"It's out!" The members of the museum soon pulled out a chest and opened it, revealing a two inch tall Buddha sculpture.
The old men immediately rushed forward to examine it, quickly confirming, "This is the Tang dynasty golden Buddha that went missing last year."
"But it's made of copper..." remarked a cop.
"Is it a fake?" Everybody was surprised.
One of the old men said with a smile, "That's right, at first we did think that it was a copper sculpture, but we quickly noticed that the weight was off. This Buddha sculpture is a lot heavier than normal copper! After weighing it, we found its weight to be very close to gold of the same volume. Based on this, we suspect that the inside is composed of gold with a layer of copper cast on the surface."
Hearing his explanation cleared up their confusion.
Indeed, the weight of the Buddha couldn't be faked. It may have looked like a copper sculpture, but the moment it was weighed, it revealed the true nature hidden within.
Of course, this was an important cultural artifact, nobody would think about opening it up to see the golden Buddha's true appearance.
The only publicly acknowledged finger of Buddha, a sacred Buddhist relic, that had been passed down to this day was from the Tang dynasty.
To worship the finger of Buddha, the royal family of the Tang dynasty specially had a batch of gold and silver ceremonial artifacts made.
From then onward, the occasional emperor would create a large batch of Buddha sculptures to worship the finger.
For example, during his 39th birthday, Emperor Yizong of Tang had a gilded Bodhisattva covered in jade and pearls made to worship the finger of Buddha.
These Buddhist artifacts created for the worship of the finger of Buddha were all priceless treasures.
Being made by the royal family meant that they represented the highest level of craftsmanship of that time. They were very important cultural artifacts.
From its craftsmanship, the golden Buddha in front of them was a similar product.
The scholars all believed that it was made by a master craftsman of the Tang dynasty for the worship of Buddha. The trading of such an important cultural artifact was naturally illegal.
"What the hell? The inside is gold?" Listening to their discussion, Huang Ji was a bit speechless.
He knew better than anyone else whether or not the inside was made of gold.
With a single glance, he knew that the Buddha sculpture didn't contain a single ounce of gold...but there was something sealed within, he just wasn't able to understand most of the data.
All Huang Ji knew for now was that it was extremely heavy!
Its density far surpassed gold, mainly consisting of iron, silicon, tungsten, and an unknown element. Huang Ji had memorized the periodic table of elements before, giving him an understanding of this concept.
This allowed him to perceive the data of any element he encountered. Yet, the element contained in the object had a very strange name, it wasn't automatically translated into the name of one of the 115 elements already discovered by humans.
In addition, its relative atomic weight was extremely high. This was a new element! Or maybe it was more accurate to say it was an element humanity had yet to discover, so it didn't have an Earth name.
"The object in the Buddha sculpture comes from a person...the creator is Siddhartha Gautama, who's that?" Huang Ji continued reading more information, as time progressed he learned more and more about the object.
Right when the sculpture was taken away, he discovered in astonishment that the object inside was an intricate device made using an alien alloy.
"It's about the shape of a finger with a very complex structure. It's an alloy! And that new element, I think it can be translated as 'kun'... " If the name wasn't automatically translated into one he was familiar with, he could just name it himself.
This was the same with the race on the Moon. It should have been transliterated as Zeta, but he named them the Watchers. In that case, the information would be presented to him in the easiest to understand format.
It was an alien civilization that had created this new element! Huang Ji never expected to come across an alien object so soon.
Unfortunately, he was unable to obtain more information about the object within just from looking at the exterior of the golden Buddha; and cutting open the sculpture was completely out of the question.
Based on the name though, the object did not originate from the Watchers.
It was a different race with another name that was in a cryptic language. He could vaguely make out the meaning was 'sinking'.
He didn't call the element 'sinking' because it sounded terrible. Since it was the name of an element, it was fine to just transliterate its name. Taking a syllable from the word, he called it kun.
"Since humans don't know what they're called, from now on I'll be the one to name everything related to aliens. Or I should say...translate..." Huang Ji thought to himself.
In the future, if he came in contact with more alien objects, maybe he would be able to summarize and decipher the language and writing of the aliens. Once he learned the language or writing of the aliens, he would be able to obtain even more information.
Language systems harbored an immense amount of information pertaining to their respective civilizations.
Just like with with any language, Huang Ji could find the creator behind every word, phrase, and idiom, and the time they'd been created. Especially with idioms, he could even learn about the origin stories behind them, he didn't need to turn a single page in a book! Of course, this was only limited to things like idioms and common sayings that had standard definitions.