Chapter 10: Miracle
“Did you injure your vocal cords? Do you need a medic to come and treat you? Marshal, please provide your location, and we will immediately dispatch a starship to bring you back to the Empire…” The adjutant spoke several sentences in a row, his voice filled with urgency.
Si Jisheng quickly composed himself, his expression cold as he sent a text message, “No need, I’m fine.”
“Tell me your plan.”
The adjutant immediately detached himself from his personal emotions and reported, “The current plan is to have you issue a statement to appease the public.”
As one of the few survivors of this war, regardless of whether Si Jisheng was the Marshal or not, he owed the public an explanation.
Si Jisheng nodded, indicating his approval.
“Secondly, we are investigating the source of these rumors. The Federation has already claimed that galaxy as their own, and the Empire cannot conduct post-war cleanup. The military currently has no evidence, so we can only cut off the source for now.”
“At the same time, our diplomats are also in talks with the Federation—”
Si Jisheng’s expression flickered slightly as he typed, “Talks about what?”
The adjutant braced himself. “Peace.”
Peace.
The Empire, which reigned supreme in the interstellar community, was actually suing for peace.
Si Jisheng froze for a long time, taking a long while to come to his senses before typing, “Repeat that.”
The adjutant paused, then repeated his earlier words: “Marshal, we all believe in you. We have all witnessed how you have dedicated yourself to the Empire, to the military, and to humanity all these years.”
“Although you are different from us,” the adjutant chuckled, “we will not exclude you just because you are not human.”
“The few of us were all personally promoted by you, so please rest assured. Besides, no one can win every battle.” The adjutant’s tone was earnest. Because of his identity, their Marshal had always been isolated from the crowd, and usually, only a few of his confidants could exchange a word or two with him.
The adjutant was very worried.
The Marshal, all alone, might not be able to get through this.
“Although we lost this battle tragically, you are not a god. Who can guarantee that they can always lead the Empire forward—” The adjutant’s voice trailed off. He stared at the text message displayed on the comm, his throat suddenly dry, unable to say another word.
“What if I told you that I lost my memories of the war and only regained my senses after it was over?”
Through the comm, the adjutant stared at the upper body of the Marshal displayed on the blue screen, his gaze fixed on Si Jisheng’s translucent silver gills.
This was something a human would never have.
“Are you certain that you lost your senses at that time?” A trace of fear appeared in the adjutant’s eyes.
When the known becomes unknown, when the controllable becomes uncontrollable.
The emergence of this emotion was perfectly natural.
He could understand.
A hint of mockery appeared in Si Jisheng’s silver eyes as he typed out the last line, “In three days, I will release an audio statement.”
A written statement lacked credibility, and a video statement would expose his Jiaoren identity.
The communication was terminated.
In that brief second, the sea returned to the silence it was born with.
The black, curtain-like night sky pressed down on the entire sea. The pitifully scarce starlight and the crescent moon, so sharp it could cut a person, cast a pathetically dim glow.
Si Jisheng was surrounded by darkness. He looked into the even darker, even more indistinct distance and slowly closed his eyes. The salty sea breeze dried the blood on his upper body, leaving behind countless filthy stains.
He seemed to have forgotten something.
Si Jisheng suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to bring the shark for Deng Xi.
Si Jisheng clenched the comm and sank into the sea. There were too many corpses on the seabed, all piled up in one place. No matter how he searched, he couldn’t find the relatively presentable great white shark he had initially chosen.
He had discovered it long ago, when Deng Xi had passed through the currents, through a school of great white sharks with their bloody maws wide open, and swam to him with a pale face.
Si Jisheng had realized then that this blue Jiaoren seemed very timid.
Despite having lived alone in the sea for so long, he knew nothing of common sense, living a pitiful existence—weak, afraid of pain, and timid.
Si Jisheng sometimes wondered how he had survived until now. It was simply a miracle.
Not at all like the Jiaoren race.
Completely different from someone like him, who blended in with humans.
They were both miracles.
Si Jisheng finally found a shark carcass that wasn’t too frightening. It had been severed at the waist by his tail fin, and the shark’s head had sunk somewhere unknown, leaving only half of its body.
The only unsightly part was the entrails that had spilled out.
Si Jisheng cleaned it up and dragged it to the red coral reef in front of the lair. Even half a shark’s body was ridiculously large, and no matter how he tried to hide it, it was exceptionally conspicuous.
He didn’t dwell on it and simply found a place to let the half-shark sink, then found some useless but ceremonially pleasing seaweed, which Deng Xi liked, and wrapped it around it.
After Si Jisheng had taken care of everything, he leaned against the red coral reef, not knowing what to do. After staring into the darkness for a long time, he looked down at the comm in his hand.
He skillfully turned it on, swiped through the pages, opened a file, and scrolled through something meaningless, his gaze sweeping over names that were once familiar but would become strangers in the future.
This was the list of soldiers who had participated in that war. Most of them were already dead. As a Marshal, it was actually difficult to remember the names of tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of people clearly.
But Si Jisheng had a physiological, muscle-memory familiarity with every name, because he had once read every single one of them.
He read very slowly, because as a mute, it took a great deal of effort for Si Jisheng to pronounce each syllable, even if the sounds he made were just a few jumbled noises that no one could understand.
Si Jisheng’s rehabilitation continued until the seabed began to brighten slightly. The sun pierced through the surface of the sea and shone down. The darkness of the seabed still existed, but it was not as dark as before.
Si Jisheng closed the file, and as if torturing himself, swallowed the metallic taste of blood in his throat. He was in a daze for a while before he remembered that he had something to investigate.
Why had his comm’s signal been restored?
“Little Mute?” The merman’s language suddenly pierced through the currents and reached Si Jisheng’s ears. He closed the blue screen and, with a few operations, transformed the wrist-sized comm into a knuckle-width ring, slipping it onto his index finger and swimming towards the lair.
Deng Xi woke up in a daze. He reached a hand out from the pearly white shell and let it hang there for a while before retracting it and pushing the shell open.
“Good morning!”
Deng Xi turned his head and greeted the seaweed in the corner, then instantly became wide awake.
Because the seaweed was empty.
Where’s the merman?!
Where’s my big little mute?!
Don’t tell me my kinsman ran off as soon as his injuries were almost healed?! My hundred fish! Deng Xi was so shocked that he shouted, “Little Mute?!”
Deng Xi swam out of the shell. Just as he was swimming towards the entrance of the cave, he saw the silver-tail swim in. The little merman swam over worriedly and circled Si Jisheng. “Where did you go?”
Deng Xi threatened fiercely, “Although your injuries are almost healed, it’s very, very dangerous outside! You just have to count how many times you’ve been injured before to know.” He proudly flicked his tail fin and threatened in a particularly scary tone, “If you leave me, Little Mute, how will you survive?”
Before he got his hundred fish, Deng Xi would strive to build a good relationship with the little mute, so that after the silver-tail gave him the hundred fish, he would still stay and live with him.
They were each other’s only kinsmen.
Why would they leave each other?
Si Jisheng once again imitated Deng Xi’s usual little expression, tilting his head to show his confusion and gesturing for Deng Xi to continue.
Deng Xi said as if it were a matter of course, “Little Mute, look, besides you, there’s only me on this planet. We are each other’s only kinsmen, but Little Mute, you can’t speak.” He said righteously, “That is to say, besides me, no other creature in the entire ocean can sing.”
“Only I can sing to save you when you’re in danger!”
Si Jisheng hesitated before nodding.
There was indeed no problem with that conclusion.
Deng Xi nodded in satisfaction with his flawless logic. “In conclusion, it’s not that I can’t live without you, Little Mute, it’s that you can’t live without me.”
The little merman’s proud tail fin flicked again.
Si Jisheng’s expression was cold and he was silent for a moment, but his silver eyes curved slightly as he nodded.
Having received affirmation, Deng Xi continued, “So, I’m going out to find food. You be good and wait for me at home, don’t run around.”
The silver-tail nodded.
Deng Xi swam out full of confidence. Less than a minute after he left, a cry of surprise suddenly came from the lair. The next moment, a flash of gold and blue rushed into the lair.
Si Jisheng was still standing at the entrance of the lair, not having left.
Deng Xi flicked his tail fin and, after swimming in at high speed, crashed into Si Jisheng’s arms.
Si Jisheng’s whole body stiffened.
The next moment, he was tightly held by two hands, and even his silver tail was tightly entangled by the rogue blue tail. Their bare skin touched without any warning.
The golden-haired, blue-tailed little merman trembled, his voice wronged as if he were about to cry, particularly delicate. “I-I-I just, just saw, in front of our, our home, there’s a dead body!!!”
Author’s Note:
Deng Xi: I’m just CPU-ing you. (Teasing you)
Marshal: Who’s the one who can’t live without whom?
