Seto knew he had never been likable. Not by his biological father, nor his other relatives, or even the people who respectfully addressed him as Lord Anubis.
His sense of smell was exceptionally keen. Perhaps it was because he had dealt with wild beasts since childhood, or perhaps the priests were correct in their analysis based on the abnormal phenomenon of the Nile flowing backwards at the time of his birth…he was indeed extraordinary.
Seto could smell the scent of illness, the scent of emotions, and a certain kind of territorial pheromone.
He was very sensitive to smells. All the people he met all smelled unpleasant, even worse than the rusty scent of blood. He disliked it greatly.
Later, Seto emerged from the cage and began learning common knowledge of human society. It took him many years to finally get the answer…
That unpleasant smell was an emotion called disgust.
Even those subjects who kowtowed to him actually could not conceal their fear of him. In essence, they were no different from his father who distrusted him or his elder brother the king who used him. The emotions directed at him were consistent, underpinned by an inescapable, subtle disgust.
Seto had smelled the wind, smelled flowers, smelled newborn lambs in the pen… But the first time he formed the concept of “pleasant smell” was in the eighteenth year of his life.
That day, he was passing by the harsh environment of the granite quarry, having come on his elder brother’s orders to liaise with the supervisor. The air was full of sand, sweat, and dust, and the weather was so hot that the sandy soil steamed with white mist. That was when it happened.
Seto smelled a very, very faint fragrance, like slightly astringent plants, yet also like sandalwood. This quiet, cool scent was almost buried in the wind and sand, but fortunately, he found its source in time.
Pleasant.
Followed closely by the unfamiliar emotion of “liking”.
Finally, after experiencing countless instances of “disliking”, he was struck by its opposite, a powerful liking.
Inevitably, this powerful liking evolved into love.
He loved his Mother Goddess.
Therefore, he could not accept Xin Hexue abandoning him and leaving just like that.
“But weren’t you the most obedient one?”
Seto was brought back to the Mother Goddess’s palace and got this question.
Along with the words came a cup of newly brewed honey wine. Xin Hexue’s tone was gentle as he repeated the previous request. “Seto has grown up now, he can drink wine. So, help me taste this honey wine brewed with a new recipe?”
Seto parted his lips but didn’t know what to say.
His animal intuition told him this was a sweet trap.
He instinctively wanted to refuse this request, but he was indeed the Mother Goddess’s most obedient.
“Good boy.”
Xin Hexue stroked Seto’s short hair, watching as Seto drank the honey wine.
Lately, due to being busy with the construction of various temple projects, Seto’s hair had actually grown long, with the ends falling to his shoulders. Xin Hexue noticed he often impatiently brushed his hair away, as uncomfortable as if some tree gum was stuck to him.
Xin Hexue spoke slowly, “Let me trim your hair a little.”
The slight snipping sounds rang out in the quiet afternoon, and small black hair strands fell in clusters to the ground.
It was as peaceful as a good dream.
In this good dream, surrounded by the sweet aroma of honey wine, under Xin Hexue’s guidance…
Seto returned to the primordial warm nest where life first sprouted.
He was no longer a wolf wandering the wilderness, no longer a jackal fleeing and seeking love from the world. He left the world full of thorns and returned to the Mother Goddess’s warm womb to rest and recuperate.
“Returned… to mother’s belly.”
Seto murmured.
This was his only and ultimate home.
A warmth surged in Seto’s eyes, boiling like hot water.
But by dusk, it transformed into an uncontrollable drowsiness.
“It’s alright.”
His head was cradled by the Mother Goddess and placed in the crook of his neck, and the voice Seto heard became increasingly blurred.
“Go to sleep.”
It was the Mother Goddess singing him a lullaby.
Only when the weight on his neck became heavy and solid did Xin Hexue push Seto to the inner side of the bed. The object that had been deeply buried inside him withdrew from between his thighs, and the turbidity gushed out uncontrollably.
‘How did he release so much?’
Xin Hexue frowned. He wanted to go to the bath pool to clean himself, but even the simple act of pushing himself up made his face pale, and the itchy smell of blood instantly rose in his chest.
He coughed slightly, and a thread of blood appeared. He wiped it away with a handkerchief, and without looking at it, hid it in a compartment beneath the bed.
The buffer period for the escape procedure had less than twenty-four hours left. He was aware of his own physical condition, which is why he had refused the physician’s examination today.
Fortunately, the busyness of the coronation affairs was enough to prevent Rahotep from finding time to come to his palace and inquire about the situation.
“Hiss.”
Xin Hexue touched the back of his neck, where Seto’s bite marks probably still remained.
But the act of lowering his head to touch the back of his neck made his gaze fall upon his own chest.
…It was too red and swollen to look at.
Combining the two actions, Xin Hexue couldn’t help but think…Why is this person like a dog?
[K.]
K knew it was time for the useless husband to make a shining appearance and clean up the mess again. Well, but he was transparent, strictly speaking, not shining.
…..
Xin Hexue fell asleep later in the night. He woke up when the sky began to turn the color of a fish’s belly at dawn. The morning wind carrying the scent of dew blew through the shutters as he dressed up.
He didn’t wear accessories, just the clean white robe he had arrived in.
At this hour, the entire palace was still sleeping off the aftermath of the all-night celebratory banquet of the coronation, and the servants here had also been assigned to banquet duties yesterday. Xin Hexue’s entire process of leaving the palace went smoothly.
He finally looked down at Seto on the inner side of the bed.
Xin Hexue knew very well that the dose of sleeping potion he had added to the cup of honey wine was enough to keep Seto asleep for three days.
Without a hint of hesitation, the hem of his robe slipped away from the sleeping Seto’s grasp.
But he did not see that the moment he turned and left, a clear trail unconsciously flowed from Seto’s closed eyes.
Just as Seto himself knew, his sense of smell was extraordinary. Starting from half a month ago, he had begun to smell the scent of illness on the Mother Goddess. As time passed, that scent gradually overshadowed the original cool fragrance on the Mother Goddess.
Until yesterday, it turned into the smell of a beautiful bouquet of flowers blooming to the point of decay, of lush green fruit ripening to the point of rot.
He knew he had been abandoned by the Mother Goddess. Forever.
This was the cruelest punishment for a puppy.
[Seto’s Love Value is Full]
Blood from biting through the root of his tongue kept overflowing from Seto’s mouth, staining the bed that was like a cradle.
……
Previously, when destroying the Forget-Worry Incense by the Nile, Xin Hexue had recalled the night Nub stabbed Anaket. The palace at the crime scene had the same smell.
That smell of Forget-Worry Incense soaked in water.
Nub had assassinated Anaket and had also extinguished the Forget-Worry Incense in the censer.
Xin Hexue’s intuition told him these two matters were connected. So after Shamule set off on his expedition to Memphis, Xin Hexue went to that temple of the goddess Isis.
Taibesha, who had once been a slave girl serving the Red and White Kings’ mother, naturally knew many royal secrets.
“Golden pupils? Was his mother that concubine sent from Nubia for a political marriage…? I remember she died very early,” Taibesha recalled for a while.
Taibesha: “My initial days following her weren’t so smooth. She was busy eliminating the palace concubine who was most loved by her husband at the time.” Here, the “she” Taibesha referred to was the mother of the Red and White Kings. She never mentioned her by name.
“Forget-Worry Incense was used on that once-favored concubine. As for that Nubian concubine who came for the political marriage, she was just very unlucky to have been invited by that concubine to her palace as a guest.”
Thus, Nub’s mother’s identity and cause of death became quite clear.
Because for foreigners, the drawbacks of the Forget-Worry Incense far outweighed the benefits. It could only briefly make one forget sorrow, but if not ingested again after a period, negative emotions would return fiercely, leaving one dizzy and crazy.
Nub had witnessed the abnormal state of his mother before her death in his childhood. By making inquiries within the Egyptian palace, he could probably learn about the Forget-Worry Incense that nearly caused the people of this land to lose their civilization hundreds of years ago.
Therefore, when he discovered such incense in Anaket’s palace, Nub assumed the royal had some connection to the truth of his mother’s death.
After all, Forgetting Incense had been banned for many years. How could it appear in a royal family member’s palace?
And it just so happened that Anaket’s mother was that very favored concubine.
Coupled with the chaotic situation at the time and the need to seize the important letters proving the old priest’s collusion with Lower Egypt, it was a foreseeable result that Nub stabbed Anaket by mistake.
“As for the Forget-Worry Incense you saw in Anaket’s palace…” Taibesha spoke slowly, laughing sarcastically, “That was something I sent out while in Upper Egypt. He is a royal who is all brawn and no brains, confined to his palace with no outlet for his dissatisfaction…he easily believed my words. He lit the incense, which shows that the desire for power and royal authority filled his heart.”
Taibesha suddenly laughed and laughed, her increasingly strained smile making her look as if she was about to cry. “Being unable to step out of this temple again from now on is also the punishment for my life, I suppose.”
Xin Hexue did not say a word, just left silently.
The day before Upper and Lower Egypt were unified, news came that Taibesha had died in the temple. Many stories of this conflict surrounding the Forget-Worry Incense would ultimately be buried by the endless yellow sand.
And now, taking advantage of the slightly brightening sky, Xin Hexue arrived at the banks of the Nile outside the palace, where a small boat was anchored.
There weren’t many officials from Nubia, and besides, this boat, intended for smuggling the Divine Envoy, had been specially ordered by their king, Nub, to be inconspicuously disguised.
Nub was originally standing at the bow of the boat. Seeing the white-robed figure approaching from afar as promised, joy rose in his heart. Disregarding the dissuasion of his other ministers, he stepped from the boat’s deck onto the muddy shore, then hurried forward to greet the Divine Envoy, leaving the boat behind him.
His mother had died in Egypt’s magnificent palace, and the shadow had remained in his heart ever since. He had followed the Divine Envoy into Thebes for two reasons: one was to investigate the truth of his mother’s death, the other was his hope that the cage of the Egyptian palace would not confine such a beautiful person.
Nub’s feelings for the Divine Envoy started as mere worship of a god, but somewhere, sometime, they gradually evolved into love and desire.
But to be able to resist someone like this, especially when following them day and night, was truly difficult.
Nub had no confidence at all that the Divine Envoy would agree to leave with him. In front of Xin Hexue, he always believed he was still that lowly slave in the quarry. Even though he was now the king of Nubia, even though he had assisted the White King in unifying Egypt as an ally, nothing could make him feel more at ease.
“You came.”
Nub was happy to see Xin Hexue keep the appointment.
But this feeling quickly froze the next moment. Before anyone could react, danger appeared behind him.
A cold gleam cut through the morning sky, summoning the first golden light from the horizon.
At the same time, it brought the first drop of blood, splashing in an arc onto Nub’s face.
[Nub’s Love Value is Full]
Nub felt his blood freezing solid as he caught the collapsing Divine Envoy. The sheer terror and shock left him speechless. He abruptly turned to look at the assailant.
The other party’s eyes were bloodshot with madness, seeming completely irrational, unlike a human.
He wildly brandished his blade at the guards closing in.
Nub could only think of one possibility: the drawback of the Forget-Worry herb had manifested. This Egyptian, due to the lack of Forget-Worry Incense, had become completely insane. And this madman was someone Nub was quite familiar with.
Anaket.
The stab back then hadn’t managed to kill him completely.
The golden sun rose from the horizon, bringing heat to the land, but Nub clearly felt the temperature of the person in his arms fading continuously, making him choke out, “Divine Envoy…”
Someone who arrived late, finished killing Anaket, his body drenched in blood whose origin was unclear, struggled step by step to come before him. He snatched the Divine Envoy’s body, but as he turned to leave, he couldn’t support himself and fell to his knees in the sand.
Shamule still had strength; most of the blood on him was from Anaket. What truly rendered him powerless was meeting Xin Hexue’s lightly trembling eyelashes.
He was too late.
Anaket’s sword had pierced the chest cavity, and blood was flowing out continuously, dyeing the white robe red.
Shamule had never imagined meeting again would be under such circumstances.
“Sorry…” he sounded like a trapped beast, his voice hoarse with despair, “Sorry…”
In order to escape the cell, he shouldn’t have made a deal with Anaket with Forget-Worry Incense as the condition.
He shouldn’t have not killed Anaket first after escaping the cell.
He shouldn’t have arrived so late.
Liquid kept streaming from Shamule’s eyes, falling onto Xin Hexue’s face, so hot it made his cold eyelashes tremble.
“Shamule.” The white robe was no longer pure white, but the Divine Envoy’s eyes were still clear. He curved his eyes and smiled lightly. “Put that ring… on me again.”
“Okay, okay…” Shamule had retrieved the carnelian ring from the pool. Now, he tremblingly slipped the ring back onto his Ankh’s ring finger. “It’s on, it’s on. It wasn’t lost.”
Even the ring finger was stained with blood, faint bright red streaks.
Xin Hexue examined the ring in the golden sunlight. His pale skin touched by the sun became red and itchy. “I like it very much…”
He placed his right hand in Shamule’s palm. Churning, stagnant blood blocked his throat, so he could no longer speak.
Lightly, seriously, slowly. Stroke by stroke, he wrote on Shamule’s palm.
Xin, He, Xue.
He slowly blinked his white eyelashes, with a hint of mischievousness. Shamule suddenly realized something. “I’ll remember! I’ll remember!”
Even though he didn’t recognize these unfamiliar characters, love made him instinctively carve their shapes deeply into his soul.
When Rahotep, affected by the shared senses, rushed over, he only saw the pale hand slip from Shamule’s palm.
Wearing that same blood-red ring that gleamed brilliantly.
[Shamule’s Love Value is Full, Heartbreak Value is Full]
[Rahotep’s Love Value is Full, Heartbreak Value is Full]
……
2015, Egypt, Luxor.
The largest museum in this city displayed the magnificent crystallization of the civilization of the New Kingdom era.
During the rule of Rahotep of the 18th Dynasty, this kingdom reached its peak, annexing Nubia and expanding its territory to the Fourth Cataract in the south, the Carchemish in the north, and bordering the Assyrian Empire.
Whether in civilization, art, architecture, or economy, it stood at the peak among the surrounding kingdoms of the same period.
The later successor, Tisis I, continued its glory.
Modern-day Luxor, the ancient city of Thebes, left behind the most massive and magnificent temple complex ruins. After Rahotep’s religious reform, the name of the main god served by this temple complex was….
Nefer Iah.
Deciphered ancient Egyptian texts recorded that this god brought golden crops that freed the people from hunger, brought repeating crossbows that made siege warfare invincible and made the four directions free from enemy invasion, and so on.
Of course, what this god brought was far more than that.
The people living by the Nile at that time knew no more misfortune in the land, no one endured hunger, the river overflowed its banks enriching the fields, the land was fertile and abundant, and they were proud of all this.
They narrated epic tales with writing, they depicted glorious murals with color, singing praises of the days under the guidance of God Iah.
Even in the 19th Dynasty, when new pharaohs reinstated Ra as the main god and the religious reform that started with Rahotep, lasting hundreds of years, came to an imperfect close, no one could erase the traces of this god’s presence.
The exquisitely crafted nested golden sarcophagus unearthed by archaeologists was incredibly ornate. Even though time had passed and the corners had peeled and cracked, one could still glimpse the initially flowing, colorful luster.
Anubis, the god of the underworld, guarded the foot of the sarcophagus in the form of a jackal, a constant presence for thousands of years.
This sarcophagus was now displayed in the central hall of Luxor’s main museum. Surprisingly, in the text on the information panel, following the name Nefer Iah, there was a bracket.
It almost looked like someone’s graffiti, taken from symbols carved on the corner of the sarcophagus, crooked and unrecognizable.
Some said those three characters resembled modern Chinese characters. But how could modern Chinese characters appear in Egypt around 1500 BC?
A tour guide led visitors through the exhibition hall.
A man with golden hair stood still before the display of the sarcophagus, his purple eyes gloomy.
“…I really want to steal you out,” he murmured.
His words drew strange looks from people around.
However, the man put on his sunglasses and left briskly, the corner of his trench coat fluttering.
…..
At twenty-five thousand feet above ground.
The guest in the first-class cabin unfolded the atlas and circled the next place he intended to visit.
Behind the sunglasses, his purple eyes flickered, and he lowered his voice, saying: “I will find him before you do.”
The next moment, his aura shifted subtly. He took off his sunglasses and sneered: “Wishful thinking.”
Although Rahotep was unable to formalize the marriage agreement with Nefer Iah under the gaze of the goddess Isis.
But just as Shamule swore.
“Only the Nile never runs dry, and the sun is eternal, these can be compared to my love for you.”
“Until the end of time, even in the afterlife, you cannot escape me.”
“For all eternity, life after life.”
No matter which cycle of reincarnation it was, they would follow the footsteps of their Ankh until they found him.
—Ankh, Ankh…
Taken from the meaning of life and soul.
—Dear Ankh.
—You are the spring of my life, you are where my soul resides.
