the ashtray, he looked at Adele and continued speaking.
"I heard that after giving you the cultural relic archives, you quickly selected something you were interested in. I'm very curious, what kind of item could catch the eye of the Judge of Heaven and be overlooked by our people for a hundred years... I didn't expect it to be this thing..."
"Listening to you, do you know what this thing is? Do you know where the crystals on it went?" Hearing Sansone's words, Adele, who was holding the Golden grooved piece, asked directly. Sansone immediately replied.
"Indeed... Due to some well-known reasons, I have done quite a bit of research on the history of the Bourbons. Among them are some clues about the cultural relic in your hand."
"What is it? It's not related to Xia Er again, is it?" Hearing Sansone's words, Adele asked directly, and the other party immediately replied, recalling.
"You're right, it's related to the King of Grand Attire. According to the fourteenth volume of the Bourbons Court History, when the King of Grand Attire was forty-seven years old, in order to celebrate repelling Prit and Iweig in the North Wu colonial war and establishing Faloro's dominance in North Wu, he held a grand celebration in Flotz to display his victory. This victory celebration included an exhibition, showcasing a large number of spoils of war captured from the enemy and treasures harvested from North Wu."
"At the exhibition of this victory celebration, Xia Er personally visited and personally bestowed the treasures from the exhibition upon the meritorious officials and important domestic Lords from the war, while this so-called... 'Groove-Inlaid Crystal Golden Engraved Triangular Pyramid' was named 'Radiance of Victory' and participated in the exhibition at that time."
Sansone spoke unhurriedly, and listening to his words, Adele directly guessed and asked in reply.
"So, those crystals were bestowed by Xia Er? Then why is this Golden main body still here?"
"No, that's not the case. Xia Er did not bestow this item. Although many meritorious officials and Lords took a fancy to this exquisitely crafted item, composed of Golden and crystals, and begged for it as a reward. But Xia Er gave it to no one, because his beloved Queen, Maria, took a liking to it... To be precise, she took a liking to the crystals on it."
"Queen Maria was naturally fond of beauty and enjoyed all kinds of jewelry. While collecting various exquisite jewels to fill her jewelry box, she was also a professional jewelry connoisseur herself. It is said that after she first saw the crystals on the Radiance of Victory at the victory celebration, she was deeply captivated by them."
"Maria believed that the crystals on the Radiance of Victory were exceptionally pure and transparent, among the highest quality crystals she had ever seen in her life. Therefore, she requested her husband, the King of Grand Attire, to bestow those crystals upon her, and she would use them to create a beautiful piece of jewelry. And Xia Er, of course, would not refuse the request of his beloved Queen. He immediately removed these four crystals from the Golden base and bestowed them upon Maria."
Sansone unhurriedly recounted the history of Faloro that he knew to Adele. After listening to his narration, Adele immediately frowned and spoke.
"Wait, she only wanted the crystals, not the base?"
"Yes, according to the historical records, Maria believed that compared to the nobility of these crystals, the Golden of the Golden base they were inlaid in, although of good quality, had patterns that looked too dense and regular, lacking aesthetic appeal. The open eye in the middle was also a bit scary, so she didn't like it at all. What Maria wanted was only the crystals, not this base."
Sansone explained this. Listening to his words, Dorothy couldn't help but inwardly complain that the Queen completely didn't understand.
In Dorothy's opinion, the carvings on this Golden base were profound. Between the regular and dense lines, they contained a certain pleasant geometric and mathematical beauty. To put it bluntly, when Dorothy saw it, it was like a programmer seeing a perfect program coded strictly according to regulations, with not a single annotation missed, running flawlessly without bugs. It was like an engineer seeing a server room with perfect wiring, where a large number of lines were not messy at all. It was refreshing and full of beauty everywhere.
'I can only say this woman doesn't understand...' Dorothy complained inwardly like this, and then continued to observe the situation on Adele's side. She saw that after taking a look at the patterns on the Golden base, Adele also said leisurely.
"The patterns on this are indeed not very good-looking... They are stiff and rigid, not soft at all. No wonder that Queen directly didn't want it... So, did he successfully craft those crystals into jewelry?"
"Yes, it was successful. Crafted by renowned court artisans, those four crystals were successfully made into a necklace named 'Maria's Light'. When Queen Maria wore it to attend events, its dazzling brilliance repeatedly amazed the entire audience. This necklace also became one of the most famous treasured items of the Bourbons Royal Family in the mundane world. It can be said to represent Queen Maria." Sansone said this, and Adele continued to ask with a solemn expression.
"So... where did this necklace go afterward? I remember Maria died in a shipwreck along with Xia Er. This necklace didn't end up feeding the fish, did it?"
"No, that's not the case. When the Nokdoorn shipwreck occurred, Queen Maria was not wearing this necklace she treasured for the trip. Instead, she left it in the Temple of Beauty. After Xia Er and Maria died, their son, Robert, the first in line to the throne of Faloro, succeeded to the throne. This was the later Greed King. Maria's Light was also inherited by Robert at this time."
"And I probably don't need to tell you much about the story of the Greed King. Towards the end of his reign, the Cold Moon Revolution broke out, and the Bourbons' wealth was plundered..." Sansone said with a stern expression. Hearing his words, Adele couldn't help but frown and say.
"That necklace, it wasn't lost during the plundering of the Cold Moon Revolution, was it?"
"No, that wasn't lost, that was stolen! Maria's Light was stolen by some despicable thief before the great plundering of the Cold Moon Revolution!" Saying this, Sansone's tone showed clear anger. He flicked the cigar in his hand, causing sparks and ash to scatter.