The sun had begun to sink in the west outside Xujing City.
And now, having caught something truly amazing, Annie had planned to add a new dish to dinner. She returned home more than an hour before mealtime.
"Master Annie!"
"You're back?"
"Huh!"
"What's that?"
"Is it a snake?"
So, when Annie came back into the courtyard of the Bamboo Grove Cottage, swinging the huge eel she was carrying, Jin Xiaoli, who'd been home alone, suddenly leaped out of the lotus pond and hurried over to greet her first. She couldn't help staring curiously at the thing in Annie's hand.
"It's not a snake!"
o(*｀ー′)o
"It's an eel!"
(?~?)
"Have you never seen one?"
(lll￢▽￢)
Annie asked, sounding displeased and puzzled, but she didn't stop Jin Xiaoli from coming closer to examine it and tentatively reach out to touch it.
"Never."
Jin Xiaoli shook her head.
"Do rivers have fish like this?"
"It looks kind of like a water snake, except it doesn't have scales..."
Back when she, the Great Immortal Carp, had ruled the river, Jin Xiaoli had never bothered to give such a small thing a second glance. She'd always gone after big grass carp or big black carp. Something with so little meat wasn't worth her attention, so naturally, she didn't remember ever seeing one.
"Ew!"
"Why does it have whiskers? And there's a bump on its head. How strange!"
After looking at it for a while, Jin Xiaoli suddenly exclaimed. This strange "fish," which looked neither like a fish nor a snake, was beyond anything she'd imagined.
"It's probably close to transforming into a dragon eel, right?"
(*^▽^*)
Annie said, lifting it proudly.
"Give it a few hundred or even a thousand years, and it might turn into a dragon!"
(^_?)☆
Of course, there was no