Lina reached out, stopping the Fierce Princess from lashing out. "Forget it. No matter what your wish is, I can help you fulfill it. You can take your time to think. First, let me tell you the good news—from now on, I can give you the chance to follow me."
*Any wish fulfilled? The chance to stay by her side?*
Was this some sort of crossover between Aladdin’s Lamp and Dao Ming Si?
But Fan Li soon realized things weren't as simple as she thought. Lina smiled. "I have only one requirement: before we go to the Holy Capital, you must help our ‘Black Coral Goddess Gang’ secure a Double S. I’ll handle the methods; you just need to contribute that lovely brain of yours. So, is it a fair trade?"
Using Lina’s power to find a way back to the human world might be a viable path. Fan Li tested the waters. "When would I start... contributing?"
"From the very first class, of course."
"I see... Could you give me some time to think about it?" Fan Li nearly fainted. Why was every quest in this world so difficult?
"Why?" The smile quickly faded from Lina’s face. She glanced at Dangdang. "Is it because of your friend? Don't worry about what happened at the school gate; it was just a misunderstanding. I’ll look after her too."
Fan Li remained silent.
Lina then looked at Liuxiang. "It couldn't be because of her, could it? That little green tea bitch who seduced my ex-boyfriend? Are you trying to get revenge for a girl you just met today? You aren't that stupid, Fan Li."
"No, of course not."
"Oh, I see. It’s for yourself." Lina laughed again, but the sound was like a crack forming on a sheet of ice—cold and dangerous. "You’re doing it for yourself. You know exactly what benefits a Double S gets in Saint Yejana. You don't want anyone else stealing your 'Academic God' halo, even if I could give you many more."
Fan Li shook her head. "I’m not refusing you. I just need time to think."
"I understand." Lina patted her shoulder and swam past, whispering one last sentence into her ear: "You’ll find out soon enough that even in university, a transcript isn't everything. Take your time."
After Lina left, Liuxiang swam over, her voice filled with anxiety. "Why didn't you just agree immediately? Do you really think you can survive until the final exams if you don't give her this chance?"
Fan Li was slightly startled. "How did you know what she wanted?"
"Don't I know her? Her mother is struggling to stay attached to the Auda Clan. Her family lacks a member with absolute strength, and that member is ideally her only daughter, Lina. So, do you have any idea how important that Double S is to her? It might be her passport to obtaining the surname of a Sea God’s descendant..."
The Auda Clan was a branch of the "Seven Sovereign Gods of the Holy Sea" and the largest Sea God descendant family in the Starry Sea. The Ouroboros eel on Lina’s armband was the crest of the Auda Clan.
Dangdang said excitedly yet indignantly, "I support you, Li! Ignore those three with Princess Syndrome! Get that Double S and slap it in their faces! Let her be arrogant; now she’s the one whimpering and begging you!"
"Dangdang, stop it. The price for refusing Lina is terrifying."
Fan Li was also panicking, but she couldn't explain why. "I don't understand. Why don't they just work hard and earn it themselves?"
At this, not only Liuxiang but even Dangdang looked at Fan Li as if she were an idiot. "Li, maybe you’ve never failed to get an S, so you don't understand. The gap between an S and a Double S is much, much, much larger than the gap between a B and an S. It’s probably like the gap between 'Miss Bubble' and her husband’s background. A Double S is truly irreplicable. Only you can do it."
"Great."
*Just great.* She couldn't possibly cosplay the original owner’s genius.
After completing the freshman registration, Liuxiang went back to the student dorms to rest. Fan Li and Dangdang didn't live on campus, so they had to take public transport home. In truth, taking a public transport vessel was faster and cheaper, but since it was registration day, Dangdang was in high spirits and suggested a return to nature—riding a whale home.
Once on the whale’s back, Fan Li and Dangdang sat in a corner. Before long, the blue whale rose, creating ripples and a minor tremor that forced Fan Li to grab the handrail. She gasped several times, her gills flaring wide.
Then, the behemoth transformed into a moving island, carrying passengers through the streets of Luoya City.
Along the way, vast stretches of colorful coral blended with man-made structures, extending as far as the eye could see. The scale of the buildings relative to the sea folk was three to ten times larger than the ratio of human buildings to humans. To allow giant creatures like blue whales to pass, the main streets were more than ten times wider than those in the human world. The buildings had almost no right angles; they curved and undulated with a vibrant, rhythmic energy. It was naturalism with a touch of Moorish flair—as if Van Gogh had splashed his palette into the seawater, erecting buildings that were swirling nebulae, rotating night moons, and dancing illusions of space-time, turning them into a dazzling reality.
The most prominent landmarks in the city center included: the sixty-meter-high Sea Snail Building, the magnificent Whale Bone Gate, a tower bridge with a two-hundred-meter span, a Catalan Modernist-style City Hall surrounded by sea anemones, and the solemn Fortress of the Literary Sovereign God...
As they passed or looked upon these structures, Dangdang shouted their names excitedly, even making a speech-like proclamation: "As expected of the capital of the Red Moon Sea! Beautiful! Ugh, why wasn't I born here? But it’s okay, my hometown is beautiful too!" Her antics made a nearby middle-aged man chuckle.
Taking advantage of her distraction, Fan Li asked casually, "Dangdang, have you ever been to the surface?"
"Of course! Doesn't every primary school organize spring trips? Wait, do the schools in your Storm Sea not go to the surface?"
The undersea world was far more open than Fan Li had imagined. She tried a different phrasing to avoid blowing her cover: "I mean actually living on land."
"Oh, never. I’ve only used legs on land once, when I was a kid. But back then, a human man took a liking to my mom, and my dad never allowed us to go to the surface again."
"I’m very interested in this topic. Tell me more."
"You know how it is. Although we transform into legs once we’re ashore and can survive as long as there’s water, our vision becomes terrible. Everything is a blur. Walking with feet feels like the body is heavy, and breathing oxygen directly through the nostrils makes the nasal cavity dry. You always feel like the dirt in the air is getting into your lungs..." At this point, Dangdang tried to recall the experience of walking on land and shuddered. "I don't know what those sea folk who like to blend into the human world are thinking. Maybe they just find it novel. Not me. The sea is much more comfortable—oh, look! The Prowler Hotel!"
The blue whale stopped at a station near a luxury hotel. A doorman took a couple’s luggage and shouted, "The Rabbis, eighteenth floor!" Then, Fan Li watched with her own eyes as they entered an elevator that plummeted toward the seabed. Standing up to look, she realized the hotel was built on a natural ledge that sank deep into a valley. The recessed cliff served as the hotel’s walls, covered in a purple mirrored material that reflected the undersea light from all directions.
"The newest and most expensive SS-class luxury hotel in the Red Moon Sea, and the one with the largest floor area. It was Lord Su Shiye’s compensation to the citizens of Luoya," the red-haired shark-man next to them added with a smile. "I’ve stayed there. A standard double room is 1,500 Fu a night."
From the way Dangdang sucked in a huge gulp of water and blew out a long string of bubbles, Fan Li deduced that this meant a lot, lot, lot of money.
"So expensive. You could travel to the surface for a long time with that," Fan Li said, deliberately steering the conversation back. "Dangdang, how did you get to the surface back then?"
"You just swim straight up. We’re only about a hundred meters from the surface here, aren't we?"
Fan Li struggled to manage her expression, trying not to reveal too much joy. "Do you know much about the geography of the continent?"
"I do, and I know you definitely do too. But since you’ve never been up there, you wouldn't know that as soon as you step ashore in Luoya, you can see humans, kangaroos, and rabbits. Interesting, right?"
"Kangaroos?"
"Yes! Their kangaroos and rabbits are like the sea urchins in the kelp forests—so many of them, it’s crazy!"
Kangaroos were only found in Australia and South America. A place with both kangaroos and rabbits was very likely Australia.
Looking at the surroundings again, the coral was terrifyingly abundant, and many fish were performing strange rituals—they took turns rubbing their backs against rocks, coral, sea turtles, and even sharks, as if scrubbing away parasites or dirt to maintain a polished appearance.
Could it be the Great Barrier Reef?
No. The Great Barrier Reef was a fully developed human territory, yet she hadn't seen a single human diver along the way. Strange. Even if it wasn't the Great Barrier Reef, how could a major city only a hundred meters below the surface go undiscovered by humans?
"Is it safe for us to go up?" Fan Li continued to ask.
"Just bring two bottles of sea hare mucus—wow, Nomad Square! This square is 170 million years old!"
The square Dangdang pointed to was massive. A statue of a great figure stood in the center, surrounded by various clubs. Some restaurants deliberately froze food items to display them outside.
"And in those 170 million years, it hasn't changed much," the man laughed kindly. "If you flip through a history book, you’ll see that even in ancient times, restaurant owners liked to display things like this."
"Really? That’s even more impressive!"
Dangdang and the man began a passionate conversation.
Fan Li took the opportunity to rummage through her bag and found a potion bottle containing a transparent mucus. The bottle was labeled with the manufacturer's name, place of production, date, main ingredients, and instructions. It even had a simple diagram—a sea hare with cow-horn gills and two tentacles. The name of the medicine was "Long-tailed Opisthobranch Linear Depsipeptide Cytotoxic Protective Fluid," with the subtitle: "Suitable for protection against sharks, sailfish, and other marine predators."
Sea hares were sea slugs. The mucus secreted from their tentacles was toxic and could induce vomiting in natural enemies; it was their way of self-defense. Sea folk manufacturers utilized this to turn the mucus into a travel essential.
But how did one use a liquid in water? Even if applied to the body, wouldn't it be washed away?
Fan Li opened the cap and squeezed a dropper of mucus onto the back of her hand. Miraculously, it stayed there naturally.
This was too magical. She was seriously studying the potion when she suddenly heard Dangdang say, "Fan Li, we’re almost home. Stop playing."
Fan Li looked up and realized they had left the bustling city center. After thirteen stops, the density of buildings and population began to decrease, and the city’s prosperity gradually faded. Not far away was a residential area that could only be described as a slum. The buildings were dilapidated, and many households discharged sewage directly, staining the surrounding seawater a grayish-brown.
Like many passengers on the whale’s back, Fan Li covered the gills on her cheeks, not wanting to inhale the sewage, but she felt a faint, ominous premonition.
"You’re almost home?" the man asked in shock.
Dangdang nodded. She wanted to say something but simply kept a smile on her face as she pulled Fan Li up.
The man smiled back. "It was nice meeting you, lovely little girl."
The blue whale stopped at a street sign. The trainer didn't even bother to get up and sweep the barnacles off the whale’s back as he had before, instead urging the passengers to disembark quickly. Then, the nightmare began—shouting "We’re here," Dangdang grabbed Fan Li’s arm and swam into the slums.
Fan Li’s nerves were on the verge of snapping.
*The original owner was actually poor enough to live in a place like this...*
In the slums, not only was every household keen on discharging sewage, but bags of trash were piled up at every door. Some had already attracted scavengers, but this didn't dampen the noisy heat of the wet market:
"Mantis shrimp, clams, squid roe! Ribbonfish, hairtail, swimming crabs! Fresh for sale, come and see!"
"Red sea bream caught this morning, only 85 De per catty! The bream are fattening up for winter, tender and delicious, come buy now!"
"Old-brand fish sauce, marinated with the best salt and herbs!"
The ground where they stood was covered in broken shells, fish bones, and rotten vegetable leaves.
Then, as a male cephalopod sea folk approached, the vendors fled in terror, clutching their seafood. The cephalopod, holding a trident, used his arm suckers to flip over the remaining vegetable stalls, shouting, "Don't disrupt Luoya’s urban order! Isn't the government subsidy enough for you? You still have to ruin the environment?! Pack up your stalls! What is this junk? You didn't even do the trash sorting properly!"
Dangdang was terrified of this Octopus Urban Management Officer. She found her and Fan Li’s residence, opened the door, went inside, and closed it with lightning speed. The hallway on the first floor was very narrow, barely wide enough for one person. She swam stealthily to the living room door, peeked inside, then quietly pulled the door shut. She turned back to Fan Li, made a "shh" gesture, and whispered, "She’s coaxing the kids to sleep. Her husband isn't home. Come on, let’s go upstairs."
This was a shared apartment. There were three floors in total: the first floor was a common area with a living room and kitchen; the second floor had two bedrooms and a bathroom, occupied by the couple and another girl; the third floor had two bedrooms—one for Fan Li and one for Dangdang.
In Dangdang’s room, her mother was helping her daughter organize her clothes.
The light source was on the ceiling—a circular glowing stone hanging there, its surface as uneven as the moon. It illuminated a ring of colorful sea urchin shells, giving the room a slight "little princess" vibe.
Fan Li helped pack things. Through her conversation with Dangdang’s mother, she gradually realized that the original owner’s grades were so good that her background was essentially her academic excellence multiplied by negative one.
There were three ways sea folk reproduced: viviparous, ovoviviparous, and oviparous.
For these three methods, the cost of birth, the strain on the mother, genetic quality, and physical constitution all decreased in that order. Oviparous birth was the most likely to produce "hybrid" children of unknown race. Nowadays, except for slaves and the bottom-tier citizens who couldn't even meet basic needs, ordinary people would not choose this method. Bottom-tier sea folk would lay a mass of eggs and simply abandon them, letting them be tempered by the law of natural selection. The unlucky ones were eaten by predators as soon as they crawled out of the egg; the average ones were picked up by slave owners, fed low-quality fodder, and sold when they grew up; the lucky ones were adopted by orphanages. But even in orphanages, caregivers and teachers favored children who had lost their families in war and discriminated against oviparous orphans to varying degrees.
From Dangdang’s mother’s words, Fan Li gathered that the original owner, whose race was indistinguishable, was most likely an oviparous foundling. Perhaps because she had suffered discrimination since childhood, she was very withdrawn. She and Dangdang had met while renting. If Dangdang said ten sentences to her, she would reply to one at most, and never more than three words. In short, she seemed to be a girl who had nothing but her studies.
After packing, Dangdang’s mother said she would help Fan Li organize her room, and Dangdang said she would join them after her bath. Fan Li almost asked "Where is the bathroom?" but fortunately shut her mouth in time, feeling incredibly foolish.
After seeing Dangdang’s room and then entering the original owner’s room, both Fan Li and Dangdang’s mother were a bit stunned. The room was about thirty square meters, and the furniture consisted only of a bed, a bookshelf crammed with books, a wardrobe, a chair, a dressing table, and a desk covered in stationery and jars. There were so many jars that some were even piled on the floor.
This was what one might call a pigsty.
But no matter how Fan Li refused, Dangdang’s mother insisted on helping her pack, and she misunderstood Fan Li’s hesitation.
"Alright, alright, Auntie knows you treasure your magic potions. I won't touch the things on the desk." Dangdang’s mother turned to tidy the bed.
Fan Li felt apologetic and started cleaning as well. She found many interesting things in the room: the desk was placed against the bed, and on it was a bone rack. In the middle of the rack, pale purple electric sparks flickered, holding a floating vacuum bubble that looked a bit like a witch’s crystal ball. She picked up an empty test tube from the desk and inserted it into the vacuum bubble; the tube began to drip water. This was likely used for mixing potion solutions.
"Auntie, is magic potion research really that dangerous?" Fan Li thought of the squid beggar, and her skin crawled.
"Believe me, no matter how fast civilization develops outside, the cruelty of the penal code in the Sea of Light hasn't changed much from ten thousand years ago. If you don't want to end up in there..." At this point, Dangdang’s mother stopped and pulled a piece of paper from the bed. "Fan Li, you know a foreign language? What country’s script is this?"
Fan Li took it. There were several lines of text, square and upright, but they didn't come from the dictionary in her head—it was her own mother tongue, albeit in traditional characters. The first line was: *"You have no path home."*
*Who studied Classical Chinese? Such traditional Chinese virtues.*
"I... I copied it from a book. I’m not familiar with it yet," she replied, while reading the contents of the paper.
The text roughly translated to:
1. You can't go back. Treat my body as your own; don't be polite. I will take good care of your family, so don't worry about them.
2. If that man finds out, tell him he will be killed again in 2271 years.
3. This body must rely on magic potions to survive. Open the first book on the top right of the bookshelf; there are 30 bottles of prepared medicine. Drink one drop a day, and you will be cured after finishing them. Do not let anyone find out you are taking this medicine, or you will die.
Finally, it was signed: *"Someone whose name you do not need to know."*
From the very first line, Fan Li’s mind went blank. After a two-second pause, by the time she reached the end, she was ready to explode with rage—after all this time, the person who used the forbidden soul technique was the original owner herself!
Yes, of course. Born as a sea folk at the bottom of the food chain, living in a slum like this—anyone would be driven to desperation. Compared to a human girl born into a family of high-level intellectuals, the latter’s life was certainly more worth experiencing. She had no grudge against the original owner, yet the girl wanted to steal her life, her family, her home, and her bright future, even leaving her in constant mortal danger. It was utterly loathsome!
She had been slow to react. From the moment the "Sea Folk-Chinese" translation dictionary appeared in her head, she should have guessed that this was a premeditated case of identity theft!
However, the original owner could steal her body, but not her memories. As long as she could swim to the surface, transform her legs, go to the local police station for help, and call her father to exchange secrets only the two of them knew, she could quickly expose the thief!
Anger nearly blinded Fan Li. Heedless of everything, she stuffed the note into her bag, smeared the sea hare mucus all over her arms and tail, opened the window, and swam out.
"Fan Li, Fan Li! Where are you going?" Dangdang’s mother chased after her, but she was old and couldn't outswim her. She could only return to her daughter’s room for help.
Fan Li was like a rocket about to explode, charging upward.
She didn't care anymore. She was going to settle the score with that thief right now!
She beat her tail fiercely, completing a hundred-meter sprint at top speed, knocking over three sea turtles along the way. As the man-made structures faded and the sunlight grew more dazzling, her heart pounded harder as she neared the surface.
She was about to leave the sea. What would she see? Was it really Australia? What if it was Africa?
However, no matter how many guesses she had, they were all in vain.
Just as she was about to break the surface, countless beams of light suddenly surged from all directions, weaving a dense golden net across the water. She couldn't brake in time and slammed into the light net. Then, a blinding flash of silver-white crossed her vision, and she lost consciousness once more.
***
**Glossary**
Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation
--- | --- | ---
奥达宗族 | Auda Clan | A branch of the Seven Sovereign Gods of the Holy Sea.
圣海七宗神 | Seven Sovereign Gods of the Holy Sea | A powerful group of deities or clans in the undersea world.
衔尾鳗鱼 | Ouroboros Eel | The crest of the Auda Clan.
浮 | Fu | A unit of currency.
德 | De | A smaller unit of currency.
长尾背肛海兔线性缩肽类细胞毒性防护液 | Long-tailed Opisthobranch Linear Depsipeptide Cytotoxic Protective Fluid | A protective potion made from sea hare mucus.
汝无可归矣 | You have no path home | Classical Chinese text found on the note.
