Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
When Zhang Zian was in the luxurious beach house, he felt as though he was briefly experiencing the life of a rich man.
The house had two floors, six bedrooms, four bathrooms, and was about 400 square meters in area. The kitchen was an open concept with a bar at the end and a lot of good wine in the cooler.
What he envied the most was the 60 square meter living room, which had a fireplace in the center of the wall. It was such a wonderful feeling to come in and relax on the soft sofa, read next to the warm fire, hear the wind howling outside and the firewood crackling, and to take a nap after hours of reading.
After he finished his lunch, he waited on the balcony with a glass of good wine. He watched how the golden beach and blue Baltic sea shifted with the wind. If he wasn’t holding binoculars in his other hand, he would have looked more like a rich man.
After searching the beach for a few minutes, Zhang Zian put the binoculars down in disappointment.
There was nothing more to the German people than this, after all.
What kind of fanatic naturalist are you if you dared to not be nude by the Baltic sea in the winter?
This portion of the beach was rugged with too many twists, anyway. Even if he stood on top of a short cliff, he could only view the beach nearby. Maybe on the beach in the east or west––where he could not see––some pretty, young girls were enjoying themselves as naturalists.
After thinking about this, he turned his head and said, “Galaxy, would you like to play hide-and-seek outside?”
“Meow. Yes! Yes!” Galaxy had stretched itself out on the carpet out of boredom. After hearing Zhang Zian’s question, it suddenly became energetic.
“Pooh! Horny pig!” Snowy Lionet exclaimed. It had seen right through him.
Zhang Zian pretended that he didn’t hear it, then said to Galaxy, “We made a deal before departure that we’d play hide-and-seek in Germany. Since the weather is nice today, let’s have some fun! There are not many people on the beach, so we can play however we want. We have almost the entire beach to ourselves. Galaxy, you haven’t played hide-and-seek at the beach before, have you?”
“Meow. Awesome! Hide-and-seek! Hide-and-seek at the beach!” Galaxy could not wait to try.
“Fina, Old Time Tea, and Famous, would you like to play at the beach?” he asked the other elfins. “The beach here is quite well-known, and it gets very crowded as soon as the summer comes.”
Old Time Tea nodded. “I’d like to go. I can use some exercise to stretch my bones.”
Famous’s mind had been preoccupied with the film, so it was also willing to take a break at the beach.
“What a fuss you are making! This is such a commonplace beach. You can find as many as you want in Egypt! It’s so cold. Why go to the beach in such weather?” Fina yawned. It was digesting its food after a big meal and didn’t want to leave the fireplace.
Zhang Zian didn’t want to leave it all by itself. Warming up was fine, but why was it staying so close to the fireplace? After staying there a long time, its golden fur might become burnt. If a spark from the wood flew onto it, its fur might catch on fire. It would surely burst in anger, and I would still be the one suffering the consequences…
Lying next to a warm fireplace was just like a boiling a frog in warm water. In the winter, many cats got burnt by fire in the countryside. Despite the fact that cats were always sensitive and paranoid, they seemed particularly dull when it came to fire. Maybe the warmth from the burning charcoal kept their guard down so that they could fall asleep easily next to a fireplace, only to wake up and find a large area on their fur coat had been burnt. Some even got injured.
This seemed to not only happen to cats but dogs as well––except that dogs seemed to be a little smarter than cats about fire. Maybe dogs were bigger and less afraid of the cold than cats were.
When cats and dogs got burned by the fireplace, the burns were called low-temperature burns. Low-temperature burns were burns caused by long exposure to an object that was not too hot but was hotter than one’s body temperature.
There was no need to despise the clumsiness of cats and dogs. Stupid humans were no better than them. Many people got low-temperature burns in the winter from sleeping with a hot water bottle or heating pad in their hands while they slept. Some people liked to play with their phones before bed and then fell asleep on top of them, ending up with severe burns on their chests in the morning.
An object that was 50 degrees Celsius was not too hot, but continuous skin contact with an object that was 50 degrees Celsius for over five minutes could cause a low-temperature burn.
To make matters worse, low-temperature burns may not seem severe, but the burns were usually deeper due to continual contact with the low-heat object. They were usually harder to heal than brief, high-temperature burns.
For small animals, like cats and dogs, low-temperature burns were very dangerous and could even be life-threatening.
Ever since Fina had finished eating and had started digesting next to the fireplace, Zhang Zian had been reminding it to be careful. Fina didn’t take him seriously, however, as it had never been so cold in ancient Egypt, where it used to live. There was no such a thing as fireplace there, either.
Zhang Zian thought that if he brought Galaxy and the others outside, Fina would surely fall asleep next to the fireplace. The consequence would be bad. Even if only a tiny portion of its fur and its pride got burnt, then it would surely snap and punish him…
No matter how he tried to persuade it, Fina was unwilling to leave the fireplace.
At last, he just had to say, “Fine, you can stay if you want. But if we find pearls by the beach, then they will all belong to us.”
“What?” Fina’s head suddenly rose. Its ears were erect. “What did you say? Pearls? Those tiny round beads?”
“Exactly!” Since Zhang Zian had decided to lie, he would lie until the end.
He pretended to be serious. “Don’t you know? Many people find clams while walking near the beach. Once they open them, they find beautiful pearls inside, and they’ve made a fortune just like that!”
“Your Majesty! Don’t listen to the bullsh*t of this stupid man,” Snowy Lionet interrupted as it tapped on the sofa cushion. “What pearls can be found on the beach? He’s just fooling you to go outside into the cold! Why not stay here with me so we can do something nasty?”
Fina became interested. “I’ve heard about this––a pyramid slave found a clam while digging in the sand on the beach. After opening it, he found one, or a few, big and round pearls inside… There were many rumors like this. They could not be coming from nowhere!”
“Indeed so.” Zhang Zian seized the opportunity and carried on, “It has been said that a Brazilian fisherman found a giant clam by the beach and there were 400 pearls of all sizes inside it. There were so many pearls that they filled an entire basin! Also, a Filipino fisherman found a 34-kilo giant clam by the beach. It measured 60 centimeters and was worth 0.2 billion United States dollars! Their lives turned around at that moment. They became rich and married pretty, rich girls!”
He held the last sentence back. Maybe they turned in the treasure to the government!
“A 34-kilo pearl?” Fina’s mouth widened in surprise. It stood up abruptly. “Why didn’t anybody give me such a treasure? And that person who found 400 pearls in a clam should be sent away to build the pyramid!”
