Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

In a suburb of London, a half-new-looking van is parked in front of a Victorian-style red brick row house. The rare sunshine in the British Isles illuminates the white body of the van and the road, making the area in front of the room's door seem much brighter.

Meanwhile, inside the house closest to the van, the sounds of objects colliding can be heard from the open window on the second floor.

"Bang—" a large pile of heavy books and magazines is taken from a bookshelf and placed heavily on the floor, revealing some hidden books behind them.

"I knew it, there's no way a cabinet this wide would only have one row of books." Leonard Ethan shone a flashlight deep into the bookshelf and then, wearing thick tool gloves, took out the items inside one by one.

Perhaps because these items had been in there for a long time, even on an island like the United Kingdom where the dust is not large, these items were covered with a layer of dust.

When the books were removed from the cabinet partitions, a cloud of dust immediately filled the small room. Fortunately, Leonard Ethan was wearing a gas mask for spray painting and wasn't affected.

For some reason, after graduating from college in Ireland, Leonard Ethan didn't pursue a career related to his studies but instead decided to move to London to become a freelance treasure hunter.

Unfortunately, due to bad luck, for the past two months, all of Leonard's work had been manual labor and recycling various debris.

But now things seemed to be looking up. After clearing six whole houses with no results, he finally found some valuable items in this seventh house that needed cleaning.

"If this doesn't work, I'll have to ask my parents for living expenses, so let's make some extra money this time—" Leonard muttered as he moved the items.

The books hidden behind the cabinet aren't many and don't look like they'll fall apart at any moment. So after spending about ten minutes, more than a dozen items were arranged one by one on a table next to the window.

All these items appeared to be books with leather or artificial leather covers. Considering the generally high prices of books in Europe, hardcover books, even second-hand ones, could sell for a considerable amount of money.

After rummaging through drawers and cabinets, Leonard made sure that the small living room had been checked thoroughly and that nothing had been missed. He then began sorting through the spoils he had placed on the table by the window.

"1962's 'Pride and Prejudice,' 1968's 'The Hobbit,' 1951's 'A Tale of Two Cities,'..."

Having wiped off the thick layers of dust on the covers of the books with a dry cloth, Leonard found that all these books were hardcover editions from before the 70s.

Although these dozen or so books look like old books with age, upon opening the books, Leonard finds that the insides are essentially brand new, showing no signs of ever having been read.

Old books in the United Kingdom are not cheap, so these books could sell for at least three to four hundred pounds.

Clearly, considering that all the residents of these row houses are low-income manual laborers, these hardcover literary books were probably not purchased by them.

Going off the current situation, Leonard easily deduced that the previous occupants probably came across these books accidentally, and they had been left here to collect dust ever since.

It wasn't until now that the landlord of the house wanted to sell the property, and Leonard was hired to clean up the house that had been abandoned for at least a year or two, that he discovered these books.

This discovery thrilled Leonard, as although these hardcover books are popular items, selling them as second-hand books in the right place might fetch a price of four to five hundred pounds.

As for his current job, simple cleaning work actually didn't accumulate much money. The real money was in finding some good things that others didn't want or had forgotten during the cleaning process.

For example, the contract Leonard Ethan signed this time was like that. The landlord only paid him half the market price for the cleaning work, but specifically noted that aside from the house itself, all other items found would belong to him.

However, whether or not he could find good things purely depended on luck. In the several cleaning jobs over the past two months, Leonard's biggest gain was finding a limited-edition silver Shell Zippo lighter with engraved patterns in a pile of trash in a house, which he then exchanged for more than 150 Pounds Sterling.

After examining all these valuable books and putting them one by one into the large backpack he had brought, Leonard removed his gas mask, moved a chair next to the window, sat down, breathed in the fresh air, and stared blankly at the blue sky and white clouds.

He was 24 years old this year, coming from a parallel Earth. Two months ago, he woke up one day, and his life had been swapped with that of another version of himself from another world.

After spending several days summarizing the memories in his mind, Leonard discovered that the history, geography, and politics of the two worlds were extremely similar, almost like two twin worlds.

For example, this world also had Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang Dynasties, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Even his own relatives were almost the same as before, with hardly any changes.

The reason he used "almost" was that, on the whole, there were no significant differences between the two worlds, but in some small ways, the worlds were indeed vastly different.

For instance, the biggest change for Leonard compared to his previous self was that he went from being a Chinese person to an Irish Chinese.

The reason for this change was that in this world, one of his relatives who had been missing for over half a century chose his father as the heir to her estate, rather than his uncle in the original world.

As for the reason he took up this job, it was simple: in addition to his memories, he brought with him a history explorer inheritance. To activate this golden finger, a series of conditions must be met.

However, he didn't expect that making money from this job would be so difficult that the only money he had on hand could barely sustain his life.

"Card." Thinking of this, Leonard immediately called up the only function he could use in his golden finger through his mind. Then, a card appeared before his eyes —

This was Leonard's current golden finger, the concrete manifestation of the inheritance. Unfortunately, the card was gray now, indicating that it had not been successfully activated.

In the center of the card, a line of golden text was hovering:[ Exploration completed, can be activated]

"Huh?" Seeing the words "can be activated" in the final status column, Leonard Ethan suddenly stood up from his seat, even flipping over the chair.

Because before this, the line of text had always displayed "exploration not completed," and the final text had also always been "not activated."

"So, it means that my finding these books is actually a recognized exploration, and neither reading books nor finding the silver lighter before this counts." Calming down, Leonard quickly concluded a pattern.

According to his guess, these books could barely be considered items with historical value, so finding these books was a recognized exploration by the golden finger, while the previous lighter clearly didn't have as much historical value as the books.

"Alright, let me see what kind of thing you really are —" Taking a deep breath, Leonard used his consciousness to tap on the card.