15: Star charts and light and shadow: an ancient mystery solved.

Night fell, and the lights were beginning to glow on the streets of Boston.

Lin Feng and Wang Dalong returned to their hotel room.

Wang Dalong was excitedly organizing the livestream footage from the day, preparing to edit a funny compilation titled "Boston's King of Getting Scammed."

Meanwhile, Lin Feng locked himself in his room, drawing the curtains tight to block out all light.

He sat at the desk; under the lamp, his focused profile was sharply defined.

Spread out on the table was the forty-five-dollar "doodle" treasure map, with the ancient compass lying quietly beside it.

"William Kidd..."

Lin Feng's fingertips brushed against the cool brass casing of the compass as he muttered to himself.

A pirate king as cunning as a fox would never use a map that anyone could understand to record the location of his treasure.

That cheap replica was more like a widely spread "smoke screen" used to conceal the real clues.

And this unremarkable-looking compass was the key to unlocking everything!

He carefully examined every detail of the compass. Soon, his gaze fixed on the top cover, which was engraved with intricate patterns.

He discovered that hidden within the crevices of those patterns were several extremely tiny holes.

These small holes seemed to have been plugged with wax during a previous restoration; they were impossible to notice without a close look.

Lin Feng took a set of precision tools from his backpack and, using an ultra-fine probe, carefully picked out the blockage bit by bit.

As the dust fell away, over a dozen pin-sized holes were revealed in no apparent order.

"What are these holes... for?"

Lin Feng's gaze returned to the interior of the compass. When he flipped over the brass base engraved with the initials "W.K.", his eyelids twitched.

On the back of the base, a small star chart was densely engraved!

The lines of the star chart were ancient yet precise, depicting a portion of the Northern Hemisphere's night sky. Drawing on the vast sea of knowledge in his mind, Lin Feng understood in a second: this star chart corresponded to the sky at the summer solstice!

The star chart, the small holes, the treasure map... there was definitely a connection between the three!

Lin Feng placed the abstract treasure map and the compass side by side, thinking hard and trying various combinations, but he remained clueless.

"No, something must be wrong with my line of thinking."

He closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm down, and rapidly reviewed all the clues in his mind.

Suddenly, a detail flashed through his mind—in the bottom right corner of the treasure map, there was also a stick-figure style drawing of a compass!

He understood instantly!

He quickly placed the physical compass in his hand precisely over the pattern on the map, making the outlines overlap perfectly.

Then, he opened the top cover and adjusted the angle of the desk lamp, allowing the light to pass through those tiny holes.

Beams of faint light projected onto the treasure map below, forming a scattered pattern of light spots.

However, the light spots remained disorganized; combined with the lines on the map, they looked no different from gibberish.

"The angle is wrong..."

Lin Feng's brow furrowed. The star chart on the back of the base hinted at the "summer solstice," so the angle of the light source also had to simulate the solar altitude angle at a specific time on the day of the summer solstice!

This was an exquisite astronomical puzzle spanning three hundred years!

Lin Feng took a deep breath and began his most skilled operation—exhaustive calculation! He fixed the light source and slowly moved the treasure map and compass, fine-tuning the angle to simulate the light changes from sunrise to sunset.

On the other side of the wall, Wang Dalong was bragging and chatting with the livestream audience, saying that Lin Feng had locked himself in a dark room to study that "scrap paper" and had probably lost his mind.

[No way, right? Does Brother Feng really want to polish this scrap paper until it develops a patina?]

[LOL, is the streamer's main thing just being stubborn?]

[Thinking too small. I bet Brother Feng will take us to feast on Boston lobsters tomorrow!]

No one knew that in the room next door, an ancient puzzle was being slowly solved.

Minutes and seconds passed. Fine beads of sweat broke out on Lin Feng's forehead, and his eyes grew sore from focusing for so long.

Just as he moved the light source to an extremely tricky angle—

In the next second, a miracle happened!

Those scattered light spots actually overlapped and connected perfectly with the original abstract lines on the map!

One second it was just gibberish, and the next, under the magic of light and shadow, it actually came to life!

A clear, recognizable local nautical chart was revealed! The outlines of islands, the distribution of reefs, navigation routes, and even skull markers indicating dangerous waters were all plain to see!

"Holy crap! It worked!"

Excited, Lin Feng slammed the table and sprang from his chair, pumping his fist with uncontrollable joy.

"Damn! Brother Feng, what are you doing? Was that an earthquake?" Wang Dalong was startled next door and began pounding on the door.

"It's nothing!" Lin Feng's voice was full of excitement. "Fatty, get ready. We've found the place!"

He pulled open the door. Seeing Lin Feng's face glowing and him trembling with excitement, Wang Dalong was stunned: "Holy crap, Brother Feng, you... you really solved that thing?"

To maintain a sense of mystery, Lin Feng did not livestream the puzzle-solving process. Only at the moment of success did he point the camera at the nautical chart that had revealed its true face under the light and shadow.

When the viewers saw that the "doodle" had truly turned into a precise nautical chart, the entire livestream fell into a deathly silence.

Three seconds later, the bullet comments erupted like a volcano.

[Holy sh*t!!!!!!]

[??? What just happened? Are my eyes playing tricks on me? What kind of light magic is this?]

[I'm stunned, completely stunned! A forty-five-dollar piece of scrap paper is really a treasure map?! I declare Brother Feng is absolutely killing it today!]

[This isn't even deduction anymore; it's theology! Please take my respect!]

Lin Feng didn't explain. He simply zoomed in the camera, focusing on an uninhabited island specially marked on the nautical chart.

"Next destination: the Caribbean Sea."

He opened his laptop and quickly cross-referenced satellite maps with nautical data. Relying on the unique island chains and reef groups on the chart, he soon pinpointed the target on a global scale.

It was an uninhabited small island in the Caribbean Sea called "Snake Bone Island," named for its shape that resembled a coiled snake skeleton.

"Done! Let's go!" Lin Feng snapped his laptop shut without the slightest hesitation.

They immediately booked flights to the largest nearby island—Saint Martin Island.

At the moment their flight information was confirmed and the plane soared into the sky...

Inside the "Eternal Hand" command center, red warning lights began to flash.

Osiris looked at the locked-on "Snake Bone Island" on the screen and Lin Feng's flight path, a playful, cat-and-mouse smile curling at the corners of his mouth.

"Send out the word: book every boat available for rent and every hotel room near Snake Bone Island. If you can't book them, buy them."

He gave orders slowly and methodically, his tone as relaxed as if he were arranging a party.

"I want it so that when he arrives, he has no choice but to board the boat we've prepared for him and stay in the room we've prepared for him."

"The perfect stage has been set. Now, we just wait for our protagonist... to make his grand entrance."