Fanli was about to lose her mind. How on earth was she supposed to tell him that she just wanted to be with him, that she wanted to strengthen their bond through a deeper intimacy, and that whether they were married or not didn't matter at all? She agonized over it for a long while, her expression shifting through a kaleidoscope of emotions, which Xinghai observed with great interest.
"What’s wrong? Are you in a bad mood?"
"No!"
"Then..." Xinghai looked down and chuckled. "Actually, Lili wants me too, doesn't she?"
"Ahhh, shut up!" Fanli jumped up and bit his arm, her face turning a deep crimson. "What kind of nonsense are you talking about... mmm."
The rest of her words were smothered by his kiss.
After a dizzying kiss, Fanli leaned into his embrace, her heart overflowing with happiness. Xinghai also seemed caught up in the moment; he held her head, his chest heaving as he breathed softly.
"If... if you don't mind that I'm not fully prepared," Xinghai said, his cheeks flushing slightly, "we can go buy a cheaper wedding ring right now. Then we’ll go register the marriage. After graduation, when I’ve earned more money, I’ll buy you a bigger gemstone, and we’ll have a proper wedding and invite all our classmates..."
"You don't need to think so far ahead," Fanli interrupted with a smile.
"Then..."
"I believe in you. All those things can come in time."
Xinghai blinked, stunned. "Really?"
"Yes."
"No, we should still go register first. We agreed, only after marriage..."
Fanli covered his mouth and shook her head. "It’s really not necessary. You’ve always been the one giving to me, and I can never seem to give you enough in return. I don't have any other thoughts right now; I just want to give myself to you completely. As for marriage, it’s okay. Whether we have that certificate or not, you are the person closest to me. To be able to give you my first time is already my greatest fortune."
After a long silence, Xinghai finally nodded. "...Alright."
As he spoke that word, his eyes grew red. It was clear he didn't want to cry, but after holding it back for a long time, a single white aquatic pearl escaped the corner of his eye. He turned his head away and sniffed.
Fanli wiped the corner of his eye for him and smiled. "Then let's do it the human way, on the shore, okay?"
"Okay." Xinghai looked up at the morning light filtering through the sinkhole. "Sleep a little longer. Shall we go to the West Beach at two this afternoon?"
"Mhm!"
West Beach was a stretch of sand on an island directly above the western part of St. Yegana, where there was a hotel run by merfolk posing as humans. The thought of dating on the beach, eating grilled seafood together, and then going to a room at night to do... *those* things made Fanli feel giddy. She slept until ten in the morning.
When she woke up, Xinghai was already gone. Fanli thought about contacting him but figured he might be trying to create a sense of ceremony by heading back first.
So, she hurried back to St. Yegana, specifically went with Feisi to buy a white dress for land use, and without even stopping to eat, she put in her contact lenses. Wearing the dress, with snow-white pearl chains around her wrists and ankles and white shell ornaments pinned into her red hair, she swam toward the surface to keep her appointment.
However, as she passed the head of the Emerald Mountains, a surge of current hit her. Her head felt as if it had been struck repeatedly by a massive boulder, leaving her completely dazed. The vessels speeding around her nearly knocked her flying. Clutching her head, she tried to figure out what was happening, but she felt a wave of nausea so intense it reminded her of the pain she felt when reading arcane books. Then, a sharp pain flared inside her chest, giving her the illusion that her ribcage was fracturing. Instinctively sensing something was wrong, she closed her eyes and made a desperate dash for the surface.
Once she broke the water, the sunlight spilled over her head and shoulders, and the discomfort began to dissipate. Pressing one hand to her chest and the other to her mouth, she spat out a mouthful of blood. The seawater in her palm quickly diluted the blood. Terrified and shocked, she washed her hands and, enduring the lingering pain in her chest, swam to the beach.
After sitting for ten minutes, the pain vanished completely, as if everything that had just happened was a mere hallucination. She remained confused for a while, but the thought of seeing Xinghai soon pushed the matter to the back of her mind.
It was noon, and the sun was scorching. She hadn't been on shore for fifteen minutes before her dress was half-dry. As she walked, her feet sank into the sand, letting the grains cover her insteps—warm and soft, like a simmering love spreading all the way to her heart.
However, carrying the heart of a bride-to-be, she waited for an hour, yet there was no sign of Xinghai.
*What gives... being late for such an important date. Is Xinghai really that scatterbrained?*
*Could it be that he didn't sleep well yesterday and overslept after going back?*
No, Xinghai wasn't one for sleeping in. He wouldn't miss such an important date.
But the underwater communicators didn't work on land. She was afraid that going back into the sea would soak her dress again, ruining the ethereal beauty of the fabric fluttering in the sea breeze. Thus, she could only continue to wait, her heart burning with anxiety.
Two hours later, Fanli began to panic. Unable to take it anymore, she dove straight into the sea to call him.
No one answered.
So, she returned to the shore, dried her dress again, and watched as the occasional merman or mermaid passed by, casting curious glances her way.
Most of her initial excitement had evaporated, replaced by mounting dread. She kicked the sand anxiously, feeling as though every second was a year.
It was impossible for Xinghai not to show up. He had protected her for so long and had never been late. Could he have encountered some danger... No, that was impossible too. He was a master at turning peril into safety.
And so, amidst her turmoil, a long afternoon slipped away.
Xinghai did not come.
The sun's heat diminished significantly, and the light began to dim. Some merfolk travelers had already jumped back into the sea, manifesting their tails and disappearing into a shimmer of light, returning to the dimension of the Sea of Light. Fanli held her head, unsure if she should keep waiting.
Worse still, before the sky had fully darkened, a massive layer of lead-gray clouds spread out like a demon's palm, silently blotting out the sun. The air turned humid, and mosquitoes from the tropical rainforest began to swarm.
Fanli leaned against a jagged rock, looking up at the sky, torn over whether to leave.
Just as she was agonizing, she heard a familiar voice behind her: "How long do you intend to wait?"
Turning around, she almost thought it was an illusion.
"Lord Sushiye?!" She slowly turned her entire body. "You... why are you on land too?"
It really was Sushiye. His short toga and snow-white hair were dry; he must have been on shore for a while. In contrast to her shock, his vertical pupils held only a vast expanse of calm and indifference. "You haven't answered my question."
"I'm waiting for Xinghai here..."
"He hasn't shown up all day, and yet you still wait?"
"How do you know?" Fanli was stunned. "He... he's my boyfriend. Of course I have to wait for him..."
"You want to mate with Xinghai on land? Have you lost your mind?" Sushiye said, his anger suppressed. "You've always prided yourself on being conservative in front of me. Is this your idea of being conservative?"
In all the time she had known Sushiye, this was the first time Fanli had heard him speak so rudely. Her face flushed with shame and fury. "You eavesdropped on our conversation?!"
Sushiye gave a cold snort but didn't answer.
"Lord Sushiye, please show some respect. Who says being conservative means I can't have a relationship with the person I love? He and I have already decided to be together for a lifetime... No, even if he doesn't stay with me forever, I am willing to have a relationship with him. This is my decision; it has nothing to do with you, does it?"
"Then tell me, how do I know what you wanted to do with him?"
Fanli frowned deeply, looking at him with suspicion. "Xinghai would never tell you these things. You didn't plant a surveillance device on him, did you?"
"I'm asking you, how much do you actually know about him? His background, his past, his race, his health, his family... how much do you know?"
"I know he comes from a military family in the Astral Navy. His father was a purebred Blue Shark, his mother was of the Ocean Race, and he has Negative Memory Consumption Syndrome... I know he's not healthy, but it doesn't matter. I'm not exactly perfect either. In my eyes, everything about him is good."
"Then do you know that all of that was a lie?"
"...He lied to me?" Fanli was taken aback for a moment, then she shook her head. She felt Xinghai was far more reliable than Sushiye, so she didn't bother arguing. "I believe whatever he says. Even if he lies to me, I believe him."
"A woman who becomes a fool the moment she falls in love."
"So what? It hasn't bothered the esteemed Lord Dictator, has it?"
"He isn't even an independent lifeform. Can you accept that?"
"What..." Fanli took a step back, fear beginning to take root. "What do you mean?"
"He is merely a mimetic lifeform. Military grade," Sushiye said slowly, followed by words that felt like a bolt from the blue. "Furthermore, this mimetic lifeform now has only one week of life left. But seeing you start to act like a fool, actually wanting to go to the final step with him, I terminated his operations ahead of schedule."
"I don't believe you." Fanli's reflex was to shake her head violently. " I don't believe a single word."
"Do you remember the scene when you first met Xinghai?" He paused, seeing Fanli merely staring at him with a pale face, then continued, "At that time, his consciousness was being controlled by me."
Fanli certainly hadn't forgotten their first meeting. It was a puzzle that had troubled her for some time. Because the Xinghai she met that first time had eyes, a temperament, and a way of speaking that were slightly different from the Xinghai she knew later. If someone told her Sushiye had simply swapped shells, she would have believed it. Thus, she was almost on the verge of believing Sushiye's words.
"A few days after Sui escaped the Stormy Sea, I picked up her trail," Sushiye said with a cold smile. "But that time I held you, I found your reaction very strange. I began to wonder if Sui was faking the soul exchange, putting on an act. However, I had many official duties to attend to those few days and didn't have time to watch you constantly, so I injected part of a person's memories into this mimetic lifeform and had him stay by your side to watch you. That is the Xinghai you want to love for a lifetime."
"I don't believe it..." Fanli said weakly.
"You don't? Then do you remember that night you and Xinghai were intimate in the Luoya Fluorescent Sea?" Seeing Fanli's face grow increasingly ghastly, Sushiye said nonchalantly, "That was also me."
"Impossible!"
Despite her words, she could not forget the details of that night at the Fluorescent Sea. The Xinghai of that night had indeed been too different from his usual self—wild and sexy, every look and smile radiating a charming aura that had left her head spinning with love for a long time. Whenever she recalled it later, she would feel quite embarrassed...
"Look at you. You didn't even notice such a massive change in Xinghai, yet you have the nerve to say you know him."
Fanli hugged her arms, her eyes welling with tears, but she maintained her composure and shook her head gently. "I don't believe it. Lord Sushiye, please stop playing this kind of joke on me. How could a mimetic lifeform have such a complete personality? Aside from occasionally entering a state of suspended animation and having Negative Memory Consumption Syndrome, he is fundamentally a living, breathing person..."
"I told you, it's because I injected part of a person's memories into his body. Of course he looks real."
"Who was that person?"
"You wouldn't want to know. That person no longer exists." Sushiye sighed. "Xinghai's consciousness is connected to mine, but it's not in real-time. His 'suspended animation' is actually the moment when the information he observed is being extracted into my consciousness. You can think of him as a machine that was being sent back to the factory for repairs at those times."
Fanli suddenly remembered something that had happened a long time ago.
"The first time Xinghai and I went to the slave market, there was a slave owner selling slaves of the Sui bloodline, who was later killed by the Abyss Race... Actually, that was your doing, wasn't it?"
Sushiye lowered his head in thought for a moment. "It seems there was such an incident. That day, Xinghai also talked to you about his 'Negative Memory Consumption Syndrome,' right? Actually, he doesn't have that disease. The so-called 'Negative Memory Consumption Syndrome' was simply because many memories were detrimental to his identity as a spy, so I deliberately made them disappear. For example, how he knew so many details about his parents' deaths."
Prompted by Sushiye, Fanli realized how strange that matter was. Xinghai had said his parents starved to death. In a state of famine, if he had been nearby, he should have starved to death as well for lack of food...
"How... how did he know?"
At that moment, a bolt of lightning illuminated the entire beach, like Death holding up a massive camera, flashing the corpse of the island into a blinding white to take a final portrait.
"When his father was on the verge of death, he refused to eat the mother's corpse no matter what. He was beside his father and his already deceased mother, and his father said to him: 'Son, remember, find your sister. Her life determines the survival of the entire Sea of Light. So, you cannot die. You must, must live on.' And so, his parents died, but he survived."
Fanli wanted to ask "So what?", but she quickly realized what he was implying, and her face instantly turned even paler. Then, a clap of thunder roared in the sky over the sea, sounding as if it would shake one's soul right out of their body.
A wave of dizziness flooded her brain, making Fanli feel an immediate urge to vomit.
She couldn't believe that Xinghai had actually experienced such a terrifying past. If this was true, then it was only natural that he didn't remember those things. If he did, he couldn't possibly have had such a clean, pure personality later on.
"Wait," Fanli said, squinting her eyes. "Xinghai... has a sister?"
"Yes."
"Who exactly is that person?" Fanli suddenly felt she had figured it out, and goosebumps erupted all over her body. "The owner of the memories you injected into his body... who is it?"
"That person was also named Xinghai." The thunder accompanied Sushiye's voice, making his words sound ethereal and unreal. "But in the body of this mimetic lifeform, there are only the memories of Xinghai before the age of seventy-four."
"And after seventy-four? Where did he go?"
"That's not important. All you need to know is that the Xinghai you know has only seventy-four years of mental maturity. That is why, despite how long you two have known each other, you have progressed while he has remained stagnant. He is not a real lifeform, and therefore, he cannot grow."
As he finished speaking, the rain began to pour down.
"Impossible..." Fanli wiped the rain from her face, her voice trembling. "Impossible. How could it be? How could Xinghai not be real? I don't believe it. I don't believe a single word you say..."
Sushiye didn't speak; he simply pointed his index finger toward a spot. A golden light shot out, and Xinghai appeared before Fanli.
He shook his head, saw Fanli and the gray sky, and immediately rushed over to embrace her. "I'm sorry, Lili, I entered suspended animation again. I... am I very late?"
Fanli only felt a sharp ache in her eyes and the bridge of her nose. Her vision was a blur, and she seemed unable to hear anyone speak clearly. But she didn't know if she was crying. She buried her head in Xinghai's chest, clutching him tightly, shaking uncontrollably, her entire body hurting as if it no longer belonged to her.
Sushiye watched them embrace in silence, his expression blank.
The rain grew heavier, soaking Fanli's white dress once more. Before long, she reverted to her aquatic form. Unable to stand, her entire body went limp.
Xinghai quickly caught her, cupping her face in his hands, his voice urgent. "Lili, what's wrong? What happened?"
"I, I..." Fanli shook her head violently, sobbing so hard she couldn't utter a word.
Sushiye pointed at Xinghai again. Xinghai's entire body jolted, and like a frozen statue, he remained motionless with his eyes half-open.
Fanli slid from Xinghai's arms to the ground.
"No!!" She lay on the ground, her arms and face covered in dirty mud and sand. "Lord Sushiye, you must have a way to let him live, don't you?"
"He was never alive to begin with. How do you expect me to let him 'live on'?"
"No, he was alive! He really lived, I saw it with my own eyes. Even if you say he's just a mimic, I know he has a soul!"
But no matter what she said, Sushiye only gazed indifferently at the horizon where the sky met the sea, not saying a word.
Fanli slapped her tail against the ground, propping herself up with her hands on the muddy sand, dragging her body forward, crawling step by step to Sushiye's feet. She grabbed his boots and looked up at him. "Lord Sushiye, I beg of you, let Xinghai live, please? I don't care if he's a real lifeform or not. This is the person I love—this boy I met at Luoya University, this boy who protected me and stayed by my side all this way, who promised to live with me in St. Yegana and create a future together..."
She spoke with deep sincerity and a semblance of logic, but her heart had long since shattered.
"If you need him, let him stay with you for one last day. However, the moment his life ends, even if I don't want to see it, I will know every detail of what he experienced. If you don't want me to see your naked body again, to experience the feeling of sleeping with you once more, then do not go to the final step with him."
Such words could no longer provoke Fanli.
"One day is too short." She clutched the hem of his robe, pleading bitterly, the mud on her arms rubbing off onto his white byssus fabric. "Can you give us ten more years?"
He didn't speak.
"Five years? Is five years okay?"
"Then three years. Three years is enough."
"One year?" She looked back at the frozen Xinghai, her voice hoarse and desperate. "Just one year will do, I beg you..."
Sushiye finally looked down at her. The tail of the girl from the Ocean Race shimmered under the rain, her hair plastered wetly against her cheeks. The beautiful white shells on her temples had long since scattered across the ground, looking like the debris of shells found anywhere on a beach. Her head hung low, her thin shoulders and fingers trembling from her weeping.
He frowned, leaned down, and easily picked her up in a bridal carry, gazing quietly into her eyes. "You're very sad, aren't you?"
Fanli huddled in his arms. She wanted to cling to him and wail, but the thought that this man was the culprit stopped her. She was indeed heartbroken—so heartbroken she didn't even have the strength to be angry. She could only hunch her shoulders and let the rain beat down on them.
"I don't understand why you are so stubbornly obsessed." Sushiye's voice was very soft, echoing above her. "If Xinghai is the person you love, then I can tell you with certainty that he ceased to exist long ago."
"If that's the case, why did you let him stay by my side?" she sobbed. "You saw how we fell in love, didn't you? Why did you indulge our love, only to take him away?!"
"It was my own arrogance."
Fanli didn't understand Sushiye's words. But Sushiye didn't intend for her to understand.
It was his arrogance.
He had thought Fanli was so infatuated with him that once she reached St. Yegana, he could naturally steal her away from Xinghai. Because he was so confident, he had allowed himself to savor every moment he spent with Fanli.
In truth, it wasn't just Fanli who had come to depend on the pure romance with Xinghai.
He had too.
He had once loved a girl just like Xinghai did, but they never had the chance to begin.
Xinghai and Fanli were so much like the two of them. Every time Xinghai's memories entered his consciousness, he experienced an intensely real hallucination.
It was as if that first love, destroyed by war and politics, had finally reached a perfect conclusion.
Whenever Fanli looked at Xinghai with those innocent yet cunning eyes, he seemed to see, through Xinghai's eyes, the reflection of the girl he had once loved from afar.
In this overly beautiful dream, she finally stopped leaving him with only a cold back; she was finally willing to turn around and look at him, to say those words he would never hear: "I love you."
The heavy rain soaked Sushiye's white hair, which messily covered one of his eyes.
"Lili, I'm sorry. The responsibility for this lies entirely with me," he said tiredly, looking down at the completely broken Fanli. "If I had been absolutely certain from the beginning that you weren't Sui, I wouldn't have let things reach this point."
"Xinghai and I... we still have a week together, right?" Fanli couldn't think of anything else.
"Mhm."
"Then, can his time be stored?"
"It can." Sushiye set her down, holding her with one arm to prevent her from sliding, then took off her pearl earring. With a wave of his hand, Xinghai turned into a streak of light and entered the pearl. "When you want him to come out, grip the pearl tightly, and he will appear immediately. When you no longer need his company, grip the pearl again, and he will return. He has 173 hours left."
Fanli touched the earring with both hands. Because it was infused with arcane power and a mimetic lifeform, the pearl emitted a faint, grayish-white glow, just like Xinghai's hair. She cradled that pearl carefully against her chest, her body trembling slightly, not daring to grip it hard.
They had promised to be together for a lifetime, and now only one hundred and seventy-three hours remained.
The companionship of these one hundred and seventy-three hours, no matter when it began, seemed far too extravagant.
She turned and looked out at the vast, boundless sea beneath the gray mist, feeling that it was empty—there was nothing there. Luoya, St. Yegana, a bright future... none of it had anything to do with her anymore. The life of this Ocean Race girl named Fanli, or the body of the Great Arcanist Sui, had nothing to do with her either.
She handed the pearl to Sushiye. "Lord Dictator, could you please keep this pearl for me? I need to rest for a while before I ask for it back."
"I can," Sushiye said, taking the pearl.
"Thank you for leaving his final moments to me." With that, she leaped back into the sea.
Fanli rushed back to her dormitory at St. Yegana University in one breath and stared blankly at her bed for two hours. Finally, she decided to do what she had just planned.
She pulled open her drawer and found the small black medicine bottle hidden at the very back—the Reverse Spacetime Soul-Exchange Potion—and drank it all in one gulp.
***
