The Undersea Adventures of the Little Jellyfish (JELLYFISH)
“The next level is this way.”
The little jellyfish was gradually adapting to the scenery within the sunken ship. In the corridors, he spotted buried candlesticks. Sometimes, brushing away the dust revealed debris that turned out to be intricately carved, gilded picture frames, with their canvases long corroded. He couldn't help but wonder what scenes had once adorned them.
"We're almost at the storage room," Shen Jixiao recalled from the map. "This ship was stocked with enough food to sustain over a thousand people for at least a month during each voyage, along with all sorts of luxuries for the nobles to enjoy. There was even a dedicated wine cellar."
"Wow..." The little jellyfish couldn't fathom it. "How many jellyfish could that feed?"
The lower decks were indeed more spacious but also more severely collapsed.
They were now very close to the ship's midsection, where it had snapped in half.
The jellyfish was fine, but the mermaid was struggling to navigate through the wreckage. Carefully, they moved aside planks and rubble. The overly ornate decor meant there were countless small, shattered items everywhere. Tang You didn't dare disturb anything recklessly, afraid that shifting the wrong object might trigger a more catastrophic collapse.
Moreover, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching him from the shadows behind.
"Shen Jixiao..." Tang You whispered, "Don't just stay silent."
Shen Jixiao was focused on moving a heavy plank. Underwater, the buoyancy of the water lifted everything, but it also made it hard to gain leverage. He had to rely solely on his own strength to shift the waterlogged timber aside, carving out a passage wide enough for him to squeeze through.
The little jellyfish hovered nearby, whimpering softly.
The mermaid paused and glanced at the gap—it was more than enough for the jellyfish to slip through.
"Do you want to go ahead and take a look?"
Tang You: ?
The jellyfish immediately recoiled. "No!"
"Up ahead is the storage room," Shen Jixiao said. "I can already see the crates in the next chamber. As the most famous ship of the Enqi Kingdom, the Tarlik's primary role was trade and transporting rare treasures between nations—pearls by the crateful, no less. If I remember correctly, before the Tarlik sank, its holds were packed with dozens of crates of treasures from the southern kingdoms."
It would be a lie to say Tang You wasn't tempted. He adjusted his illumination spell and peeked through the gap.
There did seem to be crates.
He drifted forward ten centimeters, then drifted back.
"It's so strange... My psychic senses can't penetrate these walls."
"To prevent accidents, the Tarlik's storage room walls were lined with mithril," Shen Jixiao explained. "An incredibly extravagant measure."
"That must have cost a fortune." Tang You knew that on land, mithril was even more valuable than gold. "Why didn't the humans send anyone to salvage the wreck? Materials this precious—even if destroyed, reclaiming them would yield a significant haul. Didn’t they send mages a few years ago to clear the reefs?"
Shen Jixiao was dragging another waterlogged plank aside. After a moment's thought, he replied, "Because of shifts in royal power and war."
"At this depth, only seasoned mages can dive. Trying to use magic to salvage a sunken ship in such deep waters while maintaining one's breathing is nearly impossible. Unless over thirty mages mobilize together. But unfortunately, after the sinking of the Tarik, the royal power shifted, and the Enqi Kingdom fragmented, transitioning from royal rule to warlord divisions. Almost no faction could spare more than thirty mages to salvage a single shipwreck."
"As for the reef clearing a few years ago..." Shen Jixiao gently placed the wooden plank on the floor, "That was because a new lord took over the eastern coast and issued the order."
"Oh..." The little jellyfish listened, half-understanding. "Why did that lord send people to clear the reefs?"
The exit was now wide enough, and Shen Jixiao didn’t answer the jellyfish’s question: "We can pass through now."
"Treasure!" The little jellyfish was instantly distracted.
...
To maximize transport efficiency, the crates had been tightly stacked together. Perhaps because of this, the storage room remained remarkably intact, unlike other collapsed compartments. Only a few crates had been cracked by falling debris.
Tang You lightly brushed away the dust. Under the glow of the illumination spell, the gems inside the crates burst into a dazzling array of colors, reminiscent of the glowing treasure chests from fairy tales.
"Wow!!!"
The radiance of the gems reflected off the jellyfish’s body, making it seem as though he himself was glowing. Tang You used his psychic energy to lift a yellow gem—a rare treasure in the deep sea, as beautiful as fragments of a sunlit ocean.
"Is this entire crate filled with gems?"
Tang You’s voice trembled with excitement. He felt he might melt into the brilliance of these gems at any moment. Faced with such a hoard of treasures, even a saint would feel a flicker of greed.
"So beautiful... I have a few friends who adore shiny things like this."
Unable to resist, Tang You began rummaging through the other crates.
Gold, porcelain, wine bottles—the little jellyfish, who had spent almost his entire life underwater, examined these land-bound artifacts with fascination.
Some crates were empty as their contents were long gone, leaving only a few silver fish darting through the gaps. Though the food they once held had vanished, the crates themselves still made decent nests.
"Hello there," Tang You greeted the little fish. "It’s my first time here."
"Jellyfish." "Never seen a jellyfish before." "Hello."
Tang You: "Do you live here all the time?"
"Yep." The fish’s simple minds could only produce short sentences. "This is home."
The silver fish had lived in the deep sea for so long and where light was scarce, that their eyes had nearly degenerated, leaving only tiny remnants. But their sense of smell was extraordinarily sharp, and their skin had unique structures to detect the subtlest water currents, helping them seek advantage and avoid danger.
Shen Jixiao, however, showed little interest in these things.
Unlike Tang You’s aimless exploration, he headed straight for the crates bearing traces of magic.
Despite over a decade of water erosion, the magical seals remained intact—though everything but the locks had rotted away. The wood used for these crates wasn’t meant to withstand prolonged submersion.
Gripping the mithril lock, he endured a slight sting as he tore it free.
Opening the chest revealed rolls of dark, unidentifiable objects. Shen Jixiao reached in and pulled out one of the rolls and peeling away the wax seal at its opening.
"..."
Unfortunately, no bubbles emerged, and the wax hadn't been enough to keep the water from seeping in.
"Merman, what are you doing?" The little jellyfish floated over.
In just a few minutes, Tang You had already become acquainted with the small fish. His body was slightly larger than the fishes' heads, and amidst the school, he looked like a pink lightbulb—utterly enticing.
One of the little fish took a nibble at him.
"Ouch!" Tang You retracted his tentacles. "I'm not edible."
But he looked so much like some kind of pastry that the fish kept trying to take bites. The little jellyfish had no choice but to shield himself with his psychic energy and toss out a few light orbs for the fish to peck at instead.
The object in Shen Jixiao's hands was a dark, crumpled mass, completely unlike the other treasures in the chest. The little jellyfish glanced at it a couple of times but couldn't see anything particularly valuable about it.
"This is magically treated parchment," Shen Jixiao said, his focus unwavering. "It records spell formulas—many of them are the only copies in existence."
But the water damage was severe. The moment he unrolled it, the residual magic dissipated. The entire parchment began to oxidize rapidly and the writing fading before their very eyes.
Shen Jixiao was committing it to memory.
Memorizing a single magical circuit by force wasn't difficult, but the problem was that the chest contained a thick stack of them. Even if only thirty percent had survived, he couldn't possibly memorize them all.
He could only try his best.
Tang You watched for a while too.
He didn't recognize what was on the parchment, but he saw how intently the merman unrolled each one, completely absorbed.
In a moment of distraction, one of the light orbs was swallowed by a fish. Fortunately, the magical flame didn't produce heat, so ingesting it probably wouldn't harm the fish. The light orb would gradually fade once the sustaining magic stopped, but it wouldn't burn out immediately.
The fish, noticing its belly had turned a shimmering silver, shrieked, "I'm glowing!"
"Hey—don't run around!"
The fish that had swallowed the orb darted frantically around the room, turning the underwater space into a swirling dance of silver flames, illuminating every corner.
Tang You couldn't do anything about them.
"Are you memorizing?"
"Yes." Shen Jixiao had already unrolled the third parchment. "These are treasures of civilization. They shouldn't be forgotten at the bottom of the sea."
Tang You was astonished. "There's so much—can you really remember it all?"
"...Sadly, no." The merman pressed his lips together. "But I'm trying my best."
"Oh..."
Seeming to realize he shouldn't disturb the merman, the little jellyfish floated a bit farther away and went back to opening other chests.
……
Shen Jixiao was struggling with the memorization.
The ocean depths didn’t allow for sweat, but he could still feel his stamina draining. Rote memorization was an incredibly exhausting task. After a while, when he looked up again, it felt as though half a century had passed.
Yet he had only skimmed the surface layer—there was no telling how much more lay beneath, not to mention the other chests in the room.
The merman’s gaze grew slightly vacant. He was reluctant to let the contents here be buried forever, yet he had no choice but to accept the reality.
“Shen Jixiao! Shen Jixiao!”
A silver light flooded the room.
Shen Jixiao turned abruptly and saw the tiny jellyfish casting an illumination spell, followed by a dozen small fish that had swallowed glowing orbs. They surged toward him like a flowing silver dream.
“I found so many pearls!” Tang You’s voice was brimming with excitement. “A whole chest of pearls!”
His memorization had been interrupted, yet strangely, Shen Jixiao didn’t feel angry. His gaze followed the silver fish before settling on the pink jellyfish at the center. Suddenly, he had the urge to poke the little gelatinous creature.
And so he did.
The soft jellyfish was nudged against his finger, squishy and bouncy.
“Why are you blocking me…”
Tang You was no match for the merman in terms of strength. Huffing, he picked up a pearl larger than Shen Jixiao’s thumb and held it out to him.
The merman said, “You keep it. I don’t like pearls.”
Tang You insisted, pushing the pearl toward him. “Take it. I can etch the patterns from these parchments into the pearl—that way, you won’t have to worry about forgetting. A pearl this big… can store hundreds of images.”
Shen Jixiao froze.
The little jellyfish might not understand magic scrolls, but… had he brought the pearls specifically for him, to help him record them?
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