NEBM Chapter 40.2: Yuyu

Such a quiet and simple life passed for some years. During this time, the nomadic little blue fish grew used to staying there. It was woken up by a little fool every day in the sun, and it was used to watching this little fool perform a hide and seek show every day. Afterward, it would take him to the bottom of the sea to play.

Until one day, the little blue fish was suddenly awakened at noon by the scorching sun and suddenly found that the little guy didn’t come that morning.

What happened?

It jumped a few times in doubt and went to wash the fine sand off in the backwater. As it washed, it heard a few children discussing the fool not far away.

“Do you know, that fool is dying…”

“My mother said he wouldn’t live past today. He was feverish all night last night!”

“That’s right. Maybe, we’ll get his shells later. Who knew where he got so many beautiful shells, I could just die from envy! ”

The little blue fish was alarmed. While jumping out of the water, it performed a trick to hide its body and quickly flew toward the child’s home.

But before it left, it didn’t forget to call a big wave to splash those children with water.

It was daytime, but there was no one at home with the feverish child. The brothers and sisters left to play with their peers. The father went out to fish at sea. The mother left to chat with other women.

… There was really no one who cared about an unconscious child who was dying.

A white light flashed, and the man with the long hair and beautiful face leaned down and looked at the poor little fellow. There was pity and helplessness in his ice-blue eyes.

A man like him could see at a glance that this little guy was dying.

Irreparable, with no cure.

……Wait.

As the man studied the child, a sudden thought came to him. He mumbled to himself for a moment and his cold hand brushed against the child’s hot forehead, sending a tendril of spiritual power to ease the child’s pain.

“I can save you, but the price is that you will never grow up again. Would you still want me to?”

The ice-blue eyes were as beautiful as the little blue fish’s scales.

The feverish child looked into the ice-blue eyes and nodded slowly and resolutely.

The man shifted into his true shape. His real shape was not the little blue fish, but a merman with a slender ice-blue fishtail. He found a slightly white scale among the thousands of exceptionally beautiful scales and gently pinched down.

Outside of the illusion, Shen Zhixian drew in a breath and took a step forward.

—The inverse scale.

He finally saw the legendary scale that could heal human flesh and bones.

It was a pity that it was only in the illusion. Shen Zhixian reached out and his fingers passed through the illusion, unable to touch it. He pursed his lips and could only keep watching.

The scale turned into a ray of light and fell into the child’s mouth.

The child got better.

Everyone was surprised. His parents were both astonished and disappointed, but they didn’t say anything. They just kept him at random as usual.

This serious illness seemed like a forgettable episode, the kinds that quietly turned over in the lives of children.

But the little blue fish knew that this was just an illusion.

Even if he was an ancient demon fish who’d lived for tens of thousands of years, he couldn’t completely alter men’s life and death. Although he was able to save the child, the price was that the child would never grow up.

The years passed until it became more than ten years, and the eyes of the villagers shifted from disdain to fear as they looked at the child.

The child’s title had also changed from a fool to a monster.

Driven out of the house by his old parents and healthy younger brother, the child stood at the seashore looking for his little blue fish. For more than a decade, his mind was frozen with his age, and he was vaguely aware of his unusualness, but he was at a loss.

The little blue fish swam quietly and sighed.

The little blue fish took on a human form and built a house by the sea for the child.

“I’ll give you a name. You’ve been called a little fool for more than ten years.” The little blue fish bent over and rubbed the little guy’s fluffy head. After thinking it over, he said, “Let’s just call you Little Ten.”

The child hugged the man’s leg happily, nodded, and called softly, “Yuyu! Yuyu!”

Little Ten settled down at the seaside and was taken care of by the little blue fish. The villagers kept away from the two of them. The little blue fish didn’t care. Whatever Little Ten wanted, he could supply.

One person and one fish lived peacefully in this way, until one day Yuyu carried back an unconscious man.

In the small house, the little blue fish, who’d turned into a human, placed the man on the bed. His beautiful face was the first thing the emaciated man saw as he quietly opened and closed his eyes, drifting in and out of unconsciousness.

Little Ten poked at his hand blankly. “Yuyu, who is this?”

Yuyu elegantly placed his hands on his hips and casually looked at the pitiful devil that he’d just picked up. “I don’t know.”

Little Ten said, “He hasn’t woken up yet … he’d soaked in the water for so long, had his brain gotten soaked too?”

Yuyu nodded, “It’s good if he becomes a fool too. This way, he can keep you company.”

Therefore, Yin Ci, who’d suffered a crushing defeat and had wandered destitute until now, hadn’t even opened his eyes yet when he heard this short but serious conversation about whether his brain had been waterlogged.

Yin Ci: “…”

He opened his eyes with difficulty, feeling that the spiritual power in his body was completely gone. Staring at the stranger in front of him, he asked dumbly, “Am I still alive?”

He was told that he was, of course, still alive and will live happily for a long time to come.

The king was defeated, and his spiritual power was lost. He’d long lost his qualifications to go back to fight, and after this calculation, he was disheartened and simply lived in this unknown small fishing village.

Yuyu breathed a sigh of relief and entrusted him with the heavy task of caring for the child. Then he returned to the sea to continue as a little blue fish.

In later illusions, just like watching a TV show full of dog blood, Shen Zhixian watched as Yin Ci’s eyes gradually changed toward Yuyu.

He sighed.

Hey, the poor miserable devil was going to fall in love with the beautiful merman who’d saved him.

Sure enough, one night, Yuyu received a different kind of emotion from Yin Ci. Yuyu hardly stayed overnight in the small house and the man couldn’t help himself.

Quietly, a hot kiss fell on that stunning face.

Then he rushed to the door in flight, not daring to turn around and stay.

So he didn’t know. After he left, the sleeping merman’s eyes fluttered open and a familiar compassion appeared in those ice-blue eyes.

Yuyu was leaving.

Regardless of whether it was Yin Ci or Little Ten, they could not convince him to stay. Yuyu simply said that he was going to another place, and he might never return.

He was an unrestrained fish and did not belong anywhere.

He’d thought quite well that Little Ten was already under Yin Ci’s care. They were ordinary people and more suitable for living together. He was just a fish that did not belong here and had a long life. He shouldn’t have been bound here for so long.

Yuyu ruthlessly left.

Then, after a long period of depression, Yin Ci went crazy.

In the end, he was a cultivator, and there were various ways to regain his practice. But this time, Yin Ci did not follow the old path; he became a devil cultivator instead.

He took Little Ten and searched the seas for that beautiful little blue fish, for the beautiful and exquisite man, for many years.

His obsession burrowed deeper and deeper. After he became a devil, he often had trouble controlling his emotions. The desire to possess was magnified many times. His eyes gradually turned red, and Little Ten sometimes dared not talk to him at all.

Who knew how many years they’d searched, until they finally saw the fish they’d been looking for.

The elegant and lazy man had shifted into a merman and was resting tiredly on the edge of a rock. An epidemic had broken out in one of the cities, and he’d worked hard to stop the tragedy. He ended up using most of his spiritual energy and was exhausted. He squinted under the sun, his slender fishtail slapping the water surface.

The devil cultivator looked at the ice blue tail with eyes as red as blood. .

He raised his hand, spread his fingers, and a delicate ring hook emerged from it. There were countless dense runes on the ring’s body, each one for imprisonment.

Suddenly, the sharp pain of his fishtail being punctured made the man jerk and he began to struggle violently. He frowned, gasping in agony, and turned to meet a pair of cold, red eyes.

“I found you,” the red-eyed man said hoarsely. He stood waist-deep in water, locking the imprisonment ring on the fishtail.

Blood spilled from the injured fishtail, staining the seawater underneath red.

The man panted, his chest undulating, as he opened his mouth to say something, but Shen Zhixian couldn’t hear it. A sword broke through the void, and the illusion shattered into thousands of pieces. Man, fishtail, and ring hook. The blood suddenly dissipated, and only “I found you” was still lingering clearly in his ears.

—Wrong.

Shen Zhixian jerked in surprise when someone silently came from behind him and hugged him. He hurriedly raised the hand that still held the flower branch, intending to make a move without turning around. But, he felt the hot and familiar atmosphere at his back and suddenly stopped, his wrist lowering.

“A’Jin?”

Yan Jin’s breathing was a little unstable, and there was a faint layer of red in his eyes. He pressed his mouth next to Shen Zhixian’s ear and softly repeated the man’s words, “I found you.”

His tone was a bit strange. Shen Zhixian keenly thought that there was something wrong, but he didn’t say anything and only turned his head to look at him.

Yan Jin was hugging him too tightly, with his lowered head tilted forward. When Shen Zhixian turned his head, his lips brushed lightly across Yan Jin’s cheek.

Under the soft touch, the two became simultaneously startled.

—————————
Xixi: Thank you all for your concerns. I didn’t mean to worry you. My daughter hurt her arm so, after I got home from work, I took her to the ER to get an x-ray done to make sure it wasn’t broken, and it wasn’t.

But, poor Little Ten and poor Yuyu. Sometimes, it is true that no good deed goes unpunished.

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