Quoted By:
"Either way, this is where the story would end, were it not for an unrelated venture of mine. Some of you will remember I traded in the East for a while. While there, I came into possession of an old, dusty tome in one of my travels. I purchased it at an Uhlan market-place. For centuries, these savages have plundered the silk trade routes. Though they have no use for tomes of paper written in a foreign script, they yet know such items can fetch high prices, so they frequently ... arrange to come into possession of them while on their raids in the east.
"This book, as explained to me, came from a palace of some Xingese governor or another - but I could understand nothing of it. It was written in an archaic Babylonian dialect that I could not read, but it was very clearly a book related to Alchymists, as I could spot the hermeneutic symbolism of a serpent eating its own tail in multiple places in the book.
"When I brought the book to my friend, he could scarcely believe his eyes. He jumped with joy and kissed me on the cheeks, exclaiming that he would be forever in my debt. The tome turned out to be a fount of lost knowledge, including such information that I shan't speak of. But I can tell you that my friend and I embarked on a journey of pilgrimage like no other.
"Alejandro José Ortega is not lying, my friends, when I say that I stood inside one of the Old Temples, deep in the jungles of Catanga. This means nothing to you, perhaps, but the Old Temples of the Order of the Serpent are revered, almost mystical; that any remain standing is a notion long ago abandoned by even the most optimistic of natural philosophers. I am not exaggerating when I say that the simple act of providing the location of this temple would be sufficient to make me an honorary fellow of the Imperial Society, or an honorary doctor in the University of Hofgarten. All the learned men of the Continent would speak about me!"
