Early the next morning, Ah Xiu drove on the road. He drove over a slightly undulating brown earth, overgrown with yellow grass and bare leafless trees from winter. The last of the snow has melted and disappeared. He refueled the wrecked car in a passing town. Incidentally, this town is home to the county's under-16 women's 300-meter sprinters. To make the car look less shabby, he drove it into the car wash at the gas station. When the car was washed, he was surprised to find that it was unlikely, but it was white, and there weren't many rust spots on it. After that, he drove on.

The sky is an incredible blue, and white industrial exhaust fumes emerge from the chimneys of factories and remain in the sky as if they were a photographic work. An eagle flies up from a dead tree and flies in his direction, its wings flapping slowly in the sunlight like a collection of photographs of a series of still movements.

As he walked, he noticed that he was heading in the direction of East St. Louis. He tried to take a different route, only to find himself driving into what was apparently a red-light district in the local industrial zone. Eighteen heavy-duty trucks and large trailers were parked outside a row of buildings that looked like makeshift warehouses with the words "24-hour nightclub" written on them, one of which had signs that read "Best Show in Town." Ah Xiu shook his head helplessly and continued driving. Laura loves to dance, both clothed and naked--- and on a few special memorable evenings, she dances from one state to another to perform striptease for him. How he loved watching her dance.

His lunch was eaten in a town called Red Bud and consisted of a sandwich and a can of Coke.

He passed through a valley where the wreckage of thousands of yellow bulldozers, tractors and tracked vehicles was piled up. It is estimated that this is the graveyard of bulldozers, and all bulldozers drove here and died here.

He drove through the town of Ronchi, past the town of Aster--- home of a famous writer. He noticed that the front portico columns began to appear in the buildings on either side. With the white columns, even the most dilapidated and smallest houses strive to look like a mansion in front of outsiders. He also passed a large, earth-colored river. When he saw the name of the river on the street sign, he couldn't help but laugh, and the river was actually called "Da Ni River". He also saw three trees that had died in the winter, and their bodies were entwined with brown kudzu that had strangled them into strange human shapes. At first glance, the three trees look like three witches, three shriveled old women hunched over, who are planning for his future.

He drove along the Mississippi River. Ashur had never seen the Nile, but the dim afternoon sun shining on the wide, brown surface of the river reminded him of the muddy terrain of the Nile Valley. It's not the Nile now, it's the Nile that flowed like the arteries of ancient Egypt a long, long time ago. On both sides are marshes overgrown with papyrus, home to cobras, jackals and bison......

A street sign pointing out the direction of Thebes.

The road was 12 feet higher than the main road he was on, and he had to drive around the swamp. Surrounded by bushes, flocks of birds fly back and forth in the sky in search of countless small black dots on the background of the sky.

In the late afternoon, the sun began to sink in the west, and the faint light of the elven kingdom shone on the whole world. It's a heavy, warm, custard-colored light that gives the whole world an otherworldly, extremely unreal feel. Bathed in this light, Asho passed by a street sign telling him "Welcome to the historic city of Cairo". He drove under the bridge and found himself in a small port town. The Cairo City Council is a large building, and the larger is the Customs House, shaped like a giant freshly baked biscuit, dyed with a syrupy golden color by the twilight sunset.

He pulled up to the side of the street and walked to the embankment of the river, not figuring out which river he was looking at. Next to the trash can at the back of a building, a gray-brown kitten sniffs and jumps. The light of dusk even painted the garbage heap with a magical color.

A lone seagull flies along the riverbank. A little girl was standing on the sidewalk on the bank of the river, about ten feet away from him. She was wearing old tennis shoes on her feet and a long skirt in a man's gray wool sweater, and she was looking at him with the serious, melancholy eyes of a six-year-old girl. Her hair was black and straight, hanging down long, and her skin was as brown as the river.

He smiled at her, but she glared at him in a challenge.

There was a scream and a trumpet from the water's edge. The brown kitten jumped away from an overflowing garbage can as if it had been shot. It was chased by a long-mouthed black dog and got headlong under a car.

"Hey," Ah Xiu greeted the little girl, "have you ever heard of the Vanishing Demon Powder?"

She hesitated, then shook her head.

"Alright," said Ashu, "look here. Asho took out a one-pence coin from his left hand and held it up to show her, then he made it bounce and spin and made a feint to throw it into his right hand, followed by a fist with his right hand, but there was nothing in it. He held out his right hand to the girl. "Now," he said, "I'm going to take some vanishing ......powder out of my pocket," he said, reaching into the chest pocket of his shirt with his left hand in his pocket, leaving the coin there, "...... Sprinkle the magic powder on the hand holding the coin...... "He pretended to sprinkle the magic powder," ...... Well, the coins are now gone. He opened his right hand, and there was nothing inside. To add to the amazement effect, he also opened his left hand, which was also empty.

The little girl was still glaring at him.

Ashur shrugged, put his hands in his pockets, grabbed a penny coin in one hand, and a folded five-pound note in the other. He was going to conjure them out of thin air and give the five dollars to the little girl. Judging by her appearance, she needs the five dollars very much. "Hey," he continued, "we've got a new audience." ”

The black dog and the brown kitten were also watching his performance, standing at the side of the little girl, staring intently at him. The dog's huge ears stood up, and there was a comically funny look of alertness. A long-necked man with gold-rimmed glasses and a crane-like look also walked along the sidewalk, looking left and right as if looking for something. Ah Xiu didn't know if he was the owner of the dog.

"What do you think?" Ashu asked the dog, wanting to relax the little girl, "isn't that great?"

The black dog licked his long mouth, and then spoke, his voice low and dry. "I watched a performance by Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of our time. Take my word for it, man, you're not a very good wizard yet. ”

The little girl glanced at the animals, then looked up at Axiu, then turned and fled. Her feet thumped on the pavement, as if the youkai of hell were chasing her behind. The two animals watched her run away, and the crane-looking man walked up to the dog, bending down and scratching at its towering pointed ears.

"Come on," said the man in the gold-rimmed glasses to the dog, "it's just a coin trick, and it's not real magic, so what are you comparing him to Albus." ”

"It's not really magic," said the dog, "but he'll do it." "The golden light of the setting sun disappeared and the sky turned gray.

Ah Xiu put the coins and banknotes in his hand back in his pocket. "All right," he said, "which of you is Nasus?"

"Use your own eyes. The long-mouthed black dog said, then followed behind the man in the gold-rimmed glasses and slowly walked away along the sidewalk. After hesitating for a moment, Ah Xiu followed. The cat didn't know where it had gone. They walked to a large old building in the middle of a row of wooden houses. The sign next to the door reads "Azir and Nasus." Family-run funeral parlor since 1863. ”

"I'm Mr. Azir. "I think I should treat you to dinner, as for my friend has some work to do." ”

Somewhere in the UK

The city of London frightened Salim, who tightly guarded his sample box with both hands, holding it to his chest. He was afraid of the blacks, of the way they stared at him, and of the Jews, who were all black, with hats, beards, and curly hair. Jews can be identified by their clothing, and there are many people he can't tell what ethnicity they are. He was afraid of the bustling crowds. All people of all shapes and races, poured out of their tall, filthy edifices and crowded the sidewalks. He was also afraid of the noise of vehicles. He was even afraid of the air, which smelled foul and sweet, completely different from the air in Oman.

Salim has been in London, England for a week. Every day, he visits two or three different clients, opens his sample box, and shows them brass trimkets and knick-knacks, including a variety of rings, bottles and cans, and miniature flashlights, as well as models of the Empire State Building, the Queen statue, and the Eiffel Tower, all of which shimmer with the metallic sheen of copper. Every night, he wrote a fax to his brother-in-law, Flauder, back home, telling him that he had not received any orders that day, or, on a happy day, that he had received several orders. However, Salim painfully realized that the profits from the order were not even enough to pay his airline and hotel bills.

For some reason that Salim couldn't understand, his brother-in-law's business partner helped him book a hotel on Bachelor's Street in London. The hotel made him dizzy, claustrophobic, and out of place for him, where there were often unemployed vagrants in and out of strange clothes with pointed hats, all of whom seemed delirious and didn't seem to belong to this world at all--- but the most difficult thing for him to accept was that the hotel was very expensive.

Flaude was the husband of his sister, who was not very rich, but was a partner in a small ornament factory. Everything produced at the plant is exported, to other Arab countries, Europe and the United States. Salim had been working for Flaude for six months and was a little afraid of Flauder. On the fax, Flauder's tone became more and more unpleasant. In the evening, Salim sat in his hotel room, reciting his Koran, reassuring himself that everything would pass, and that his time in this strange world was limited.

His brother-in-law gave him a thousand pounds to pay for various expenses during the journey. When he saw this amount of money for the first time, he thought it was a huge amount of money. However, the pace of spending money is much faster than Salim imagined. When he first arrived in London, he tipped everyone and paid everyone he met for fear of being seen as a poor Arab, and he stopped tipping altogether when he realized that while he was benefiting from the tip, perhaps others would laugh at him more behind his back.

The first and only time he took the subway, he got lost. He couldn't get his bearings and even missed appointments. Now, as a last resort, he takes a taxi and walks the rest of the time. He staggered into the overheated office, his face numb from the cold air outside, sweat under his coat, and muddy shoes on his feet. When the bitter cold wind blew along the avenues--- in London, the avenues ran from north to south, and the avenues went from west to east, and it was as simple as that, so it was easy for Salim to know which direction to go in the pilgrimage to Mecca, and his bare skin was as cold as if he had been whipped with a whip.

He never ate in the hotel--- the cost of the hotel was paid for by Flauder's business partner, and the cost of the meal had to be paid for by himself, and he bought some food from the small sandwich shop and other small food stores outside, and smuggled it into the hotel under his coat. After a few days, he realized that no one cared about this kind of thing. Even so, he felt uncomfortable walking into a dimly lit elevator with a bag full of food. Salim always had to bend down, squint his eyes, look for the elevator floor button, press the floor he lived on. In this way, he was uncomfortable all the way, and finally returned to the small white room where he lived.

Salim was uneasy. The fax I received that morning was brief, but it was full of rebuke and disappointment. It says that Salim has let them all down - his sister, Flauder, Flauder's business partner, even the Sultan of Oman and the entire Arab world have been disappointed because of him. Unless he gets the order, Flaude no longer sees him as obligated to continue employing Salim, everyone depends on him for support, and his hotel bill is too expensive. How the hell is Salim wasting their money? Do you have to be as extravagant as the Sultan of England? Salim finished reading the fax in his room, and his room always felt too stuffy, so he opened a window last night, but now it felt too cold, and then sat there for a while, the expression on his face solidified into utter sorrow and distress.

Afterwards, Salim walked to the city. He clutched his sample box as if it were filled with diamonds and rubies. He braved the cold wind and trudged block by block until he reached the intersection of the streets, where he found the low building above a delicatessen. He walked up the stairs to the fourth floor and came to the door of Pan's Global Imports.

The office was filthy and dark, but he knew that the Pan Global company controlled almost half of the decorative souvenirs imported from Britain from the Far East. As long as you get a real order, a big order, from Pan's Global, you can compensate Salim for the entire cost of this trip. This is the difference between success and failure. Salim sat down in an uncomfortable wooden chair outside his office, resting the sample box flat on his lap and looking at the middle-aged woman sitting behind the front desk. Her hair was dyed too bright red, and she was constantly blowing her nose with one soothing tissue after another, wiping it again after blowing it before throwing it into the garbage basket.

He arrived at the office at 10:30 a.m., half an hour earlier than the agreed time. He sat there, his face flushed a little, his whole body trembling slightly. He was worried that he might have a fever. Time passed very slowly.