The Undersea Adventures of the Little Jellyfish (JELLYFISH)
"Monster." "The monster is gone." "Jellyfish."
Once everything had calmed down, the silverfish, adept at seeking advantage and avoiding harm, swam out again.
The illumination spells they had swallowed had already burned out. The little jellyfish checked their bodies and found no harm caused by the spells, so he bid them farewell with relief: "See you later."
"Bye, bye."
Tang You still couldn't bear to part with the box of pearls, but he couldn't carry too many. Before leaving, he stuffed two large ones into Shen Jixiao's palm and used his psychic energy to carry a few more himself.
As they descended deeper, he could sense that the pearl he was searching for was very close.
"Shen Jixiao, we must have a lot of fate between us."
"Why do you say that?"
Perhaps because they had grown familiar, the mermaid's words gradually increased.
"The pearl I'm looking for and the thing you're searching for are almost in the same place."
They swam out of the shipwreck—the upper half had been thoroughly explored.
Jellyfish, being creatures that feed and swim constantly without rest, never ran out of energy, but the mermaid was clearly exhausted. So they decided to leave first, allowing the mermaid to find something to eat.
Around the shipwreck, there were plenty of creatures and edible options.
Shen Jixiao still wasn't entirely sure what fish could eat. Holding an illumination spell, he hesitated over the strange creatures before him.
"This one is poisonous," the little jellyfish interrupted his thoughts. "Don't touch that kind of shellfish—they're carnivorous and eat small fish. They're highly toxic. Even a mermaid would die within minutes if touched. Not even a god could save you."
Shen Jixiao immediately straightened up, feeling more awe than when he had encountered the deep-sea octopus.
"What about this one?" He pointed at a plump, curved shellfish.
"Not poisonous, but not tasty," the little jellyfish declared loudly. "Stupid fish, how do you not even recognize food?"
Shen Jixiao: "…" He had a feeling the little jellyfish was scolding him out of spite for the head-touching incident.
He really didn’t recognize them.
The little jellyfish had no choice but to point out a few edible options for Shen Jixiao to nibble on, while he slowly expanded his psychic energy to sense where his pearl might be.
The pearls he had marked were, in a way, imprinted with his signature, allowing him to sense them even from afar. But pinpointing their exact location still required careful psychic searching.
After all, compared to the vast ocean, pearls were far too small.
It felt… close to the lower half of the shipwreck.
Tang You floated in place, curious about why his pearl had ended up there.
He couldn't remember what had happened before he fell asleep, nor did he have much recollection of the silent ship Tarlik. The massive storm eighteen years ago left some vague impressions, but they were faint—likely forgotten or perhaps sealed away inside one of his pearls.
Had he accidentally dropped a pearl when that storm struck eighteen years ago? Or had he buried one here before and simply forgotten?
Either way, victory was within reach.
The monster had already been dealt with.
The mermaid was still tapping open shells to eat, crouched on the seabed like some dugong grazing on seaweed. Tang You hummed a tune, recalling how some people mistook dugongs for mermaids because the females had developed breasts and hair-like features. But to him, dugongs resembled manatees more.
A few minutes later, his psychic senses twitched—he had located his pearl.
Surprisingly, it was very close to him, near the lower broken section of the ship.
The little jellyfish perked up, pleased.
If it was this nearby, it would save him a lot of effort searching. He just couldn’t figure out why the pearl was inside the ship. He had assumed it would be buried beneath the seabed.
Maybe… an octopus had carried it inside? Some octopuses liked collecting pretty little things for their dens.
"Shen Jixiao," he called out to the mermaid, "I think I’ve found my pearl. It’s somewhere nearby. I’m going to retrieve it."
"Alright," Shen Jixiao replied while holding a pile of muddy shells—nowhere near enough to satisfy his hunger. "Want some?"
"No, thanks."
Tang You quickly swam to the ship’s broken section.
"Pearl, pearl…" He was excited to reunite with his pearl, so much so that even the dark, eerie interior of the ship didn’t seem as terrifying anymore.
Guided by his psychic senses, Tang You glanced in the direction of the pearl and swam toward it.
But after a short distance, he suddenly froze.
His pearl… was moving.
Not just drifting with the water or shifting due to gravity—it was clearly moving, and heading straight toward him.
Tang You instinctively looked up, peering into the ship’s interior.
—A shadowy figure slowly emerged.
"Ahhhhhh!"
The little jellyfish screamed.
……
The mermaid dropped the shells he had gathered and swiftly swam over. "What happened?!"
"Monster!" Tang You shrieked, his tentacles curling in fear. "There really is a monster!"
Shen Jixiao peered into the ship’s interior. His vision in the dark wasn’t great, but he could faintly make out a blurry black silhouette—gone in a flash. By the time he tried conjuring a light spell, the thing had already vanished.
"What did you see?" he soothed the jellyfish. "Don’t worry, it didn’t chase us. Let’s talk somewhere safer."
Tang You took a moment to calm down.
"I can’t believe my eyes," he said. "I’m a well-traveled jellyfish, but I’ve never seen anything like that before."
Shen Jixiao listened intently.
"It… it had legs."
Shen Jixiao: ?
"Human-like, forked legs," Tang You recalled. "But it wasn’t human. It had three gaping mouths, fish scales, and a tail—but also legs."
Shen Jixiao couldn’t quite picture the creature.
But he caught the key detail: human legs.
The jellyfish felt distressed: "My psychic energy has locked onto my pearl, and my pearl is on that monster. What should I do? I absolutely dare not go near it."
"It's alright, I'll help you," Shen Jixiao said. "Are you sure those were human legs?"
"I'm certain! But that definitely wasn’t a human—no human could survive in a place like this."
Shen Jixiao froze for a moment.
His memories drifted back to a stormy night eighteen years ago, the ground shaking so violently it made him nauseous. He had been on a ship, utterly alone, with water rising to his calves. No one came to save him.
No one would return to the engine room when the ship was about to sink.
Soon, he was swallowed by the endless water and unsure when something had pulled him along, dragging him out of the ship with the current. He couldn’t swim, his oxygen running out, and he almost felt his soul ascending to heaven.
Yet his consciousness grew eerily calm. He watched himself sinking farther from the surface, watching the water, bubbles, wooden planks, and storm clouds, while beside him was the massive beast falling with him—the Tarlik.
But at that moment, he saw a person.
A young man—his face had blurred in memory over time.
Repeated recollections and reconstructions had made Shen Jixiao unsure whether the face he remembered was truly how the young man had looked. All he knew was that he had been gently lifted, the other person so composed and serene, as if unafraid of the raging sea.
The memory blurred further and the last image he recalled being the young man placing him on a lifeboat before slipping through the engine room’s crevice back into the sinking ship.
If his memory was real, then this young man was the human he knew who could survive the longest underwater—aside from himself, of course, since he wasn’t human.
"Shen Jixiao, what kind of creature do you think that monster is?" the jellyfish asked.
"I don’t know," Shen Jixiao replied.
For some reason, he had a bad feeling about this.
"Let’s go in and take a look."
"Eh…" The little jellyfish trembled. "I don’t absolutely need that pearl."
"We’re already here," Shen Jixiao insisted. "We’re almost at the engine room. You can pinpoint the pearl’s location, right?"
"Yes, QAQ," Tang You said warily. "What are you planning? You’re not thinking of actively seeking out that monster, are you? It looks really terrifying—can we please not go?"
Shen Jixiao sidestepped the question: "We’re just confirming its position so we can avoid it."
"Alright."
They entered the ship again.
The rear half was far more complex than the front, with the crucial engine room located below.
Twenty years ago, the Enqi Kingdom had commissioned the finest engineers to build this ship. The engine room alone consisted of thirty chambers, each equipped with four furnaces.
When the Tarlik sailed, the cost of fuel consumed in half a day was an astronomical figure beyond ordinary imagination.
Not to mention the hundred-person engineering team required to keep the engine room operational.
It was a vessel built with extravagance, heedless of cost.
Time had passed, and now, as they entered the engine room, most of the machinery lay in ruins. As the section directly impacted by the reef, it had collapsed the most severely, the metal twisted beyond recognition. There was no trace left of the intricate structures from back then.
Tang You couldn’t help but think—if the bones of the person Shen Jixiao was searching for, the one who had saved his life, were truly here, wouldn’t they have been crushed to dust?
"That would be such a shame. The mermaid put in so much effort searching here—they definitely wouldn’t want to see this outcome."
The path deeper in was blocked, preventing them from heading straight to the inner engine room.
They had no choice but to go up a level and make their way through the corridor above. This was also where Tang You had spotted the monster earlier.
He swam cautiously, staying close to the mermaid while lighting the way with a small illumination spell and never venturing into the surrounding darkness. "Shen Jixiao," he asked, "do you think that kind of monster eats jellyfish?"
Shen Jixiao glanced sideways at the jellyfish—a pink, soft, candy-like creature that looked sweet enough for anyone to say it seemed delicious. But he replied, "Definitely not."
"This seems to be the crew's resting quarters," he remarked as he eyed the fallen nameplate.
It was the first mate’s room.
He took a brief look inside.
Unlike the luxurious rooms reserved for nobles, the crew’s quarters were more spacious and lacked extravagant decorations. Amid the chaos, they actually appeared somewhat tidy.
Shen Jixiao suddenly stopped.
"What's wrong?" The jellyfish halted as well.
Tang You watched as the mermaid bent down at the doorway of a crew cabin, leaning slightly inside and running his fingers over the floor.
"Something's off," the mermaid said with a serious expression. "The accumulated silt here is noticeably less than outside. Perhaps large fish frequently pass through, reducing the buildup with the water flow. Or maybe... something has cleaned this place, treating it as its own nest."
Tang You shuddered and immediately made a connection. "Then... doesn't that mean it's the monster's lair?"
"Let's go quickly..." He tugged at the mermaid with his psychic energy. "The monster definitely won't like us intruding into its nest. Let's finish exploring the engine room and leave as soon as possible."
Shen Jixiao: "..." He still felt something wasn't right.
He scanned the surrounding rooms, peering inside each one.
The floors in all of them had little silt. It was unlikely that the lack of buildup was due to the rooms being sealed—they weren't far from the ship's fractures, and most of the windows inside were shattered. With water flowing in and out regularly but without strong currents, silt should have accumulated over the past decade or so. The noble cabins they'd seen earlier were proof of that.
But the problem was—there were too many clean rooms.
Would a monster really treat so many rooms as its lair?
They soon found the entrance to the next level—a massive crack in one of the crew cabins.
The little jellyfish extended his senses.
His pearl was far away, meaning the monster wasn't nearby, so he descended with the mermaid.
...
Nothing.
They searched every engine room, even the nearby cabins. Tang You spread his psychic energy wide, assisting in the hunt.
No matter how hard they looked, they couldn't find a single skeleton matching Shen Jixiao's description.
The closest they found were two female skeletons buried under rubble, along with some nearly disintegrated bone fragments.
"Mermaid..." Tang You was exhausted and just let the mermaid carry him as he floated limply. "What do we do now?"
The mermaid didn't answer.
Coming to an eighteen-year-old shipwreck to search for the bones of a savior had always been a far-fetched idea. It wasn't surprising they hadn't found anything. But he couldn't accept it.
Why...
"Are you tired?" Shen Jixiao finally spoke. "Rest for a while. I'll go back up to check again."
"Alright." The little jellyfish was indeed worn out. He had overused his psychic energy today, maintaining a wide-ranging search to ensure the monster didn't suddenly appear and make a meal of him. "You should rest too."
He knew the mermaid was also exhausted.
Mermaids weren't suited for prolonged stays in the deep sea—it was too cold, too dark, and food was scarce. By now, they had been down here for over twelve hours, most of which had been spent exploring the enormous wreck and moving debris aside. The mermaid had barely eaten, fought an octopus, and was undoubtedly more fatigued than him.
Yet the mermaid continued searching tirelessly.
Shen Jixiao swam back to the crew quarters to inspect each room one by one.
They were close to the engine rooms, so there might still be clues. At the same time, he wanted to figure out why these rooms were so unnaturally clean.
"..."
Suddenly, something vaguely familiar caught his eye.
It was a darkened scroll, unfurled in an empty room.
He had seen scrolls of this style not long ago—all rare, solitary copies hidden away in storage. Unlike those sealed scrolls, this one seemed to have been opened for a long time, yet the magic within hadn’t dissipated. Even from a distance, he could see the words preserved by magic.
Shen Jixiao swam closer.
A faint glow illuminated the scroll. What he saw depicted on it was a magic so intricate and complex—something he had never even imagined.
Wait.
His illumination spell hadn’t approached yet. Where was the light coming from?
Shen Jixiao reacted swiftly, grabbing the scroll and immediately retreating from the room.
Whoosh—
A current roared past.
He saw it—a massive maw, large enough to swallow half his body, snapping shut right before his eyes.
Just moments ago, that maw had been concealed in the darkness and nearly invisible against the faint glow. And that glow? It came from a tiny lantern-like bulb above the creature’s mouth.
"An anglerfish?"
"It’s that monster from earlier!" The little jellyfish was the first to react. "My pearl isn’t here—it abandoned my pearl and came after us instead!"
Only then did Shen Jixiao notice it—beneath the massive mouth in the darkness was another, lined with sharp teeth. Inside the first mouth, there was yet another. Its sides bore deformed fins, and behind it was a tail, comically small compared to its gaping jaws. But the most grotesque feature was the two fleshy legs protruding diagonally from its sides, unmistakably human in skeletal structure.
What in the world?!
Shen Jixiao was genuinely startled, finally understanding why both the sea anemone and the jellyfish had called it a "monster." This thing couldn’t possibly be classified as any known species in the natural world.
And just now, it had tried to lure him into its mouth using the glowing bulb and the scroll as bait.
A chill ran down Shen Jixiao’s spine. Without hesitation, he grabbed the little jellyfish and fled, deciding to observe the creature from a safe distance before engaging.
"I told you it was a monster..." The jellyfish trembled with fear. "It’s terrifying."
Shen Jixiao: "I’ve never seen anything like it."
"Me neither."
They swam down to the next level—a corridor lined with power chambers.
For now, the monster hadn’t pursued them.
The merman slowed to a stop before casting several illumination spells to light up the surroundings, ensuring the creature couldn’t sneak up on them unnoticed.
Catching his breath, he unrolled the scroll he had been clutching tightly, hoping to find some clues.
After a quick scan, he froze.
"What’s wrong?" The jellyfish, noticing Shen Jixiao’s prolonged silence, floated up to his fingers and nudged him gently with his "head."
"Merman, merman, you’re not scared stiff, are you?"
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