Chapter 14: Deng Xi
Deng Xi was woken up by the cold.
The sweet dream suddenly plunged into darkness. A large hole appeared in the ground, and he fell without warning.
Beneath the ground was an ice cave.
The temperature was dropping rapidly. His gills, which he used to breathe, seemed to be frozen as well. It was getting colder and colder—
Deng Xi groggily opened his eyes. All he could see was pitch black. Something was dragging him by his tail, pulling him rapidly into the deep-sea rift.
It wasn’t a dream; he was really falling!
Deng Xi’s eyes widened, and he was instantly awake.
Help!!! Fish-napping!!!!
He had only forgotten to close the shell lid tonight! How did he get caught by another fish to be used as a food reserve?!
Deng Xi immediately flicked his tail, shaking off whatever was dragging him. He swam upwards, flapping his tail fin as if his life depended on it. Then, a bone-chilling sensation instantly washed over him. He glanced back.
It was too dark; he couldn’t see anything clearly.
He was already deep in the abyss of this underwater canyon. Only at the very top was there a sliver of light.
A merman’s senses were extremely keen. Even if Deng Xi couldn’t see, he could guess that something was breaking through the water behind him, swimming towards him at high speed.
Not just one current, but many, many of them.
The cold, prying gazes from the darkness made Deng Xi’s scalp tingle. Run, I must not get caught!
But a merman’s swimming speed was not high. Deng Xi swam with all his might, but the things chasing him were getting closer and closer. Not to mention, he was completely unfamiliar with this deep-sea abyss.
Besides swimming headlong towards the light, he couldn’t find any place to hide.
He was about to be caught.
Deng Xi’s gills fluttered rapidly. The intense physical exertion made him swim slower and slower. Finally, when he crashed headfirst into a coral reef in front of him, he had no strength left to swim.
It hurts.
Deng Xi touched his head. Fortunately, the coral reef was brittle, and his head wasn’t cut open. He breathed a sigh of relief and fumbled with the messy seaweed in front of him.
Suddenly, something in the seaweed flashed with a faint light. Then, a chain reaction began. From a single point of light to a cluster, it spread into a patch, a large patch…
The entire deep-sea abyss lit up at that moment. Deng Xi’s pupils slightly dilated. It was fluorescent jellyfish, tens of thousands of them, lighting up in that instant, illuminating the pitch-black abyss.
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
And Deng Xi had also successfully seen what creatures were chasing him. They were venomous sea snakes, dozens of them, all chasing after him.
Each one was three to four meters long and as thick as Deng Xi’s arm. The venom dripping from their fangs could kill in less than a few dozen seconds if bitten.
Sea snakes were creatures that avoided light and preferred darkness. The illumination from the fluorescent jellyfish made the sea snakes chasing Deng Xi pause for a moment, slowing down and gradually swimming into the shadows under the light. But their sinister heads were still all aimed at Deng Xi from all directions.
The sight made Deng Xi’s scalp tingle. He swallowed. Taking advantage of this gap, he turned and burrowed into the seaweed. As soon as he pushed it aside, his eyes lit up. It was a cave he could hide in!
Behind the seaweed-covered cliff was a cave he could just fit into. Deng Xi immediately swam into the cave. The faint light of the fluorescent jellyfish in the abyss, after this brief flash, all returned to their original dimness.
In a single second, the abyss returned to darkness.
Deng Xi randomly grabbed a few fluorescent jellyfish and hid in the cave. His tail was coiled on the stone wall, and his butterfly-wing-like gills trembled violently as he breathed rapidly.
He had no strength left and could only rest for now. Deng Xi looked at the fluorescent jellyfish in his hand. With a slight squeeze and poke, the jellyfish would flash.
Deng Xi calmed down and curled up in a corner, carefully hugging his big tail, his face hidden behind it. From time to time, he would squeeze a jellyfish and, in the brief moment of light, peek out with his light blue eyes from behind his big tail to take a look.
As expected, the sea snakes had also followed him in. But because there was no fluctuation in the current, they couldn’t find where Deng Xi was. And because Deng Xi occasionally made the jellyfish light up, a vacuum had formed around him due to the sea snakes’ aversion to light.
In short, Deng Xi was safe for now, but with the slightest movement, he would become a meal for the sea snakes.
Danger followed him like a shadow. In the pitch black, only the faint light of the jellyfish flashed on and off. Deng Xi was a little bored and counted his scales. For a moment, it seemed as if he had returned to the time before he met the little mute. The whole world, the entire ocean, was left with only him, a single merman. His calls would never be answered by his kinsmen.
More often than not, he would be curled up alone in a pitch-black cave, the cold, hard shell beneath him, and no sparkling silver tail on the seaweed bed in the corner. A thick sense of loneliness crept into his heart.
Deng Xi lowered his eyelids dejectedly.
Has the little mute noticed that I’m gone? Will he come looking for me?
But the little mute can’t speak, nor can he sing the merman’s song. How can the little mute find me, and how will I know that the little mute is looking for me?
Deng Xi peeked his head out again and glanced at the school of sea snakes in the cave. He closed his eyes in fear and secretly cheered himself on.
Don’t be afraid!
Once I recover my strength, I’ll light up the fluorescent jellyfish and charge straight out!
The school of sea snakes surrounded the entrance of the cave, swimming around in the dark water. If Deng Xi went past, he would definitely run into them.
What if I get bitten? Will I die?
Deng Xi sat quietly in the darkness, hugging his tail for a while. When he had recovered his strength, he nervously squeezed a fluorescent jellyfish, preparing to sing softly in the merman’s language and charge out the moment the song took effect, even though Deng Xi’s face was pale with fear.
Before he made a sound, Deng Xi tilted his head slightly, as if he had heard something. In the abyss outside the cave, it seemed as if someone was calling his name.
·
During the day, they had already explored most of this sea area in search of a new lair. The only place they didn’t know was that deep-sea abyss.
Si Jisheng swam above the abyss, his eyes lowered as he quietly looked at the pitch-black seabed. His huge, fan-shaped silver tail fin suddenly stirred up the current. The Jiaoren’s fins followed, cutting through the water. His nearly two-meter-long silver tail swiftly shot towards the abyss, like a meteor streaking across the night sky, with extreme speed and power.
The current was violently churned up. The fluorescent jellyfish, which normally needed to be touched to light up, were affected by the surging current and automatically lit up in flashes. The faint fireflies burned fiercely in the cold deep sea, the light spreading into a vast expanse, completely illuminating the entire deep-sea abyss.
Si Jisheng stood in the abyss, floating in the water interwoven with thousands of lights, and carefully looked over every inch.
Nothing.
Not a single blue tail could be seen.
Si Jisheng’s eyes darkened. He continued to swim towards the bottom of the abyss. As his speed slowed, the light of the jellyfish weakened, and the entire abyss was shrouded in a hazy dimness.
The deeper he went, the more Si Jisheng smelled a dark, cold, fishy scent. Before they moved to the new lair, he had once caught a sea snake.
Si Jisheng closed his eyes and carefully sensed it. His brow furrowed even more. It was a school of great sea snakes.
Ordinary sea snakes were generally only a little over a meter long, but the great sea snakes were commonly four meters long, with the longest being six or seven meters. Their venom was also much more potent. Even a slight scratch, if the venom entered the body, would result in a cold, purple corpse in a matter of seconds.
Simply searching with the naked eye was meaningless.
Si Jisheng knew this very well. His expression was extremely cold, his thoughts so calm that he even simulated the blue Jiaoren, who usually had a carefree smile, being bitten by a sea snake. His expression would be pained, his eyes filled with fear, and his beautiful blue eyes would rapidly lose focus in a matter of seconds, finally collapsing in an unknown lair, his face purple.
Si Jisheng’s breath hitched slightly.
If he didn’t find the blue Jiaoren quickly, what he had imagined would become a reality.
Deng. Xi.
Si Jisheng called out in his heart, word by word.
He opened his mouth futilely, clenching the conch shell in his hand. The moment he opened his mouth, the noisy names immediately drilled into his brain.
“Our singing is like the wind. It blows when it wants to, and stops where it wants to.”
“This is an ability we were born with. You just need to follow the ocean and find it again.”
Si Jisheng’s chest rose and fell slightly. He closed his eyes and slowly held the conch shell to his ear. His mind froze for a moment. The small conch shell seemed to connect his mental sea with reality.
In the silence, the sound of surging waves and the whistling of the sea breeze quietly sounded.
Si Jisheng opened his mouth and silently mouthed two syllables.
It was the merman’s language he had already traced countless times in his mind. It was the first time he had normally pronounced a name since he had fallen ill.
“Deng Xi.”
The Jiaoren’s unique subsonic voice spread to every corner of the sea with the current, low and deep.
In the cave, Deng Xi slowly raised his eyes. Fearing that he had misheard, he pricked up his ears and listened carefully again.
Is someone calling me?
An unfamiliar merman’s language, a dry and raspy pronunciation.
Deng Xi knew that someone had come to pick him up outside the cave.
Author’s Note:
Jiaoren have “subsonic voice”—that is, ultrasound, which is used for underwater communication (from Baidu)
