Jackson crouched down and used his thumb to scrape the dirt off the object. A golden, gleaming color met his eyes.

He focused for a moment, confirming that what he had tripped over was not a stone, but a gold brick roughly three inches wide. Only one side of the gold brick was exposed, and he couldn’t tell how long it was buried beneath the ground. He tried to pull it out with his hands, but it wouldn’t budge.

Looking around, the only thing surrounding him ...