When Luo Mu returned to the Coral Sea, he saw that quite a few members of his tribe had brought back sharks as food.
That group of sharks that had passed through the outer sea had probably been reduced by half.
Among merfolk, shark was actually a fairly popular food. It wasn’t just An La who liked it; many merfolk ate shark.
If they came across a dead whale, they were also more than happy to share the meat, even if the whale had already begun to rot.
There was a reason for this. Shark meat and whale blubber provided them with richer nutrition, allowing merfolk to go as long as three days without eating after a full meal.
Pregnant female merfolk could even eat an entire shark in one sitting.
Luo Mu naturally ate shark as well, but at the moment, he had no appetite.
When he returned to his den, he found a starfish inside his otherwise spotless home, along with a crab crawling around and trying to find somewhere to hide.
Luo Mu scooped up the motionless starfish and the crab and tossed them both out of his den. He also moved the cluster of pink sea anemones near his entrance, placing them somewhere with plenty of food.
They belonged somewhere more suitable for them instead of wasting their time in his territory.
Life among merfolk was usually this ordinary and boring. Once they had eaten their fill, they rested. If they were energetic like An La, they could go out and play, chase fish, or pick fights.
But Luo Mu spent most of his days cleaning his den and quietly staying there. A life without anyone disturbing him was what he was most accustomed to.
However, these past two days, things had been unusually noisy.
Although he had taught the wandering mermaid—Li Leyou—how to hunt today, she didn’t seem to have learned much. By tomorrow, she would probably start calling for him again.
Luo Mu turned over in the gentle current inside his den and let out a troubled little bubble.
If Li Leyou called for him like that again, should he go?
But the entire day passed, and even until the following evening, Luo Mu still hadn’t heard the call he had been expecting.
The sounds coming through the seawater were all from his fellow merfolk playing and arguing, all noises he was accustomed to.
That strange mermaid… Li Leyou hadn’t made a sound.
Had she managed to find food today? Had she finished yesterday’s fish? Had she somehow gotten stranded on shore again?
So, what was Li Leyou doing that day?
She was gathering materials and making tools.
Humans knew how to make and use tools. So what if she couldn’t compare to a genuine mermaid? Did that mean she couldn’t catch fish?
She hadn’t managed to catch a single fish in front of Luo Mu yesterday. The look of shock on his face had made her feel a little embarrassed, so she was determined to redeem herself.
Besides, she had to eat. She couldn’t keep relying on someone else to catch fish for her.
Li Leyou walked along the shore, gathering branches, coconut shells, large seashells, wooden planks… anything she thought might come in handy.
For breakfast, she ate the fish left over from yesterday. It had been sitting around too long and had developed a slightly strange taste. For lunch, she casually picked some seaweed near the shore. Mixing red and green seaweed together made for a surprisingly refreshing meal.
If only she had some sauce, a little bird’s-eye chili, and garlic oil, it would be even better.
She fantasized about the food while eating, then continued making tools after finishing her meal.
She took her homemade tools to the reef area to put them to the test.
The tools she’d made with the limited materials available weren’t very useful. When she thrust her homemade fish spear down, she missed the fish and the spear shattered against the reef.
If only she had a steel or iron spear.
Li Leyou surfaced, placed the broken fish spear beside the pile of miscellaneous items on her wooden plank, then dove back down to search around.
Before long, she tossed several fist-sized shells onto the plank.
These would be her dinner. After eating the meat, she could smash the shells and sharpen the fragments to use as spearheads.
Unfortunately, freshly collected shells from the sea were incredibly difficult to open. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t pry them apart.
In the end, she simply swung her arm and smashed them repeatedly against the reef.
And that happened to uncover a large crab hiding underneath.
The crab was covered in colorful patterns and was quite large. Li Leyou instinctively pinned it down with a branch and caught it.
But once she had it in her hands and saw it waving its claws around, she had no idea how to eat it.
She had never eaten raw crab before. She had only ever eaten steamed crab, and she wasn’t particularly fond of crab anyway.
“Forget it, forget it. You can go. You don’t taste good.”
After all that work, the shellfish meat she had collected only filled a palm-sized shell, which she had turned into a bowl.
Different shellfish had different flavors. Some tasted sandy and muddy, some were tough and chewy, while others were actually quite delicious.
She memorized what the good ones looked like and decided that next time, she’d only look for those.
Li Leyou still followed the habits she’d developed during her twenty years as a human. She ate three meals a day and went to sleep once it got dark.
That night, she didn’t sleep in the sea.
Instead, she lay on the large wooden plank she’d found.
She was still trying to figure out how to make her fish tail naturally turn into legs once it was out of the water. But after nearly being baked to death by the sun, she was understandably wary.
So she came up with a compromise.
She lay on the wooden plank as it floated on the sea. Whenever her tail started feeling dry, she could simply lower it into the water for a while. That way, she wouldn’t become severely dehydrated.
After an entire night of fruitless attempts, she was awakened by the morning sun.
Still half-asleep, Li Leyou rolled over, expecting to feel the blanket on her bed, only to tumble straight into the water with a splash.
The cool seawater instantly woke her up.
She casually splashed some water onto her face and called it washing up.
When she surfaced, she discovered that the wooden plank she’d wedged between two rocks the night before had carried her away from the shore again.
She had no choice but to drag the plank back toward the coastline.
She didn’t dare venture too far from shore anymore. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to find her way back.
There wasn’t much food in deeper waters, but near the shore, even if she couldn’t catch fish, she could still find other things to eat.
“Well, Li Leyou’s Castaway Diary… A new day has begun. What should I have for breakfast?”
Another day began, and Luo Mu still hadn’t heard Li Leyou call for him.
That morning, he finally agreed to accompany his noisy younger brother to hunt sharks, while also filling his own stomach.
When he passed through the waters where Li Leyou had appeared before, he slowed down slightly and carefully listened to the sounds carried through the seawater.
Apart from the countless complicated noises, he still couldn’t detect Li Leyou’s voice.
Merfolk liked making all kinds of sounds in the water to express or vent their emotions. They sang and chatted with tribe members far away.
But the golden-tailed mermaid was unusually quiet except when she called for him.
When Luo Mu returned to the Coral Sea, he passed several young merfolk who were playing.
They were still several years away from adulthood, yet they had already grown nearly two meters long.
The two young females in particular had much thicker tails than their brothers because they ate so much.
They were playing with a small lemon shark that had accidentally wandered into the Coral Sea.
To them, the little shark was nothing more than a pitiful toy. They kept smacking it around with their tails until it became dizzy and could no longer escape.
Once they were tired of playing with it, they would share the shark among themselves.
Seeing them, Luo Mu unconsciously thought of the frail golden-tailed mermaid again.
From her scent, she seemed to be an adult, yet she was barely two meters long—about the same size as these two young female merfolk who hadn’t even reached adulthood.
Luo Mu began to feel uneasy.
Could Li Leyou have starved to death because she couldn’t catch fish?
Restless and irritated, he flicked his tail repeatedly.
In the end, he decided to go and check on her.
Before looking for Li Leyou, he first went to a nearby deep-water reef.
There were occasionally some particularly delicious fish there.
It was already summer, and tuna came near the reefs to spawn. At this time of year, tuna were especially delicious.
While Luo Mu was worrying that Li Leyou might already have starved to death, Li Leyou was pulling her homemade fish spear out of a reef.
A spotted fish was impaled on its shell-made spearhead.
She stared at it for a moment before letting out an excited series of cries.
“Got it! I finally caught one!”
All that time spent grinding down the shells hadn’t been wasted. Neither had all the time she’d spent lurking beside the reefs until her eyes nearly went blind from searching.
When Luo Mu arrived carrying a huge tuna, he saw Li Leyou lying on the reef, holding up her fish spear and the fish attached to it while shouting excitedly.
Luo Mu didn’t dare approach immediately.
He cautiously surfaced until only half his face was visible, observing her condition.
He had never heard a mermaid make noises like that.
Wait.
Perhaps he had heard something similar before.
An La had made an especially awful noise after being stung by a jellyfish.
Luo Mu cautiously approached the reef where Li Leyou was and asked, “Were you stung by a jellyfish?”
“Huh? Luo Mu, what jellyfish?”
Li Leyou was still celebrating her hard-earned hunting success. When she saw him, she immediately showed off.
“Look! I caught a fish!”
Although the spotted fish wasn’t very big, Luo Mu was still happy for her.
At least she wouldn’t starve to death here.
And the scent of her happiness was so strong that Luo Mu couldn’t help being infected by it.
“I’m bringing you a fish. This kind tastes good.”
Li Leyou didn’t recognize many kinds of sea fish, but she happened to know this one.
Wasn’t that tuna?!
It was expensive!
Its high price had left such a strong impression on her that she had remembered what it looked like.
The spotted fish she’d worked so hard to catch instantly lost all its appeal.
She tossed it onto the wooden plank.
“Wow! It’s tuna! There are tuna here? Did you catch it especially for me? Luo Mu, you’re so nice!”
The scent of her happiness became even stronger.
It seemed that seeing him alone made her happy, not just because he had brought her food.
Luo Mu awkwardly handed her the fish and began sinking into the water.
“I’m leaving.”
“Wait, wait, wait!”
Li Leyou hurriedly stopped him.
“I have something to ask you. Don’t leave yet!”
“What is it?”
Luo Mu stopped.
“How do I turn my fish tail into legs?”
Li Leyou looked at him with hopeful eyes.
She had wanted to ask him last time but had forgotten. And she hadn’t wanted to keep calling him over, especially since he had already helped her catch fish. What if she really annoyed him?
But today, he’d come to her on his own.
There was no way she was going to let this opportunity slip away.
Under the bright sunlight and across the sparkling surface of the sea, Luo Mu’s clear eyes, like glass marbles, were filled with confusion.
“How could a fish tail turn into legs? Humans have legs,” he said.
Li Leyou was confused too.
Didn’t merfolk have legs?
That couldn’t be right. They were clearly capable of transforming into human form.
Grandma Su Wei had always told her that merfolk could freely transform their tails into human legs.
“You still haven’t learned? Are you perhaps too young right now?”
That was the only explanation Li Leyou could think of.
Otherwise, what else could it be?
Surely merfolk who couldn’t turn their tails into legs now hadn’t somehow evolved legs after five hundred years, right?
Biological evolution couldn’t possibly happen that quickly.
Luo Mu, however, was convinced that Li Leyou must have been stung by a poisonous jellyfish.
An La had also started saying strange things after being stung.
“Merfolk don’t have legs, and we can’t turn our tails into legs. We live in the ocean. Why would we need legs?” Luo Mu said seriously.
“Eat the fish, then rest for a while. You’ll feel better.”