The doctor sat in the departure lounge, playing Fruit Ninja on his iPhone, but he wasn’t really focused and kept hitting bombs and failing. After failing several times, he finally gave up, put away his phone, and took out the Egypt travel guide from his bag.

Actually, he wasn’t going to Egypt for leisure but for work. His hospital had established a cooperative relationship with a hospital in Cairo, and he was going for an inspection. There were many opportunities for overseas business trips, but the doctor felt very unlucky to be assigned to Egypt. Why Egypt? He really wanted to switch with Chun Ge—that lucky guy got to go to England! Egypt was nothing but yellow earth and more yellow earth, and worst of all, it was very hot!

The doctor casually flipped through the travel guide in his hands, feeling a subtle sense of dread. He could speak English, but he couldn’t speak Egyptian! Once again cursing the fortunate Chun Ge…

The doctor, who was muttering to himself, noticed someone had sat beside him. Just as he was about to move his bag over, he suddenly widened his eyes when he looked up.

The shop owner, whom he had just seen and said goodbye to last night, was sitting calmly beside him, and what he was holding… was actually a boarding pass and passport!

The doctor was completely speechless. Though he had known from the last trip to Xi’an that the shop owner must have an ID card to fly, he hadn’t expected the shop owner to even have a passport! And obviously on the same flight as him. He had only told the shop owner yesterday that he was going to Egypt—how had he managed to get even his visa processed in such a short time? He remembered it had taken him several days to get his own!

However, none of this was the main point. The main point was…

“Why are you coming with me?” The doctor rubbed his face, feeling it was incredible. In his impression, the shop owner was a genuine ancient person who, though living in modern society, clearly cherished the antique atmosphere of the Mute House. Unless necessary, he wouldn’t actively engage with the outside world. Was the sun rising from the west now? The shop owner was actually going abroad?

The shop owner found the doctor’s devastated expression quite amusing. After staring at him for a while, he smiled slightly: “I’ve always wanted to visit Egypt. I’ll take this opportunity to go and have some fun.”

The doctor was frightened by the smile at the corner of his lips. Have fun? Hey! Though they both had five thousand years of history, Egyptian antiques weren’t for casual fun! The doctor’s mind instantly flashed through countless horror movies about mummies, then he forced himself to calm down. The shop owner liked Chinese antiques, but that didn’t mean he liked foreign antiques too. He was being overly anxious.

After calming down, the doctor thought having company wasn’t bad. The shop owner was no longer wearing his old-fashioned Zhongshan suit, but a shirt modified from the crimson dragon robe. The all-black shirt had red-gold cloud patterns embroidered at the cuffs and hem—both modern and fashionable, very eye-catching. That persistent crimson dragon lay on the shop owner’s right shoulder, its body winding around his back, never moving to another position. Combined with the beige trench coat he wore outside, he looked exactly like a handsome, stylish urban youth. Who could guess that this person beside him had actually lived for over two thousand years?

The doctor then noticed that the shop owner actually had a semicircular gold earring clipped to his ear. This type of earring didn’t require piercing—it just clipped onto the ear. The doctor raised an eyebrow, not expecting someone like the shop owner to wear jewelry, though he noticed the shop owner only wore it on his left ear. This actually made it look quite distinctive.

Tsk, was it going to rain red? This old antique actually understood fashion now? The doctor didn’t dare tease him, only silently complaining in his heart.

Soon boarding began. Their seats were adjacent, and since they were taking a red-eye flight in the early morning, after chatting briefly, the doctor tilted his head and fell fast asleep.

The shop owner helped remove the glasses from his face, called the flight attendant to get a blanket for him, then stared fixedly at the doctor’s sleeping face.

Though he spoke lightly, his heart was extremely conflicted.

He had long known about Hu Hai’s obsession with Fu Su, but over these two thousand years, Hu Hai had never appeared, or perhaps he had appeared before, but since Fu Su’s reincarnations in every life died before age twenty-four, there was nothing he could do about it, so he simply didn’t care much. But the doctor, as Fu Su’s current incarnation, had survived due to the breaking of the longevity lock, so Hu Hai began various schemes.

What Hu Hai wanted to do was simply to resurrect his Imperial Brother and erase the doctor’s soul from this body. Hu Hai had already attempted this once, fortunately without success. The shop owner had properly secured the Nine Dragons Cup and successfully released the smoke screen, but he couldn’t guarantee that Hu Hai would truly be fooled. So when the doctor traveled abroad this time, he also suspected Hu Hai had manipulated things, wanting the doctor to leave his protective sight. Therefore, he cast a divination overnight—unexpectedly getting the Water Thunder Difficulty hexagram, a rarely appearing ominous hexagram among all hexagrams. Difficulty means hardship. The ominous hexagram says: “Wind blows tangled silk with no visible end, confusion and worry turn things upside down. Moving slowly and smoothly brings順fortune, but haste brings restriction and loss of freedom.” Within one hexagram are six lines, and this time the yin line six-three appeared, with the line statement: “Pursuing deer without a guide, only to get lost in the forest. The gentleman should be alert—if not abandoned, proceeding brings misfortune.” Yu refers to a forest guide—in ancient times, entering mountains and forests required a yu person as guide. This line meant pursuing deer without local help would only lead to getting lost in the forest. A gentleman should be alert—if not abandoned, great disaster would follow.

Not to mention this ominous line statement, the Water Thunder Difficulty hexagram was the most taboo hexagram for distant travel among the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching. So the shop owner quickly used his connections to get a visa and book a ticket, deciding to accompany the doctor to Cairo.

“Don’t worry, no matter where it is, I can always protect you…” the shop owner murmured, his voice finally dropping to barely audible.

There were no direct flights from Shanghai to Egypt’s capital Cairo. They transferred in Doha, Qatar, then waited at the airport for over three hours before boarding the flight to Cairo. With all this traveling, they arrived in Cairo at noon on the same day. Though on the surface they had only taken twelve hours to reach Cairo, there were time zone differences, plus the time spent taking the train from their city to Shanghai—in total, over twenty hours had passed during the journey.

Even the doctor, who had once stood in an operating room for ten hours, felt dizzy and unsteady when he walked out of Cairo airport and saw the extremely dazzling and scorching sun overhead.

Someone quickly supported him. The doctor rubbed his aching temples and found that the shop owner, who hadn’t slept at all, was still energetic. Well, he couldn’t judge this person by normal standards—after all, in some sense, he wasn’t a normal person at all.

No one came to pick them up, which the doctor had expected. As a small fry like him, he couldn’t expect the other hospital to mobilize everyone. The doctor hailed a taxi. Though there was a language barrier, fortunately he had memorized the address of the hotel booked by the other hospital. The taxi driver was also used to tourists with language barriers and held up a number with his fingers. The doctor was immediately speechless—apparently local Cairo taxis didn’t use meters but were accustomed to agreeing on a price first. Haggling could naturally be conducted without verbal communication through gestures. After the doctor made several hand signals, the driver stepped on the gas and headed for their destination.

Along the way, they saw the blue Nile River filled with triangular sailboats and countless minarets piercing the clouds in the city. Cairo, called the City of a Thousand Minarets, was a pearl beside the Nile. The scenery was beautiful all along the route, so the doctor looked forward to their accommodation. He insisted on dragging the shop owner along, planning for them to stay together to save money.

Moreover, most importantly, the shop owner didn’t have a cell phone. In this modern society, not having a phone made communication impossible, and the doctor didn’t want to lose track of someone in a foreign land.

But when he saw the dilapidated room in that hotel, he still couldn’t bring himself to suggest the shop owner stay together.

Because there was only one pitifully small single bed in the room.

The shop owner was quite dissatisfied with the unsanitary conditions here and rarely frowned, pulling the doctor out before he could speak. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t stay here, right?” the shop owner asked indifferently.

“It doesn’t matter—they can still contact me the same way. It’s just that accommodation would need to come out of my own pocket…” The doctor’s words were cut off by the shop owner’s gaze. He suddenly felt a bit foolish—save money? Why was he trying to save money for this person?

The shop owner hailed a taxi and gave an address, but this time he didn’t haggle and directly handed the driver two green bills.

This taxi driver could actually speak English. Upon hearing they wanted to go to the Mena Palace Hotel, he immediately introduced it enthusiastically. The Mena Palace Hotel had existed before the Suez Canal opened—it had a long history and was only one street away from the three great pyramids of Giza. Among its rooms, the Churchill Suite was one of the world’s famous top ten hotel suites, the venue where China, America, and Britain signed the Cairo Declaration. Today, this suite still wasn’t preserved for public viewing but continued to accommodate guests like other rooms, except its price was jaw-droppingly high.

Accompanied by the driver’s witty commentary, the car drove straight down Pyramid Street to the end. The doctor looked at the pyramids standing in the endless desert outside the car window, feeling extremely unreal.

This feeling of unreality reached its peak when the shop owner actually checked into that Churchill Suite with his card.

Though he knew the shop owner was a spendthrift, being this profligate was simply outrageous! The Churchill Suite was so large—just the two of them staying there? Though this room’s balcony directly faced the Great Pyramid of Khufu, other rooms could see it too!

But the room rate was actually N times that of other rooms… The doctor felt dazed, thinking he probably hadn’t actually arrived in Cairo but was dreaming on the plane.

The shop owner ignored the doctor standing dazed at the door and walked around the room, sighing: “Most of the furniture isn’t original anymore…”

“You… you’ve been here before?” The doctor almost bit his own tongue.

The shop owner didn’t answer but took down an oil painting from the wall and carefully extracted something from the painting’s frame.

The doctor immediately moved closer. Lying in the shop owner’s palm was clearly a semicircular gold earring. The doctor reflexively looked up at the shop owner’s left ear—the two earrings were indeed identical, not different in the slightest.

“This… this…” Even though he was used to the endless strange things the shop owner could do, the doctor was somewhat speechless at this moment. This… this was Egypt!

“Fortunately, this oil painting was done by a famous person, so no one tampered with it.” The shop owner restored the frame and rehung the painting. “Don’t be so surprised. Though I haven’t been here, someone else came here back then.” As for why he could tell the furniture had been changed, it was because he had an unusual intuition about antiques.

Just one glance could tell him roughly when something was made.

The doctor was stunned. Upon entering the Churchill Suite’s living room, several photographs hung there. Though his history wasn’t good, he could tell that one was a group photo of the Big Three—China, America, and Britain. He didn’t recognize Churchill and Roosevelt very well, but he was extremely familiar with the other person. He had seen this person in history textbooks during school.

Besides this Big Three photo, there were several solo photos of Churchill and group photos of attendees on the wall. The important Chinese figure and his wife were among them. In the unclear old photograph, a glint of gold could be vaguely seen by the lady’s ear.

Such a pair of earrings—one was in the Churchill Suite, while the other had once been by that lady’s ear. That lady was famous for her extensive social connections and had helped her husband create an excellent situation. Though it eventually declined after a turning point in Xi’an, with their party ultimately retreating to Taiwan, she had been a formidable figure who commanded wind and rain in her time, not to be underestimated.

“What does this earring do?” the doctor asked with great interest.

The shop owner didn’t keep him in suspense long and handed the newly retrieved earring to the doctor. “Put it on. In current terms, this gold-plated earring can be used as a translator and communicator.”

The doctor complied, roughly guessing this earring should have been used as a listening device back then. Later, for unknown reasons, they couldn’t find an opportunity to retrieve it, so it had remained silent for nearly sixty years. The doctor didn’t not want to ask about the earring’s true origins, but his physical strength couldn’t support his curiosity. After hurriedly washing up, he fell directly into dreamland.