Chapter 31 She Comes from the Ocean
"Xuepo, you have to take your medicine obediently." Su Yun held up the Banlangen (Isatis root) and gently coaxed her to take the medicine.
"Okay." Shepard obediently finished the large bowl of medicine.
These medicinal liquids were something Shepard had never tasted before, and they didn't taste particularly appealing.
But she always obediently cooperated and drank all the medicine.
Then he lay expectantly by the pool and asked, "I've finished all my medicine. When can I go back to the river with Wanwan?"
Su Yun smiled, reached out and ruffled the other's soft white fur, coaxing, "Almost there, almost there, be good and take your medicine. It won't be long before you can go back to the river! After you take your medicine, you need to rest well. You should sleep for a while, and I'll go get the souvenir that Wanwan prepared for you."
"Hmm!" Upon hearing about the souvenir, Shepard's eyes lit up, and she obediently nodded and went back to the pool to rest.
Su Yun watched as she returned to the pond to rest before closing the gate and going to the stream.
Wanwan, who had been waiting for a long time, immediately surfaced.
She eagerly stepped forward and asked, "How are you? Is Shepard feeling better?"
Su Yun shook his head with a heavy expression, "There's still no improvement."
"Is that so...?" Hearing Su Yun's answer, Wanwan's expectant eyes gradually dimmed. She remained silent, her expression extremely grave. "Is there really no other way?" she persisted, unwilling to give up.
Su Yun slowly shook her head, her expression filled with helplessness. She continued, "Since that day, I've tried many methods—salt water, herbal water, boiled water... but nothing worked... for Shepard's injury..."
"Is she... still losing scales?" Wanwan's eyes were filled with a faint despair.
Su Yun couldn't bear to look at her face, so she slowly nodded and replied, "Yes. And..."
Seeing Wanwan's eyes gradually dim, Su Yun hesitated, wondering whether he should tell her the truth.
"And what?" Wanwan was clearly unwilling to let go of the fact that Xuepo was ill, even if it was bad news, she wanted to know.
Su Yun gritted her teeth and told Wanwan the truth: "And now the scales on its tail have started to fall off... and its arms look a bit swollen... I'm worried, I'm worried..."
"What are you worried about?" Wanwan asked anxiously.
"I worry that if one day all the scales fall off, I might not even be able to save my skin and flesh..."
"Ah..." Wanwan's pupils widened slightly, and she froze instantly. Couldn't even her skin be saved? Her mind uncontrollably imagined that scene, and her heart felt as if it were being torn apart.
"Can't even save the skin and flesh?" Wanwan clutched her chest and slowly sank into the water. What to do? Now even the tail is starting to fall...
No one understood the significance of a tail to a mermaid better than her... What to do...?
The mermaid in the water visibly slumped, like a withered seaweed, about to be swept away by the current in an instant.
"what to do..."
She suddenly murmured blankly, unsure whether she was speaking to herself or Su Yun: "It's still too late...it's too late..."
Looking into the other person's darkened eyes.
Without further hesitation, Su Yun decisively said, "I guess Shep originally lived in the sea, right? So you're actually on your way to the seaside, aren't you?"
"Huh?" Wanwan, who was immersed in her chaotic thoughts, was suddenly interrupted. Upon hearing Su Yun's words, she subconsciously nodded, then shook her head when she realized something was wrong.
Seeing the other person nodding and shaking their head, Su Yun was a little confused. "Is it true or not?"
Wanwan: "Yes and no."
"Yes and no?" Su Yun was even more confused. "What's going on? I think the reason Shep keeps losing its scales is because it can't adapt to fresh water..."
At this point, she paused to look at Wanwan's expression.
Wanwan was taken aback at first, then looked deeply into Su Yun's eyes, sighed softly, and finally spoke slowly, "Yes, Xuepo is indeed not of the same race as me. She should live in the sea..."
“Coco…but this is Shanzhou!” Su Yun had seen the sign on the highway before and knew that she was in a province or city in China. Although the Qingjiang River flows through it, this place is far from the coastline. She asked in surprise, “How did Xue Po get here? Did she swim all the way here?”
Wanwan shook her head and denied it, saying, "Of course not. The story goes back to when I met her."
"I found her in a rainstorm..."
Next is Wanwan's own story.
It was an extremely rare downpour. I hid in a crevice in the rocks at the deepest part of the water. The space there was not wide, and even if I squeezed in as hard as I could, a bit of my tail would still stick out.
That night, the rain was heavy, and thunderclaps crashed against the water's surface with tremendous roars, as if illuminating the entire riverbed. It was a terrifying storm, typical of the weather in the first few years of the apocalypse—fierce and utterly irrational.
To avoid the surging waves in the water, I tried my best to shrink myself into the crevices of the rocks to avoid being swept away by the turbulent undercurrents at the bottom of the river.
Just as I was hiding in the crevice of the rocks, carefully avoiding the wind and waves at the bottom of the river, a noisy sound suddenly came from above. The rumbling of machinery grew louder and louder as it rose above the water. I couldn't help but lean out halfway to look up.
Ah! So it's a human-made ship!
I never expected that a ship could still be running so long after the apocalypse, even though the ship doesn't look very new or very big.
A small, wrecked boat, lashed by the relentless rainstorm, slowly moved forward, bobbing up and down in the wind and waves.
These past few days, Yishi has become increasingly chaotic, with several zombie hordes occurring. I watched from the river as the surviving humans were chased by the frenzied zombie hordes, either becoming food or managing to escape. The surviving humans have all disappeared, either escaping or... dying.
This small boat must also be a surviving human that escaped under cover of night.
However, it's uncertain whether we can successfully weather this strange and sudden downpour.
Watching the small boat battle against the giant waves in the storm, I wondered if it could successfully break through.
Then, I felt a violent ripple at the tip of my tail. Based on my past experience, I knew that a giant wave was coming!
I hurriedly pulled my head back from looking up, and then, with all my might, I curled up my back and pulled my tail and body back in, struggling to shrink into the crevice. I pressed my back against the crevice with all my might, gripped my tail tightly with both hands, and held onto this incredibly difficult posture, anxiously and unbearably waiting for the giant wave to arrive.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, a huge wave that almost overturned the entire riverbed swept in, taking away all the dead wood and garbage that had accumulated in the river.
Thankfully, I managed to hide myself completely in the crevice of the rocks at great risk, almost breaking my bones, which prevented the giant wave from sweeping me away. However, the ship was not so lucky and was capsized by the wave.
After a loud crash, items from the ship fell off: frightened humans, riddled corpses, strange iron barrels, huge containers, all sorts of cages, and a huge blue water tank emitting a faint white light, slowly sinking into the water.
Strangely enough, despite so many things falling from the ship, I still spotted her at first glance.
Amidst utter chaos.
The beautiful white-tailed mermaid lay quietly in the fish tank, slowly sinking with the current, so clean and pure, like the most perfect work of art in the world.
I was instantly captivated the moment I saw her...
She was like a diamond that had accidentally fallen to the bottom of the water, dazzling and radiant, and then she gently landed in my arms...
After I rescued her, I learned that her name was Shepard and that she had been kept as a pet by humans.
Unlike me, who was wandering around and never knew where my next meal would come from, Shep was always carefully kept in a fish tank or pond. Every day, someone would change the blue water for her, comb her hair, and feed her...
She's different from me, who grew up struggling to survive on the outside world...
She knew nothing and knew nothing; she was as innocent as a blank sheet of paper.
I didn't want her to live a miserable life like me in this dirty city. I'd heard from other mermaids that Mingzhou was a place with wide waters, abundant resources, and few people.
So I took her upstream and we arrived at Mingzhou.
Sure enough, the area there was beautiful with high mountains and clear waters, and sparsely populated. We had a very happy time there, but unfortunately, it didn't last long. Shepard started to fall ill. First, she became dull and then gradually became weak.
I desperately tried to catch fish for her, find herbs, and change the water in the pond, but it was all in vain. I watched as her delicate, feather-thin fins began to break apart... and then slowly peeled away...
Finally, watching her unable to eat anything, slowly withering away... I fell silent...
I asked her what was wrong?
For the first time, she became shrewd, remaining silent and refusing to tell me the truth.
Only after I pressed her repeatedly and begged her did she finally tell the truth.
It turned out that Shepard couldn't get used to the river water at all; it made her very uncomfortable, stinging and pricking...
And so, day after day, year after year, the water slowly eroded her body, leading to its decline...
It was only then that I remembered the first time I met Shep, she lived in such deep blue and clean water.
After asking many people, I learned that the beautiful blue water came from the sea.
So I took Xue Po and swam eastward along the current... until we arrived here.
However, as time went on, Shepard's condition gradually worsened. I originally just wanted to find a secluded place for her to rest for a while, but I never expected to encounter a flash flood, and she was swept here by the current...
I didn't mean to hurt you. I just wanted to teach you a lesson, to scare you, and to get you away from the water so that the injured Shep wouldn't be discovered... Shep can no longer swim...
Hearing her say this, Su Yun exclaimed in slight surprise, "Ah, I see!"
No wonder Su Yun always felt that his escape from the water last time was a bit too easy; after all, he wasn't a very good swimmer to begin with.
Facing a natural aquatic hunter, there should have been no chance of escape, but it still managed to escape. Logically speaking, if it were Su Yun, in order to hunt prey, he would definitely seize the opportunity the moment the prey fell into the water and panicked, and directly break its neck.
I was so panicked when I fell into the water that I can't remember anything. But when I think back carefully, I realize that the other person was indeed letting the water out of my sight.
Wanwan deliberately didn't reach out to finish her off immediately, but instead deliberately created an opening, deliberately missed, and then deliberately let her escape.
"Yes, Shepard was already unconscious at that time. I had no other choice but to try to scare you and get you to leave the stream... But I never expected that you would be the ones to save her in the end..." The black-haired girl in the water had slightly red eyes and her lips trembled as she tried to express her apology, but she didn't know how to speak.
Seeing the other person's dejected appearance, Su Yun didn't want to dwell on it at this moment. "Now we finally understand that your motive wasn't intentional injury, but I never believe in shifting blame. One thing at a time. Now let's think about whether there are any other ways to save Xue Po..."
"Is there any other way?" Wanwan fell into deep thought again. "Probably the only way is to go back into the sea, but... but we're so far from the sea now... We've been swimming for a long time since we set out, wandering around for ages, but we haven't found the sea. We've lost all our snow-white fins, then our scales, and now even our skin is bleeding... and we still haven't found the sea..."
Just think back to when I first met Shepburn, how beautiful she was! Her fins were incredibly soft, her scales shimmered with a gentle light, and her beautiful, long tail...
Now, Shepburn could only lie weakly in the fish tank, its scales scattered and bloodstains covering its body, resembling a withered seaweed...
Thinking of this, she began to blame herself again: "It's all my fault. I should have found out in the first place... If it weren't for this, Shepar wouldn't have been hurt... I'm the one who hurt her, I'm the one who hurt her..." As she spoke, large tears welled up in the black-haired mermaid's eyes, turning into black pearls that fell into the water.
"Sigh~"
After listening to Wanwan's story, Su Yun sighed softly. Although she had vaguely guessed that the injury caused by Xue Po's different species had not healed, she did not expect the story to be so complicated.
"Don't cry, calm down. We don't need to find seawater, I have another way..."
"What method?" Seeing a glimmer of hope, Wanwan's eyes suddenly lit up.
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