An Youyu held the wooden tag marked 【2】 and walked out from the verification bar. A brief silence fell before the counter.
Tag No. 2.
For forty-two years, Clown's contest tag had remained vacant edition after edition.
Younger bettors had never seen betting open for Clown; older ones could only piece together that long-ago battle from fading memories.
Lu Guizhou had been eighteen that year with Five Hundred Pressure, making him one of the favorites on the top mast board for that edition.
He walked the "Sky Ray" Path. His fish membrane could glide on the wind, and once in the water, he could shift momentum using the rising and sinking waves. Few in the melee arena could keep up with him.
Many in the anchorage had once thought Clown was finally going to turn its fortunes around.
Who could have known that Lu Guizhou revealed his cards too early? Fearing he would break into the platform-seizing arena, five communes teamed up to force him out beforehand.
In the end, he ranked only seventeenth.
Even years later, when people brought it up, some still felt regret on his behalf: if he had known how to hide his strength a little better back then, Clown might not have failed to secure a seat.
Others dismissed the idea: so what if he had Five Hundred Pressure? When someone from a weak commune stuck their head out, others would only press them back down first.
Yet the twenty-eight communes, having watched flags rise and fall for generations, always held to one truth: thirty years east of the river, thirty years west—fortunes would always turn.
As long as the banner remained, no matter how weak a commune was, there would always be a day when it flew high once more.
They didn't necessarily believe Clown could turn things around this time, but when that banner sent someone into the field again, they couldn't help but give another glance.
After all, among the twenty-eight banners, only a select few held the upper hand year in and year out.
As for the rest, who didn't long for the tides to turn?
If even Clown, dormant for forty-two years, could rise again, it would be as if a point had been proven for every low-lying banner out there.
Now, Clown had finally sent another.
What was this young man named An Youyu truly made of?
Those running the book had long since investigated every young fish-transformed person of age across the twenty-eight communes.
Which King Path each person walked, when they Formed a Current, how much pressure they had recently tested at, and which ones were the best fighters—even if the bookmakers couldn't uncover every last detail, they should have at least heard the names.
Yet the name "An Youyu" was one they had never heard before. If he had grown up in Clown Float-Commune all along, it was impossible for the betting board to have caught no wind of him—could he be a newcomer who had only recently registered residency?
Pairs of eyes looked across the counter, landing on him.
"It's already spreading through the anchorage. In twenty-eight days, as soon as the lease expires, the Seven Seats will reclaim Ugly Stone for marrow extraction, and Clown will be driven out of Seven-Masts Waters."
"They haven't entered the field in forty-two years, yet they send an unfamiliar face right at this moment. Clown is fighting with their backs to the wall; maybe they really are hiding a trump card."
"Whether he's a trump card or not, we'll know once he steps into the pool."
The notary turned the page of the register and raised her chin toward the pressure-testing pool.
"Step into the pool. Circulate your force to protect yourself."
An Youyu removed his outer robe and stepped down the stone steps into the pressure-testing pool.
Once he stood firm inside the pool, the hemispherical bronze cover descended once more. The latches locked tight, seawater was pumped into the pool along the bronze pipes under pressure, and the needle on the pressure-testing dial outside the cover began to turn again.
An Youyu dispersed his Salamander Force throughout his limbs and bones, resisting the hydraulic pressure pushing in from all around him.
Fifty Pressure.
Eighty Pressure.
One Hundred Pressure.
Fish-swimming One Hundred Pressure.
The crowd in front of the counter leaned forward one after another, their hands holding wager tickets pressing against the counter's edge, every pair of eyes fixed on that red needle.
Those in the back rows stood on their tiptoes to peer through the observation window over the heads, all waiting for the needle to surge up in one breath.
However, the needle paused on that exact marking notch.
"Why did it slow down?"
The notary added another notch of pressure. Confirming that One Hundred Pressure was indeed the limit of what An Youyu could stabilize, she closed the valve and drained the water.
This re-verification was not something where one could simply report a number themselves and call it done. When water pressure exceeded the body's limit, the fish aperture would instinctively spur force to protect the body, making it impossible to hide even if one tried;
and if someone feigned being unable to hold out early, the notary could likewise detect abnormalities from the reactions of their fish aperture and fish force.
"It stopped?"
"Only One Hundred Pressure?"
Not everyone crowding in front of the counter was fish-transformed, but they spent all day staring at the Verification Board and betting odds. Everyone knew full well what kind of weight One Hundred Pressure held.
A brief silence fell before the counter first. Then, a few scattered laughs surfaced from the edge of the betting stands.
"Holding back for forty-two years, only to come up with One Hundred Pressure?"
"The weakest contestant in the last edition had Three Hundred Pressure. Clown isn't here to Seize the Mast; they're paying money to toss someone in the water."
"And here I thought they were really hiding a big fish. In the end, it's just a joke."
Some never laughed, merely loosening their grip on the counter edge and lowering their tiptoes. That slight hope of seeing a weak banner rise again receded quietly as the red needle settled on One Hundred Pressure.
The bronze door of the pressure-testing pool opened once more.
An Youyu draped his outer robe back over himself and walked out from the pool.
The notary waiting by the door took a pale gray current-testing membrane from the desk and handed it to him.
"Press down and circulate your fish force once."
An Youyu took the current-testing membrane and pressed his palm against it.
The surface of the membrane quickly lit up with scattered specks of light, the bright spots remaining dispersed without ever connecting into a single line.
Scattered force.
The notary took back the membrane and wrote two lines in the contest registry.
【First-Transformation Salamander Swim, One Hundred Pressure.】
【Scattered force, not Formed a Current.】
It was completely identical to the oral preliminary record left by Xu Jian last night.
She turned the registry page in front of An Youyu and pointed to the empty space at the end.
"Today's entry will be posted on the board for all communes to inspect, as well as for reference during Tide Battle proceedings. If your strength changes in the future and you want to update the board, come back for re-verification."
"If everything is correct, press your thumbprint here."
An Youyu scanned through it and pressed his print.
What the contest registry recorded was only this moment.
As long as he did not return on his own, whether seven days later or when the Tide Battle officially began, all the betting board could confirm would always remain this One Hundred Pressure.
The notary then added 【New Residency Donation Pending】 in the back column and pointed her pen nib toward the back hall.
"You hold New Residency, so your registration still lacks a donation. Go inside to draw an item, and hand it over to the Central Warehouse within seven days for your qualification to be finalized."
"Understood."
Just as the notary put down her pen, a clerk behind the right counter referenced the new entry, took down the wooden tag under Clown that had been vacant for forty-two years, scraped off 【Quota Vacant】, and rewrote it as:
【Clown · An Youyu | First-Transformation Salamander Swim | One Hundred Pressure, Unformed Current】
【Claiming One Mast: Betting Pending.】
Only then did the people waiting in front of the public book confirm their previous suspicion.
"He really is a New Residency."
"No wonder the betting board had never heard this name before."
"Don't worry about payout odds just yet; whether he can even turn in the New Residency donation isn't even a sure thing."
An Youyu also looked at that tag.
Clown · An Youyu!?
With the commune name placed right next to his name, no matter how one looked at it, it seemed like an insult calling him a clown.
Yet the more he looked at it, the more amusing he found it.
Clown or clown, at least the tag said An Youyu, not Seventeen.
The notary closed the registry and led them into the back hall.
It was much quieter here than in the outer hall.
In the center of the desk sat a sealed wooden box. Twenty-eight donation slips were individually sealed inside identical wax cylinders, revealing no characters to see nor length to feel.
Beside the wooden box lay open this edition's donation list, its final page stamped with seven seat seals in total.
Xu Jian took the opportunity to explain the rules of drawing lots.
Long before Clown registered its replacement spot, the Seven Seats had already verified the list and sealed all donation slips into the box. Every one of these donation slips corresponded to an item on the wanted posts that had gone unfound for years.
An attendant pushed open the sliding cover on the wooden box.
"Draw one."
An Youyu reached his hand into the box and casually pulled out a wax cylinder.
The attendant checked the sealing wax, sliced open the top of the cylinder with a small knife, and a long, narrow donation slip fell onto the desk.
【Donation Item: One Tiger-Head Mushroom.】
【Must be a complete live specimen, pileus undamaged, roots must not be separated from native land soil.】
【Limit: Seven days. Late submission will disqualify the current replacement entry.】
Donation Item: Tiger-Head Mushroom
The lucky auspicious day Lu Guizhou had been muttering about all the way here had officially run out at this point.
At the very bottom of the slip, the original requester was also marked.
【Original Requester: Clown Float-Commune, Ning Cang.】
Rate on N.U.
