At the end of August, the summer sun baked with reckless abandon. In the area of sea near Anle Island Reef, the sun seemed to go straight to the bottom of the sea, and even the sand grains were warmed by a hint of sunshine.
Abundant schools of fish gathered and multiplied here. And at the same time, a group of dangerous predators were quietly approaching.
Su Su, a silver-white shark of two meters in length, looked out of place mixed in a large group of sharks with an average body length of four to five meters.
He followed the shark group near a group of yellowfin tuna, which was their hunting target today.
The sharks spread out in formation and took up an attack stance.
Tuna was delicious and had always been a popular meal for sharks, but they were known for their speed and it wasn’t easy to catch them.
The goal today was to try to eat enough. Su Su hunkered down at the end of the line and thought with a burning gaze.
The large and athletic sharks were in groups, their dorsal fins silently cut a wave of water in the water surface. The sharks were like a group of experienced hunters, moving tacitly to surround the prey. They worked together as if they had worked together a thousand times, swimming skillfully to force the prey to a place.
Sprinting, splitting, chasing, hunting.
Sharp teeth tore open the fragile scales of the prey, blood stained the blue water, flesh floated around, the entire surface of the water suddenly became turbid.
The prey had fallen, the tacit understanding of the collaborators, now changed as they started fighting for food.
Su Su also searched for today’s lunch. He had his eye on a tuna that was also smaller in size. He mixed in the middle of several large sharks, calculated the route in his heart, took the opportunity of the tuna to dodge the large sharks to jump up and bite the other’s tails.
The taste of blood stimulated Su Su’s senses and made the hunger in his belly even stronger. The bloodthirsty excitement ignited in Su Su’s eyes.
The prey that was bitten struggled, but the injury to its tail made its movement gradually become slow.
Just when Su Su intended to tear off the fish and feast on it, several bigger sharks surrounded from all sides and snatched Su Su Su’s prey from his mouth unceremoniously.
Again, again!
Su Su thought with aggravation and anger. Because of his small size, those bigger ones grabbed his prey with impunity.
But Su Su couldn’t beat them, so he had to swallow his breath to find new prey.
However, the scramble didn’t stop, Su Su tried again and again, and failed again and again.
The hunting time passed quickly.
Su Su worked for half a day and still had an empty stomach.
Such a failed hunting experience wasn’t the first time for him. Because his body had half of the mermaid blood, his size and strength was far inferior to other sharks, he was often robbed of prey, and could only follow behind to pick up some leftovers, if his luck was bad, he’d end up with a hungry stomach.
When food was seriously scarce, there were even sharks that paid attention to him, if he didn’t run fast, he may now have been buried in a shark’s stomach.
The good thing was that Su Su had other ways to get meals, so he didn’t die of hunger.
Su Su left the shark group and dived all the way down. The seawater here was darker, as if the blue color that covered the sunlight when the day and night changed. The corals were covered, the water plants were floating, and from time to time some small shrimps and crabs went in and out between the sand and rocks.
Su Su Su stopped at an ordinary-looking reef and swept the sand from the bottom of the sea with his tail, revealing the corner of a metal box that obviously didn’t belong to nature. Su Su bit the handle above the box, shook his head, and carried the whole box, which was nearly a meter long, out from the bottom of the water.
The lock of the box had been destroyed, the small shark skillfully flipped with the tail for a moment and plucked open the lid of the metal box. Inside, a large broken fishing net almost occupied the entirety of the box, a palm-sized waterproof speaker shrunk in the corner, it looked very old. There was also a round chip, it was properly placed in the middle of the box, but it was only the size of a coin, with an unknown material of black chain, the back was engraved with a lion pattern.
These three things were all gotten by Su Su from a shipwreck.
The sound box could play a sound that specifically attracted small fishes to come and feed, while the fishing net could intercept their escape route. This was the way Su Su learned to hunt from the chip.
Humans called this thing “teaching material”.
Just pressing the button in the middle, the coin-sized chip, could cast a light screen, the light screen contained the magnificent and fantastical world of human beings. From the enlightenment of language and writing, to the introduction of local customs, to some science and basic courses. A chip that covered the entire content from the beginning to the graduation of nine years of compulsory education.
Su Su knew some of the courses at a glance, there were some that needed to be read several times to understand, and some that couldn’t be understood in any way, such as the subject called physics, which said many phenomena that Su Su had never seen, and naturally could not understand.
But this didn’t affect Su Su’s interest in learning, after all, life in the ocean was too boring, this “textbook” was Su Su’s only way to spend time.
Su Su would take the box in his mouth wherever he went, and then after reaching his destination, he would find a safe place to bury it, just like now.
The fishes wouldn’t be active until the evening from, right now there was still plenty of time.
Su Su first opened the stereo, placed it in a hidden place, normal fishes couldn’t hear sound waves from the speaker, so Su Su wasn’t worried about attracting any unnecessary trouble. Then he ripped the several edges of the fishing net with his teeth and fixed it on the reef next to him.
This was the way of hunting taught to him by the chip.
The quality of the broken fishing net wasn’t good, the top had several holes, the line broke constantly, and always hooked in one place. The little shark had been careful when pulling, but the shark’s teeth were not better than the flexible fingers of human beings, and it was still damaged in several places during pulling. After a few more times, the fishing net would be completely scrapped.
He arranged it properly, and then waited.
This way of waiting for the prey wasn’t very efficient, the sound had been somewhat damaged, the sound was intermittent. The leaky net often let the prey escape, but as long as he waited, there was always some meager harvest to feed.
The time was close to sunset, and the daylight gave the sea a floating layer of broken gold.
This was Su Su’s favorite time, he floated all the way to the surface.
Su Su looked up from underwater, and everything in the sky seemed to be separated by a boundary, with the edge of the world terminating at the sea level.
The sky was dyed into a dazzling red by the afterglow of the setting sun.
Su Su had never seen the reality of the flame. He always wondered whether the falling sun lit up the clouds at sunset every day, which made such a bright color.
Behind the reef where Su Su was, was the land of the mermaid nation. Su Su had slipped over there several times before, and it was a very different landscape over there. They built fortresses at the bottom of the sea to avoid attacks from other sea creatures, used modern production lines to catch sharks, and exported them to the human world in exchange for weapons, food, and some technological products.
From there, further west, was the land. That was where the humans rule.
There they created an unimaginable civilization that could make inanimate objects, fly in the sky, swim in the water, and even leave the land they lived in and go to the distant sky.
Su Su waved his tail, this sea was very big, so big that it was difficult to spend a lifetime to step on every side of the sea. But Su Su felt like it was a cage, a huge, fluid cage, imprisoning him here.
Su Su couldn’t fly, nor could he walk, once he left the water, even breathing was a problem. He repeated the same life day after day, hunting, hunting, hunting, and he always failed, he was always underfed.
But Su Su always felt that this shouldn’t be the whole of life, living should not be just to survive.
He wanted to leave this place.
Su Su stared at the direction of the land for a long time, until the dazzling fire red gradually turned into a thick indigo purple, followed by a deeper blue than the sea water, and finally turned into a black that was too heavy.
The stars lit up sparsely and faintly, one of them was extraordinarily large and dazzling, like a diamond embedded in the night.
Su Su knew it, it was the main starship Bai Ze, Su Su had seen it in the textbook.
The textbook said that it was the first interstellar main warship developed by mankind, which could accommodate hundreds of interstellar warplanes, thousands of mechas, and tens of thousands of missile launchers, and was a solid line of defense to shelter the planet from extraterrestrials.
When Su Su was free, he and this distant starship, established a one-sided, strange friendship, he always came to the surface to see it, as if as long as he watched, he got some kind of silent companionship.
The dark and silent sky was like another infinite sea, Su Su couldn’t help but imagine the scenery there, that the huge battleship, when swimming in the vast interstellar, was it also the same as him, lonely?
The sea became dark all of a sudden, but it wasn’t difficult for Su Su, with his natural acuity and positioning system comparable to GPS. Su Su accurately swam back to the trap he had set up.
To Su Su’s surprise, it was obviously not yet time, but there was already a prey in the net. The size of the prey wasn’t like a blind fish, it was much bigger than that, and from the wavering shadow, the body length should be between one meter five and one meter eight.
The sound of the sound box wouldn’t trap the big fish, so Su Su guessed that the other should be unlucky and just happened to bump over. This was a rare feast, Su Su excitedly sped up out to rush over and opened his mouth wide to prepare to give the prey a fatal blow.
“How can there be a fishing net here? Ooh… It can’t be untied, how can it get more and more tight…” The sound was beautiful, like a song, not to the ear, but directly to the mind.
Mermaid?
Hearing the voice, the little shark held back the momentum of diving and pulled back its fangs in front of the fishing net.
TN:
Excited for this 🤸🎉