Chapter 1

Sui Xiong groaned and opened his eyes.

His head hurt—badly!

"I only got drunk. Why does my head hurt so much?" he groaned, trying to roll over and sit up.

Then he saw the blue sky and sea meeting at the horizon. The vast ocean stretched as far as he could see, and white seabirds flew overhead. A salty breeze drifted past, and the waves rippled gently.

What a beautiful view.

But... why was he lying on the sea?

Sui Xiong began to think back.

The night before, he'd been playing an online game with his friends. They'd finally cleared a high-difficulty dungeon and gotten the top-tier gear he'd been dreaming of. But everyone wanted it, and he'd lost the roll.

He'd been so frustrated! He'd nearly thrown his mouse. He couldn't be bothered to keep playing, so he logged off, shut down his computer, and went straight to the food stalls downstairs. He ordered three dishes and a bottle of liquor.

And then?

Then... he couldn't remember.

That was only natural. Who could remember things after getting drunk?

But he lived in an inland city. There wasn't a sea anywhere nearby, and there weren't even any lakes. How had he ended up out at sea just from getting drunk? There wasn't a scrap of land around him, either.

Wait! There wasn't any land at all... so what was he sitting on? The surface of the water?!

Realizing this, Sui Xiong didn't sink into the sea like a character in a comedy cartoon. He was still floating on the surface, which made him feel a little more at ease.

At least he didn't have to worry about drowning. He couldn't swim.

But then he suddenly realized something was wrong.

Where were his legs? Where was his body?

By common sense, when someone sitting down lowered their head, they should see their legs and torso. But he saw nothing.

Strictly speaking, he hadn't seen absolutely nothing. He could just make out a faint, transparent outline, vaguely human-shaped. Beneath it lay clear seawater, with a few fish and shrimp swimming below.

But what did that have to do with him? Where were his legs and torso? Was all that remained this outline?

Sui Xiong raised a hand in bewilderment and discovered that it, too, was just a transparent outline.

Perhaps... probably... most likely... his whole body had turned into this transparent outline?

Or perhaps the transparent outline wasn't a body at all, but... a soul?

"All right, now I know two things. First, I'm out at sea. Second, my body is gone, and I'm probably a soul now."

Just then, he realized that the terrible headache he'd had when he woke up had completely disappeared.

That was probably only natural. If he no longer had a body, how could his head hurt?

Still, it was strange. Even without a body, he could see and hear and smell the briny sea. He could even press his head to the surface and lick the water, and taste it.

He thought it over. Without a body, he didn't have to worry about drowning. And if a soul could still feel things, then he didn't have to worry about going blind or deaf. When you put it that way, maybe the situation wasn't so bad...

"Sure enough, every piece of bad news comes with some good news. No wonder comedies are always full of jokes like, 'I have two things to tell you, one bad and one good.'"

Sui Xiong muttered to himself. Despite the sudden upheaval, he was surprisingly calm. Even he hadn't expected that, in a situation like this, he wouldn't panic but would instead be able to think so clearly.

"Maybe it's because I don't have a body anymore, so I don't feel pain or have things like adrenaline affecting my thoughts?"

Muttering to himself, he tried moving.

He stood up and looked at the sea and his surroundings. His height had indeed changed a little.

Then he lay down again and found that his height changed once more.

"All right, now I'm certain that a soul has a definite shape. It's neither a breath of air, like some myths say, nor a ball... I could win a Nobel Prize for this."

He muttered as he tried taking a few steps, testing whether this body—which might or might not be called a soul—could move.

If he couldn't even move, he'd be in real trouble.

Fortunately, he could still move normally. He could walk, run, and jump. He didn't seem much faster than when he'd been alive, but at least he didn't have to worry about being trapped in this vast ocean and spending his whole life as a wandering ghost.

"What a stroke of luck in the middle of all this misfortune!" Sui Xiong exclaimed. He stopped and began thinking about what to do next.

As for the question of "why this happened," he'd already given up trying to figure it out.

Something so far beyond imagination wasn't something an ordinary office worker could make sense of. Wasting time and effort on it would be like those ancient scholars who spent their entire lives poring over books, trying to link the stars in the sky to the fortunes of emperors and generals on earth.

It was a nice idea, but meaningless.

The first thing Sui Xiong considered was getting ashore.

He was human—or rather, a human soul—not an aquatic animal. He belonged on land.

So first, he had to find land and get ashore.

Once he was ashore, he would look for people and work out where he was.

He couldn't be sure he was still on Earth, or that it was still the beginning of the new century. He suspected he might have crossed into another world, but he had no idea where.

If he'd ended up in the past, that would be all right. A soul didn't seem to age or die, so if he waited long enough, he could eventually make it back to the present. But if he'd crossed over to some alien planet or another world, that would be terrible. He might never make it back in his lifetime.

"No, that's actually not important."

He quickly reconsidered. For someone who might have become a soul and crossed into another world, what time or place—or even what world—he'd ended up in wasn't important.

The most important thing right now was to survive!

In every kind of myth and legend, souls were fragile things. Eastern myths even held that a ray of sunlight or a gust of wind could destroy a soul completely. Although he didn't yet seem to be afraid of sunlight or sea breezes, leaving his soul exposed like this was definitely unsafe!

Especially since the moment he thought of it, he started to feel cold.

The cold wasn't unbearable, but it was damp and clammy, like a rainy winter day. It was cold and wet, sticky and gloomy, and made him feel disgusted to the bone.

So what should he do?

Sui Xiong pondered.

The simplest solution was to find his soul a shell—or, in other words, find himself a body.

But he looked all around, as far as he could see, and didn't find a single human body.

Finding a body might not even be a good idea. Sui Xiong had grown up in an inland city and couldn't swim at all. Out here in the endless ocean, even if he found a body to possess, he'd probably just drown.

Then, as a next-best option, he at least needed to find some kind of shelter.

He thought it over, looking left and right and scanning the sea around him.

But within sight, he couldn't find anything hard that he could hide inside.

He tried diving underwater to look around.

As he went under, a sudden inspiration struck him: he'd had a headache when he woke up, which meant he'd probably still had a body then. After he woke up, his body might have sunk into the sea because he couldn't swim, leaving only his soul floating on the surface.

Could that mean that if he dived to the seabed, he might still be able to retrieve his body?

At the thought, his spirits soared. He tried hard to dive deeper into the sea.

But just a few seconds later, he discovered in dismay that he couldn't dive very deep at all. By his estimate, he couldn't go more than two meters down.

Still, at least he wouldn't suffocate as a soul, so he could stay underwater as long as he liked.

Alas, even if his body really was down there, he had no hope of retrieving it now...

Never mind. He didn't even know whether his body was in the sea. There was no need to get discouraged yet. The most important thing was to deal with the danger.

Perhaps it was his imagination, or perhaps the water really was safer, but being underwater gave him a strange sense of security. It was like a bare-chested person finally putting on a shirt.

It wasn't thick or warm, but at least he didn't have to rely on a layer of fat beneath his skin to withstand the cold wind.

"Myths often have mountain spirits and water ghosts. Maybe staying in the water really is safer." Sui Xiong muttered to himself and decided to make his home underwater. Other than looking for land, he wouldn't come up to the surface.

"Clothes, food, shelter, and transport. I've probably dealt with 'clothes' for now. As for transportation, I can make do with my own two legs. That leaves food and shelter."

Sui Xiong muttered as he looked at the sea creatures around him.

He spotted some fish, but they were a little too far away. The only things nearby were a few jellyfish.

Jellyfish.

White, translucent bodies, thin tentacles trailing from them—ordinary jellyfish.

"I remember most jellyfish are edible. Some have stinging cells on their tentacles, but those probably won't do anything to a soul." Sui Xiong muttered to himself. "But it seems like a soul can't eat, either..."

Even so, he felt that he needed to eat something.

Once the thought of eating had occurred to him, it gradually grew stronger, and he soon felt hungry.

So, without thinking, he reached out to grab the nearest jellyfish.

His hand, which was only a transparent outline, easily caught the jellyfish—or, more precisely, reached into its body and grabbed something.

He'd caught it, and he could eat it!

So he brought the jellyfish over—or, rather, whatever edible thing he'd caught—and raised it to his mouth.

Looking closely, he saw a tiny point of light, faint and inconspicuous. It wasn't the transparent outline of a jellyfish, as he'd imagined. He held it to his mouth and examined it carefully for a long while, confirming that it was only a little speck of light.

He noticed that the jellyfish hadn't lost even a single tentacle. What he'd caught was something intangible.

Could it be... the jellyfish's soul?

His hunger grew stronger, so he ate it.

It wasn't much, just a little—enough to take the edge off his hunger.

He looked at the jellyfish again and saw that it had lost its vitality, drifting with the current.

"So I really did eat its soul."

He thought it over, then went to catch a few more jellyfish.

A short while later, Sui Xiong still hadn't had his fill. A few completely lifeless jellyfish floated in front of him.

"Now I can proudly declare that I'm no longer an ordinary mortal who'd fall to the bottom of the food chain without a weapon. I'm a dangerous predator in these waters—or, if you like, a water ghost."

Giving up on studying the jellyfish corpses, Sui Xiong laughed three times and headed toward the fish in the distance.

He was still hungry.