At the end of August, the midsummer sun was baking hotly. In the waters near Anle Island and Reef, the sun seemed to shine directly to the bottom of the sea, and even the sand grains were warmed by the sun.
Rich schools of fish gather and reproduce here, but at the same time, a group of dangerous predators are quietly approaching.
Su Su, a two-meter-long silver-white shark, looked out of place among a school of large sharks with an average length of four to five meters.
He followed the school of sharks closer to a group of yellowfin tuna, their hunting target for the day.
The sharks dispersed and assumed attacking postures.
Tuna tastes delicious and has always been a favorite food of sharks, but they are known for their speed, and it is not easy to catch up with them.
Today's goal is to eat as much as possible. Su Su huddled at the end of the team, thinking with a burning gaze.
The huge and powerful sharks formed a school, their dorsal fins silently creating a wave on the water surface. The sharks were like a group of experienced hunters, surrounding their prey in a tacit coordination. They cooperated tacitly, as if they had done it thousands of times before, swimming skillfully to force the prey into one place.
Sprint, split, chase, hunt.
The sharp teeth tore open the fragile scales of the prey, the blood dyed the blue sea red, and the floating pieces of flesh made the entire water surface suddenly turbid.
The prey has fallen, and the partners who had just been working together in perfect harmony now start to fight for food.
Su Su also started looking for lunch for the day. He spotted a small tuna. He mixed in with several large sharks, calculated the route in his mind, and took the opportunity when the tuna was avoiding the large sharks to jump up and bite the tail of the other one.
The taste of blood stimulated Su Su's senses, making him even more hungry. Su Su's eyes lit up with bloodthirsty excitement.
The bitten prey struggled hard, but the injured tail made its movements gradually slow down.
Just when Su Su was about to tear off the fish meat to enjoy it, several larger sharks surrounded him from all directions and rudely snatched the prey from his mouth.
It's like this again! It's like this again!
Su Su thought with grievance and anger. Just because he was small, those bigger fellows would wantonly snatch his prey.
Unfortunately, Su Su couldn't beat them, so he could only swallow his anger and look for new prey.
However, the competition will not stop. Su Su tried again and again, and failed again and again.
The hunting time passed quickly.
Su Su was busy for a long time, but his stomach was still empty.
This was not the first time he had failed in a hunt. As he was half mermaid, his size and strength were far inferior to other sharks, so he was often robbed of his prey when hunting, and could only follow behind to pick up some leftovers. When he was unlucky, he would go hungry.
When food was in short supply, some sharks would even turn their attention to him. If he hadn't run fast, he might have been buried in the stomach of one of the sharks.
Fortunately, Su Su had other ways to supplement his food so that he would not starve to death.
Su Su left the school of sharks and went down to the sea. The water here was darker, like the azure color that covered the sun when day and night changed. There were corals, swaying water plants, and small shrimps and crabs occasionally coming in and out among the sand and rocks.
Su Su stopped at a seemingly ordinary reef with ease, and used his tail to sweep away the sand on the seabed, revealing a corner of a metal box that clearly did not belong to nature. Su Su bit the handle on the top of the box, shook his head, and lifted the nearly one-meter-long box out of the water.
The lock of the box had been broken. The little shark skillfully flipped the box with its tail for a moment and opened the lid of the metal box. Inside, a large broken fishing net almost took up the entire box. A palm-sized waterproof speaker was huddled in the corner, looking very old. There was also a round chip, which was placed neatly in the middle of the box. It was only the size of a coin and was strung with a black chain of unknown material. A lion pattern was engraved on the back.
These three things were found by Su Su from a shipwreck and are Su Su's treasures.
The speaker can play a sound to attract a small fish to come and eat, and the fishing net can intercept their escape route. This is the hunting method that Su Su learned from the chip.
Humans call this thing "teaching materials."
Just press the button in the middle, and the coin-sized chip will project a light curtain, which contains the magnificent and fantastic human world. From the enlightenment of language and characters, to the introduction of local customs and culture, to some popular science and basic courses. One chip covers all the contents from enlightenment to graduation from nine-year compulsory education.
Su Su could understand some courses at a glance, some he had to read several times before he could understand, and some he just couldn't understand at all, such as the subject called physics. It described many phenomena that Su Su had never seen before, so naturally he couldn't understand them.
But this did not affect Su Su's interest in learning. After all, life in the ocean was too boring, and this "textbook" was Su Su's only way to entertain himself.
Su Su would carry the box with him wherever he went, and when he reached his destination, he would find a safe place to bury it, just like he is doing now.
Blind fish will not be active until night, so there is still plenty of time now.
Su Su first turned on the stereo and placed it in a hidden place. The sound waves emitted by the speaker are inaudible to normal fish. Su Su was not worried about causing any unnecessary trouble. Then he used his teeth to tear open several corners of the fishing net and fixed it on the reef next to it.
This is the hunting method that Chip taught him.
The quality of the broken fishing net was not very good. There were several holes on it. The line was constantly connected and always tangled in one place. The little shark tried to be careful when pulling it, but shark teeth are no match for human nimble fingers, and it was still torn in several places during the pulling. After a few more uses, this fishing net will be completely scrapped.
After everything is arranged, the next step is to wait.
This method of waiting for prey is not very efficient. The speakers are a bit damaged and the sound is intermittent. The leaky fishing net often lets the prey escape, but as long as you stay there for a while, you can still get some small harvest to satisfy your hunger.
It was almost sunset, and the sunlight coated the sea surface with a layer of floating gold.
This was Su Su's favorite time of the day, when 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 layer of barrier, and the edge of the world ended at the sea level.
The sky was dyed a dazzling red by the afterglow of the setting sun.
Su Su had never seen fire in reality. He always wondered if it was the falling sun that ignited the clouds at sunset every day, causing them to burn out such bright colors.
Behind the reef where Su Su was, was the territory of the mermaid kingdom. Su Su had sneaked there several times before, and the scenery there was completely different. They built fortresses on the seabed to avoid attacks from other marine creatures, spun mermaid silk with modern production lines, and exported it to the human world in exchange for weapons, food, and some technological products.
Further west from there is the land, which is ruled by humans.
There they created an unimaginable civilization that could make inanimate things fly in the sky, swim in the water, and even leave the land where they lived and go to the distant sky.
Su Su shook his tail. This sea was so big that it would be difficult to explore every corner of it even if he spent his entire life. But Su Su felt that it was like a cage, a huge, flowing prison that imprisoned him.
Su Su could neither fly nor walk. He could not even breathe out of water. He repeated the same life day after day, hunting, hunting, hunting, but he always failed and was never full.
But Su Su always felt that this should not be all of life, and living should not be just for the sake of living.
He wants to leave here.
Su Su stared in the direction of the land for a long time, until the dazzling red gradually turned into a thick indigo purple, then into a deep blue deeper than the sea water, and finally turned into a black that was so thick that it could not be dissolved.
The stars lit up sparsely and flickered faintly. Among them, one was particularly large and its light was more dazzling, like a diamond embedded in the night sky.
Su Su recognized it. It was the Bai Ze main starship. Su Su had seen it in the textbook.
The textbook says that it is the first interstellar battleship developed by humans. It can accommodate hundreds of interstellar fighters, thousands of mechas, and tens of thousands of missile launchers. It is a solid line of defense to protect the planet from invasion by alien creatures.
In Su Su's spare time, he established a one-sided, strange friendship with this distant starship. He always came to the sea to see it, as if by looking at it from afar, he was getting some kind of silent companionship.
The dark and lonely sky was like another boundless ocean. Su Su couldn't help imagining the scenery there and whether the huge battleship would feel lonely like himself when traveling in the vast starry sky.
The sea surface suddenly turned dark, but this did not bother Su Su, who, with his natural sensitivity and GPS-like positioning system, swam back to the trap he had set accurately.
To Su Su's surprise, the prey had already been caught even though it was still not time. The prey was not the size of a blind fish, but much larger. Judging from its swaying shadow, it was probably between 1.5 and 1.8 meters long.
The sound of the speaker will not attract big fish. Su Su guessed that the other party must have bad luck and was busy rushing to the road, so he just happened to bump into him. This is a rare feast. Su Su excitedly speeded up and rushed over, opening his mouth wide to give the prey a fatal blow.
"Why is there a fishing net here? Ugh... I can't untie it. The more I try, the tighter it gets..." The voice was beautiful, like a song, not reaching my ears, but going straight into my mind.
Mermaid?
Hearing the voices, the little shark held on to its diving momentum and just managed to retract its fangs in front of the fishing net.