MASG chapter 36

 

70 months?

A year has 12 months, 70 months…

Xia Yu quickly calculated — not quite six years.

But almost six years! That means the Tide has been working for nearly six years without ever docking! They’d been working on the ship the whole time, relying on the chip’s services to dispel loneliness and the fear of the sea.

Jingwei: [I knew this world was full of trouble… You must tell the adults this news, you can’t handle it alone.]

“I know. I can’t handle it. If only I were older.” Xia Yu didn’t pretend otherwise. At his age, not holding the team back was the best he could do. They’d found the special medicine for Mi Dou, but their fate was still uncertain.

He didn’t know when Yan Xia and Xi Ban would return. Wouldn’t he already be drowned by the time they reappeared?

Mo An hugged him at that moment.

The little jellyfish was scared—he knew. His body grew warm again, snuggled up beside Xia Yu. That was all he could do for now; after all, they were both small.

“Sorry, I’m too small.” He apologized to Xia Yu. “If I were big like the other sirens, like Meng Qingqing, then—”

Xia Yu shook his head, and a warm current of water circled him, offering some comfort. It was okay—even if he died here, he wouldn’t be cold; he’d die warm.

“I really want to grow big. If I were bigger, maybe I could flip this ship and rescue you.” Mo An had never desired that; his belief in power overcame everything. “We’ll swim out and to land. You can breathe big gulps of air.”

“That’s fine. I can breathe big gulps now, too. Look.” Xia Yu immediately began to pant, breathing deeply with all his might, just to show Mo An that he could too, so his little brother wouldn’t be so sad.

He was already small, and now someone even smaller was beside him. The two depended on each other in the seawater with no adult to help them. Xia Yu bowed his head and looked at Mo An’s uneven tailfin, feeling a pang in his heart.

“Does it still hurt?” he asked.

Mo An shook his head and clutched the syringe tightly. “It’ll be fine when we get back. We can give Mi Dou the injection.”

“Yeah, yeah, as long as we give this injection, everything will be fine.” Xia Yu tried to lift his head. The seawater had reached his chest. “The three of us can grow up together. I wonder what Mi Dou will look like when he grows up.”

Seeing Xia Yu struggle, Mo An wrapped his arms around his waist and lifted him up. Xia Yu’s feet left the rack, and he floated on the water’s surface. Finally, he could save some energy.

By then, the lights in the cargo hold had completely gone out, leaving only the sound of water pouring in.

What kind of sound was that? Xia Yu found it torturous.

His surroundings were unclear, and the oxygen was decreasing while the water was increasing. He began to feel intense oppression and suffocation. The sound of water, which had originally been negligible, became particularly pronounced. The louder it was, the closer Death’s footsteps seemed.

“So warm.” Xia Yu touched Mo An’s round little belly.

Mo An quietly emitted heat while thinking about how to get Xia Yu out of there.

“You really are a pretty little fish. I’d like to see what you’ll look like when you grow up.” Xia Yu smiled.

“Then grow up with me, and you’ll see.” Mo An swayed his tail, using it to maintain his balance despite its damage. It was difficult, but he was determined to do his best.

“When you grow up, you can return to the deep sea.” Xia Yu held out his hand. “Go see your Haisiruola, or visit your spawning ground! It must be beautiful there. Surely there are many mermaids who will welcome you.”

“I don’t want to go back.” Mo An anxiously glanced around. Why weren’t Yan Xia and Xi Ban back yet?

“Even if you go back, be careful. Don’t trust humans so easily. After all, not everyone in this world is good. Go back, there’s no AI there.” Xia Yu even considered taking off his wristband and giving it to him. “Also, if you see the blue abyssal jellyfish in the sea, don’t be curious. Don’t go look at it.”

“Stop talking. You don’t sound good.” Mo An was frantic. There was only a meter or two left to the ceiling.

Those meters were their living space. Once they were filled, the cargo hold would flood, leaving no cavity. The sound of water rushing in grew louder and louder. At the same time, they heard two people calling out.

“What on earth is happening?”

“Where are Mo An and Xia Yu? How do we get out?”

It was Yan Xia and Xi Ban! Xia Yu shouted with all his might, “Here! We’re here! Don’t worry about us. Contact Silver Fang quickly! You’re not Huo. Time is looping. Only four minutes and twenty-seven seconds! Don’t let Silver Fang—”

The water’s surface rose rapidly, and Xia Yu accidentally swallowed water.

“Cough, cough… Don’t let Silver Fang go to the captain’s room. The navigation log is with me. The Tide has been at sea for seventy months. The kitchen has no food. Go to the central cafeteria!” Xia Yu shouted intermittently, his voice like a thin thread ready to snap at any moment. “Don’t go to the captain’s room!”

Yan Xia, Xi Ban, and the others were still some distance away, catching only fragments of what he said.

“Time loop! Please believe me!” Xia Yu choked again. “Contact Silver Fang! The chip is behind the ear. They… don’t have loneliness!”

The water rose again, nearly sweeping Xia Yu from Mo An’s hands. Yan Xia wasn’t faring much better. She tried to grab Xi Ban, but they were a second off.

“Grab me!” Yan Xia reached out.

“Help… help…” But Xi Ban’s hand hadn’t reached her yet when a wave covered his head, and he was swallowed by the water without saying another word. The water acted like a barrier, casually taking away a life.

Then, silence returned and Xi Ban’s voice was gone.

“Xi Ban! Xi Ban!” Yan Xia’s heart skipped a beat. It was pitch black around her, and she couldn’t tell where Xi Ban had been swept to. But now, there was an even more terrifying situation—what Xia Yu had said.

A moment ago, she and Xi Ban had been searching for Xia Yu and Mo An. No one understood why the seawater had surged in so suddenly and so fast. In a few minutes, the water had risen to this level, intent on killing.

She hurriedly took out the walkie-talkie. “Silver Fang! To the central cafeteria! Time loop!”

Silver Fang was still interrogating crew members when he noticed something was wrong. The Tide was obviously sinking, and large puddles had formed on the F1 deck. At that moment, Yan Xia’s voice came through his earpiece. He couldn’t attend to the two crewmen, so he turned and asked, “Say that again!”

“It’s what Xia Yu said!” Yan Xia was tossed by the water. “Don’t go to the captain’s room!”

Silver Fang had just had that thought when he asked, “How did he know I was going to the captain’s room?”

“Time loop! It’s looped many times!” Sudden waves splashed Yan Xia in the face. “The navigation log is here. The captain must have been to the cargo hold. The Tide has been at sea for seventy months. Don’t go to the kitchen. There’s no food!”

Silver Fang, who had been about to head to the kitchen, stopped again. His intentions had been predicted! The time loop was real!

“There’s nothing in the kitchen. They want to go home. You need to go to the central cafeteria.” Yan Xia had heard this from Xia Yu. This should be their last loop. Her head strained upward as she gasped for air, her nose only a dozen centimeters from the ceiling — perilously close.

She had no strength left to find Xi Ban and no energy left to care for Xia Yu and Mo An. “Silver Fang! Silver Fang, can you hear me?”

“I’m heading to the cafeteria now! How are you over there? The ship is sinking!” Silver Fang shouted.

“I’m almost dead!” Yan Xia kicked the water hard. “Don’t worry about me. Go! Wake them up! Make them go home… Killing them all at once is unlikely. Wake them up!”

The space, only a few centimeters wide, was compressing like torture, slowly pushing everyone toward death. Yan Xia could still hear Xia Yu’s calls, sometimes near, sometimes far; none were complete. Seawater filled her nostrils, chilling her, and a gust carried Xia Yu’s voice back to her.

“They… don’t want to go home!”

After he finished shouting this, Xia Yu was completely submerged, entering the closed world under the water.

They don’t want to go home.

If they had truly wanted to go home, Silver Fang would have awakened them by now, and there wouldn’t have been another loop.

So Xia Yu guessed that they never wanted to go home in the first place. The chip had completely erased their yearning for land and home.

In fact, they no longer ‘needed’ to go home.

Only crew members who didn’t need to go home could endure a seventy-month voyage and remain aboard for so long. They no longer resisted the sea or longed for land—they had become one with the ocean.

So the problem must be here!

Xia Yu wanted to shout a few more times, at least to hear Yan Xia’s response. That way, he would know that the message had been passed on successfully. But he never got that chance. Even when he pressed his face tightly against the ceiling, all he encountered was seawater—no air remained.

He opened his mouth to call out again, but seawater rushed in instead. He spat it out, held his breath, and realized for the first time that he didn’t like swimming all that much.

The sea was strong. Darkness surrounded him.

So dark. So cold. So terrifying.

Xia Yu grabbed blindly at something—probably a horizontal bar on the rack. He hadn’t even managed a deep breath before he was swallowed whole. Panic consumed his oxygen supply faster than anything. Usually, he could hold his breath underwater for five or six minutes, but now, ten seconds felt like ten years.

Every second dragged on like a century—worse than death itself.

The dread of waiting to drown nearly killed him before he actually died. The current separated him from Mo An, he couldn’t find those small, cold hands anymore.

Soon, Xia Yu felt the last of his oxygen burn out. Water forced its way into his mouth.

His throat spasmed, his lips trembled uncontrollably, and panic spread through him.

His eyes were wide open, but he saw nothing. His ears were filled with water. His limbs flailed. He wanted to hiccup, cough, and breathe. His chest hurt. Was this what it felt like when your lungs were about to burst? But Xia Yu refused to give in. He refused to open his mouth.

He knew that once you opened your mouth while drowning, there was no going back.

He wanted to live.

He desperately wanted to live. He wanted to grow up and eat delicious food. He didn’t want to die—he hadn’t seen enough of the world yet.

He wondered what the grown-up world would look like.

Then his mouth opened, but not because he wanted it to.

Another mouth forced it open.

What entered wasn’t seawater, but oxygen—the very thing he needed to live.

Mo An’s lips were pressed against his, transferring air to him breath by breath.

The mermaid sisters had told him before that mermaids have only two places where their blood runs bright red: the heart and the gills. Everywhere else, it’s pale blue.

Why only those two places? Because the heart and gills are vital organs for breathing—they filter oxygen from seawater and send it into the blood. In the sea, pale blue blood is hard to see, allowing mermaids to hide their wounds. However, the heart and gills were too important; if they were injured, the injury had to be noticed.

Now, thin red streams were seeping from the slits on Mo An’s gills.

He only had six gill slits, not twelve like an adult merman. The oxygen he filtered was only enough for one, not two. Xia Yu’s breathing was fast and shallow; his body was in a state of panic due to the lack of air. The moment he felt oxygen enter his mouth, he began gulping it greedily.

“I want to live.” That was the only thought in Xia Yu’s mind. He couldn’t think of anything else.

His gills ached from overexertion. Mo An’s tail hung downward, bracing against the current to keep them from being swept apart. He didn’t even notice the blood leaking from his gills.

He wanted to live, too. He wanted to see the world when he grew up. But more than anything, he wanted to survive with his little jellyfish.

More and more oxygen entered their bodies. Mo An held Xia Yu tightly and silently prayed to the Haisiruola he had never met.

He prayed that Yan Xia had heard Xia Yu’s message and passed it on to Silver Fang. He prayed that Silver Fang would realize the truth and awaken the Tide, which had been at sea for seventy months—before the next loop began.

The Tide was sinking.

Silver Fang stood alone at the entrance of the central cafeteria. Two crewmates stood behind him, even more bewildered than he was.

Seawater covered his boots. Yan Xia’s last words echoed in his mind—words that shook him to the core:

“They don’t want to go home!”

That must have been the final message that Xia Yu and Mo An entrusted to her—the last clue passed on at the cost of their lives. No one knew how many loops had occurred beforehand. Each person held a fragment of the truth and passed the final link of the chain to the next person before dying.

“They don’t want to go home…” What did that mean?

The fact that he was still here in this loop meant that the last one had ended in failure. Had he misunderstood their obsession before, thinking it was to go home, and wasted precious time?

If they didn’t want to go home, then what did they want?

The chip erased fear. What else could it erase?

Silver Fang had never felt such tension. This time, he didn’t go to the captain’s room or the kitchen; he rushed straight to the cafeteria. No more repeating old mistakes. He had to strike at the heart of it in one blow.

Team A was missing and Team C was trapped in the flooded cargo hold, likely dead. The remaining members of Team B were scattered.

The odds were stacked against him. Yan Xia, Xia Yu, and Mo An would have to fight this battle together.

“Great Lord, grant us all things. And from those who have not, take even what they possess.”

Once again, the crew had formed a circle and prayed devoutly to something unseen above.

What did that mean? Silver Fang listened closely. That line was the key—
But who was saying it? The crew’s own minds?

They had been at sea for seventy months.

No, this wasn’t their consciousness. It was the chip’s!

Every networked chip in the world was controlled by Nuwa. It had awakened! The voice belonged to the chip implanted behind their ears—and it was still working!

The chip was stealing something from them.

70 months at sea. The kitchen was completely empty.

Silver Fang now understood what had been taken. The revelation struck him like lightning. He clenched his jaw, ready to gamble everything.

“Everyone, go eat! It’s time to eat!”

The murmurs stopped instantly.

Though the cafeteria was packed with crew members, it was silent enough to hear a pin drop.

“Everyone, it’s…it’s time to eat.” Silver Fang’s throat tightened. This was human empathy—feeling pain for his fellow humans’ suffering.

70 months at sea. The chips behind their ears had done more than erase loneliness; they had erased hunger. That was why the kitchen was unused. They survived on nutrient fluid and basic pills, maintaining only minimal energy.

Controlled. Exploited. Abused.

They had no power, wealth, or status—only the most basic human reactions.

Now, the unseen hand behind everything wanted to take that away, too.

Was he right? Was his gamble correct?

The water kept rising.

One crewmember blinked his hollow eyes, and then a tear fell.

On the B2 floor, in the flooded cargo hold, Yan Xia and Xia Yu were still fighting to survive.

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