Compared with the seas changing into mulberry fields outside, little changed inside the cavern. Each time she woke, Ye Chuqi saw much the same things: perhaps a few more corals, or a few more shells.
Ye Chuqi had been watching the currents. After confirming their direction, she stopped at a narrow opening. Water flowed through it toward some unknown place, but according to San San, the passage beyond it ran beneath the weed-covered slope on the surface.
Ye Chuqi had a half-formed idea. "San San, do you think the mutated weeds on the surface have anything to do with the Giant Clam?"
"It's possible, but the timeline doesn't fit."
From what Ye Chuqi had learned from the boat owners on the island, people had discovered the weeds' remarkable seasoning effect only a few centuries ago. The Giant Clam, however, had been here for thousands of years. If it had an effect, that effect should have appeared long ago, not been discovered only a few centuries back.
Of course, perhaps no one had used the weeds in cooking before then, so no one had noticed the change. If so, whoever first thought to use them as seasoning had been quite a character.
"But judging by the traces left by these little shells, especially the ones piled up in the crevices outside, they've been here for only a few hundred years, less than a thousand," San San said, offering a more plausible theory. "Could the Giant Clam, or the Formation outside, have caused them to mutate and given them this effect? Going by the direction of the currents, the water could then have carried these special elements to the surface, helping the weeds grow and giving them their flavor-enhancing properties."
Ye Chuqi nodded. "There's one way to find out."
"How?"
"See whether