"Happy!" Menes put away the duel board. Through his tactics, he had just achieved a great victory. He may have cheated a little, but a win is a win.
"Tell me, Menes, have you ever heard of something called the Emerald Tablet?" Menes stored the duel disk and chatted with Tom for a while, who took the opportunity to bring up the topic.
"The Emerald Tablet?"
"An emerald tablet that contains the highest mysteries of alchemy in the world." Tom described the characteristics of the Emerald Tablet to Menes, but he had no intention of obtaining any information from him about it: the temporal distance between them was so vast that it was unrealistic to expect Menes to know what the Emerald Tablet was. Tom was just stirring the pot.
It turned out that Menes had never heard of the Emerald Tablet. And he mocked its description.
"There is no tablet that can contain all the secrets of alchemy, it is a very profound subject, impossible to..." He paused, as if remembering something, "But if it's an emerald tablet, I do recall having made one of those..."
Tom: !!!
Menes clicked his tongue and pulled out a chocolate from the box he had in his hand. "I remember telling you that I was born with the gift of alchemy, it runs in my blood, it's a power passed down through my lineage. But I've been working on it, trying to materialize it into something external, and I have conducted some experiments with it, which led to an unfinished product, an emerald slab that, if used correctly, allows the creation of more complex objects, the upper limit of which is probably the duel disk I just made."
Astounded, Tom hurriedly took out the newspaper he had saved earlier and asked Menes to take a look at the photo in the news to see if it was the Emerald Tablet he had made back then.
"Yes," Menes took a glance and recognized it, "I placed it in the treasure room of the pyramid and never thought it would see the light of day again."
Tom was frozen for a moment. "This thing cost you so much effort, why didn't you bring it to your temporal cycle?"
Menes appeared helpless. "It serves me little, but my children and grandchildren need it more. They haven't inherited my gift of alchemy. And the conditions for its use are strict: it requires blood from my bloodline, and the purer the bloodline, the more complex the tablet can be."
Tom gradually understood Menes's intentions. To use the Emerald Tablet, his legacy for future generations, a person must possess Menes's blood to be able to use it, and it was the best way to prevent theft. Of course, with the disappearance of ancient Egypt, Menes's descendants had become extinct, and even if they survived, the bloodline had diluted enough over thousands of years to render it unusable. Therefore, there was no one in the modern world who could use the tablet, except...
Tom looked at Menes with a fervent gaze.
Menes: ...
"The principle of alchemy is equivalent exchange..."
"I can bring you all sorts of novelties from our world."
"Deal."
Menes pulled out a glass bottle, then pricked his fingertips with a knife, and a drop of bright red blood emerged from them. Menes's blood gave an extraordinary sensation: it was so red that it felt warm and dazzling, and each drop, as if possessing life force, flowed through the glass bottle as if wanting to escape.
Menes put four or five drops of blood into the vial and tightened the cap so that the drops wouldn't escape from it.
"One drop will be sufficient." He handed the vial to Tom.
[Menes's Blood (?): A vial of living blood, with unlimited usage, although]
Tom, Hermione, and Fawkes spent several more "days" at Menes's house.
They didn't leave until Menes had had enough, which wasn't easy because Menes was a true poker addict, and no matter what he did, he always had to have a duel first...
"By the way, do you remember if there's any shrine or something in the area that may have hidden below?" Tom asked Menes before leaving, recalling his guild mission.
Menes: ???
The greatest treasure of all, am I not?
Of course, being the Pharaoh of Pharaohs, he wouldn't say something so degrading.
But he was a little puzzled by Tom's reasons for asking. Tom explained that it was a guild mission, and so on.
"A guild that connects its members through the dream world?" Menes's interest was piqued. "Let me see!"
Tom took out the crystal ball from his pocket and handed it to Menes.
"Impressive," exclaimed Menes. "Such a pity..."
"A pity? Why?"
"I'm trapped in the cycle of time and can't join you in your dreams." Menes looked sorrowful, clearly longing for the outside world. So much so that even two visitors unrelated to him found entertainment in his presence, simply because they could alleviate his boredom.
This time, along with the crystal ball, there was a small golden ball.
"The ball of delicacy!" Tom recognized the golden ball as the treasure Menes had used to communicate with him.
"Take it, I know you urgently desire it. As for the ruins, just give me the address here, there are probably still remains in that ruined city on the surface." Then, with a wave of his hand, Menes sent Tom and the others back to the pond. He sent them back to the real world and found a comfortable position for himself, falling into a deep sleep.
For almost endless years, time passed while he slept. He would only wake up when his next visitor arrived.
Back on the ground, Tom reached out to Fawkes, hoping it would take him back to England. But to his surprise, Fawkes spread its wings and gave his arm a peck, as if warning him to behave.
Tom: ???
Fawkes: Caw~!
Tom: ???
What's wrong with this silly bird?
He took out the ball Menes had given him and shook it. Fawkes saw Tom pulling out his "translator" and squawked abruptly.
"Caw~! (Boy Yodel, I want a fresh grasshopper with a slice of mint on top!)"
Tom was stunned by this request, confused by Fawkes's sudden demand. Was the bird hungry? It hadn't eaten much at Menes's house, right?
When Tom didn't respond, Fawkes added mockingly, "If you don't feed me, then I'll have to have a chat with Professor Snape about who 'visited' his Potions office."
Tom: Σ(?д?llll)