The Clam Maiden's Gift

Shi Mu paid no attention to the glowing shells. He swam quickly to the enormous reef and, with one arm, BAM BAM, rapped on it several times.

With a soft puff, a cloud of blood mist spurted from beneath the reef. Like a living thing, it swiftly circled the young man several times before silently sinking into his body.

As soon as Shi Mu inhaled the blood mist, his spirits soared. He let out a long breath underwater, then opened his mouth and breathed freely, just like a fish.

Then he moved swiftly around behind the reef. He quickly dug a rusty iron awl and chisel out of the seabed sand and began carefully chiseling beneath the reef.

The faint white light made everything clear: a giant clam, about the size of a water vat, lay crushed beneath the enormous reef. Its entire body was as white as jade, without a speck of color.

But most of this enormous creature was pinned beneath the reef, unable to move. Only occasional flickers of silver light glimmered across its shell before vanishing.

The section beneath the side of the reef where Shi Mu had been chiseling was now almost completely hollowed out. Even the seabed currents sometimes made it tremble slightly.

After the time it took an incense stick to burn, Shi Mu was beginning to tire from his nonstop chiseling.

He held his breath again and stopped working. Turning around, he returned to the front of the reef and lightly tapped the stone wall three times.

Hearing the sound, the giant clam below sent silver light rippling across its shell, then managed to open it a narrow crack and puff out a cloud of blood mist.

The earlier scene repeated itself.

After Shi Mu absorbed the blood mist, his breathing returned to normal. He swam back to his original spot with hammer and chisel in hand and resumed his painstaking work.

The white giant clam beneath the enormous reef was something the boy had discovered on the seabed two years earlier. When it accidentally sprayed him with a mouthful of blood mist, he had immediately gained the temporary ability to breathe freely underwater.

Overjoyed, he realized the giant clam was no ordinary creature. He had gone home to fetch his hammer and chisel, then returned to the seabed to slowly chip away at the bottom of the reef, hoping to free it.

The giant clam was remarkably perceptive. It seemed to know Shi Mu was trying to free it, and whenever he could no longer breathe underwater, it would spray out a cloud of blood mist so he could keep breathing freely.

But the reef was simply too enormous. Even though Shi Mu could breathe freely underwater, he still had little strength on the seabed, and the stone was extraordinarily hard. It had taken him two full years of chiseling to get this close to succeeding.

During that time, Shi Mu discovered that the blood mist the giant clam sprayed was even more astonishingly mysterious than he had first expected.

Over the past two years, as he absorbed more and more of it, the blood mist—which at first had only let him endure underwater for a very short time—now kept him going for a full incense stick's burn, with time to spare.

Shi Mu had also discovered that the blood mist not only greatly improved his ability in the water, but benefited his body as well.

His body-tempering cultivation, which had stalled for lack of medicinal support, had advanced in one breath from the fourth layer to the seventh. Many things he had struggled to understand had suddenly become clear, as if the mist had also sharpened his comprehension. It had even made him noticeably more mature than others his age.

Otherwise, how could a boy of barely ten have appeared so calm and composed before the old man in the blue robe?

This time, he worked for most of the night before finally leaving the seabed, exhausted, and returning to his home in the fishing village.

By his usual routine, he rested for several days after each trip to the seabed to regain his strength before going down again. But under the circumstances, he could hardly afford to do that.

The following night, the boy once again plunged into the sea from the same stretch of shore.

On the third night, deep beneath the sea!

BOOM!

Several chunks of stone tumbled down, and the reef shuddered violently, beginning to tip slightly toward the hollowed-out side.

The giant clam, which had been pinned tightly beneath the boulder, flashed with dazzling silver light and struggled with all its might.

"It worked!"

Shi Mu was overjoyed. He twisted around, swept his arms through the water, and quickly swam to the other side of the reef to avoid being crushed.

A series of thunderous crashes rang out. The reef had tipped halfway over, and it looked ready to collapse completely. The giant clam was just about to break free from beneath it.

But at that moment, an unknown current suddenly surged toward the falling boulder.

After a long rumble, the tilting reef shuddered and eerily settled back into its original position. The giant clam, which had managed to wriggle partway free, was about to be pinned down again.

"Oh no!"

Seeing this, Shi Mu barely had time to think before shouting. He dropped his waist low, and his feet plunged half a foot into the seabed sand with two soft puffs. Then he jerked his arms and slammed two punches into the reef in succession.

THUD! THUD!

The boy's fists struck the stone wall with a heavy impact. The surrounding seawater churned, and the enormous reef quivered. Its downward pressure eased for a moment.

Seizing the chance, the giant clam flashed with white light. Its form blurred, and it mysteriously vanished from where it had been.

Shi Mu, however, staggered backward several steps. His hands were a bloody mess, and the pain was so intense that he spat out a mouthful of blood. His vision went black, and he collapsed unconscious.

Just then, the water near the boy stirred. The giant clam reappeared amid swirling white light. Its two shells slowly opened, revealing a tiny girl holding a blood-red orb.

The tiny girl looked about six or seven years old and stood only three inches tall. She wore a gauzy little bodice, and her skin was as white as snow. Her features were exquisitely delicate. After carefully studying the unconscious boy and his blood-soaked hands with her star-black eyes, gratitude filled her small face.

She lifted her lotus-root arms and raised the blood-red orb in her hands. Rings of silver light burst from it and swept in every direction.

The next moment, a chorus of whooshes filled the water. Shells of every size poured out from all across the seabed, quickly gathering beneath the boy and gently carrying him upward.

Before long, the seawater parted at the surface, and the boy floated up.

The many shells scattered with a roar and sank back to the seabed.

A sweep of silver light, and the enormous shell reappeared beside the boy. Its two halves gaped open, revealing the tiny girl once more.

She looked at the boy and saw that he was still unconscious. Then she glanced at the blood-red orb in her hands. A hint of hesitation crossed her small face, but in the end, she gritted her teeth and tossed the orb toward him.

The orb spun rapidly above the boy. With a soft puff, a great cloud of blood mist burst out!

Several days later, the girl appeared on the surface of the sea tens of thousands of miles away. She was now the size of an ordinary child, and beside her stood a beautiful middle-aged woman in blue palace robes.

The two rode atop a giant black tortoise as large as a house, speeding toward the depths of the sea with rolling waves surging on either side.

The beautiful woman held the girl's hand. As she gazed at her fondly, she continued to speak:

"Child, if you hadn't run into me this time, you might really have met with disaster. Tsk, tsk. A Heavenly Clam Spirit Maiden—born a water-element spellcaster. Even in the entire history of the East Sea, one appears only once in ten thousand years. It seems the sea-dwelling people of the East Sea are destined to flourish! By the way, child, what's your name? Why don't I see your spirit pearl? The legends say that every Heavenly Clam Spirit Maiden should have a companion spirit pearl. It's a superb material for refining protective magic artifacts..."

"Ah, ah..."

The girl babbled and gestured with her free hand.

"Oh, your name is Xiang Zhu, and you gave your spirit pearl to someone? He was the one who saved your life? Hmm, repaying kindness—that's only right. What? He was a human, and a man, too? Child, remember this: human men are all completely unreliable. If you see him again, just strike him dead with one blow. Come, let's go with your master and get the pearl back... What? You say the spirit pearl was contaminated long ago by a strange blood on the seabed, and it no longer has any use? Oh, if that's the case, then forget it. We'll let that human boy have it. But you must never meet him again..."

The woman's voice grew fainter and fainter as the giant tortoise carried them farther across the sea. At last, they dwindled to a black speck and disappeared completely.

In his fevered haze, Shi Mu felt as if his whole body were burning. His blood seemed to be boiling, and his mouth and throat were parched. Suddenly, he let out a loud shout and sat bolt upright.

Only then did he realize he was sitting on the sandy beach by the sea. Everything around him was quiet, and there wasn't another person in sight.

The boy stared blankly for a moment, then instinctively lowered his head—and was immediately stunned.

The backs of his hands, which should have been a bloody mess, were now smooth and unblemished. There wasn't a trace of injury.

Shi Mu stared at his hands, turning them over and over several times. Then, sensing the strange state of the blood in his body, he couldn't help but look puzzled. After thinking for a while, he suddenly seemed to remember something and frantically felt around his clothes.

A moment later, he pulled a thumb-sized, crystal-clear orb from the front of his shirt.

"This is..."

The boy was puzzled, but certain that he hadn't had this thing on him before.

Shi Mu had no idea that the clouds of blood mist the giant clam had sprayed at him were actually formed from the foreign blood stored inside the girl's spirit pearl.

He had absorbed only one-tenth of that strange blood. Now, to heal his wounds, the girl had forced out all the rest in one go, restoring his injuries in the blink of an eye.

But because the girl had stopped suppressing the blood's corruption, the spirit pearl itself had lost its spiritual nature. It was now nothing more than a somewhat rare luminous pearl. Otherwise, she truly would have been reluctant to leave it behind.

Shi Mu turned the orb over in his hand for a while. It felt exceptionally smooth and was clearly valuable, so he carefully tucked it away against his body.

Afterward, he jumped back into the sea and searched the seabed around the collapsed reef. Only after confirming that the giant clam had truly left did he resurface with a sense of loss and return to his home in the fishing village.

Three days later, the old man in the blue robe and the others appeared in the fishing village.

Not long after, a black carriage, escorted by several mounted knights, sped out of the village and rumbled toward Feng City.