The Second Fragment

The Ten Thousand Seas Banquet was an ancient ceremony with which the Spirit Trout Race entertained its most honored guests. Though it lacked the complicated etiquette of human banquets, it possessed its own deep-sea overlord's boldness and extravagance.

The delicacies in the hall were all rare treasures taken from beneath ten-thousand-fathom sea trenches: there were completely transparent "Ice Heart Snail Slices," as thin as cicada wings, melting on the tongue into a wisp of cold current that washed through the lungs and organs; there was "Dragon Whale Brew," made from the brain marrow of thousand-year dragon whales, a single cup of which made the spiritual energy in one's dantian surge like a rising tide; and there was "Red Flood Dragon Belly," roasted over Samadhi True Fire, charred outside and tender within, its fragrance actually able to condense in the seawater without dispersing. The dancers of the Spirit Trout Race wore gauze and danced lightly within the water curtain at the center of the hall, their figures like fish, graceful beyond words.

Lu Changsheng and the others had originally worried that, as humans, they would be treated coldly, but to their surprise, Patriarch Xuan Ming wore a warm smile from beginning to end and raised his cup again and again. Even those elders who had looked stern at first gradually lowered their guard under Xiao Yi's sleeve-tugging, coquettish pleading, and their words actually gained a few traces of warmth.

Lu Changsheng understood in his heart that all this hospitality was because of the little princess sitting on Xuan Ming's knee, currently enthusiastically placing food into his bowl. Xiao Yi's status within the race was far more exalted than they had imagined. Xuan Ming treated this pearl in his palm as if he feared she would break if held in his hand