Two wisps of aperture breath—one black and one white—were still slowly circulating within the dead aperture.
An Youyu finally saw their source clearly.
In the center of the collapsed old aperture, a new aperture the size of a fish eye was embedded.
The new aperture was shaped like a stone egg, its surface covered in dense, intricate markings.
A new aperture?
The dead aperture had clearly collapsed; how could a second fish aperture grow inside it?
Thump.
The stone-egg-like new aperture suddenly contracted and then slowly swelled, like the beat of a heart.
A wave of vibration rippled through An Youyu's consciousness, sending bursts of numbness across the back of his head.
Immediately after, that fluctuation turned into a foreign sensation, dragging his consciousness back into that whirlpool.
Back then, he had been reduced to a lone head, rolling endlessly in the whirlpool.
Two deep ocean currents flowing in opposing directions alternately poured into his severed neck, repeatedly washing over his shattered fish aperture. Whenever the opposing currents collided deep within the dead aperture, a faint pulse echoed from the center of the collapsed aperture walls.
With every repetition of that pulse, a foreign instinct for growth branded itself a degree deeper into his nerves.
Afterward...
From the severed neck, a backbone sprouted anew, viscera took shape one by one, flesh and blood spread out along the skeleton, and finally, complete limbs differentiated and grew.
...
The visions cut off abruptly here.
Yet An Youyu had already come to understand.
So that was how the complete body below his neck had come to be when he was fished onto the fishing boat.
As for this "sensation" resembling a flashback of muscle memory, the ancient texts of the fish-transformation camp happened to have a record of it: 【Fish Roe Shedding Recall】.
A Fish Roe Stone was not a real fish egg.
It was a stony embryo formed from the unspent power of fish-transformation left behind after a high-tier mutant fish died, preserving the path of fish-transformation traversed by that mutant fish during its life.
How bones ought to grow, how organs ought to differentiate, how the body ought to adapt when encountering a strange tide—these things that could not be recorded in words were sealed within the Fish Roe Stone in the form of instincts.
Once the Fish Roe Stone hatched, the instincts sealed inside would awaken bit by bit.
Just like fry newly hatched from eggs, no one had ever taught them how to swim, yet the moment they hit the water, their bodies naturally knew how to sway their spines.
When cultivators re-read these instincts through perception, it was known as shedding recall.
With every portion of shedding recall deciphered, a cultivator could identify a piece of the fish-transformation conditions.
When all the shedding recall pieced together, the complete fish recipe hidden within would be revealed.
For now, the shedding recall An Youyu had accessed was still incomplete.
Yet it was already enough to explain what had transpired over this past month.
All along, a Fish Roe Stone had been hidden inside his body.
After the whirlpool tide occurred, the opposing ocean currents pouring into his dead aperture triggered it, causing it to hatch inside the old aperture and ultimately become the new aperture before his eyes.
And that newly formed physical body that had troubled him for an entire month was reshaped from his severed neck down by the new aperture, driven by the growth instincts preserved within the shedding recall.
However, reshaping an entire body had also nearly exhausted the power of the new aperture.
When Blackwater Sickness broke out soon after, it forcibly jolted the newly dormant aperture awake once more.
It drew out the black matter lurking within his organs and flesh.
Once the black spots receded, the residual medicinal potency left in the new aperture after the Fish Roe Stone hatched was completely depleted, causing the new aperture to sink into dormancy.
For the full month that followed, the water and food continuously fed to him by Ning Cang and his wife gradually replenished the deficits of this body.
Not until that bowl of fish soup entered his stomach moments ago did the new aperture finally pulse once again.
...
"Fish Roe Stone..."
An Youyu's breathing hitched slightly.
Had not the Yan Clan hired sea bandits back then to slaughter the entire Salted Fish Float-Commune all for a top-grade Fish Roe Stone?
Yet those people had turned the cabins, secret compartments, and underwater breeding pens upside down, only to find nothing in the end.
Could the one hatched in his dead aperture be the very one the Yan Clan had been searching for back then?
But when did it enter him?
Why did he have no memory of it whatsoever?
The new aperture suddenly contracted heavily.
Another fragment of memory flooded into his mind.
...
That was back when An Youyu was not yet six years old.
Salted Fish Float-Commune was still there, and his father and mother were both alive.
That day, a white-haired old man in tattered rags sat at the stern of the boat, leaning against the rusted railing, and beckoned to him.
A white cataract covered the old man's left eye, but his right eye squinted into a smiling crescent.
"Come here."
An Youyu ran over, and the old man grabbed his wrist. His palm had just been sliced by a fishhook, and the wound had not yet scabbed over.
The old man pulled out a stone egg the size of a fingernail from his breast pocket—half pitch-black and half ash-grey—and pressed it directly onto the wound.
The stone egg softened upon touching blood.
An Youyu felt only a chill in his palm before the object sank into his flesh through the wound, vanishing without a trace in the blink of an eye.
Frightened, he tried to pull his hand back, but the old man held fast.
"Don't be afraid."
"That is a Fish Roe Stone."
An Youyu stared at his palm.
The wound was still there.
Yet the stone egg was gone.
"Where did it go?"
"It went home."
"Home?"
"Mm."
An Youyu touched his wound.
"Its home is inside my body?"
The old man smiled.
"It is living with you for now."
"What about later?"
"Later, it will take you home."
An Youyu grew even more confused.
"Whose home?"
"Your home, of course."
"But I know the way home."
The old man did not answer.
He turned his head, gazing at the sea stretching out beyond the float-commune all the way to the horizon.
Only after a long moment did he say with a smile:
"The sea is so vast; everyone loses their way at times."
An Youyu wanted to press further.
The vision before his eyes abruptly went out.
...
The sound of freezing rain pattering against the iron sheet returned to his ears.
An Youyu was still sitting by the edge of the bed, the warmth lingering in the wooden bowl in his hand. Yet the scene from a moment ago was vivid enough to be no illusion—the white-haired old man, the wound on his palm, and that half-black, half-grey Fish Roe Stone.
Yet before today, he had never remembered any of this.
He originally had no memory of what happened before he was six.
His parents had told him that he suffered a strange illness when he was six, and after recovering, all his previous memories were gone.
Therefore, all his memories of home began with Salted Fish Float-Commune.
His father heading out to sea with the fishing boats, his mother calling him back to eat at the cabin doorway.
The fish-oil lamp lighting up at night, and the family lying in the drafty cabin, listening to the seawater lap against the hull again and again.
That was the home he had always recognized.
Until he was ten, when sea bandits boarded the float-commune.
The Yan Clan Tide Court fished him out of the sea and erased his name; there was no longer an An Youyu in the world, only Number Seventeen.
The lives of his parents and so many others from Salted Fish Float-Commune still weighed heavily upon the Zijing Sea.
Sooner or later, he would return to settle this debt.
Yet before he turned six, that old man had already told him—the Fish Roe Stone would take him "home."
If the old man was referring to Salted Fish Float-Commune, he was already living there at the time, so why would he need a Fish Roe Stone to lead the way?
But if not, which home was the Fish Roe Stone supposed to take him back to?
Who was the old man? Why had he hidden the Fish Roe Stone inside his body? Was that strange illness at age six related to this as well?
An Youyu had no answers.
He could not even be certain whether what he had just seen was his childhood erased by the strange illness, or the shedding recall left to him by the Fish Roe Stone.
There was only one thing he could be sure of now.
That Fish Roe Stone had indeed entered his body.
And it had already hatched inside his dead aperture.
Thump.
The new aperture pulsed once more, and the remaining shedding recall flooded into his consciousness.
How the opposing currents crashed into the dead aperture, how the twin forces of black and white rotated in turns, and how the backbone, organs, and flesh below the severed neck regrew—the previously scattered changes fell into place one by one, finally forming a complete pathway.
The shedding recall left no words, but carved every single change directly into instinct.
When the final gap was filled, An Youyu naturally understood it.
A complete fish recipe surfaced deep within his consciousness.
【Fish Recipe: Nirvana Body-Abandoning Salamander】
【Transformation Tier: First Transformation】
【Dead aperture as the nest, opposing currents as the catalyst; Yin and Yang reversed, body restored from a severed head; aperture breath penetrating the vessel, re-establishing the salamander aspect.】
...
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