Chapter 223.1: A Tiny Fish
Wu Heng believed he had originally been a fish all along.
For a period of time, he lived in the sea just like the other fish. From the gleaming shells of mollusks, he could vaguely make out his own reflection. He was not particularly attractive, and there were no other fish like him nearby.
But that was not the only thing that puzzled him.
He could think.
Did fish have thoughts? Or did the other fish also wonder about the same things he did, only unable to communicate with one another?
Because of that, Wu Heng had no friends here.
He caught and ate tiny fish, or occasionally fed on scraps of larger fish drifting from who-knew-where.
In the deep sea, there were jellyfish even stranger-looking and rarer than he was. Wu Heng circled around them for a long while, finding them amusing, completely forgetting that the surrounding waters had already filled with long, soft, translucent tentacles. He was stung unconscious.
The jellyfish did not eat him. By the time Wu Heng groggily woke up, they had already drifted away.
His strength had not yet recovered. Several times he nearly died in the jaws of other fish. After going hungry for a very long period without finding enough food, Wu Heng flicked his tail and left the deep-sea region behind.
The setting sun dyed the ocean surface crimson. The coral reefs and rocks of the shallow sea delighted Wu Heng endlessly, and the food here was far more abundant than in the deep ocean.
There was everything—red algae, coral polyps, plankton, fish eggs, turtle eggs.
Although the surrounding waters were still filled with all kinds of dangerous predators, it was far more comfortable than the deep sea where food had been scarce. And so Wu Heng lived through a stretch of days spent simply eating when full and sleeping when tired, sleeping when full and eating when awake.
During that time, he even made a few friends: a sea slug and an old sea turtle.
Wu Heng could no longer remember when he had first begun understanding their speech instead of communicating through scents and movements.
“You’re really ugly,” the sea slug said.
“Your skin isn’t smooth, your scales aren’t shiny either, and that gray color…”
“And your head is huge, like a bald guy.”
Wu Heng ignored it completely. Most of his time was spent eating.
“You’re so much bigger than me. Why do you still pick at tiny shrimp every day?”
In the shallow sea, sunlight was even more abundant than food. The light reached all the way down to the ocean floor. Wu Heng had lived there the whole time, roaming across a vast range of waters. He had traveled along many stretches of coastline, gazing from beneath the sea surface toward the sunlight above and the distant shore.
Occasionally, terrifyingly huge land creatures would appear near the coast. The ones that remained motionless were the enormous plants that did not exist underwater; they posed no threat to marine life.
The truly dangerous ones were the massive creatures floating on the sea surface that only appeared rarely, but whenever they did, they would haul away countless sea creatures. Running all over the surface of those giant creatures were animals with four arms.
“Those are humans, dummy! You’ve never even seen people before? They’re the most perfectly evolved creatures on this planet!” The sea slug devoted itself daily to educating this clueless country bumpkin.
“But they’re pretty unlucky too. A few years ago, after that huge disaster, I became white and big and soft and fast, but so many humans died…”
“Die?” Wu Heng finally reacted. He poked his head out from beneath the coral reef.
The sea slug only liked talking, not listening, so it continued rambling on by itself.
“They’ve probably mostly recovered by now, though there aren’t many of them left.”
“You should watch out for them. Humans always love coming into the sea to catch things. If they haul you up, they’ll throw you straight into a pot of oil!” The sea slug sprawled lazily over the coral reef. “Though you don’t look very tasty. Maybe if they catch you, they’ll toss you back.”
Wu Heng tilted his head upward and swam close to the underside of a boat, only to be startled by a fishing net suddenly cast down from above. He quickly darted back beneath the coral reef.
The sea slug slowly crawled down from above. “Dummy!”
“I don’t belong here,” the ugly little fish suddenly said.
The sea slug snorted twice. “You’re this ugly? You belong in a trash can.”
“I’m human.”
“You’ve eaten too much crap and fried your brain.”
Just then, several sea snakes appeared. The sea slug immediately wriggled beneath Wu Heng’s belly to hide. The sea snakes came out in force. At first there were only a few, but more and more quickly followed, densely surrounding Wu Heng in circles.
“Hand over that jelly thing!” the sea snake closest to Wu Heng shouted loudly.
Beneath him, the sea slug squeaked, “Please don’t treat me like this.”
Wu Heng did not know exactly how large he was, though he probably was not bigger than the fishing boats the sea slug had mentioned. He had always minded his own business with these sea snakes. It was hardly worth offending a group that might drill his body full of holes just for the sake of a sea slug.
But not offending them did not mean he had no other options.
He hated being threatened.
The brownish-gray fish shifted slightly, stirring up clouds of sand across the ocean floor.
The sea snakes thought the fish had wisely decided to back off. Instead, with a flick of his tail, Wu Heng whipped around and bit the speaking sea snake cleanly in half. Thin threads of blood spread through the water. Wu Heng experimentally stuffed the still-wriggling half of the snake into his mouth.
Delicious.
Far tastier than algae and fish eggs.
Wu Heng plunged headfirst into the swarm of sea snakes and began tearing into them without restraint, biting wildly at anything in reach.
By the time he returned, he had eaten every single sea snake. Even the ones that fled had been chased down and devoured.
Once the sea slug realized what had happened, it immediately buried itself in the sand.
“Sea snakes are poisonous,” the sea slug reminded him quietly, no longer nearly as arrogant as before.
“Sweet,” Wu Heng said.
“Sweet? What’s that?”
At those simple words, a dull ache suddenly throbbed somewhere deep inside Wu Heng’s mind. Without hesitation, he turned around, and the sea slug hurried after him.
“Where are you going?”
“To land. I’m going back to land.”
“The venom’s rotted your brain! How can a fish go onto land? Even sharks die if they end up on shore!”
Wu Heng said nothing and swam forward with all his strength.
He passed through swaying seaweed. The water grew warmer and warmer. His body turned weak, his scales burned hot, and the sea slug’s endless chatter abruptly turned into a shriek.
“Heavens! How did you grow legs?!”
The sea slug stared at the two webbed claws that had suddenly extended from beneath the fish’s belly. They looked almost like a lizard’s limbs.
“With legs, you can go onto land now!”
For the first time, Wu Heng lifted his head above the sea surface.
Gentle waves brushed against his cheeks. His claws gripped the wet sand as he slowly crawled toward the shore.
He did not know where he was going.
He did not know whether life on land would truly suit him.
He knew even less whether there would be enough food there.
But he knew one thing for certain:
He absolutely did not belong in the sea.
Compared to his confusion, the sea slug was close to being shocked to death.
It was also the first time it had come so close to the shore. It lifted its head to look at what lay beyond the sea surface. Because of the rippling water, the human standing in it looked blurry—long, pale limbs, wet black hair, very much like those young boys who came to the beach every summer vacation.
Only this human had a pair of rare pale green eyes, and was currently looking straight at it.
The sea slug hurriedly buried itself in the sand.
Wu Heng bent down and lifted it straight out of the water.
“It’s me.”
Before it could even react, the sea slug was already close to suffocating from being out of the water too long.
Wu Heng placed it back.
It crawled out again, leaving half its body above the water surface. “You’re that ugly fish?”
‘Probably.’ Wu Heng nodded.
He looked down at his own hands, then flexed his still-submerged feet, still not quite used to them.
“You’re the best-looking human I’ve ever seen,” the sea slug said, crawling onto Wu Heng’s instep. “How can you be a human? That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ve always been a human,” Wu Heng said. He didn’t know how to explain what “always” meant, or where it came from—he only knew there was a voice inside him telling him so.
“What about me then? Are you taking me with you?”
“You stay here and wait for me.”
The sea slug did not understand what it meant to wait, or what meaning there was in waiting at all—but it still stayed where it was, unmoving.
The human’s figure grew distant, walking along the shoreline, past dark reefs, and eventually disappearing into the vast mangrove forest.
During the wait, a few horseshoe crabs even crawled over and pointed at it, gossiping.
“I know, I know. I heard there’s a human here doing poverty relief work on you guys, making you all bigger and more numerous. What is it? Looking down on your poor relatives now?”
“Who’s your relative?”
By the time the sky was about to darken, Wu Heng finally returned carrying a large plastic bottle.
He bit off the top of the bottle, allowing the sea slug to crawl inside.
“It’s a bit cramped,” the sea slug complained.
“Then I won’t take you,” Wu Heng said.
“Perfectly fine,” it immediately replied.
—
Wu Heng walked barefoot across the soft, damp wetlands, carrying a plastic bottle. In the woods, he first tore off a few pieces of tree bark and wrapped them around himself.
“We can go find nearby humans and ask for a couple of pieces of clothing!” the sea slug understood human society better than Wu Heng did.
An hour later, Wu Heng was walking, stumbling deep and shallow with each step, until he reached a high ground where several large wind turbines were spinning in front of a corrugated metal house. He knocked on the door, and as soon as it opened, he kept bending over repeatedly.
“Please, please help me.”
The sea slug had taught him that too.
The person who opened the door was a middle-aged woman. She looked weathered but energetic. She shouted, “Whose kid are you? Why are you here alone? Don’t you know you can’t go near the sea at night? Be careful, or an octopus will drag you away!”
“I need some clothes, and some food,” Wu Heng said.
“Oh, you’re quite bold, aren’t you? Come in.” Though her words sounded a bit harsh, she didn’t truly blame him. After all, the boy in front of her still looked underage, and surviving in the post-apocalyptic world couldn’t have been easy—he was even wearing bark.
After she pulled him inside, she went to another room and returned after a while carrying a set of clothes. “Go put these on. The previous owner doesn’t need them anymore anyway. Remember to wash yourself clean before changing.”
For some reason, when the woman looked at the suddenly appeared boy, she saw an almost newborn childlike expression on his face and instinctively assumed he might not know anything about everyday life.