[Successfully loaded the perspective of Host Body Three—"Eternal Abyss Shark Yagubalu." Welco to the real world.]
A cold notification tone echoed in his mind as Ji Minghuan groggily opened his eyes.
The first thing to enter his vision was a transparent crystal ball about the size of a soccer ball. The crystal ball appeared to be made of glass, filled to the brim with salty seawater.
At this mont, his Host Body Three, Yagubalu, was floating within this cramped pocket of water. The sensation of being enveloped by water currents washed over his body from all directions, feeling just as warm and natural as when Host Body One was wrapped in its Restraining Bands.
It felt as though the seawater was a part of this body.
As he regained his senses, his water-filled pupils slightly contracted. He raised his head, noticing a circular opening at the top of the crystal ball that could be opened and closed, which was currently shut tight.
Through the glass surface of the crystal ball, he could see his own reflection. He was a blue shark barely the size of a human palm.
The shark's eyes and body were round and plump, with a trace of dark blue in its pupils and a mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth. Wagging its chubby tail, a small black dorsal fin could be seen on its back.
The little shark could breathe smoothly in the seawater, an instinct deeply engraved into its genetics.
Ji Minghuan blinked, staring unblinkingly at the reflection of the little shark on the glass surface.
Recalling the character's background, he thought to himself, 'This shark seems capable of growing many tis larger. I need to see how that transformation works after loading the mories. If I accidentally enlarge myself and burst the crystal ball, wouldn't my undercover ga be over before it even begins?'
He twisted his shark head, looking around like a newborn child.
The crystal ball rested on a nightstand. Before him was a luxuriously and elegantly decorated bedroom. Firelight crackled in the fireplace, but unlike the outside world, the flas consuming the firewood were a deep ocean blue. Whether it was the curtains, the carpet, the chandelier on the vaulted ceiling, or the frad oil paintings on the walls, everything made one feel as if they had stepped into the bedchamber of a dieval noble.
As the shark surveyed its surroundings, a black-and-blue interface slowly materialized before its eyes.
[Main Quest 1: Devour the Legendary Whale, Chikanao, and completely destroy the Whalegarden.]
[Quest Reward: 3 Attribute Points, 4 Skill Points, 6 Division Points.]
[Main Quest 2: Conceal the identity of the Eternal Abyss Shark. Use your words to beguile the Third Prince, Xize'er, and gain his trust.]
[Quest Reward: 1 Attribute Point, 1 Skill Point, 1 Division Point.]
'Why do these two main quests make
seem like the villain?' Ji Minghuan thought. 'Speaking of which... Li Qingping subtly ntioned the Third Prince of the Whalegarden before, saying that his two older brothers were extrely cruel and secretly harbored murderous intent toward him. Could it be that this character's main quest is actually to pretend to help the Third Prince fight for the throne, only to burn the bridge after crossing it and devour the entire Whalegarden?'
Reaching this train of thought, Ji Minghuan suddenly felt that this character's main quest was a bit inhumane... Oh, wait, this thing wasn't human to begin with. With that realization, he felt relieved.
He had learned a crucial lesson from the Tutor of the Salvation Society: to be flexible with moral standards.
Humans should be judged by human moral systems;
Therefore, a shark naturally had to be judged by the values of a shark. It was just a hungry little animal. What was wrong with eating a whale? What was wrong with the law of the jungle among marine life?
'I'm rejecting my humanity, Li Qingping!' Ji Minghuan thought. 'Don't bla
when the ti cos. I really didn't an to swallow this whale; it's just the instinct of a carnivore, alright?'
[System Prompt: Currently loading the mories of Host Body Three. Following a five-second countdown, the mories of Ga Character Three, Yagubalu, will be poured into your mind. Please prepare yourself ntally.]
As the system prompt faded, a splitting headache caused Ji Minghuan to let out a muffled groan, feeling as if a red-hot pair of iron tongs had been pressed directly against his skull.
Even turning his pain sensitivity down to the absolute minimum could not mask the nerve-trembling agony.
After all, these were not the mories of a human, but those of a long-lived animal species.
A little over a decade of human life experiences compared to this shark's centuries of living at the bottom of the sea was as pale as the thinnest, most fragile sheet of paper. There was simply no comparison.
A mont later, the headache finally began to subside. Ji Minghuan took a gurgling breath in the water, then slowly closed his eyes and entered his spiritual world.
When he opened his eyes again, he was greeted by the sight of that familiar library. The setting sun was a deep crimson, its slanted rays casting light into the building.
Ji Minghuan's spiritual body remained in the form of a four-year-old child, his underdeveloped fra draped in a set of loose pajamas.
Glancing upward, he noticed an additional shadow hanging from the library's ceiling. Alongside the already hanged Black Cocoon and the Chess Player, there was now a human-sized shark.
The shark was entirely dark blue, surrounded by swirling currents of intertwined black and blue water. Suspended in midair by a fishhook, it kept its eyes closed and remained completely motionless, much like a freshly caught fish hanging in an early morning market.
'Another useless hosted persona,' Ji Minghuan thought. 'Will these corpses eventually cram my library completely full? Good thing this shark didn't appear in my spiritual world at its original size, otherwise wouldn't my library instantly transform into an aquarium?'
He walked over to the bookshelves. Due to the newly loaded character mories, he could see that the originally empty shelves were now packed with massive rows of books.
This shark had lived for an unknown number of years, constantly hunting in the sea, living the exact sa life day in and day out.
As a result, its mories appeared on the shelves in the form of children's picture books, with many details omitted. With every turn of a page, a month or even a year of the shark's story passed, told in an incredibly brief manner.
Ji Minghuan casually pulled a few books from the shelf and flipped through those mories. The vast majority of them were recounted from a predator's perspective, detailing how this last Eternal Abyss Shark survived in the deep sea. It felt like watching an endless nature docuntary series on underwater animal life. He was better off not reading it.
However, he specifically singled out the final picture book to read. It showed that by the year 2020, the shark's true body had grown to a massive length of a hundred ters. Although it could already be considered an absolute behemoth, it was still only half the size of the Legendary Whale.
In other words, if it wanted to devour the Legendary Whale, this shark needed to at least double in size.
The character's mories also ntioned another detail: this shark possessed the Ability to alter its size and appearance.
Thus, it had shrunk its body down to the size of a palm, disguising its appearance to resemble a Nobe Shark—entirely blue, completely round, and completely devoid of any murderous aura or intimidating presence typical of a shark.
This species was also known as the Palm Shark. There was no size difference between a mature Nobe Shark and an infant one. Therefore, in the dog-eat-dog environnt of the ocean, the Nobe Shark species suffered from a natural disadvantage, born at the absolute bottom of the food chain.
They could only survive by preying on microscopic fish and eating seaweed. Because of this, Nobe Sharks were incredibly rare. For humans, catching a Nobe Shark was equivalent to dredging up a bucket of gold. Many wealthy individuals in the Whalegarden kept them as pets.
To infiltrate the Whalegarden, Yagubalu, a hundred-ter-long apex predator of the ocean, was forced to swallow its pride and transform into a Nobe Shark. It ultimately got its wish, falling into the hands of the King, who subsequently presented it to the Third Prince as a Gift.
According to the mories, the Third Prince was nad Xize'er, and he was twelve years old this year.
Xize'er was a boy suffering from albinism.
Because he had been frail and sickly since childhood, he was frequently warned against going outside casually. He certainly wasn't allowed to play in the commoners' world like the other princes. Consequently, his longest companion was likely this very bedroom—luxuriously decorated on the surface, but utterly dull and boring in reality.
To him, this place was like a beautiful birdcage, and he was the captive bird trapped inside.
Only on the rare occasions when he received his royal father's permission would the Third Prince be let out of his cage to catch a glimpse of the outside world.
Because of this, the Third Prince's ntal age was actually much lower than that of his peers, equivalent at best to a six or seven-year-old child. He was naive and introverted, frail and sickly. Thus, he failed to bond with his two older brothers. The First Prince and the Second Prince rarely interacted with him, only dropping by occasionally to check on him.
Just as Ji Minghuan was reviewing these mories, a figure stepped into the silent bedroom.
The shark turned its head inside the crystal ball, laying eyes upon a young boy with white hair and pale cyan eyes.
He wore a crown atop his head and was draped in a luxurious robe over a button-up shirt. The boy was so delicate and pretty that he resembled a girl, with long white eyelashes drooping gracefully over his eyes.
If his guess was correct, this was the Third Prince of the Whalegarden's royal court—Xize'er.
The people in the Whalegarden spoke Latin, and the Eternal Abyss Shark possessed an extraordinary capacity for learning. In just the short span of ti since entering the Whalegarden, it had already mastered much of the grammar.
Ji Minghuan pressed his shark head against the surface of the crystal ball, staring intently at Xize'er.
Xize'er walked over, his long cape trailing across the floor like the tail feathers of a bird. He picked up the crystal ball from the nightstand and sat down on the soft bed.
"Li Qingping is coming back..." he muttered to himself. Lying back on the bed, he held the crystal ball high in the air, locking eyes with the shark, his tone brimming with unconcealable joy.
"Who is Li Qingping? What a silly na. The person must be quite silly too, right?" Staring into his eyes, the shark slowly projected its voice out of the crystal ball.
Xize'er paused in surprise, his eyes slowly, ever so slowly, widening to their limits.
A vacuum-like silence enveloped the two of them until the shark inside the crystal ball broke the quiet once more:
"Hey, can't you hear
talking?"
"A talking Nobe Shark!" Xize'er finally reacted, his jaw dropping as he shouted in dumbfounded shock.
"Shh! Keep your voice down! If anyone else hears you, they'll roast
alive and eat !" the shark whispered sharply.
The boy and the shark stared at each other in a wide-eyed standoff. Xize'er sat there in a daze for a long mont before his lips slowly curved into a smile. A burning brilliance suddenly burst forth in his eyes, completely resembling a child who had just spotted a brand-new toy in a store.
He first turned his head to glance around the room. Upon confirming that no one had seen this, he quickly yanked the covers over his body and the crystal ball, creating a makeshift tent. He then leaned close to the glass and asked in a hushed voice:
"Can you... really talk?"
"Would it be a ghost talking instead?" the shark replied. "Shh! This is a secret between us. You're not allowed to tell anyone else, otherwise, I'll bite my own tongue off right here in the crystal ball."
"Mhm, mhm, a secret!" Xize'er nodded obediently, his pale cyan eyes glowing faintly in the darkness. "Shark, Shark, what's your na?"
"Yagubalu," the little shark replied.
"No one ever told
that Nobe Sharks could speak human language. It wasn't even ntioned in my textbooks."
"That's because I'm a particularly noble Nobe Shark," the shark boasted. "In short... I'm a shark aristocrat."
Xize'er hesitated for a mont before quietly asking, "Then, do you eat people? When Royal Father first gave you to , my brothers scared
by saying that all sharks eat human flesh, and Nobe Sharks are no exception. But the books clearly state that Nobe Sharks can grow up without needing to eat."
"I don't eat human flesh. I'm a vegetarian; I'm a vegetarian shark." The shark paused before dropping its voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I also eat Anecdote Fragnts. You can feed
all your useless Anecdote Fragnts."
"That's good..." Xize'er breathed a sigh of relief. "Wait a minute, you eat Anecdote Fragnts?"
"Yep, yep!" The shark's tone was incredibly smug as it gave its tail a little flick.
"Alright... there are lots of single-use Anecdote Fragnts in the royal court, like 'Moving Stairs' and 'Pigeon ssengers' and such. But if I sneak them out, Royal Father and the others might scold ."
"It's fine, just secretly bring one to feed
every day. I have a very small appetite."
As it spoke, the shark puffed out its tiny chest, seemingly trying to prove that with such a small fra, its appetite must naturally be small as well.
"No problem." Xize'er nodded. "The next ti I go to visit the Anecdote Vault, I'll sneak so fragnts back for you."
"It's a promise then. Liars have to swallow ten thousand needles, and their brains will beco as dumb as Ghost Bell!"
"Who is Ghost Bell?"
"The na of a stupid pig," the shark explained sounding quite authoritative. "It's a character from the fable 'Daddy Black Cocoon and His Three Little Piglets'. Did you not know about it?"
"Oh, wow, you know so much." Xize'er nodded, sighing in admiration. "I've read a lot of books, but I've never heard that story."
Just then, a ghostly pigeon carrying a letter suddenly flew in through the window, its wings fluttering with a flap-flap-flap sound, before it gently alighted on the back of Xize'er's hand.
"What is that?" The shark peered at the pigeon outside the crystal ball.
"The Anecdote Fragnt 'Pigeon ssenger'. It's the lowest-grade and most common Anecdote Fragnt. Everyone here uses it to deliver ssages."
As Xize'er spoke, he untied the letter from the spectral pigeon, causing the bird to dissipate into a shower of eerie green fluorescent light.
He glanced at the letter. "This is from Li Qingping. Li Qingping is back!" Xize'er's expression filled with excitent.
The shark froze for a mont, thinking to itself, 'Li Qingping, you truly deserve a thousand deaths. Are you secretly tricking little kids behind your best bro's back?'
"Oh, oh! Then you better hurry up and bring this Li Qingping over to et this shark!" it declared. "I want to see if he lives up to his na and is just as much of a silly fool as he sounds."
"Mhm, mhm! Yagubalu, you wait right here! I'll go bring Li Qingping over."
Xize'er spoke rapidly as he placed the crystal ball back onto the nightstand. Pressing his cheek against the glass, he waved at the little shark, then turned and bolted out of the room without looking back.
Through the glass of the crystal ball, Ji Minghuan watched the Third Prince's retreating back through the shark's eyes. He couldn't help but marvel internally, 'He really is incredibly naive and innocent. It seems this prince has been thoroughly sheltered. There's no way he turns out to be one of those two-faced characters who are innocent on the outside but ruthless on the inside, right?'
Just then, a black-and-blue prompt interface popped up in front of the shark.
[Completed Main Quest 2: Conceal the identity of the Eternal Abyss Shark. Use your words to beguile the Third Prince, Xize'er, and gain his trust.]
Seeing this, Ji Minghuan couldn't help but roll his eyes.
He thought to himself, 'You call this beguiling the Third Prince? With this prince's level of ntal maturity, is the word 'beguile' even necessary? To put it bluntly, isn't this just coaxing a child? I'm the best at coaxing children. The Salvation Society still has a whole bunch of world-destroying, corrupted little brats waiting for
to coax them.'
[Quest Reward Obtained: 1 Attribute Point, 1 Skill Point, 1 Division Point.]
[Main Quest 2 has been updated to Stage Two: Protect the Third Prince, Xize'er, from the assassinations of the First Prince and Second Prince, ensuring the Third Prince, Xize'er, successfully survives until August 1st.]
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