For the next day, he conducted a large-scale search of the castle, hoping to find more clues. However, besides the symbols at the top of the tower, they didn't find anything suspicious.
“It feels like we can't make any progress at all—” By the morning of the third day at the castle, Marie was visibly frustrated. “Although we've found more than three hundred runes, we can't make anything out of them.”
“If there's anything to say about these discoveries, it's that these symbols are indeed beautifully drawn. At least, they look more like paintings than text.”
“Wait, are you saying these symbols look more like paintings than text?” Liang En, who was pondering over a pile of photos, looked up and asked, “Are you sure about that?”
“Pretty sure.” Marie pointed at the symbols on the screen, “For example, this fish symbol is an early Christian symbol, but the carvings here are much more detailed, unlike the original simplicity—”
As Marie explained the symbols on the screen one by one, she indicated that these were artistic symbols, which were rarely used.
“That means these things are more expensive to produce than we imagined.” Liang En nodded slightly, “And I also noticed something strange just now, these symbols don't repeat.”
“If there's no repetition, then it's unlikely these symbols are used to convey written information.” Upon hearing this, Marie pondered.
“Unlike Chinese characters, our European writing started with alphabetic scripts, so if enough information were to be conveyed, repeated symbols would be necessary.”
“So I think we can temporarily abandon the idea that these symbols convey written information. At least for now, it seems unlikely.” “This is a bold but very reasonable hypothesis.”
Marie’s analysis gave Liang En an important insight. “We see symbols and instinctively think they are encrypted texts, but is that really the case?”
At this point, Liang En realized why the Rosicrucians had spent so much time here without figuring out the situation. After all, no matter how strong your abilities are, if the direction is wrong, it’s meaningless.
To be honest, the Rosicrucians' level in codebreaking could be considered top-notch, even comparable to the Golden Dawn.
Alchemists liked to use various codes to hide their research results, so as a primary alchemical research organization, they naturally needed to master enough cryptographic techniques.
Unfortunately, based on the data collected so far, these symbols are likely not encrypted text, so no matter how strong the decoding ability is, it wouldn't help much, and could even lead one astray.
After breaking a stereotype and broadening their thinking, Liang En and his team made a new discovery: when they put all the photos together and observed them as a whole, they found that the arrangement of these symbols was peculiar.
“If we put all the symbols on the walls and the floor together, we find that they form an irregular oval shape.” Liang En pointed to the assembled photos.
“Does this look familiar to you?” “Indeed, but I can’t recall where I’ve seen it.” Elizabeth frowned and zoomed in and out, rotating the large photo on her phone screen.
“It looks very much like an aerial view of the island we’re on.” Jeanne, who was swiping her phone just now, suddenly said, then uploaded a photo to the computer.
This image was the panoramic view of the tower top that Liang En had just sent out, only Jeanne connected the outermost circle of symbols with black lines into a closed pattern, which looked almost identical to the island's map.
“This creativity is amazing—” Realizing what this was, Liang En admired the person who designed this. This design fully exploited the weakness of normal human thinking.
When people see a series of symbols they don't recognize, their first reaction is that these symbols hide some secret and then try to decode them.
Therefore, they would never think that these symbols have no meaning and are just simple markers.
“But what message is this map trying to convey?” Elizabeth pondered while looking at the island map. “I think anyone standing on that tower should see that the island’s environment doesn’t require a map.”
“Let me think, do you think it depicts the castle beneath our feet?” Liang En said, enlarging an area on the screen and pointing to several clustered symbols.
“Yes, this is it.” Elizabeth leaned in for a closer look and pointed to a gear-like symbol, “In ancient maps, this symbol often represented fortified military outposts.”
“So these symbols are not entirely random, but they mixed informative symbols with others.” Liang En nodded at the gear-like symbol.
“So I think if this really is a map, there must be some marks indicating where they hid their secrets.”
“Look at this, could it be?” Less than a minute after Liang En finished speaking, Marie suddenly pointed to a place at the edge of the photo, “I remember seeing this symbol in many maps I’ve studied.”
She pointed to a symbol composed of a sixteen-pointed star and a circle. The sixteen points included four longest, four medium, and eight shortest points, forming a perfectly symmetrical pattern.
“This indeed relates to maps because this is a navigator’s symbol.” Liang En explained after closely examining the symbol.
“This symbol is called the ‘Wind Rose,’ which appeared around 1300 AD, served as a sailor's talisman, and was widely used in tattoos from the 18th to 20th centuries. It was sometimes drawn on maps as well.”
“As for why it appears here, it's probably to indicate to those who see these symbols that the hidden message among them is a map.”
The discovery of the Wind Rose greatly boosted everyone's morale because it confirmed their previous hypothesis. Encouraged, they quickly completed the overall analysis of these symbols.
The analysis concluded that out of the three hundred symbols, fewer than ten might be related to geographical locations. From these symbols, it could be deduced that the treasure was likely near the castle, or even inside it.
“We’ve made a significant breakthrough, but this doesn’t mean the upcoming work will be easy.” Liang En summarized their current situation during lunch.
“After all, the castle and its surroundings are vast. It would take us until next year to dig through it all by ourselves, so now we need to find a more detailed location.”
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