“Is my phone waterproof?”
The thought had barely crossed her mind before Jiang Yu’s hand had already adjusted the camera on her chest mount, perfectly framing both herself and the silver-haired man who had just stepped out from the coral rubble.
Facing a screen frozen with stalled bullet comments, her tone was remarkably calm: “Yeah, we’ve got a bit of a situation.”
The silence lasted only two seconds before the entire screen exploded with bullet comments.
【You call this a bit of a situation?! Sis, you just fished a living person out of the sea!】
【A normal person would’ve called the cops and run by now. I salute this mental fortitude!】
【Cool under pressure! The Iceberg Koi lives up to her name!】
【Go get help! Most explosive beachcombing stream of the year right here!】
Gift effects flashed so brightly they dazzled the eyes, and the viewer count skyrocketed. Fifty thousand, eighty thousand, then straight past one hundred thousand. The platform’s backend didn’t even wait for the usual approval process—they pushed the stream straight onto the site-wide splash page.
In the shallow water pit, the man walked out over the broken coral.
Water dripped down his silver hair. He carried an air of being lost in time, his golden eyes fixed on the pitch-black reefs around him before finally locking onto the glowing phone on Jiang Yu’s chest.
His brow furrowed slightly, and his voice sounded like it had been struck from an ancient bell sunk at the bottom of the sea: “What manner of magical artifact is that? It can contain soul light.”
The bullet comments went wild:
【Magical artifact! Bro’s way too deep in character!】
【Ten out of ten for this cosplay! The lines are perfect!】
Jiang Yu didn’t respond. She cautiously stepped back two paces: “Who are you? Why were you inside the coral?”
The man paused, his brow furrowing tighter. After a long moment, he shook his head very slowly: “I can’t remember.”
As Jiang Yu stepped back, he followed with two steps forward.
Jiang Yu stopped. He stopped too.
His gaze never left her for even a second.
This reaction wasn’t right.
Jiang Yu tested him by continuing to back away, her steps light and quick.
When the distance between them approached nearly ten meters, the man’s expression suddenly changed.
He let out a muffled groan, his tall frame lurching violently. His knees buckled and he slammed down into the shallow water, splashing up a huge spray.
Beneath his soaked, thin clothing, a faint dark-red ancient pattern flickered.
Jiang Yu froze in place immediately.
【Is he faking an injury?!】
【Don’t pull this forced-bonding crap!】
【Help, why does this inexplicable sense of fate feel so real?】
Jiang Yu stared at him: “You can’t leave me?”
The man pushed himself upright on his knees. On that cold, stern face that looked like it had been soaked in frigid seawater for years, an expression of confusion mixed with helplessness surfaced: “So it seems.”
Jiang Yu glanced at the screen—two hundred fifty thousand viewers and still climbing.
She didn’t want to exploit this inexplicable situation for views. Her finger pressed down on the end-stream button: “The situation’s complicated. That’s all for today—going offline.”
The screen went black instantly, cleanly cutting off the hundreds of thousands of hungry viewers.
The sea breeze grew colder.
Jiang Yu carried her bamboo basket back, a tall dark figure following steadily behind her.
The distance was precisely maintained at about three meters—he wouldn’t take one step closer, nor would he let it grow one step farther.
Back at the crumbling stone house on Deer Antler Island, the harsh reality of her situation stared her straight in the face.
The place was barely twenty square meters, with a single bed taking up most of it.
At that moment, the man—who looked well over 185 centimeters—stood in front of the bed, his clothes still dripping water.
He was surveying his surroundings with a blank expression.
Jiang Yu tossed him an old towel and pointed at the concrete floor: “I’ve only got one bed. You’re sleeping on the ground.”
He looked at the dusty floor, didn’t argue, and simply sat down cross-legged with an air of condescending grace.
Jiang Yu pulled out a thin blanket, wrapped herself up tight, and turned her back to him.
She’d turned off the stream, but the outside world had already exploded.
#UnluckyBeachcomberFishesUpLivingPerson and #SilverHairedHunkUnderwaterCosplay—both hashtags swept the trending charts.
The whole internet was arguing over whether this was scripted acting or movie-grade CGI.
Tech experts stayed up all night analyzing frame by frame, posting guarantees: absolutely no CG added—the water splashes and lighting were all real, and even the man’s micro-expressions were terrifyingly natural.
The fiercer the debate, the bigger the hype.
Jiang Yu’s follower count, originally around fifty thousand, surged to nearly eighty thousand overnight.
In the dead of night, the sound of the tide grew louder.
Jiang Yu was a light sleeper. When she turned over, she suddenly noticed the floor mat was empty.
Following the sound of the wind, she saw the man standing by the drafty window.
Outside hung a brilliant sea moon, its light falling on his silver hair like a layer of frost that could never be washed away.
In that moment, he had none of the aloofness from their first meeting—only an unfathomable confusion. He looked as insubstantial as sea mist that a single gust of wind could scatter.
Jiang Yu watched him for a long while. A memory surfaced unbidden in her mind—the day she was cast out of the Jiang family gates.
The moon had been just as bright that night, and she’d had just as little idea where to go.
She tugged her blanket tighter, turned over, and closed her eyes.
…
At dawn, the sun rose above the horizon, dispelling the night’s chill and dragging that faint, ethereal divinity back down into the mundane mess of reality.
Jiang Yu began giving this man, who had zero knowledge of everyday life, a crash course.
She turned on the faucet. “This is water. You use it to wash your face.”
He stared at the rusty iron pipe, brows furrowed. “A water dragon is hiding inside this iron vessel?”
She walked to the bathroom and pointed at the flush toilet.
After he realized what that thing was for, he flat-out refused to go near it, his face a picture of utter disgust.
Finally, Jiang Yu asked Aunt Lin for an old T-shirt and shorts that A-Wang no longer wanted and tossed them to him.
They were cheap street-market clothes worth a few dozen yuan, but on his broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted frame, they somehow looked like high-end designer wear.
He cooperated the whole way through, but the rawness and resistance in his movements made Jiang Yu want to sigh.
Breakfast was a pot of seafood porridge, still warm, that Aunt Lin had brought over the night before.
The two of them sat at the low wooden table and shared the meal. Jiang Yu took a sip of the hot porridge and asked, “You really can’t remember anything at all? What your name is, how you got sealed inside that coral?”
He held the stainless-steel spoon that looked completely out of place in his hand, his movements clumsy and unfamiliar.
After a long moment, he lifted his eyes. Those golden pupils shimmered with scattered light in the morning glow, looking straight into Jiang Yu’s eyes.
“Cang Ming.”
“That’s your name?”
He gave a slight nod, then paused his movements, his voice low and deep.
“All I know is that many things are buried beneath this sea.”
“They are all waiting for you.”
Jiang Yu’s hand, holding the spoon, froze mid-motion.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Before she could press for more details, the flimsy wooden door was pounded thunderously by A-Wang.
“Sister Jiang! Huge trouble! What happened to you last night made the provincial news! A bunch of reporters are squatting at the dock waiting to interview you!”
“And the platform operators have called like a dozen times, saying they want to sign you to their top-tier contract!”
Jiang Yu frowned and went to open the door. A-Wang stumbled in, his face flushed red, barely able to get the words out: “Su Niannian! It’s that bitch Su Niannian! She… she posted a video reporting you under her real name!”
A-Wang gasped for air and shoved his phone in front of Jiang Yu’s face. On the screen was Su Niannian’s pitiful, innocent-looking face.
“She’s saying you’d stop at nothing to get famous, that you found some foreign model of unknown origin and used illegal imprisonment to force him to play along in your act! The internet has exploded—everyone’s cursing you out, demanding you come out and explain yourself!”