A way to survive had been found, but that sudden memory of his childhood still hung in An Youyu's heart.
The Yan Clan had killed his parents, burned his float-commune, erased his name, and finally severed his head and destroyed his fish aperture, believing they had thoroughly reclaimed this life.
Yet against all odds, he had survived.
His severed fish-transformation path had also been reconnected.
Next, he would first gain a firm foothold in these unfamiliar waters, then continue walking down this lost-and-found 【Salamander Swim Path】.
Once he grew strong enough to shake the Yan Clan, he would naturally return to Zijing Sea.
His parents' lives.
The people who died on the float-commune.
His erased name.
He would collect every last one of these debts, account by account.
...
Once the night grew pitch-black, An Youyu was driven by thirst to where he could no longer lie still.
The half-jar of fresh water Zheng Azhu had brought at dusk was still sitting beside the bed.
An Youyu reached out and touched the lid, but did not open it.
The float-commune drifted atop boundless seawater, but for ordinary boatfolk, truly drinkable fresh water was always a scarce resource.
Whether it was rainwater or fresh water distributed from the water platform, how much each household received had to be rationed carefully according to their share.
Zheng Azhu did not yet know that his Blackwater Sickness had completely healed.
This half-jar of water was likely spared once again from the rations of the four Ning family members.
The medicine and rations he had consumed over this past month were already more than enough.
He could not touch this water again.
Besides, he had re-established his aspect.
Once a fish-transformed established their aspect, aperture breath would reshape their internal organs along with the fish aspect, allowing them to filter salt and discharge impurities to drink seawater directly.
On the sea, this ability was called 【Drinking Sea】.
Different fish aspects accomplished 【Drinking Sea】 in various ways.
What the Body-Abandoning Salamander relied upon was precisely the Conjoining Membrane.
An Youyu withdrew his hand, picked up the wooden basin, and pushed open the door to step out onto the outer gallery.
This was the first time since regaining consciousness that he truly saw the place that had taken him in.
Clown Float-Commune
A'Man's cabin hung at the end of a detachable side corridor on the inner side of the western ring wall, about two cabin stories above the water surface.
The cabin backed against the ring wall, its door facing the inner waters.
Living quarters, storehouses, workshops, and water storage platforms were not joined into a single contiguous structure, but were instead scattered across floating platforms of various sizes.
Uneven footbridges threaded between them, with small boats moored beneath the bridges.
Looking east across more than a hundred meters of water, a giant clown head stood in the center of the float-commune.
A rusty-red pointed hat towered high, its ghastly white round face peeking out from behind layers of footbridges, and below a faded red nose, its mouth stretched wide all the way to its ears.
Tide-Viewing Towers stood at intervals along the ring wall.
At this moment, several black flags hung simultaneously from the tops of the towers, extending along the arc straight into the night.
In the tide disaster class at the fish-transformation camp, An Youyu had memorized every kind of tide-viewing flag.
On the sea, tide disaster warnings were divided into different tiers, signaled by flag colors.
Black corresponded to 【Undercurrent Tier】.
The danger of this tier lurked beneath the water.
Even if the surface wind and waves had ceased, undercurrents at different depths could still collide; whether human or boat, once dragged in, one could easily be pulled into the depths.
The ring wall could block the wind and waves on the sea surface, but it could not block the undercurrents surging beneath the water—yet the entire float-commune remained anchored firmly in place.
An Youyu looked toward the capstan on the inner side of the ring wall, where a thick main chain hung down into the sea, pulled taut from time to time by the underwater currents.
He was reminded of his hometown, Salted Fish Float-Commune.
Salted Fish Float-Commune's anchor well was just like this: the main chain passed through the well opening, its end locking onto a suspended sea stone that could barely be encircled by one person's arms.
There was an old saying on the sea: "Reveal one stone, hide a mountain."
The suspended stone anchoring Salted Fish Float-Commune was no solitary rock, but rather a "stone head" extending from a massive mountain of the Old Continent into this sea layer—what people of the old era called merely the "tip of the iceberg."
The remainder of the mountain was entirely folded within spatial folds, invisible to the naked eye and unreachable by hand, so looking down from the surface, only a single stone head appeared suspended in the sea.
Yet precisely because it was connected to a mountain in another dimensional space, it could hang in place and suppress the surrounding ocean currents.
Thus it was called a 【Sea-Calming Stone】.
Sea-Calming Stone
Beneath the main chain of Clown Float-Commune, there must surely be locked such a Sea-Calming Stone as well.
Although An Youyu could not see it, he could feel its existence from the taut main chain.
All the Sea-Calming Stones in Zijing Sea belonged to Zijing Tide Court, and An Youyu knew every single Sea-Calming Stone in those waters.
This place was clearly not Zijing Sea.
Over the past month, An Youyu had gradually gathered several place names from the couple's conversations and the lingering sounds from old items in the cabin.
The float-commune beneath his feet was called 【Clown Float-Commune】.
The sea area where Clown Float-Commune resided was called 【Seven-Masts Waters】.
The nearby float-communes and small anchorages together formed the 【Seven-Masts Anchorage Association】.
And the sea layer where Seven-Masts Waters was located was named 【Salt-Bone Sea】.
As for the name Salt-Bone Sea, An Youyu had indeed seen it in far-sea navigation logs.
More than ten sea layers separated it from Zijing Sea.
Following maritime routes, an ordinary fleet traveling smoothly would still take twenty to thirty years.
That whirlpool tide had indeed swept him far enough away.
Below the cabin door was Clown Float-Commune's water drawing area.
A Sea-Calming Stone did not merely anchor a settlement; with every ebb and flow of the tidal breath, a colorless stone marrow would seep from the crevices of the rock, known as 【Fresh Marrow】.
Upon entering seawater, Fresh Marrow would envelop the salt, sinking back down to the stone's surface; the remaining water, stripped of salt, became lighter and floated all the way up toward the sea surface.
This plume of fresh water rising from around the Sea-Calming Stone was known by boatfolk as a 【Suspended Stone Sea Spring】.
Once it reached the surface, it was simply called a 【Floating Spring】.
During Abundant Tides, the Sea-Calming Stone released plenty of Fresh Marrow, stripping the seawater thoroughly of salt, so the Floating Spring reaching the surface could be drunk directly.
During Wither Tides, less Fresh Marrow was released, leaving residual salt in the Floating Spring; the water drawing platform had to filter and refine it once more before sending it to the water distribution platform for household rationing.
Floating Spring
At present, this surge of Floating Spring had not yet risen to the surface.
The fresh water left in the upper layer from the previous surge had long been dispersed by the surrounding seawater.
This patch of water below the cabin door was temporarily no different from the open sea.
A water-drawing rope was wound around the outer gallery railing.
An Youyu slipped the wooden basin into the rope loop and slowly lowered it to the water surface.
The basin sank.
He hauled the rope back up.
Half a basin of seawater sloshed gently in the moonlight.
An Youyu squatted, scooped up a handful, and brought it to his mouth.
The moment seawater entered his belly, the black and white Nirvana Breath in his new aperture stirred on its own.
The Conjoining Membrane scattered throughout his flesh and blood gathered in response, absorbing the water bit by bit, while excess brine and impurities were expelled to his skin's surface along with the black breath.
Soon, a thin layer of grayish-white salt frost formed on the back of An Youyu's hand.
He rubbed off the salt frost with his thumb and drank another handful.
Then another.
Until the dryness in his throat completely receded.
Only then did An Youyu stop.
【Drinking Sea】 was merely the first step for a fish-transformed to harness seawater.
As fish-transformation deepened, the things one's physical body could draw from seawater would grow greater and greater, until one lived off the sea just like a true sea beast.
Holding the wooden basin, he stood up and looked past the ring wall.
Beyond the wall was the open sea.
And food was out there as well.
However, the black flags atop the towers were still fluttering in the wind.
Although One Hundred Pressure had been restored, his Salamander Force had not yet Formed a Current.
Diving into the outer sea at a time like this, once caught by underwater crosscurrents, he might not last much longer than A'Man.
No matter how hungry his stomach was, there was no need to gamble the life he had just reclaimed.
He would wait until the black flags were taken down.
...
Rate on N.U.
