The thirteen-member expedition was now reduced to five. Dr. Hunter was about to faint, but he managed to regain his composure, grabbed the package Alyosha had left behind, and continued forward.
They expected another long and narrow corridor, but to their surprise, the path beyond the platform was much wider and not too long. After less than a hundred meters, a sandy area appeared before them.
The sand was fine, uniformly sized, and of a beautiful pale golden color, resembling a sea of sand at first sight.
This patch of sand was very wide, occupying the entire corridor, but it wasn't long, and not as long as the sandpit used for long jumps in the playground.
"Why is there sand here?" Hermione was a bit perplexed, she stood at the edge of the sand, being careful not to touch it hastily, but she looked at her companions, hoping to get an answer.
"Maybe it's a quicksand trap like before?" Sara approached her and dipped the light stick, but surprisingly, the sand was only two centimeters deep.
"It must be the sand used to absorb moisture from the air in the pyramids." Dr. Hunter provided an answer based on his own experience, "Of course, if we don't consider magic, that's what it is."
Hermione looked at Tom, hoping to get some kind of reference from him, but Tom couldn't say for sure either and could only shake his head, saying he wasn't sure, but his instinct told him the sand should be harmless.
He stepped onto the sand of his own accord.
Nothing happened; the sand didn't even reach the soles of his shoes.
They managed to cross the sand unharmed.
After a short walk on a small stretch of sand, they arrived at a huge dark gold door. At the entrance, there were two black cats, one on the left and one on the right.
When they stood in front of the door, it moved on its own, opening inward from the center. The two doors swung inward at an angle and stopped moving, finally forming a figure eight, with darkness behind them.
Sara threw the light stick she was holding, and then the old Yushadu took the lead and entered. When the two light sticks illuminated the interior, he froze in place.
"Oh, God..." He had his mouth open and his eyes bewildered.
Tom, curious, followed inside, and when he saw what was on either side of the corridor, he also felt a suffocating sensation overwhelm him. And he was sure that almost anyone who had seen this scene would have felt suffocated and frozen on the spot.
Gold. So much gold.
Mountains of gold.
That was the only word Tom could use to describe the spectacle he saw.
They were in a room the size of an auditorium, with a narrow path behind an eight-shaped door, the end of which was hidden in darkness, and two piles of gold over ten meters high on either side of the path.
The mountains were formed by various gemstones, large gold plates, delicate vessels made of gold and silver, and sculptures of animals.
"Oh my God," said Dr. Hunter, unable to stay on his feet, his face twisted with excitement. He could have studied this place for the rest of his life with just a few pieces! With the treasures in this room alone, he could build a museum no less significant than the British Museum.
He would be the most famous archaeologist in the world, and the first in the history of ancient Egypt!
Both Sara and Yushadu were equally excited.
Sara believed that with her share of the treasure, she could buy the entire Champs-Élysées! Yushadu was convinced that the contents of this room could free all of Egypt from hunger, and they could use the money to provide free healthcare, mandatory education, expand the Suez Canal, and build more hydraulic works...
The Egyptians could live like the oil magnates of Sinai!
Tom and Hermione stood up in awe: it was a spectacle they had never seen before.
"We can grab these treasures and build a library, you can be the director, and I'll be the librarian..." Hermione said, taking Tom's arm, trembling slightly, "When we graduate..."
Tom felt dizzy.
The gold instantly evoked the most primal desire in the five of them.
Dr. Hunter, standing beside them, murmured, as if in a dream, "The treasures of so many lords of Upper and Lower Egypt, the riches of both banks of the Nile and the entire Mediterranean coast, they should all be here..."
A bag could be made with the contents of this room, and one could eat and drink for the rest of their lives.
At this point, everyone suddenly calmed down: first of all, they were still trapped in this pyramid, and secondly, even if they could fit, how much could they take? Each person's limit was a backpack...
Wait, a backpack?
In an instant, eight pairs of eyes and four gazes focused on the backpack on Tom's back. Muggle backpacks are small, but wizard backpacks are different!
They could carry tons of gold in a single trip!
"Calm down! Everyone calm down!" Tom waved his hand, gesturing for everyone to calm down. The gold was here and it wasn't going to run away with its legs open, so let's calm down.
Tom looked around and saw a huge cluster of red coral at the edge of the path, with many small lamps of precious shapes hanging from its branches. Each lamp was shaped like a kitten, with the cat's tail as the wick. Tom patiently lit the cat lamps one by one.
He counted forty-nine cat lamps of various shapes hanging from this cluster of coral, which alone could be the treasure of any national museum in the world.
And there were more lamps of this kind.
Dr. Hunter found other lamps of the same type in other parts of the corridor, and by the time they had lit them all, the entire room was illuminated. They could also see the entire room clearly.
There were nine huge pillars on each side of the room, and on one of them was the golden mountain they had just seen, while in the center of the room, there was a small pond with what appeared to be live fish.
Once the mountain became visible, Dr. Hunter quickly estimated the amount of gold in the room and discovered that, according to conservative calculations, there were nearly ten thousand tons of gold hidden in the room!
The entire gold reserve of the United States was only 8,000 tons.
In other words, whoever gets the treasure of this room will be truly rich! Even if the five of them shared it, their individual gold holdings would be among the top five gold reserves in the world.
And that's not even counting the cultural value of all that gold and the value of those gemstones! There are gemstones the size of pigeon eggs everywhere.
Someone once concluded that humans have three desires, the desire to eat, the desire to sleep, and the desire to be surnamed, but Tom thought that one must be invited to this house to see it. Tom believed that the love for gold was so deeply rooted in people that it was written in their genes as an instinct.