Chapter 92
I’m translating the chapter now and formatting the in-universe email, status window, and flashback as styled HTML blocks so the output matches the chapter rules.CHAPTER_TITLE: The King’s Golden Inscription
I opened the email.
The scroll reached the end.
"I’ll need to see the photo first."
I downloaded the attached file and clicked it open.
The moment I saw the picture, the gold light nearly blinded me.
This is...
The first photo.
At a glance, it looked like nothing more than a square block of concrete.
A gray surface tinged with white.
A rough, hardened shape.
On one side, a clearly rounded indentation remained.
It was unmistakably the mark of a bullet that had struck and stopped there.
Choi Yi-seo had already finished her own inspection, and she watched closely as Si-woo examined it.
The second photo.
It showed a cracked cross-section.
The concrete had broken from the impact of being dropped, and the hidden surface within was beginning to show itself.
Through the gap, a vivid golden sheen emerged.
And there, too, were the delicate strokes of finely carved Chinese characters.
What showed through were only two half-obscured characters.
The instant I finished scanning the photos, my consciousness began to blur, and the world around me faded.
Then the memory of the person bound up in that long-ago object began to replay.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Whoooosh-!
Bang!
Kwaaaang-!
Planes roared overhead.
The sound of explosions filled my ears so completely it seemed to press against my skull.
Dust and dirt swallowed the view in front of me.
It was the summer of 1950, at the mouth of the Nakdong River.
Beneath a sky blazing with sun, gunfire poured endlessly from the far bank.
Clumps of earth burst from the trench wall, and the air split above our heads with the shriek of passing rounds.
"Corporal Kelly! Move to the next trench! Now!"
Sergeant John Hart’s shout exploded through the chaos.
Harold gritted his teeth and pushed himself upright.
Damn it...
This was a battlefield where the man he’d been talking to a moment ago could have his body blown apart by a shell and no one would even blink.
All around him lay piles of corpses and soldiers writhing in pain.
It was enough to drive a man insane.
Swoosh-!
The moment he lunged forward, the dirt right beside him erupted upward.
Fragments of stone rained down against his helmet like hail.
Thud-thud-thud.
Keeping low, Harold ran with all the strength left in him.
Swoosh-
A bullet brushed past his ear.
Kwaang-!
A shell landed nearby.
The shockwave crashed over him.
He nearly went down, but he didn’t stop moving.
Somehow he made it to the next trench and threw himself inside.
He collapsed against the wall.
His breath caught in his throat.
He clutched his rifle to his chest and gasped for air.
His heart felt like it was about to burst.
Son of a bitch.
At this rate, I’m really going to die.
There was already a dead body lying in the trench.
Thankfully, it wasn’t one of ours but an enemy soldier.
By now, that sort of thing had become routine.
Seeing a corpse no longer stirred anything in him.
Then, almost by instinct, Harold’s hand went to his chest pocket.
It was gone.
His heart shield bible.
A pocket-sized Bible with a thin steel plate affixed to the front cover.
may this keep you safe
That phrase was written on the front.
There had been soldiers whose lives were saved when bullets or shrapnel struck the metal cover and ricocheted away.
That was why people called it a miracle Bible.
Families often pressed one into the hands of sons, husbands, and brothers before they shipped out.
Harold wasn’t a devout Christian.
He had hardly ever opened the Bible to read it.
Still, he carried it with him.
The morning he left, his mother had taken it in both hands and said, “This will keep you safe.”
Because of those words, he could never bring himself to throw it away.
But last night, when he’d been moving through the trenches and slipped into a patch of mud, it had vanished somewhere along the way.
It had felt ominous.
Of all days, it had to be today.
The day the enemy’s full-scale assault was beginning.
His luck was rotten.
Then his eyes stopped on the chest of a dead North Korean soldier lying nearby.
Something in the soldier’s chest pocket.
A thin slab of gray concrete.
It was a flat rectangle, a little larger than the palm of his hand.
Bang!
Kwaaaang!
The shelling drew closer again.
Harold made his decision.
That’ll do.
When he took it in his hand, it felt heavier than he expected.
He thought it wouldn’t fit in his chest pocket, but it slid in perfectly.
For the first time in a while, he felt a little steadier.
Better than nothing.
"Corporal Kelly! What are you doing? Move it already!"
The sergeant yelled from beside him.
Harold Kelly rose to his feet.
And then.
Swoosh-
Something slammed hard into his chest.
His breath stopped.
He reeled backward.
His back struck the trench wall.
So this is how I die?
It felt like his bones had been crushed.
But there was no blood.
Suppressing his fear, he looked down at where the bullet had hit.
It was the square concrete block.
One side had been deeply dented inward.
The bullet was lodged there.
"Damn it! Kelly! You got hit? Are you okay? I’ll get the medic!"
A comrade came running.
Leaning against the trench wall, Harold slowly let out a breath.
He stared blankly at the chunk of concrete in his hand, then a snort of laughter slipped out before he could stop it.
"No, I don’t need a medic, Thompson. Look at this! This thing saved me!"
His comrade’s mouth fell open when he saw it.
"Hah. Hell, Kelly. You’re one lucky bastard. Now move, or Sergeant John Hart’s going to kick our asses!"
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
My consciousness returned.
I narrowed my eyes and, without realizing it, brought a hand to my chest.
The tension of battle, where death could come at any second.
People dying all around me.
The sense that I might die myself at any moment still hadn’t fully faded.
My heart was still pounding like mad.
Appraisal Result
[Taejong's Gold Book for Sejong's Accession]
[An artifact bestowed by Taejong upon Sejong, inscribed with merits and obligations as he passed on the throne]
[An item stolen by a North Korean officer during the chaos of the Korean War]
[Part of the gilt copper plate has been dented inward by a bullet]
[Coated in oiled paper and fixed in place with a thin concrete paste, preserving its complete form except where the bullet struck]
[Value: National Treasure level]
Without meaning to, I pushed myself away from the backrest and shot to my feet.
My heart was racing for a different reason now.
A gold book.
The kind of book once engraved with a king’s posthumous title or used to pass the throne to a successor, its merits and responsibilities carved onto a gold plate.
Instead of paper, the text was delicately etched into a thick gilt bronze plate.
Multiple leaves were connected by hinges so it could fold and unfold like a screen.
Because it was an alloy of gold mixed with copper, it was both hard and dense.
That was why it had been able to stop a bullet.
It was found... and not just that, it was Sejong the Great’s gold book? My God.
As I stood there in stunned silence, Choi Yi-seo spoke carefully while looking over the photos.
“The gold visible through the concrete looked anything but ordinary, so I wanted to show it to you, Appraiser.”
Only then did I manage to steady myself and reply.
“You did well. It doesn’t look like an ordinary object to me either. Judging from the size and shape in the email, it looks like a gold book. They seem to have wrapped it in thin oiled paper and sealed it in a layer of concrete.”
“A g-gold book?”
Choi Yi-seo knew what a gold book was, and her voice broke in surprise.
“Take a closer look at this photo.”
I pointed to the tiny space between the broken concrete cross-section and the golden surface beneath it.
“You can see a slight dark, oily sheen on the surface.”
Choi Yi-seo leaned in even closer.
“...You’re right.”
“Someone must have coated it in oil or wrapped it in thin cloth first, so it could be taken out easily later before the concrete was applied. Thanks to that, the concrete never flaked off the gold leaf. If anything, it acted as a protective shell, sealing out moisture and air for seventy years.”
Choi Yi-seo stared at the photo in silence, and then, unable to contain herself any longer, she asked, “Then, Mr. Kim Si-woo... whose gold book is it?”
Her voice was tight with strain.
I looked at the screen again.
Between the cracked concrete, the golden surface gleamed through.
And there, visible between the fractures, were only two engraved characters.
Not fully, not clearly.
Someone else would have had trouble guessing the characters from that glimpse alone.
But I had already seen the status window, and even that partial view was enough for me to infer it.
"Chungnyeong."
Choi Yi-seo’s expression froze.
What those characters referred to was none other than King Sejong’s princely title.
In other words, the title he held before becoming king.
“...Then this is King Sejong’s accession gold book?”
Choi Yi-seo’s lips trembled.
I was trembling just as much.
Keeping my voice steady, I said, “Yes. That’s very likely.”
Choi Yi-seo looked as if she could hardly believe it.
As I studied the golden characters in the photo, I went on, “Taejong didn’t wait until the brink of death to pass over the throne. The year Sejong turned twenty-two, he relinquished the throne while he was still alive.”
“So the symbolic meaning of this gold book is even greater. It’s what Taejong gave Sejong when he personally handed over the throne.”
Silence fell for a moment.
“...Are you saying it disappeared from Jongmyo during the Korean War?”
“That seems to be the case, based on the circumstances.”
Choi Yi-seo looked again at the gold glinting through the crack in the concrete.
The letters from six hundred years ago were showing themselves again.
“I need to send an email right away.”
There was no time to hesitate.
I opened the email immediately.
My fingers moved quickly over the keyboard.
Even after hitting send, I kept pacing around the computer.
What time was it in California right now?
I checked the clock quickly.
At the same time, my heart was pounding harder and harder.
Sejong’s accession gold book.
This was a treasure among treasures, something I needed to secure by any means necessary.
The fact that it was sleeping inside a keepsake box somewhere in California would not leave my mind.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from the screen as I waited for a reply.
Then it happened.
Before long, another email arrived.