One person and one fish stared at each other for a long time, both confused.
After a while, the little blue fish hopped on its tail, jumped a little longer, and once again said, “Play over there. Don’t come over and touch me again.”
The child looked around at a loss, only to find that the fish was talking to me. He yelled, “But, but the fish will die without water.”
He remembered that, after returning from fishing, the uncle next door had thrown a few fishes on the beach with regret, saying, “Died too quickly without water. If they’re not fresh, they’re useless. ”
The fishes were beautiful so the child quietly sneaked over to see them after the uncle walked away. Their cold bodies lay on the sand and could no longer move or spit bubbles.
A wave came up and swallowed them forever under the sea.
“Go back to the water …” The child tried to catch the little blue fish with his hands, and the little blue fish rolled nimbly away, not allowing him to touch. The child was so anxious that his eyes became red. He cried, “You’re going to die without water…”
When his tears fell, the little blue fish stopped rolling. Even though the child’s eyes were blurred with tears, he actually caught the fish in his palm very accurately, holding it carefully.
So the tears fell on the little blue fish, very warm.
The little blue fish meekly let the child put him into the water. When a small wave came over, it swam forward and was not swept away, saying, “If you knew that fish will die without water, then you should that people will drown when they fall into the water. Are you dead?”
The child crouched down. He actually liked this beautiful fish. The fish didn’t swim, and he stared at him with anxiety. Hearing the question, he thought hard, saying hesitantly, “I seem…to know …”
Not long ago, the neighborhood uncle and grandma had cried for a long time by the seaside, scaring the child so much that he dared not play and only hid away. But a few words still drifted into his ears.
“There are so many people, why must it be you who drowned…”
The large boy who’d stoned him countless times in the past was now soaked with water and covered with fine sand, lying cold and unmoving on the beach. Like death. Like a fish out of water.
So, he understood another truth, which was that if a person fell into the water, he would drown.
And although he liked to stay at the beach, he dared not go too far into the water. He was a fool that nobody liked. If he fell into the water, no one would come to save him.
Seeing the child nodded, the little blue fish shook its tail and did something. Suddenly a big wave rolled up in the distance, and it landed on the shore in the blink of an eye, catching the child, who was caught off guard, and sweeping him into the water.
As soon as he entered the water, the child panicked. He’d never seen such a big wave and had never been in such deep water. He desperately thought that he was going to drown! He didn’t know if his grave would be on the seafloor or if his body would be sent ashore …
But the pain of his imagination did not appear. His eyes snapped open and he found himself sitting in a transparent ball. The sea was outside the ball, and within the ball, there was nothing but clean air.
The little blue fish swam beside him and saw him open his eyes. The fish shook his tail and said, “Don’t be afraid.”
The fish’s voice was very nice and gentle. The child was instantly soothed by his voice. He carefully touched the large transparent ball that surrounded him, which was warm and soft, and his little finger would protrude outward when he poked at it with his finger.
He was afraid of piercing the ball and quickly retracted his hand. Then, he sat obediently with both hands on his knees, and following his little blue fish.
It wasn’t until the little blue fish stopped and called him to look around that he discovered he’d drifted unknowingly into the deep sea.
Many beautiful fishes were swimming around, and there are many small shrimps and crabs swimming leisurely in the water along the ocean floor. This was a scene he’d never seen before.
After a while, the child forgot to be afraid. He looked with wide, unblinking eyes at the scene before him, exclaiming, “Yuyu, Yuyu!” [t/n: Yu = fish]
The little blue fish just thought that he was exclaiming about those schools of fish nearby
and didn’t talk back. It just swished its tail, leisurely swimming alongside the child.
However, the child continued to shout, laughing excitedly. He called the little blue fish, “Yuyu! Yuyu! Yuyu is still the best!”
The blue fish stopped and swam around the child. It looked at him with a smirk, unexpectedly discovering that this was a little fun.
“Is it fun?”
“Mmn, it’s fun!”
“Are you happy?”
“Ha-happy!”
The stammer couldn’t stop the happiness from overflowing.
Shen Zhixian was outside the illusion, watching as a bystander. He watched the little blue fish took the child to the sea for a day trip, and then brought him back to the shore, and then asked, “Do you understand?”
The child had not yet settled back from his excitement and the fish’s question confused him.
The little blue fish patiently persuaded, “Look, you fell into the water. Did you drown?”
The child thought for a moment and said, “No.”
The little blue fish came to the conclusion. “If you fall into the water, you won’t drown. So when I go ashore to bask in the sun, I won’t die. ”
This confused the child. His fingers twisted together, tangling for a long time, as he thought over this reasoning.
After accepting this fallacy, he whispered, “Yuyu, today, today are you very happy?”
After the children finished playing together, they always asked each other this question. If everyone was happy, that meant that they could play together again.
The child stared at the little blue fish with eager eyes.
The little blue fish didn’t know so much. It patted the water with its tail, creating a lot of small splashes, and casually said, “Just OK.”
This was not the answer the child anticipated. He pursed his lips and was a little disappointed. He said with trepidation, “Then, will you come again tomorrow?”
His voice was both serious and nervous as he added, “You come tomorrow, I, I will make you happy.”
This is the first time the little blue fish heard such words. It was intrigued and asked, “Don’t you have any friends? Why do you want to play with a fish?”
“No, I, I’m a fool. I can’t, I can’t play with them.”
“Oh, you’re a fool. Only you will talk to a fish.”
The child giggled. When others called him a fool, he could detect their maliciousness. But when the little blue fish called him a fool, it felt more like a praise. He said, “You, you look good, like the sky, like the sea.”
The little blue fish had lived for a long time, had seen many things come and gone. And the fish had been flattered countless times, many of which were both elaborate and poetic. But, no one had used such simple and honest words to tell him that he was beautiful.
It laughed and said nothing, only tried to hurry the child back home. “Okay. It’s going to be dark soon. Go back home.”
The child went home obediently, and the little blue fish had a thought. Instead of going back to the sea, it performed a technique that hid its body and quietly followed the child home.
The child really did not have a good life. When he was born, he had a high fever, which burned his brain. At first, he was the only son in the family and he could be taken care of. But, as his brothers and sisters were born healthy and grew up, he gradually lost his status.
His original name had long been forgotten. Now, everyone, including his parents and siblings, all called him a fool. Over time, he also felt that he was indeed a fool.
The people in the fishing village did not like fools. Children of the same age were influenced by the adults and did not like him. They never took the initiative to play with him and would even tease him.
He was said to be a fool, but he was actually just a child with a sluggish stammer and his intelligence was not on par with the children his age. Of course, he could feel the maliciousness of others. Over time, he stopped looking for other children to play with and would always sit alone quietly by the sea, sitting day by day.
The little blue fish watched him as he curled up in a small corner and fell asleep. It sighed and silently went back to the sea.
Early the next morning, the little blue fish swam ashore. It came very early and thought that the child wouldn’t be there. It would go ashore and bask in the sea breeze under the sun and sleep for a while. But, there was already a person sitting there, waiting for it.
Little blue fish: “…”
It jumped with resignation in front of the child, and when the child saw it, his eyes brightened, and he said, “I, I want to make you happy today! I’ll play a game for, for you to watch.”
He took out the things held in his arms and said earnestly, “I and Mumu will play together! Play, play hide and seek! ”
Indeed, in the palm of his hand was a big wooden turtle. It was worn down with age and it’s condition was very shabby, lacking arms or legs. But, the child still cherished it.
The little blue fish wanted to laugh at how he and a piece of wood would play high and seek, but it thought of the scene it saw last night and became silent.
So the child happily hid the wooden turtle in a shallow sand pit then ran a few steps away. Facing away from the side, he squatted with his hands over his eyes, “Quickly hide, quickly hide…”
He’d learned how other children played hide and seek. After stuttering to ten, he turned around. “Mumu, I, I’m coming for you!”
He pretended to look around, as if he was in a hurry, and finally found the wooden turtle in the shallow pit.
“Yuyu, look!” The child raised the wooden turtle in his hand and giggled. “I, I found it!”
The little blue fish watched him entertaining himself silly, and it silently spit out a pitiful little bubble. The bubble floated up and popped against the child’s forehead, making him laugh.
Still smiling, the child held the wooden turtle and began to explain seriously, “I, I can only play hide and seek. I play this game with everyone, although, although everyone couldn’t find me.”
Really a poor little spirit, little blue fish thought. How could no one find him in such a place, with so many children, and with the silly strength of this fool.
They just hated him and didn’t want to play with him.
The child was still looking at him with anticipation: “Yuyu. Is Yuyu happy?”
The little blue fish smiled and softened his voice, “Happy.”
Listening to it, the child began to praise himself. He happily hugged the wooden turtle and whispered, “Look, I’m also useful. I, I can make Yuyu happy. Yuyu, can, can you be happy every day?”
This time, the little blue fish didn’t answer him and just said, “You’ve made me happy today. I want to take you to see more interesting things.”
The child was a fool, after all, and immediately forgetting his problems, nodding violently.
So one person and one fish went to the bottom of the sea for another lap. During their farewell, the child was given two beautiful large shells, and he was so happy.
He reluctantly bid farewell to the little blue fish, agreed to continue to play tomorrow, and then walked away step by step.
After watching him leave, the little blue fish shook his tail and dived back into the deep sea.
Such a quiet and simple life passed for some years. During this time, the nomadic little blue fish grew used to staying there. It was woken up by a little fool every day in the sun, and it was used to watching this little fool perform a hide and seek show every day. Afterward, it would take him to the bottom of the sea to play.
Until one day, the little blue fish was suddenly awakened at noon by the scorching sun and suddenly found that the little guy didn’t come that morning.
What happened?
It jumped a few times in doubt and went to wash the fine sand off in the backwater. As it washed, it heard a few children discussing the fool not far away.
“Do you know, that fool is dying…”
“My mother said he wouldn’t live past today. He was feverish all night last night!”
“That’s right. Maybe, we’ll get his shells later. Who knew where he got so many beautiful shells, I could just die from envy! ”
The little blue fish was alarmed. While jumping out of the water, it performed a trick to hide its body and quickly flew toward the child’s home.
But before it left, it didn’t forget to call a big wave to splash those children with water.
It was daytime, but there was no one at home with the feverish child. The brothers and sisters left to play with their peers. The father went out to fish at sea. The mother left to chat with other women.
… There was really no one who cared about an unconscious child who was dying.
A white light flashed, and the man with the long hair and beautiful face leaned down and looked at the poor little fellow. There was pity and helplessness in his ice-blue eyes.
A man like him could see at a glance that this little guy was dying.
Irreparable, with no cure.
……Wait.
As the man studied the child, a sudden thought came to him. He mumbled to himself for a moment and his cold hand brushed against the child’s hot forehead, sending a tendril of spiritual power to ease the child’s pain.
“I can save you, but the price is that you will never grow up again. Would you?”
The ice-blue eyes were as beautiful as the little blue fish’s scales.
The feverish child looked into the ice-blue eyes and nodded slowly and resolutely.
The man shifted into his true shape. His real shape was not the little blue fish, but a merman with a slender ice-blue fishtail. He found a slightly white scale among the thousands of exceptionally beautiful scales and gently pinched down.
Outside of the illusion, Shen Zhixian drew in a breath and took a step forward.
—The inverse scale.
He finally saw the legendary scale that could heal human flesh and bones.
It was a pity that it was only in the illusion. Shen Zhixian reached out and his fingers passed through the illusion, unable to touch it. He pursed his lips and could only keep watching.
The scale turned into a ray of light and fell into the child’s mouth.
The child got better.
Everyone was surprised. His parents were both astonished and disappointed, but they didn’t say anything. They just kept him at random as usual.
This serious illness seemed like a forgettable episode, the kinds that quietly turned over in the lives of children.
But the little blue fish knew that this was just an illusion.
Even if he was an ancient demon fish who’d lived for tens of thousands of years, he couldn’t completely alter men’s life and death. Although he was able to save the child, the price was that the child would never grow up.
The years passed until it became more than ten years, and the eyes of the villagers shifted from disdain to fear as they looked at the child.
The title had also changed from a fool to a monster.
Driven out of the house by his old parents and a healthy younger brother, the child stood at the seashore looking for his little blue fish. For more than a decade, his mind was frozen with his age, and he was vaguely aware of his unusualness, but he was at a loss.
The little blue fish swam quietly and sighed.
The little blue fish took on a human form and built a house by the sea for the child.
“I’ll give you a name. You’ve been called a little fool for more than ten years.” The little blue fish bent over and rubbed the little guy’s fluffy head. After thinking it over, he said, “Let’s just call you Little Ten.”
The child hugged the man’s leg happily, nodded, and called softly, “Yuyu! Yuyu!”
Little Ten settled down at the seaside and was taken care of by the little blue fish. The villagers kept away from the two of them. The little blue fish didn’t care. Whatever Little Ten wanted, he could supply.
One person and one fish lived in peace in this way, until one day Yuyu carried back an unconscious man.
In the small house the little blue fish, who’d turned into a human, placed the man on the bed. His beautiful face was the first thing the emaciated man saw as he quietly opened and closed his eyes, drifting in and out of unconsciousness.
Little Ten poked at his hand blankly. “Yuyu, who is this?”
Yuyu elegantly placed his hands on his hips and casually looked at the pitiful devil that he’d just picked up. “I don’t know.”
Little Ten said, “He hasn’t woken up yet … he’d soaked in the water for so long, had his brain gotten soaked too?”
Yuyu nodded, “It’s good if he become a fool too. This way, he can keep you company.”
Therefore, Yin Ci, who’d suffered a crushing defeat and had wandered destitute until now, hadn’t even opened his eyes yet when he heard this short but serious conversation about whether his brain had been waterlogged.
Yin Ci: “…”
He opened his eyes with difficulty, feeling that the spiritual power in his body was completely gone. Staring at the stranger in front of him, he asked dumbly, “Am I still alive?”
He was told that he was, of course, still alive and will live happily for a long time to come.
The king was defeated, and his spiritual power was lost. He’d long lost his qualifications to go back to fight, and after this calculation, he was disheartened and simply lived in this unknown small fishing village.
Yuyu breathed a sigh of relief and entrusted him with the heavy task of caring for the child. Then he returned to the sea to continue as a little blue fish.
In later illusions, just like watching a TV show full of dog blood, Shen Zhixian watched as Yin Ci’s eyes gradually changed toward Yuyu.
He sighed.
Hey, the poor miserable devil was going to fall in love with the beautiful merman who’d saved him.
Sure enough, one night, Yuyu received a different kind of emotion from Yin Ci. Yuyu hardly stayed overnight in the small house and the man couldn’t help himself.
Quietly, a hot kiss fell on that stunning face.
Then he rushed to the door in flight, not daring to turn around and stay.
So he didn’t know. After he left, the sleeping merman’s eyes fluttered open and a familiar compassion appeared in those ice-blue eyes.
Yuyu was leaving.
Regardless of whether it was Yin Ci or Little Ten, they could not convince him to stay. Yuyu simply said that he was going to another place, and he might never return.
He was an unrestrained fish and did not belong anywhere.
He’d thought quite well that Little Ten was already under Yin Ci’s care. They were ordinary people and more suitable for living together. He was just a fish that did not belong here and had a long life. He shouldn’t have been bound here for so long.
Yuyu ruthlessly left.
Then, after a long period of depression, Yin Ci went crazy.
In the end, he was a cultivator, and there were various ways to regain his practice. But this time, Yin Ci did not follow the old path; he became a devil cultivator instead.
He took Little Ten and searched the seas for that beautiful little blue fish, for the beautiful and exquisite man, for many years.
His obsession burrow deeper and deeper. After he became a devil, he often had trouble controlling his emotions. The desire to possess was magnified many times. His eyes gradually turned red, and Little Ten sometimes didn’t dare talk to him at all.
Who knew how many years they’d searched, until they finally saw the fish they’d been looking for.
The elegant and lazy man had shifted into a merman and was resting tiredly on the edge of a rock. An epidemic had broken out in one of the cities, and he’d worked hard to stop the tragedy. He ended up exhausting most of his spiritual energy and was exhausted. He squinted under the sun, his slender fishtail slapping the water surface.
The devil cultivator looked at the ice blue tail with eyes as red as blood. .
He raised his hand, spread his fingers, and a delicate ring hook emerged from it. There were countless dense runes on the ring’s body, each one for imprisonment.
Suddenly, the sharp pain of his fishtail being punctured made the man jerk and began to struggle violently. He frowned, gasping in agony, and turned to meet a pair of cold, red eyes.
“I found you,” the red-eyed man said hoarsely. He stood waist-deep in water, locking the imprisonment ring on the fishtail.
Blood spilled from the injured fishtail, staining the seawater underneath red.
The man panted, his chest undulating, as he opened his mouth to say something, but Shen Zhixian couldn’t hear it. A sword broke through the void, and the illusion shattered into thousands of pieces. Man, fishtail, and ring hook. The blood suddenly dissipated, and only “I found you” was still lingering clearly in his ears.
—Wrong.
Shen Zhixian jerked in surprise when someone silently came from behind him and hugged him. He hurriedly raised the hand that still held the flower branch, intending to make a move without turning around. But, he felt the hot and familiar atmosphere at his back and suddenly stopped, his wrist lowering.
“A’jin?”
Yan Jin’s breath was a little unstable, and there was a faint layer of red in his eyes. He pressed his mouth next to Shen Zhixian’s ear and softly repeated the man’s words, “I found you.”
His tone was a bit strange. Shen Zhixian keenly thought that there was something wrong, but he didn’t say anything and only turned his head to look at him.
Yan Jin was hugging him too tightly, with his lowered head tilted forward. When Shen Zhixian turned his head, his lips brushed lightly across Yan Jin’s cheek.
Under the soft touch, the two became simultaneously startled.