LSDWTWHA chapter 1

Chapter 1

At the end of August, the summer sun fiercely baked the sea area near Anle Island Reef, as if the sunlight directly penetrated to the seabed, warming even the sand grains.

Rich schools of fish gathered here, breeding. At the same time, a group of dangerous predators silently approached.

Su Su, a two-meter-long silver-white shark with some mermaid heritage, seemed out of place among the average four to five-meter-long large shark group.

He followed the school of sharks as they approached the golden-fin tuna golden-fin tuna, which was today’s hunting target.

The sharks dispersed into formation, taking on an attacking posture.

Tuna are known for their delicious taste and have always been a sought-after dish for the shar group, but they are also known for their speed, making it not an easy task to catch them.

Today’s goal was to fill their bellies. Su Su shrank back to the tail of the group, thinking intensely.

The large and agile sharks moved in unison, their dorsal fins silently parting the water’s surface. The sharks acted like experienced hunters, seamlessly surrounding their prey. They moved as if having practiced a thousand times, skillfully herding their prey into a tight space.

Sprinting, dividing, chasing, hunting.

Sharp teeth tore through the prey’s weak scales, turning the blue seawater red with blood, and the floating pieces of flesh turned the clear water murky.

The prey had already fallen; the once-cooperative partners now started fighting over the food.

Su Su also began searching for his lunch. He targeted a smaller tuna. Mixing in among a few large sharks, he calculated his route and seized the opportunity when the tuna tried to evade the larger sharks, lunging forward to bite down on its tail.

The taste of blood stimulated Su Su’s senses, intensifying his hunger. A bloodthirsty excitement ignited in his eyes.

The bitten prey struggled desperately, but its injured tail made its movements gradually slow.

Just when Su Su planned to tear off the fish’s flesh for a hearty meal, several larger sharks surrounded him from all directions, mercilessly snatching the prey from his mouth.

Again! Again!

Su Su thought, feeling wronged and furious. Just because he was smaller in size, those larger fellow sharks shamelessly robbed him of his catch.

Unfortunately, Su Su couldn’t overpower them and could only swallow his anger and search for new prey.

However, the fighting would not cease, and Su Su tried again and again, only to fail repeatedly.

The hunting time passed quickly.

Su Su had worked hard all day and still had an empty stomach.

This kind of failed hunting experience was not new to him. Because he possessed half mermaid heritage, he was far weaker than other sharks, often having his prey snatched away, leaving him to pick up the scraps behind them; when his luck was bad, he might even go hungry.

When food was severely scarce, there would even be sharks casting their gaze upon him. If it weren’t for his quick speed, he might have already ended up in some shark’s stomach by now.

Fortunately, Su Su had other ways to supplement his meals, preventing himself from starving to death.

Su Su left the shark group and dived down, where the water was a deeper hue, almost like the dark blue that covered the sunlight at dusk. Coral were obscured, and seagrasses swayed, with small shrimp and crabs occasionally scuttling about among the stones.

Su Su adeptly stopped near an unassuming rock, sweeping the seabed with his tail, 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 pulled out the nearly one-meter-long box from the seabed.

The lock on the box had already been broken. The young shark skillfully used his tail to flip it open, revealing a large, tattered fishing net that nearly filled the box, and an old waterproof speaker crammed into the corner. There was also a round chip, neatly placed in the middle of the box. It was the size of a coin and strung on an indeterminate black chain, with a lion pattern engraved on the back.

These three items were treasures that Su Su had discovered from a sunken ship.

The speaker could emit sounds specifically designed to attract certain small fish for catching, while the fishing net could intercept their escape routes. This was a hunting method Su Su learned from the chip.

Humans referred to this thing as a “textbook.”

By pressing the button in the middle, the coin-sized chip could project a light screen filled with the colorful and fantastic human world. From the enlightenment of language and characters to the introduction of local customs, and even some scientific knowledge and basic courses, a single chip covered everything from enlightenment to completion of nine years of compulsory education.

Some courses were easy for Su Su to grasp at a glance, while others required several re-reads to understand, and there were some he couldn’t comprehend at all, like that subject called physics, which discussed many phenomena he had never seen and thus could not understand.

But this did not affect Su Su’s interest in learning, as life in the ocean was too dull, and this “textbook” was his only form of entertainment.

Su Su would carry the box wherever he went, then find a safe place to bury it upon reaching his destination, just like now.

Blind fish would only become active at night, so there was still plenty of time.

Su Su first turned on the speaker, placing it in a hidden spot. The sound waves emitted by the speaker were inaudible to normal fish. Su Su didn’t worry about attracting unnecessary trouble. He then used his teeth to tear open several corners of the fishing net, securing it on the nearby rock.

This was the hunting method the chip taught him.

The damaged fishing net couldn’t be considered high quality; it already had several holes in it, where the threads were fraying. During the pulling, Su Su tried to be as gentle as possible, but a shark’s teeth couldn’t match the dexterity of human fingers, so it tore in several places during the process. If he kept using it for a few more times, this fishing net would be completely ruined.

Arrangements were made, and now it was time to wait.

This method of waiting for prey was highly inefficient. The speaker was already a bit damaged, producing intermittent sounds. The leaky fishing net often allowed prey to escape, but as long as he waited longer, there would still be a slim chance of a meager harvest to ease his hunger.

Time had approached sunset, and sunlight coated the ocean’s surface with a layer of floating particles like gold.

This was Su Su’s favorite time of day; he swam up to the surface.

Peering up from underwater, everything in the sky seemed to be partitioned by a barrier, with the edge of the world stopping at sea level.

The sky was painted with a dazzling red hue by the afterglow of the setting sun.

Su Su had never seen flame in reality. He often thought that every sunset, perhaps it was the falling sun igniting the clouds, creating such brilliant colors.

Behind the reefs where Su Su was, lay the territory of the Mermaid Kingdom. He had sneaked over there several times before, and it was a completely different scenery. They had built fortresses on the seabed to fend off attacks from other sea creatures, using modern production lines to weave shark silk and export it to the human world in exchange for weapons, food, and some technology products.

West of there was land, a place ruled by humans.

They had created unimaginable civilizations, enabling lifeless things to fly in the sky, swim in the water, and even leave their living land to travel to distant skies.

Su Su flicked his tail, realizing this ocean was vast—so vast that it would take a lifetime to explore every corner. Yet he felt as though it was a cage, a massive, flowing prison, confining him right here.

Su Su couldn’t fly or walk; leaving the water made breathing a problem. Day in and day out, he repeated the same life—hunting, hunting, hunting—and he always failed, always left unsatisfied.

But Su Su always felt that this shouldn’t be the entirety of life; living shouldn’t be merely about survival.

He wanted to leave this place.

Su Su stared in the direction of land for a long time until the dazzling red gradually turned into a deep, rich indigo, then into a blue deeper than the sea, finally transforming into a heavy black that couldn’t disperse.

Stars flickered on, twinkling faintly, among them one particularly big and bright, like a diamond embedded in the night.

Su Su recognized it; that was the main starship, the Baize. Su Su had seen it in the textbook.

The textbook stated that it was the first interstellar battleship developed by humanity, capable of accommodating hundreds of starships, thousands of mechas, and tens of thousands of missile launchers, serving as a solid defense line to protect the planet from alien invasions.

In his leisure time, he had established a one-sided, peculiar friendship with that distant starship, always coming to the surface to gaze at it, as if watching from afar granted him some silent companionship.

The dark, desolate sky resembled another boundless ocean, and Su Su couldn’t help but imagine what the scenery there might be like, wondering whether the enormous warship, navigating through the vastness of space, felt the same kind of loneliness he did.

As the ocean surface fell into darkness, it posed no challenge for Su Su, relying on his innate sensitivity, comparable to a GPS navigation system. Su Su accurately swam back to the trap he had laid.

To Su Su’s surprise, it seemed that there were already prey caught in the net, even though it wasn’t time yet. The prey was not like blind fish; it was significantly larger, and from the shifting shadow, it appeared to be around one point five to one point eight meters long.

The speaker’s sound wouldn’t attract larger fish. Su Su guessed that this one was just unlucky, hurrying by and accidentally running into it. This was a rare feast; Su Su excitedly accelerated, preparing to strike the prey deadly.

“How could there be a fishing net here? Ugh… I can’t untangle it; the more I try, the tighter it gets…” The sound was melodious, akin to singing, not reaching the ears but directly entering the mind.

A mermaid?

Upon hearing the voice, the little shark barely managed to stop its diving momentum, barely holding its sharp teeth before the fishing net.