Laomu was so fast at catching fish that Li Leyou couldn’t even see how he had done it.
She was dragged along behind him for a while until she finally started feeling a little better. Just as she was about to ask where they were going and how much longer it would take, she called out, “Laomu…”
He suddenly let go of her and dove toward the reef below.
In the blink of an eye, he came back with a large orange-red fish in his hands.
“Eat.”
The fish looked surprisingly peaceful in his hands. Perhaps because his sharp fingers had pierced straight through its gills and brain, all that remained was the occasional twitch of its tail—much like Li Leyou’s condition when she had been close to dying earlier.
Li Leyou hesitated for a moment.
Could such a brightly colored fish really be safe to eat?
But because she trusted Laomu, she accepted it anyway.
Its skin was smooth and slippery, and its orange-red body was covered in dark markings. It was actually quite pretty.
Following her usual eating habits, Li Leyou lowered her head and began preparing the fish, trying to gut it and clean out its insides.
Laomu watched her poke and prod the fish’s belly without actually taking a bite and became confused.
He considered two possibilities: maybe she had never seen this kind of fish before and was simply curious about it, or perhaps she couldn’t bite through it.
In the end, he chose the latter.
He couldn’t sense much curiosity from her. What he smelled instead was frustration.
She can’t even bite a fish this soft?
After watching her struggle for a while, Laomu silently took the fish back.
With both hands, he simply pulled it apart.
The half-meter-long fish split in two as easily as tearing a sheet of paper.
“Here.”
Li Leyou was stunned.
For a moment, she couldn’t decide whether to be amazed by his incredible strength—tearing apart a half-meter-long fish as casually as tearing paper—or horrified by the sudden burst of bloody violence.
The blood quickly dispersed into the seawater.
Laomu pushed the torn fish meat toward her mouth again.
He couldn’t understand why someone who was practically starving to death was still standing there in a daze.
Li Leyou blankly accepted the fish meat.
She didn’t bother removing the skin or picking out the bones anymore.
She simply started eating.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do, she told herself.
And surprisingly, it actually tasted pretty good.
It was much better than the fish she had caught herself yesterday.
The snow-white flesh was firm and slightly springy, somewhat like chicken. There weren’t many bones either, and most of them were large enough to avoid easily.
She really was starving.
She ate every last bit, leaving behind only two pieces of skin, the head, tail, and skeleton.
The ocean was a place without trash cans, which also meant that pretty much everywhere could serve as a garbage dump.
Li Leyou tossed the leftovers away.
“Thank you for catching the fish for me. I’m full!”
Laomu: “?”
To a mermaid, that fish had barely been an appetizer.
He had intended for her to eat a little first, regain some strength, and then take her to catch several more fish.
“Why did you eat so little?”
Laomu finally understood why her body was so much smaller than that of an ordinary female mermaid.
She simply wasn’t getting enough food.
She must have been living in a constant state of hunger, which was why her body had remained so small.
This only made Laomu more confused.
What kind of life had she lived before?
Was she really unable to get enough food to eat?
Li Leyou was equally confused.
“So little?”
She had just eaten an entire half-meter-long fish!
She could practically feel the meat stuck in her throat.
How could that possibly count as little?
“You used to eat this little too?”
“This is already a lot. I used to eat even less.”
Back when she was human, two bowls of rice per meal were already enough for her.
Laomu frowned deeply.
“Can’t you catch fish?”
Li Leyou nodded.
“Yeah. Catching fish is really hard.”
But she was actually quite proud of herself.
She had managed to catch one fish with a net yesterday!
For her first day as a mermaid, she thought she had done amazingly well.
Laomu listened to her say that she couldn’t catch fish, yet she showed no sadness or embarrassment whatsoever.
Instead, she seemed as cheerful as her golden tail.
Laomu fell silent, his feelings complicated.
Mermaids living within a族群 would be cared for by their elders if they lacked hunting skills.
But perhaps this mermaid had been forced to wander away when she was very young.
No one had fed her.
No one had taught her anything.
“…I’ll teach you how to catch fish.”
Laomu told himself that he was only doing this to avoid being disturbed again.
He was certain that if she continued staying here and eventually went hungry because she couldn’t catch fish, she would call for him again.
“Really?!”
Li Leyou’s heart filled with admiration.
Laomu really was such a good mermaid when he was young.
“How do you catch them? I couldn’t even see what you did when you caught that fish earlier.”
“Come with me.”
Laomu led her toward the reef.
“That was a spotted fish. They like living around reefs, and they’re easy to catch. You can start with this kind.”
“Okay, okay! I thought it tasted pretty good too.”
Li Leyou followed him closely, carefully observing his movements and preparing to improve her fishing skills.
But she quickly discovered that this was completely useless.
It was like standing beside the top student in math and watching them solve a problem. You could watch the entire process and still have no idea why they were doing it that way.
“Did you see clearly?” Laomu asked, holding a spotted fish.
Li Leyou tried to analyze everything he had done.
“How did you know that fish was hiding under that reef?”
“I heard it moving. Couldn’t you hear it?”
Li Leyou couldn’t.
Her transformation into a mermaid clearly hadn’t been complete.
She had gained a tail, the ability to breathe underwater, and the ability to make sounds underwater, but she definitely hadn’t gained Laomu’s ability to hear tiny sounds from far away.
Li Leyou looked miserable.
“I can’t hear it.”
She became depressed again.
Laomu silently took her wrist and guided her closer to the reef so she could observe more carefully.
“Then use your eyes. Their bodies are brightly colored, and parts of them will usually stick out from the reef. Like this one…”
He pointed toward a small patch of orange-red visible between two rocks.
He suddenly reached in and grabbed another spotted fish.
As usual, he handed it to Li Leyou.
“Now you find one.”
Two mermaids with completely different colored tails slowly swam over the vast reef.
Li Leyou widened her eyes and concentrated with all her might, as if she were playing one of those simple observation games.
She refused to miss a single crack.
“There! Is that one there?”
“Yes. Now put your hand in and grab it, just like I did.”
Li Leyou was always very obedient when it came to following her “teacher’s” instructions.
She boldly shoved her hand into the gap between the coral reefs.
But she didn’t catch the spotted fish.
Instead, several scratches appeared on her arm, with thin trails of blood seeping from the wounds.
Li Leyou rubbed her injured arm and stared disappointedly as the fish slipped deeper into the reef.
“Ah… I missed it.”
She had actually grabbed the middle of the fish’s body for a moment, but her fingers couldn’t pierce into its flesh.
They simply slipped off.
She thought about it.
She really needed some tools.
A fishing spear.
A net.
Something like that.
Laomu stared at her arm, completely stunned.
He had never seen a mermaid get scratched by a reef before.
Even newborn mermaids weren’t so fragile that coral could injure them.
He took Li Leyou’s scratched arm and gently examined it.
He hadn’t noticed it before, but her skin felt completely different from his.
It was far too soft, without the toughness of a mermaid’s skin.
There was also no protective “membrane” covering her body.
It was almost like exposed fish flesh without any fish skin protecting it.
Her fingers were strange too.
They were far too rounded.
When she applied force, no sharp joints or claws emerged.
Even when she pressed them against his skin, they couldn’t hurt him at all.
Why is he silently touching her hand?
Li Leyou immediately turned the tables and touched his arm in return.
A proper mermaid’s skin felt slightly slippery in the seawater, almost like the slick feeling of sweaty skin after exercising.
She had barely touched him twice before Laomu pulled his hand away and avoided her touch.
This fish is seriously being a hypocrite.
He could touch her whenever he wanted, but the moment she touched him, he dodged.
However, he really did look troubled.
In the end, he said nothing.
He simply turned around, caught two more brightly colored spotted fish, and handed them to her.
Li Leyou held one fish in each hand.
“You need to eat more. Eat.”
Li Leyou shook her head.
“I really can’t eat anymore.”
While the two of them were going back and forth over how much she should eat, another mermaid swam over.
It was Anla.
He was dragging a dead shark nearly as long as his own body, apparently returning from a hunt.
“Oh, Laomu. Back to see your mate again?”
Anla deliberately teased him.
“What are you two talking about?”
He peeked at the spotted fish in Li Leyou’s hands and scoffed.
“Those stupid fish can’t even run away properly. Eating too many of them will make you stupid too. A truly fierce mermaid should eat sharks!”
He proudly displayed the huge shark he had caught.
Then he turned to Li Leyou.
“How about it? Have you ever eaten shark before? Obviously not. Here, have a bite.”
Li Leyou couldn’t understand a word of his excited speech.
She only saw him tear off a piece of shark meat and casually hand it to her.
Li Leyou still remembered their grudge.
She didn’t really want to eat anything from him.
But she had never tasted shark meat before, and she was genuinely curious.
After three seconds of internal debate, she quickly convinced herself:
Fine. Since he’s offering an olive branch, what’s the harm in trying one piece of shark meat?
She accepted it and curiously took a bite.
It was extremely chewy.
The texture was terrible.
The taste was strange too.
There was an odd smell.
And somehow, it seemed familiar.
Li Leyou carefully tasted it again.
Suddenly, her eyes widened.
A flash of realization struck her.
She knew where she had smelled that before.
It smelled like urine.
It was as if she’d just put a piece of meat from a public restroom into her mouth.
She immediately spat out the shark meat she hadn’t swallowed.
Sharks excrete urea through their skin, and the smell gradually seeps into their muscles.
That was the source of the strange odor.
And the older the shark, the stronger and more unpleasant the meat tasted.
Li Leyou gave Anla a strange look.
What an unusual taste preference.
Her disgust was written all over her face.
Anla looked down on her for not appreciating good shark meat and couldn’t be bothered talking to such a wandering mermaid who couldn’t even eat shark.
“If you don’t eat shark, no wonder you’re so skinny and ugly.”
Mermaid aesthetics revolved around strength and powerful physiques.
Anla called out to Laomu.
“Stop wasting your time playing with this ugly wandering mermaid. We should go back.”
Laomu really did need to leave.
He had already stayed here much longer than he normally would.
“I’m going back.”
Before leaving, he suddenly remembered something.
“What is your name?”
Li Leyou hadn’t expected him to leave so suddenly.
When he asked her that, she realized she still hadn’t told him her name.
“Li Leyou.”
She carefully pronounced her name.
“Liuliu?”
Anla, who hadn’t swum very far yet, repeated it and asked his brother,
“Did she say her name is Liuliu?”
Why are you still butting in? Just go away already!
Li Leyou secretly grumbled.
Reluctantly, she told Anla,
“You can call me Liuliu.”
“Liuliu.”
Laomu repeated the nickname.
“No.”
Li Leyou immediately corrected him.
“You have to call me Li Leyou. It’s Li—Le—You!”
Laomu looked puzzled.
“Why can he call you Liuliu, but I have to call you Li-Le-You?”
The pronunciation was a little strange to him. He had to say it slowly for it to sound right.
Li Leyou sighed.
“…Don’t worry about what he calls me. Just don’t get my name wrong.”
Laomu was confused.
“Why can’t I?”
He looked at his younger brother.
“What is different between Anla and me?”
“Oh, come on! Weren’t you leaving? Hurry up and go, go, go!”
Why are you asking so many questions?!
Li Leyou practically chased the two brothers away.
She shook the several spotted fish still in her hands, suddenly feeling as though she had forgotten something important.
Then it hit her.
“Oh, right! I forgot to ask him how to turn his fish tail back into legs!”