PDLP Chapter 248 The Veil of Wealth and Singularity is More Enigmatic than Financial Reports
Chapter 248 The Veil of Wealth and Singularity is More Enigmatic than Financial Reports
The automatic door of the convenience store vibrates every time it opens, just like the heartbeat that always vibrates in Xiao Si's chest when Yu Zhanmo passes by.
Yu Zhanmo's tall, slender figure swept past the oden glass display case, precisely picking up Xiao Si's favorite quail egg: "If you're deficient in qi and blood, you should supplement with more protein." The fog from the insulated box condensed on his glasses, forming a desert-like white haze. Xiao Si stared at the internship badge swaying beneath his white coat, recalling what the archaeology professor had said: "The anthropomorphic stele unearthed in Mecca—what kind of story lies behind it…?"
On a rainy night, Yu Zhanmo brought Xiao Si, whose night run had been delayed by the rain, an umbrella with the same pattern on the handle as the ring, and the ribs still smelled of an unfamiliar perfume.
Xiao Si is having trouble sleeping. Recently, she heard from a classmate that Yu Zhanmo seems to be getting along very well with a female nurse, and they went out to dinner together again tonight...
Then why did he bring me an umbrella again? Was it for an after-dinner walk? She unconsciously thought this as she wiped the rubbing of the bronze artifact, when suddenly the Arabic phrase "unspeakable love" appeared on the rubbing paper—the same gold-stamped pattern on the title page of Yu Zhanmo's anatomical notes.
Young Muhammad awoke with a start amidst the caravan's saddlery, the lingering scent of disinfectant from the future still coursing through his nostrils. He looked down at the still-present needle marks on his palm—the marks left from testing Zhen Xiaosi's sensitivity before his journey.
The twelve-year-old boy gripped the reins tightly, looking up at the swaying bronze bell on the neck of the caravan's lead camel, fine sand slipping through his fingers... The outline of Mecca's city gates was gradually becoming clear in the morning mist.
"Ahead lies the Najran Oasis, near the Yemeni border. It's rich in water, and date palms grow in the dried-up river valleys to feed the villagers' livestock. The villagers are building dams, expanding their farmland, and harvesting more grain..." Uncle Abu Talib's voice, carried on the hot wind, continued, "There are monks wearing Iron Crosses there, still reciting the Torah's encouragement and guidance."
He found himself traveling with his uncle to trade in Syria. "The Quraysh nobles here are very fierce; they will actively persecute anyone who threatens them. We must be extra careful!" Young Muhammad nodded, catching a whiff of myrrh in the air. As the caravan unloaded its goods under the palm trees, he saw black-robed monks scooping holy water with silver spoons, and Jewish scholars swaying leather boxes with scriptures tied to their foreheads during morning prayers…
The caravan translator told him, "They say the Creator created the world in seven days." The boy drew seven marks in the sand, and the shadow of a camel thorn was quietly creeping across the third mark.
Three years later, the month of Haram was supposed to be a time of prohibition against weapons, but the blood of the Quraysh chieftain soaked the black stone of the Kaaba. Fifteen-year-old Muhammad was caught in the chaos, and he remembered how the clanging of metal shattered the tranquility of the forbidden month. In a fleeting moment, he saw his own figure, sword in hand, reflected in the pupils of his enemy—a Bedouin with a copper ring in his left ear and a crescent-shaped scar on his Adam's apple.
"In the name of the goddess Rath!" The shouts exploded in his ears. When he came to his senses, the blood-stained scimitar had slipped from his fingers, and the Bedouin youth's blood was seeping into the seams of his straw sandals. That night, he vomited uncontrollably in the desert, the stars swirling overhead like scattered silver coins. Something heavier than death gripped his heart, like the suffocating feeling a caravan encounters while traversing a sandstorm.
On the seventh day after Yu Zhanmo's disappearance, Xiao Si found a dusty Arabic dictionary in his dissection room. Tucked among the yellowed pages was a fragment of a marriage contract from 595 AD; the reddish handwriting was identical to the boy's handwriting used to annotate his lab report. When she read the name "Undersea Calamity,"
What Xiao Si didn't know was that at that very moment, in the cave of Hira in 610 AD, Muhammad, who had received his first revelation, was trembling as he wrote: "I have lost the moon, the goddess of the Great Food, whom I only dare to gaze upon at night..."
As the Jewish scholar unfolded the parchment, Muhammad suddenly noticed a draft of a message that Xiao Si had not sent between the paragraphs: "The parrot at the convenience store chirped 81 times today, and Yu passed by 0 times..." The boy had carved seven marks in the sand with a scimitar, and the edge of the sixth mark still bore traces of blue ink from a modern ballpoint pen.
When the 25-year-old caravan steward was inventorying the frankincense chests, he would let the moonlight fall at a specific angle, illuminating the bottom of the chests—a remnant of Yu Zhanmo's modern habits. As the golden veil of the Undersea Calamity brushed against the ledger, he suddenly heard Zhen Xiaosi's choked sobs as she wiped the archaeological excavation square: "The highest level of artifact restoration is to fall in love with the spirit of time..."
On their wedding night, the coolness of the drizzle seeped into the wedding robes, mingling with the lingering warmth of the umbrellas in the bucket outside the convenience store... Muhammad stroked the calluses on his wife's palms, but in a moment of distraction, he touched the band-aid on Zhen Xiaosi's hand as she was carrying the boxes of cultural relics.
On the night his seventh child died, Muhammad stood beneath the dome of the spice warehouse. The little rhinoceros's gaze slanted in through the skylight, casting his long shadow onto the neatly stacked frankincense chests. The sea monster was watching the young man's profile as he checked the ledgers: the practiced tapping of his knuckles on the earthenware pot reminded the businesswoman of her father appraising rough agate stones…
“You turned last year’s loss-making trade route into a 40% profit.” The stunningly beautiful forty-year-old woman suddenly spoke, her gold-threaded veil unable to conceal her two divorces. As the young man turned, she saw the amber luster honed by his years of business travel in his eyes. “I intend to entrust the rest of my life to a trustworthy young man—I wonder if you would accept this commitment?”
On the night of the wedding banquet, a light drizzle fell in Mecca, and a rare wild ginseng actually bloomed!
As the red candles of the wedding banquet wept in the third watch of the night, a fine drizzle began to fall outside the walls of Mecca.
As the bridal sedan chair passed by the cliff edge, the wild ginseng that had been untouched for a hundred years suddenly burst forth with a tearing sound—dark red roots broke through the frozen soil, and three amber flower buds burst forth from the old wrinkles… At this moment, the acacia bell hidden in the bride's sleeve trembled softly!