The king sat at the young man's bedside and listened to him tell of his misery—sir, did you know that this place surrounded by mountains was no ordinary place, but a mysterious country known to the outside world as the "Magic Capital". Legend has it that this place was the domain of the devil long ago, but for some reason, the devil mysteriously disappeared hundreds of years ago, and it was only then that some people came to live, live, and even build a country here. But the cowardly people have not dared to come near this place so far, for fear that the devil will come back one day and cause harm to others.

My father was the king of this magic city, called Hammoud, and he ruled for seventy years. When he died, I succeeded to the throne and married a beautiful and gentle wife from out of town. We fell in love and loved each other, and she loved me so much that she didn't think about eating or drinking without seeing me. My wife's greatest hobby is to tell her all sorts of weird stories.

I could tell a few at first, but then I couldn't tell her so many bizarre stories—so I went through the books my father had left me and told her the stories about them. Every time my wife hears these stories, she is very happy, and naturally I feel satisfied and happy. This life lasted for a whole year. One day, she went to the bathhouse to bathe, and I told the cook to hurry up and prepare dinner so that she could enjoy it when she returned. I was resting in this palace at the time. slept sideways, and the two palace maids sat at the head and foot of the bed to serve.

With my wife not around, I felt restless and couldn't sleep. The two maids thought I was asleep, so they chatted in a whisper. I heard the maid sitting at the head of the bed say, "Maisi, our master is very pitiful. He lives with us, the magician's wife, and what a waste of youth. "When I heard her words, I was shocked—I didn't show my voice in order to continue listening." Yes, may Allah punish this wicked woman!" The palace maid sitting at the end of the bed said angrily, "How can our master marry such a woman as a wife when he is so young-"

"The master is so mediocre that he doesn't care about her at all." "What nonsense are you talking about! If the master knew about her, could he not ask - she was messing around behind her master's back. "So the master knows that she doesn't know her secret yet-" "How could I know it-the master drinks every day before going to bed, she puts the anesthetic in the wine, and the master will pass out when he drinks it, and of course he doesn't know where she has gone, what she has done, and where she has come back. She was well-dressed, dressed up, and slipped out, and did not return until early in the morning, and then she lit incense and smoked it in front of her master's nose, and the master would come to his senses. ”

Hearing the palace maid's conversation, I was so shocked that my face turned black with anger. In the evening, my wife came back from bathing in the bathhouse, and we set out our meals and ate and drank together. After the meal, she pestered me to tell her a story. In order not to arouse her suspicions, I told her what I had read in the book today, and she was as happy and excited as ever.

It was getting late, and I was ready to go to bed as usual. As always, my wife commanded her servants to bring me wine, and gave it to me with her own hands. After I took the wine, I poured it out secretly while she was not paying attention, and then pretended to be asleep, and fell on the bed, pulling the quilt over it, as if I had fallen asleep. At this point, I heard my wife say to herself, "Sleep on you, damn one." I'm tired of you, I don't know how long I'll have to endure it!"

After she finished speaking, she calmly changed into gorgeous clothes, applied grease and powder, and dressed up. Then she took my sword, opened the door, and went out. I immediately jumped out of bed and followed my wife out of the house. I saw her go out of the palace gate, through the streets and alleys, and when she came to the city gate, she muttered something in her mouth, and the iron lock immediately fell off automatically, and the city gate opened. She slipped out of the city, and I quietly followed her, chasing her all the way to a group of mounds. In the middle of the mound stands a fortress with a brick domed house. I followed, climbed up to the dome and peeked through the window into the house. In this room lived a sturdy black slave who was dressed in filthy clothes and reclining on a pile of sugar cane leaves. My wife stepped forward and knelt on the ground in front of the slave, and the slave raised her head and scolded, "You damn thing, why did you delay so long-"

I heard my wife say, "My dear husband, please understand my troubles! When I concealed my identity to marry the new king of the Demon Capital, it wasn't to extract the contents of the prophetic poetry book from his mouth. Now I'm almost on the verge of success – in a few days, I'll know exactly what 'that' going to be!" The black slave said angrily, "yes--how can you convince me that you're not talking a lot--damn it, you can't really be in love with the little white-faced king--or else, why don't you trick that book into reading it for yourself, but have him tell it to you--why don't you just talk about it every day, can't you let him talk about it all at once-"

My wife groveled before the black slaves and said, "My master! How can you doubt my loyalty to you—you must know that the book was enchanted by the old king of the Demon Capital, and that only his descendants and the descendants of the author of the book could read it, and I had no way to open it, so I could only lie to my current husband to tell me a story; And how dare I be too anxious to ask him to talk too much at once—I am afraid that this will arouse his suspicions. ”

The slave snorted, not believing her words, but I knew she was telling the truth, and my body was cold from head to toe. My wife pleaded bitterly to gain the trust of the slaves: "My dear husband, my only love, I can swear in the name of the Lord God that in two days at most I will be able to get the final answer out of his mouth—that I will surely destroy his city before sunrise, and let owls and crows roar everywhere, and let foxwolves flock in for the return of our great Lord God—and prove my faithfulness to you." ”

"Okay, don't talk about that. Tell me, what did you hear from his mouth today-" My wife suddenly brightened: "This is exactly what I want to tell you right away." The most exciting news – tonight, he finally got to the most crucial, important part of that prophetic poem! The foolish man told me this as an interesting story, but he did not know that it was an important part of the fate of our Lord God—according to the 'story' he told, it was prophesied in that in the near future, an old fisherman in one of the nearby countries would go out to fish, and he would fish out a brass bottle in the middle of the sea and open it—and then our Lord God would come back from the sealed bottle! There is no doubt that it will return to its territory and come to this 'magic capital' in the future. All we have to do is wait patiently here, trusting that the Demon God, who has boundless power, will give his most faithful followers everything they want!"

"You're saying that the Demon God was sealed in a gall bottle and thrown into the sea—that's why it disappeared from the human world for five hundred years—" The black slave had a stunned look on his face, "And then—what happened to the Demon God after he came out of the bottle—"I don't know, he didn't talk about it again today—but don't worry, I'll keep pestering him tomorrow." ”

The black slave snorted, very dissatisfied with my wife's answer, and I, in a cold sweat, rejoiced in my heart that I had found out the truth of the matter before the story was finished, otherwise the wicked, despicable woman would have heard all the contents of the book and would have done something vicious to me. The thought that I had been the target of her exploitation for so long made me so angry that it seemed as if the entire universe was pitch black.

Then I saw my wife go around to the black slave and say, "My dear husband, do you have anything here that you can give me to eat—" "Go and find it for yourself in the back room, there is a copper basin with boiled mouse bones, take it and gnaw it, there is leftover soup in the jar, go and drink it!" The slave said, "My wife did as he told me to go to the back room to find something to eat." When I saw this, I finally decided that these were two evil people, and they were both apostles of the devil. I crept down from the roof, broke into the house, took the sword my wife had brought, drew it, and struck the slave by the neck, and I was furious and thought it had killed him. When I wielded my sword, I intended to cut off the veins and arteries in the slave's neck, but I only cut his flesh and throat. He was panting so hard that he couldn't speak. I thought he wouldn't survive, and I felt revenge burning in my heart, thinking that this was the best way to punish my wife. So I put my sword back in its sheath, put it back in its place, hurried back to the city, came to the palace, and then lay down on my bed and fell asleep. Early in the morning, my wife woke me up. I saw her cut her hair and wore a mourning dress. What she said to me showed that she did not know that I had done the incident last night: "Your Majesty! If I do this, please don't blame me. Because I just received the news that my mother died of illness in a distant country, and I could not go back to keep filial piety, so I had to mourn her in this way. ”

"That's as it should be." I pretended not to know anything, and calmly said to her, "Do whatever you want." From that day on, she mourned all day long, wept to the corner, and buried her head in filial piety. Soon after, she also built a domed mourning room in the palace, which was filled with tombs that looked like a burial tomb. In fact, I know that she built this mourning room to move the black slave to it to recuperate. The black slave was still alive, but he had become a useless cripple. Since he was injured in the sword that day, he could only survive on soup, and he was too weak to speak, and he was about to choke. My wife stayed there almost from morning till night, serving him tirelessly.

I endured all this in silence, pretending to know nothing, and did not pursue her actions, but my heart was full of anger. One day, my wife came back from the mourning room. I was already asleep, but she woke me up and said, "Your Majesty, you haven't finished the story you told me last time, can you continue—"

I held back my anger and said, "You are so sad every day, how can you be in the mood to listen to stories now-" She said in a rhetorical voice, "I am afraid that my mother will be lonely underground, so I will tell the story that Your Majesty told me to my mother under the Nine Springs in the mourning room, so as to express my sorrow." I finally got it any longer, and jumped out of bed, pointed at her nose and scolded, "Yes—I'm afraid you're going to tell the story to the half-dead black slave in the mourning room—I regret that I didn't make up for it, and that it killed him!"

Hearing this, my wife stood up and cried out, "Damn it! It turned out to be a good thing you did! Cut my husband, destroyed his youth, and made him suffer in a condition where he would not die!" Yes, I did it!" As I spoke, I drew my sword, held it in my hand, and walked over to kill her. When my wife saw my actions, she burst out laughing and said, "You can kill me too—and now I don't have to pretend to be an ordinary person anymore—I know most of the contents of the prophecy book anyway, and you have no use for it." Why don't you let me vent it thoroughly, and use it as a gift and greeting to welcome the return of the Demon God-sama!"

So, she chanted a few incantations and said, "I will not kill you, I will let you live and suffer - with my spell, turn the lower half of your body to stone!" Since then, I can't stand up, I can't sleep, my lower body is a lifeless stone, but my upper body is a living person with free movement. At the same time, the entire magic city, including the streets and gardens, is also controlled by her magic. The city was inhabited by adherents of four religions: Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Christianity. After being enchanted, they all turned into witchcraft fish, which they used to guard the gates of the demon capital. Muslims become white fish, Christians become red fish, Christians become blue fish, and Jews become yellow fish. Only after death can these fish break the spell and revert to their human body. And the towns of the magic capital have been turned into lakes under evil magic, and the original four islands have become four mountains that surround the lake. Only the palace remained as it was, for the wicked woman and the black slave still lived in the mourning room. And from that time on she came here every day at sunrise, and took off my clothes, and beat me with a hundred rods, and beat me to the flesh, and then she put a towel over me, and put this splendid garment on the outside, and then went to the mourning room to serve the black slave. The enchanted young man couldn't help but cry sadly after talking about his experience and what had happened to him.

The king looked at him and said, "Don't be sad, young man, for perhaps I can help you and deliver you." ”