Chapter 7

Those gleaming white fangs looked ready to sink into her head at any moment. The Big Black Fish kept flying after her, flicking its tail and fins now and then to match every change in her direction.

Its tiny black eyes, almost impossible to spot without looking closely, were fixed on Ye Chuqi as though it wanted to bore two holes through her. It had fought tooth and nail for that red fruit. Did she think it would let her take it just because she thought it hadn't seen?

It would get the fruit back even if it killed it.

But as it flew on, it realized it might actually die.

Ye Chuqi realized it too.

When the Big Black Fish began to run out of strength, Ye Chuqi stopped and stepped slightly aside. Unable to brake in time, it zipped right past her.

The Big Black Fish: "..."

Ye Chuqi couldn't help laughing. She snapped a branch off a tree and kept a safe distance from the Big Black Fish. Its gills were pumping furiously, and cracks had appeared across its once-smooth body.

Water was scarce in this wasteland, and even the air was scorching. For an aquatic creature to fly so far from water and last this long was remarkable.

It was just a little stupid.

It had chased her without a second thought, never stopping to consider whether it had enough strength to fly back. Now it couldn't reclaim the fruit or kill her, and it was going to lose its life too.

What a miserable situation.

Ye Chuqi understood its thinking. Stupid or not, the Big Black Fish had followed her partly because it couldn't bear to back down. It had surely planned to catch her, kill her, and take back the red fruit. That would solve its predicament.

What it hadn't expected was that, just as Ye Chuqi couldn't do much to it, it couldn't do much to her either. Catching up had used every last bit of its strength, while Ye Chuqi still appeared to have energy to spare.

Agony tore through her meridians, and her blood churned as though she might cough it up at any moment. Ye Chuqi smiled. She couldn't show weakness or let her opponent see that anything was wrong.

"You're dying." Ye Chuqi looked at the chaotic speech bubbles above the Big Black Fish's head and felt helpless. When San San woke up, she would have to ask whether she could choose when these bubbles appeared.

Even if the Big Black Fish understood human speech, the language barrier meant it couldn't understand her words. But Ye Chuqi had discovered her unusual talent only after arriving at Lush Mountain. She had once thought she was merely good with cats and dogs. Later, she learned that the Spirit Beasts there liked her too, and she could even communicate with them in simple ways. She figured she could probably communicate with this fish as well.

The Big Black Fish answered by lunging at her and biting wildly. In moments, the branch in her hand was reduced to splinters. Ye Chuqi kicked it to the ground, where it could no longer struggle to its feet.

"You're dying," Ye Chuqi repeated.

If the Big Black Fish understood that, it should stop fighting her. With one last effort, it might still fly back to the Little Oasis and have a chance of surviving. But now it lay in the dust, covered in black ash, unable to fly again.

Ye Chuqi had already put the red fruit into her space. With San San's awakening, the Portable Space had opened to her again. She had yet to finish refining it and still needed San San's help to take things out, but she could put things in whenever she wished.

The space had awakened when she crossed over into the Cultivation World. She had still been an infant then, found and brought to Lush Mountain by her Eldest Senior Brother. She didn't know where she came from, and the Heart of the Space Spirit couldn't explain it either.

According to the Heart of the Space Spirit, the space was vast. What she could see was only a tiny fraction of it. The rest would gradually reveal itself as she refined the space and raised her cultivation.

But she had barely reached the Foundation Establishment stage and refined only a small part of the space when she crossed over again. The space had suffered another devastating blow, wiping out more than a decade of hard work overnight.

All she could use now was one tiny patch of land. Yet when she placed the red fruit inside, its intact roots took hold in the fertile Spirit Soil, and it grew even more luscious than it had beside the pool.

San San might complain when it woke up that she had made a mess of the space again. Still, she really could save the dying Big Black Fish.

"I can save you. You get one chance." Ye Chuqi held up a finger. Her slender, fair-skinned finger caught the dim sunlight, taking on a soft halo. "If you attack me again, we'll go our separate ways."

If the Big Black Fish could understand her words, it probably would have asked whether "go our separate ways" was really the right phrase. But it had no strength to worry about that now. It understood what she meant.

Ye Chuqi steeled herself and touched a finger to the Big Black Fish's head. The last thing it saw was the undisguised distaste in her eyes. Then the scenery changed, and it found itself somewhere wondrous.

The place was even smaller than the Little Oasis it had lived in. Only the center was lit; everything else it could see was shrouded in impenetrable gray. But it was immersed in gentle water that felt extraordinarily soothing. The little pool was barely bigger than its body, yet it was enough to ease all its pain.

A Spirit Spring was, of course, another standard feature of the space. But Ye Chuqi's cultivation was too low, and the space's level was low as well, so the spring water was weak. It took several days to condense even one drop of concentrated spring water. San San had always kept those drops, but it had likely used them all up in the Astral Wind.

Only the diluted spring water remained, yet it was enough to leave the Big Black Fish, which had never seen anything like it, awestruck. Ye Chuqi had dug the little pool for herself. Even diluted Spirit Spring water was drinkable, but although San San had said the spring could cleanse itself, drinking her own bathwater would still have been a challenge. So she had dug a small pool beside the spring and channeled water into it for everyday use. Now it was just the right place for a half-dead Big Black Fish.

Ranking List

|

Portable Space Stories

Transmigration and Rebirth Romance

Big Black Loves Fish