Chapter 68
Intense burning kept the seawater hot for a long time, and some small fish, slower in movement, failed to escape and ended up half-cooked in the rolling sea. Aviation gasoline, unlike petroleum, has no color and almost no smell.
Once consumed, the flames naturally disappeared, but enduring the gradually scorching seawater was pure self-torture. Xia Yi didn’t wait for the Sirens to catch him; he swam in a direction away from them.
This was definitely a tropical region, evident from the beautiful coral reefs and rocks alone.
With no map to guide him now, Xia Yi could only guess. When he had the little dolphin with him, they had been swimming against the ocean current downstream. At that time, there was no specific destination; it was purely about the scenery.
The tropics were preferable, especially considering that in temperate waters, fish congregated seasonally, and the nights were particularly cold, prompting a journey to the South Sea.
When he climbed onto that island, Xia Yi believed he had reached the South Sea, very close to land. Otherwise, how could he see a group of drifting people—though, of course, Annie and the others eventually returned to land in Fuzhou.
Xia Yi’s direction had been completely off; he thought he had been heading south all along, but in reality, he was southeast…
Though the sun hung in the sky, and one could deduce directions from all around, there was always the issue of perspective. That island was actually in the Philippine Sea, separated from the South Sea by the entire Philippine archipelago.
Xia Yi used to insist on wearing clothes while soaking in the seawater, not out of any aversion to nudity but for safety. Back then, he thought that if he encountered a shark or hit sharp rocks, jeans could offer some protection.
Besides, normal people usually had the habit of wearing clothes, regardless of whether anyone else was around. After all, he had grown up in a civilized society; there was no relation to whether Xia Yi had autism.
But people always had to yield to reality under harsh conditions.
Xia Yi only had a piece of US Marine Corps uniform he had picked up on the aircraft carrier, and it was only the top. This garment was supposed to fit snugly, but Westerners tended to have robust body types, so it hung down quite a bit on Xia Yi’s legs.
However, it was useful. The shoulder area was too wide, especially when stretched out in seawater, making Xia Yi’s silhouette appear very unfamiliar.
This stretch of sea had a strange feeling to it, but Xia Yi couldn’t quite pinpoint what was odd.
There was no way to figure out though; he had seen too little of the sea. According to the legends of the sea monsters, even at depths of several thousand meters, there were waters with temperatures soaring to hundreds, which was completely unimaginable.
Visually, the depth of the water here was at least fifty meters, which was a spectacular sight. From top to bottom, it was an endless expanse of seawater, with colorful schools of fish swimming around. It almost rivaled the grand halls over ten meters high in European cathedrals.
Looking down, there were clusters of coral, unevenly spread across the seabed terrain, mostly composed of the branching antler corals.
Speaking of which, it was quite interesting. Some corals looked particularly delicate, with slender branches extending elegantly like plum trees, sparse and brightly colored, mostly red; these were the willow corals. In contrast, some corals resembled exploded flowers, short and dense.
Their branches were thick enough to be used as mallets, mostly in dark grayish-white; these were the antler corals. It was not uncommon for one type to exist in a specific location while the other did not, but Xia Yi didn’t pay much attention to this.
The Siren followed behind him but didn’t dare swim too close.
The Siren thought Xia Yi’s clothing was quite conspicuous…
When his fish tail swayed inadvertently and brushed past a cluster of coral, he suddenly stopped, circling the reef for a long time. At that moment, a school of violet flower wrasses swam by.
When Xia Yi turned around to look, the mermaid with pale silver hair, who had been tinkering with the coral, let his hair drift and scatter in the seawater. A stray flower wrasse curiously circled the Siren once, but then failed to see ahead and plunged headlong into a floating seaweed, flailing its tail in disorientation.
The water encountered resistance around the pale silver fish tail, causing small ripples. The translucent fins on the waist and wrists could only fully extend in the seawater, emitting a faint silver glow as if narrating the charm of this creature—wild and beautiful.
Xia Yi inexplicably thought that if there was another mermaid beside the Siren, they would embrace each other, arms wrapped around each other’s spines, following the graceful curves of their agile bodies, their fish tails entwined. Perhaps that would be the most visually stunning scene in the natural world.
He strangely found it somewhat unsettling.
Especially when he imagined the Siren, completely absorbed, watching a female mermaid even more beautiful than any woman he had seen before.
His emotions were complex; probably because he had never considered that mermaids couldn’t wear clothes, with their lower bodies as fish tails and their chests still exposed. If the female mermaid had a good figure, when she surfaced, everyone would probably be nosebleeding.
“Quick, get away, Xia Yi!”
Xia Yi was lost in thought, and by the time he heard the Siren’s sonar waves, he hadn’t reacted in time. The force of the seawater had already flipped him out quite far, nearly choking him again.
Xia Yi struggled to regain his composure, only to find the Siren had tightly embraced his entire shoulder, their bodies now dangerously close, making his memories of physical discomfort instinctively resurface.
Reflexively, he recoiled, but before the intention to break free truly formed in his mind, Xia Yi was already stunned by the sight before him.
It was a massive shadow, almost as large as Abiseth.
The body resembled a massive flat ball, not smooth at all, rough like the surface of a reef, covered all over with intersecting yellow-brown stripes. Its appearance was extremely bizarre; its head and front half occupied three-quarters of its body, while the rear half including its tail was remarkably slender in comparison, as if two entirely different creatures had been awkwardly stitched together.
The huge body even stooped slightly, as if it thought itself akin to a shrimp.
As it crawled out from among the seaweed and coral, its body color surprisingly faded, beginning to blend with the color of the seawater.
Maybe it noticed them; its head turned to look over.
Xia Yi was so horrified that he couldn’t utter a word.
It was like something out of a Japanese ghost story, with a mouth so large it nearly encircled its entire head. Unable to close fully, its fine, numerous teeth curved inward, forcibly holding up its flat head, giving it an extraordinarily sinister appearance.
From its head dangled something long like a tentacle.
Most peculiarly, after a slow twist of its body, it revealed pectoral fins under its abdomen—these were no fish fins; they resembled giant frog hands, with distinct fingers and webbing. On the reef, it managed to support itself like a gymnast on the pommel horse, causing the coral to crack slightly.
No wonder this place was full of antler corals; the delicate willow corals simply couldn’t withstand its weight and had long since shattered.
Xia Yi had seen many sea monsters before—whether Abiseth or Thomas, even Emperor Angelfish—they were all identifiable by their size alone, but what kind of creature was this right in front of him?
The creature’s cloudy eyes stared fixedly.
It seemed to recognize the Siren and sluggishly twisted its body back, settling again on the reef, slowly crawling away in a rather eerie posture.
Yes, crawling, using what should have been its pectoral “palms.” It seemed unwilling to swim like a fish—understandable given its completely disproportionate tail, making it difficult to maintain balance even in seawater.
Xia Yi eerily recalled a Korean movie he had seen.
The Han River Monster didn’t look this terrifying!
“What is that?”
“I don’t know.”
Xia Yi couldn’t believe it.
“Even you don’t know?”
“Should I… know?”
The Siren let go of Xia Yi’s arm, looking at the cluster of coral he had been studying. Lightning-fast, he grabbed a flower wrasse that had darted into a crevice in the rock and now emerged, but he felt no appreciation for its beauty and tossed it away in disgust. Tropical fish like this were really not to his taste.
“It… swam away when it saw you…”
Xia Yi couldn’t describe the feeling, but he could sense something strange from the creature’s cloudy eyes. This feeling made him blurt out:
“It doesn’t recognize you; otherwise, it wouldn’t be willing to leave.”
In that moment, Xia Yi’s sudden fear wasn’t just because of the creature’s monstrous appearance but because he instinctively felt like prey. Without the Siren beside him, he was sure he would have been swallowed whole by now.
“It’s been seen in the Mariana Trench. Katoto and Abiseth had a fight with it, and that’s why it didn’t dare go to Feichaz.”
“Is this also a sea monster?”
“… No, we don’t acknowledge it. None of those caused by humans are…”
The Siren’s sonar carried a strange emotion that Xia Yi keenly detected.
It wasn’t disgust or hostility towards spider crabs.
“Is it nuclear pollution?”
Xia Yi couldn’t help feeling horrified at the strange appearance; what kind of terrifying mutations could create such deformities?
His thoughts wandered, and the Siren overheard.
“What is nuclear pollution? Mutation, deformity… It looks like this naturally.”
“Huh?”
The Siren completely failed to understand Xia Yi’s confusion, calmly swimming away with Xia Yi.
“I think I know where this sea area is now. It’s the Marshall Islands; very few places are avoided by sea monsters, like the deep sea of Japan and places like this… because eating the food here would make us feel uncomfortable. Xia Yi, if you’re not hungry, let’s move on.”
“But I haven’t noticed anything unusual here.”
People live here, and there are many beautiful fish. Apart from that monster, there’s no sign of nuclear pollution at all.
“Maybe. Thomas said this place shouldn’t be visited, starting fifty years ago… I also don’t feel anything unusual about the seawater here.”
The pale silver fish tail gently swayed in the water as the Siren slowed down, surrounded by the incredibly beautiful scenery of tropical waters.
Suddenly, Xia Yi heard a deep and terrifying sound.
The school of fish suddenly scattered, fleeing in all directions.
“It’s looking for a mate.”
The Siren could tell Xia Yi was puzzled, nonchalantly answering.
Xia Yi still didn’t want to get too close to the mermaid and kept a distance, listening to the sound for a long time, then suddenly asked:
“That sound doesn’t sound like mating.”
It sounded more like a wail, but probably not out of despair; this creature’s emotions hadn’t developed to that extent.
“Because it can’t find…”
The Siren glanced back in the direction where the creature was roaming.
“Even if it does find, no matter how many of its kind it eats, it can’t successfully reproduce.”
With such a massive body, it probably wasn’t easy to find…
Wait a minute!
Xia Yi was puzzled; he must have misheard.
Did this group reproduce by eating their own kind?
Such a twisted fish?
No, was this really a fish?
Sleepyblue’s corner:
Hi guys! Sorry for the delay : ) Here’s a new chapter for the month (sorry for the inconsistent updates!) Therefore, I decided to post 1 chapter a week every Saturdays. But for every 3 ko-fi donations, an extra chapter will be posted a day after the donation has been posted ^^
