The continent sank many years ago.
Yet the mortal realm still floated upon the sea.
Survivors riveted together derelict ships, floating platforms, and buoyancy pods to piece together new places of shelter.
The smaller ones were called float-communes, and the larger ones were known as anchorages.
Those that governed maritime domains and commanded all anchorages were called Tide Courts.
Welcome to Sea-Swallowed Sky.
...
Seventeen had almost forgotten what his original name was.
All these years, he had been doing the Yan Clan Tide Court’s bidding.
When the Yans needed a confession, he would strap the fish-transformed onto the torture chair, twist open their lungs, and pierce their fins until they yielded the answers his superiors wanted.
Now, it was finally his turn to sit upon his own torture chair.
Creak.
The rusted iron door pushed inward.
Footsteps trod across the damp iron plating, approaching at an unhurried pace before coming to a stop in front of the torture chair.
“In the past, you were always the one pinning others to this chair. Now that you’re sitting in it yourself, how does it feel?”
Seventeen raised his eyes.
The newcomer’s hair was combed neatly, and behind his ears lay a fine layer of white scales that trailed all the way down into his collar—a Fish Guard instructor of the Yan Clan Tide Court.
Codename: White Eel.
He was his instructor, after all.
He couldn't just slump before him like this.
The moment Seventeen straightened his spine, a sharp pang pierced his neck as the barbs on the inside of the iron collar sank a few fractions deeper into his flesh.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Is the reason important?”
“Wasn’t it you who fished my dying self out of the shipwreck, brought me into Zijing Anchorage, and taught me fish-transformation?”
“It was.”
White Eel casually dragged over a chair and sat across from him.
“And so?”
“You told me I was very capable, and you said I was someone the Yan Clan Tide Court couldn’t do without.”
“I did say that.”
“However, that statement could be made more precise. Your capability isn’t particularly outstanding. What is truly rare is your uniqueness.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Of course there’s a difference.”
White Eel stood up and circled around to the back of the torture chair.
“Back then, when you emerged from the trial chamber, your lower body had been gnawed by piranhas down to bare bones.”
“The next day, I watched with my own eyes as flesh and blood regrew over those bones, sprouting two complete legs.”
“It was then that I knew your 【Fish Aspect】 was the Body-Abandoning Salamander.”
“《Tide-Calming Salamander Register》 has circulated in the Northern Jurisdiction for so many years. Countless people have completed their initial fish-transformation, manifesting dozens of salamander aspects, but throughout the generations, you are the only one with the Body-Abandoning Salamander.”
Seventeen naturally knew his body was different from ordinary people.
As long as he didn’t die outright on the spot, any missing flesh and blood would always slowly grow back.
Yet what kind of monsters didn’t exist in the Yan Clan Tide Court?
Those clad in scales, those bearing gills, those whose bones could compress on their own with water pressure...
What did his minor regenerative ability amount to?
He was merely a bit tougher to kill.
And precisely because he was tough to kill, he had crawled out alive from trial after trial.
“Even if I am a Body-Abandoning Salamander, what does that have to do with locking me up here?”
“It has everything to do with it.”
White Eel sat back down in front of the torture chair.
“Don’t think I don’t know how you got that intelligence. Relying on this living flesh of the Body-Abandoning Salamander, how many enemies have you made for the Yan Clan Tide Court? Being locked to your own torture chair today—isn’t it exactly what you deserve?”
Seventeen tugged at the corner of his mouth.
What he deserved?
At thirteen years old, he graduated from the Northern Jurisdiction Fish-Transformation Camp and was assigned to the roving scout squad.
A year later, the Yans suddenly transferred him to work as an aquatic scout.
A roving scout who only knew how to patrol the seas, scout paths, and keep watch was shoved right into an enemy float-commune.
Along with the transfer order, the Tide Court specifically passed down a fish technique tailored to his Body-Abandoning Salamander aspect:
【Blood Swim】.
Once mastered, he could refine the flesh he sliced from his own body into slender fish bones.
The surface of the bone needle was as hard as fine bone, yet the inside was still writhing living flesh; once struck into a human body, it would swim along blood vessels, entangle nerves, and pierce internal organs.
That agony was enough to pry open anyone’s mouth.
Relying on this fish technique, he brought back report after report of intelligence, rising from aquatic scout to inquisitor in less than a year.
Over the subsequent three years, step by step, he went from the youngest inquisitor in the Yan Clan Tide Court to the “Blood Yanluo” that made everyone on the Zijing Sea pale at the mere mention of his name.
Everyone said the Tide Court had finally recognized his talent.
Seventeen thought so as well.
After all, he was indeed very good at making people talk.
The Tide Court had clearly been putting him in positions of great trust.
Yet now, his own instructor had severed his tendons, burned through his fish lungs, and locked him to this torture chair he had used for three years.
“Whether as a roving scout, an aquatic scout, or an inquisitor, wherever the Tide Court told me to go, I went. The people that needed catching, I caught. The confessions that needed extracting, I extracted.”
“When I brought intelligence back, you took it without hesitation. When you credited my achievements and promoted me, no one complained that I made too many enemies. Now that the dirty work is done, it’s become what I deserve?”
Hearing this, White Eel actually laughed.
“I was just joking with you.”
Seventeen shifted his wrists slightly, the fish-locking chains scraping against mangled, bloody wounds.
“You call this a joke?”
“Severing your tendons and burning out your fish lungs was only to keep you docile. With the regenerative power of the Body-Abandoning Salamander, these injuries won’t take your life.” White Eel leaned forward slightly. “What’s truly fatal is that you don’t know what you are.”
Seventeen furrowed his brow.
White Eel continued.
“Severed body without death, missing flesh and blood regrowing entirely so long as the skull remains, the fish aperture hidden in the back of the head... these material-identifying traits are written clear as day on the recipe.”
“Recipe?”
“When the fish-transformed reach a high level and want to ascend further, they must gather materials according to a recipe.” White Eel looked at him, the smile on his lips deepening. “And your head happens to be an indispensable primary ingredient for one of the higher-tier paths.”
“On the recipe, it is called—”
“The Head of the Body-Abandoning Salamander.”
Seventeen’s pupils contracted slightly.
“So this is the real reason I’m locked here?”
“Correct.”
“Since you knew long ago that I was a Body-Abandoning Salamander and treated me as fish material, you could have taken my head the day my fish aspect formed. Why let me live until today?”
“Because back then, you hadn’t been seasoned yet.”
“Seasoned?”
“A newly formed Body-Abandoning Salamander head is merely a living head. Its medicinal potency is too shallow to enter a high-tier fish recipe. To become a true primary ingredient, it requires an additional process.”
White Eel paused.
“Torture-steeping.”
It was the first time Seventeen had heard the term.
White Eel stood up, running his hand along the torture implements on the wall before finally resting it on the torture chair beneath Seventeen.
“You didn’t actually think the Tide Court made you an inquisitor just because you were good at making people talk, did you?”
Seventeen’s spine stiffened. The torture chair beneath him, upon which he had sat for three years, suddenly felt utterly alien in this instant.
White Eel continued, “Under severe torture, when agony, terror, and the truth burst forth together, a very peculiar acoustic vibration is born within those screams.”
“The head of the Body-Abandoning Salamander resonates with this vibration, steeping out the medicinal properties required for ascension bit by bit.”
“If one person isn’t enough, interrogate ten.”
“If one year isn’t enough, raise it for three.”
“The more you hear, the more thoroughly it is steeped.”
Having spoken, White Eel snapped his fingers.
Snap.
The back of Seventeen’s head suddenly went numb.
“Stop...”
“Please, stop...”
“Kill me...”
“I really don’t know anything...”
Those familiar wails and cries seemed awakened by that sound, once again flooding his ears.
For three years, these sounds had never truly vanished.
He had always thought they were merely auditory hallucinations left behind after interrogating too many people.
Turns out, they weren’t.
His head had been ruminating on those agonizing screams all along.
Listening over and over.
Steeping over and over.
Until the medicinal properties seeped into every inch of his cranium.
This was the so-called torture-steeping.
“Heh.”
A low laugh forced its way out of his throat.
“I spent three years as an inquisitor, believing I had seen every method of torture in the Northern Jurisdiction. In the end, I didn’t even know when the torture fell upon me. How laughable.”
White Eel consoled him instead, “You can’t really be blamed for that. Fish soaking in brine never knows when the flavor has seeped in.”
“Who is it that needs my head to ascend?”
“Young Master Yan.”
White Eel answered crisply.
For a piece of fish material about to be handed over, it naturally wasn’t worth the trouble of concealing anything.
“Now that the heat has done its work, it’s time for you to surrender it.”
...
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