“Heartless! Greedy! Shameless!”
Even as Jiang Ye slid into the water, Guide 233, the Chubby Bird, was still chattering beside her, every word from that beak nothing but a new insult. The poor little bird had probably exhausted her entire life’s collection of negative adjectives on Jiang Ye, as if only this could console her unwillingness after sending Jiang Ye a free ten-draw.
The instant Jiang Ye entered the sea, an invisible light shield surrounded her. This was the effect of the passive skill "Like a Fish in Water." With this, Jiang Ye could ignore all discomfort underwater, moving as if walking on flat ground, and could breathe just as freely as if she were on land.
Chubby Bird also squeezed close to Jiang Ye, nestling into her light shield.
Familiar shallow-water fish swam by in clusters, sending ripples curling around Jiang Ye as they passed.
“Really, isn’t that a bit much?” Jiang Ye paused to check the arrow marker on the mini-map, glancing at Chubby Bird. “Didn’t I just ask you for ten times?”
“Ten times! That’s a whole ten times!” Chubby Bird cried mournfully. “I’ll barely survive this!”
“Say, you’re an NPC—why are you hiding in my shield?” Jiang Ye lifted her eyebrows. “Wait, don’t tell me you can’t breathe underwater?”
“Of course not!” Chubby Bird, after seeing Jiang Ye’s greedy nature, had entirely given up pretending to be a gentle little bird around her. She no longer even tried to hide her temper. “I’m a bird—not a seabird! Seabirds can’t dive either, okay?!”
Having secured her free ten-draw, Jiang Ye now looked at everything with a sense of tranquility and peace.
“All right, all right, just stay by my side and I’ll protect you.”
“Thanks, sis—oh, hell no!!” Chubby Bird reflexively started to thank her, then realized and quickly changed her tune.
Why should she thank this woman?! If not for her, she wouldn’t be stuck in this mess right now! Thank her? Thank her family!
Jiang Ye fully took Chubby Bird’s outbursts as a child’s attempts at being tough. She shook her head and swam onward, carefree.
Chubby Bird hadn’t expected Jiang Ye to be so fast. She flapped her wings hard in the water, but just couldn’t keep up. Seeing that she was about to be left behind and slip out of the light shield, Chubby Bird cried out at the top of her lungs.
“Wait for me! Wait for me!”
“Aaah! My tail’s out! It’s wet, it’s wet!”
“So troublesome.” Jiang Ye frowned slightly. Before the prideful little bird could start cursing, Jiang Ye casually scooped her up and stuffed her into her own pocket.
“Stay put.”
With that, Jiang Ye sped up again.
Chubby Bird reached her tiny talons over the pocket’s edge, poking her round little head out to look around. Her beady eyes were now full of curiosity.
It was her first time in the sea.
So this was what it felt like deep in the ocean. All the sounds and waves were gentle here, like being held in a mother’s arms, filled with warmth and safety.
All sorts of weird creatures swam past—none of which Chubby Bird had seen before. She wasn’t in charge of the Island as an NPC, and was hardly familiar with anything here. This was her first grand sea adventure, tagging along with Jiang Ye.
“Why did you have to come down with me?” Jiang Ye dived deeper. She had never gone this deep before. Now, she was nearly a hundred meters underwater, the middle of the ocean’s euphotic zone.
Chubby Bird muttered something Jiang Ye didn’t catch, quickly changing the subject.
“Hey, hey, hey, player, what’s that?”
Jiang Ye followed the direction of the little bird’s claws. In the water, a group of ribbonfish stood straight up, nearly vertical in the sea.
“Ribbonfish,” Jiang Ye said.
“Ribbonfish?”
“A kind of fish that isn’t really good at swimming, just likes to look up at the sky when it’s got nothing better to do.” After a beat, Jiang Ye added, “Not so different from you birds.”
“Would it kill you not to diss birds?!” Chubby Bird fumed.
“The way ahead isn’t easy,” Jiang Ye warned, rationally. “You sure you want to stay with me?”
Actually, at 100 meters underwater, human visibility was already extremely poor. Jiang Ye didn’t have any lighting equipment. The only reason she could see anything at all was thanks to the passive skill "Like a Fish in Water" and its buff.
This skill, like her Island, was now at Level 10. It allowed Jiang Ye to stay underwater for two hours and even provided some underwater illumination. But this wasn’t like a searchlight—more a faint underwater glow swirling gently around her.
With her own buffed vision, Jiang Ye could see more clearly than most players.
At a hundred meters down, she could still roughly make out the path ahead. Any deeper—
Everyone knew sunlight could reach as far as two hundred meters underwater at most. Between 200 and 1,000 meters was the twilight zone, where the light was dim and visibility depended on the clearness of the water. Photosynthesis wouldn’t happen there. The deeper you go, the less light and the more unknowns await.
It was clear that the mini-map’s arrow was leading her into the deeper, darker, more mysterious parts of the sea.
She was already mentally prepared for this.
But she was less sure if Chubby Bird knew what was coming.
“Of course I’m staying by your side!” Chubby Bird answered without hesitation. “If I’m not here to keep an eye on you, what if you go back on your word?”
“Can’t you just monitor me in your own program?”
“What, you don’t want me here? Let me tell you, I have special functions!”
“I don’t.” Jiang Ye said. “You’re too noisy.”
Guide 233 felt like she was about to faint from rage, right there in the water.
She held it in—hard. To carry out the Supervisor’s task. To be there when the Guardian awakened, so she could later boast to the other birds—she had to endure.
Chubby Bird huffed, shot out of the pocket, then wagged her tail feathers fiercely in front of Jiang Ye’s face, almost brushing past her nose.
Once she was ready, something happened that surprised Jiang Ye: the little bird’s two eyes began to glow, casting beams ahead like deep-sea spotlights.
“Pfft.” Jiang Ye couldn’t hold back a snicker.
Wasn’t this just the bird version of laser eyes?
“Well? Impressed?” Chubby Bird preened, shaking her tail feathers like a wagging dog. When she turned and saw Jiang Ye’s face—trying hard not to laugh—her temper flared. “What are you laughing at?!”
“Nothing.” Jiang Ye shook her head, serious.
“Yes you are!”
“Let’s keep going.” Jiang Ye reached out to ruffle Chubby Bird’s head and then gripped her like a flashlight, aiming the little body to shine around.
“Hey!!!” Chubby Bird shouted in protest.
But even so, she didn’t switch off the light beams from her little bean eyes.
Chubby Bird told herself: Endure. Great patience can overcome all.
Once the Guardian awakened and this player who bullied her was erased from the game, she, Chubby Bird, would have the last laugh.
Yes!
That would be payback for bullying little birds! This was karma!
With Chubby Bird acting as their makeshift deep-sea lamp, traveling became far easier. Jiang Ye continued downward.
She could feel the cold all around her, the temperature slowly draining away. With a serious look, she kept a close eye on everything in the ocean. If any deep-sea creature happened to attack her, she suspected she wouldn’t live to see the surface.
Fortunately, the way was smooth. Maybe it was thanks to her live bird flashlight, but nothing weird ambushed her along the way. The creatures she met were mostly Zhe water fleas, phosphorescent krill, and some small fish—nothing that posed a threat.
Following the arrow on the mini-map, Jiang Ye swam until she reached two massive boulders. The arrow kept urging her onward, but the boulders blocked her way completely, impossible to go left, right, or around.
That left only one option.
Gritting her teeth, Jiang Ye backed up to get a running—well, swimming—start.
“What are you doing?!” Chubby Bird asked, confused.
As soon as she finished, she saw Jiang Ye shoot forward like a rocket, heading straight for the boulders.
“Holy—player, are you crazy?!” Chubby Bird panicked, worried that Jiang Ye’s reckless crash into the rock would drag her down with her.
Thud.
Jiang Ye crashed straight into the boulders headfirst.
But there was no shattering, not even the faintest crack, not even a shudder.
The boulders stood unmoving, imposing like solemn sentinels.
This was the first time Jiang Ye’s Iron Head Technique had failed.
Phosphorescent krill winding around the rock glowed faintly, coming together to form a mocking face.
Jiang Ye balled her fists, feeling taunted.
Just as she steeled herself for a second attempt, the krill gathered into a new symbol.
A crescent moon.
Jiang Ye stared at the boulder. After a long moment, she changed positions, slowly approached, and pressed her palm to the stone’s surface.
The moment her hand touched it, writing appeared on the boulder.
It was a line of Lanxing script in seal style.
“The sun waxes and wanes, the moon is born and dies.”
This was the first time since traveling to this star system that Jiang Ye had seen Lanxing script.
Before this, her mind seemed implanted with the interstellar language, so she always used it seamlessly. She didn’t expect to find Lanxing script here.
“Player?” Chubby Bird called out uncertainly after Jiang Ye had been silent for some time. “Don’t you recognize that writing? It’s fine, from what I know, this is from an ancient planet. Just snap a picture and upload it to the Star Network, and you’ll get a translation.”
“Hmm,” Jiang Ye replied, flat as a stone.
Chubby Bird clearly sensed something was off about Jiang Ye, but couldn’t figure out what.
She was about to say more when Jiang Ye made up her mind.
“We’ll come back tonight.”
“Huh? Wha—?”
Chubby Bird got no say. Jiang Ye grabbed her, and with a teleport, they returned to the Island.
It wasn’t completely dark yet; the sky was still in sunset. Orange hues spread across the heavens, and the sea was God’s palette, brimming with the colors of dusk.
Jiang Ye sat on the Island, gazing into the distance.
At this moment, she had never felt more certain.
Her intuition told her there had to be secrets behind this game that she didn’t yet know.
Of course, there were other possibilities.
Like maybe the company that made Free Wanderer was full of Lanxing culture enthusiasts, so they hid little cultural Easter eggs everywhere—even in bizarre deep-sea quests, inscribing Lanxing script on the door.
Logically, that might be more likely.
But Jiang Ye’s gut insisted: there was something more.
After all, her transmigration itself was already an illogical occurrence.
As Jiang Ye fell into thought, Chubby Bird grew anxious.
“Player, you did get my free ten-draw, you know.” She reminded her, “You are still going to finish that quest, right?”
“Of course.” Jiang Ye explained, “I just suspect that during the day, the boulders we saw won’t open. We probably have to wait for night.”
She recalled the phrase she saw on the stone: The sun waxes and wanes, the moon is born and dies.
Strangely, the “sun” and “death” characters were etched as reliefs, especially prominent.
Jiang Ye suspected that the door’s opening might be tied to the sun and moon.
That was why she brought Chubby Bird back, to avoid wasting time deep underwater.
Jiang Ye watched the sunset a while longer, then got up and headed for her hut.
Chubby Bird trailed after her non-stop.
Jiang Ye entered the room, planning to squeeze in a live stream before night fell, hopefully making some cash.
But when she sat down on the sofa, no matter how many times she tried, she couldn’t open the streaming system.
“What’s going on?” Jiang Ye frowned.
“What? Your streaming system got shut down?” Chubby Bird exclaimed.
Jiang Ye turned and shot her a look, staring so hard that Chubby Bird felt flustered.
She turned to bolt, but Jiang Ye snagged her in one hand.
“Why are you running?”
“I’m—not!”
“Feeling guilty?”
“Who—who’s feeling guilty!”
Jiang Ye’s eyes narrowed.
“You can choose to not tell me the truth. Just like I can choose not to finish the quest.”
“Player! You already got the ten-draw!”
“Yep, I did get the ten-draw.” Jiang Ye smiled. “But what if I really am heartless, greedy, and shameless—what if I go back on my word?”
Chubby Bird screeched, wildly flailing her little bird claws, as if to vent her anger.
But to Jiang Ye, it was just impotent rage.
After letting her finish venting, Chubby Bird finally calmed down.
Overwhelmed by Jiang Ye’s presence, she told the truth.