“It’s so dark~” Rong Gui’s voice suddenly rang in Xiao Mei’s mind.
This was another advantage of the robotic bodies: Even underwater, they could still converse in signal mode as long as they were connected with each other.
↑
But now it seemed that this might not be an advantage at all.
=-= Even underwater, one still has to listen to this bloke’s constant babbling. With his head quietly fixed in place, Xiao Mei thought to himself.
Furthermore –
For a robot who can still see things in the dark by means of architecting information nodes, does it really matter whether the environment is dark or not?
Day and night, dark night and black water – is there any difference?
Xiao Mei thought in silence. Soon, Rong Gui’s voice came back into his mind again: “Ah~ah~ah~”
Were it a human voice, it would probably be a very melodious chant. Yet right now, Rong Gui was not only a robot, but a robot who couldn’t even use any vocal equipment, too. Therefore, this chant was directly transformed into texts in Xiao Mei’s mind.
Xiao Mei: ……
“Why do you have to sing even at this time?” He finally asked.
The “chant” came to a screeching halt.
“Why, because I’m worried that you are also scared!” Rong Gui smiled.
He used the word “also”.
Alright, so that’s because he’s scared?
“According to the detection results, we still have to move underwater in this situation for about four hours.” Thinking for a while, Xiao Mei eventually said something.
“Our power is enough.” Thinking again, he added.
“So we just need to hold on for another four hours!” Rong Gui seemed to be relieved.
He used the phrase “just need”, not “still need”.
It’s a very simple difference, but the whole sentence represented a completely different meaning.
“If we continue like this, won’t our heads fall off?” Realizing that Xiao Mei began to pay attention to him, Rong Gui immediately became high-spirited. So he asked a question that he had been curious about since the installation of the propellers.
No wonder he’s wondering. It’s really that –
The looks of them both now were quite astonishing indeed!
Their heads were embedded in the originally reserved place behind the car, yet their limbs were reassembled under the operation of the system, and finally turned into propellers in high-speed rotation. Since his body was made of machines, Rong Gui didn’t feel anything whatsoever. However, it’s precisely this lack of feeling which made him increasingly worried.
“No, they won’t. In fact, your head has already been separated from your body.” Xiao Mei responded to his question.
“Er…does it mean that, our heads…have already fallen off?” Rong Gui went blank for a moment. He wanted to scratch his head, but soon found that he now had no hands to wield.
“Still…it’s so dark~” Talking for a while, Rong Gui whispered once more.
A moment later, he even “sang” a song about the dark night.
With his head full of large sections of lyrics, Xiao Mei eventually logged into the system on the car and, after he wrote a line of codes, the car door suddenly opened.
“Ah! Xiao Mei! Our car door opened! What are we going to – huh?” Rong Gui “saw” what happened before him, and soon, his attention was drawn to what was rolling out of the car.
“mushrooms?!”
As Rong Gui noticed, the things that were falling out of the car were indeed the “mushrooms”, or earth beans, that he had always treasured.
In a stretch of pitch-black deep water, the “mushrooms” on the top of these earth beans became the only light source, glowing faintly with green light amidst the darkness.
It’s just as if someone had opened the car door and poured down the stars!!!
If Rong Gui had eyes right now, his eyes must be staring super wide open!
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Lbkfnfg, atbrf fjgat yfjcr vlvc’a ojii boo jibcf. Pcrafjv, atfs kfgf ojiilcu boo klat atf oibkfg qbar – atja’r gluta, atbrf oibkfg qbar wjvf ys Wljb Zfl, jcv vfrlucfv jcv qjlcafv ys Ebcu Xel.
Dfobgf ifjnlcu, Ebcu Xel agjcrofggfv j iba bo fjgat yfjcr ab atf oibkfg qbar. Ccv yfobgf ublcu ecvfgkjafg, Wljb Zfl erfv atf gbqfr ab olz atfw bc atf agecx.
“Wow, lucky that you’ve tied up the flower pots with the ropes, Xiao Mei~” Rong Gui let out a sigh. After finding that the other end of the ropes on those flower pots were securely tied to the car, Rong Gui continued to enjoy the view of his “mushrooms”, resting assured.
Great. It isn’t dark anymore in this way. Rong Gui thought, very pleased.
The head is finally clear of the babbling. Xiao Mei also got the peace he always wanted.
All’s well that ends well.
“But, can earth beans survive in water? They won’t spoil if we keep soaking them like this, right?” Rong Gui had enjoyed the view for a long while before he thought of this problem.
“Theoretically speaking, they won’t. Earth beans were originally a kind of aquatic plant, and it’s only after some varietal development that people are able to grow them on land. Although what we have now are of the improved land breed, they should be able to survive in water, or even grow better.” The signals sent over by Xiao Mei were still flat and cold, without any emotion.
“Oh.” Nevertheless, Rong Gui felt relieved.
At this point, the two stopped talking.
Naturally, Rong Gui went on to enjoy the view of his mushroom lamps, whereas Xiao Mei…
Well, Xiao Mei was also looking at the mushroom lamps underwater.
One had to admit, mushroom lamps in the black water were really a beautiful sight. Moreover, they were drifting up and down with the water flow, and a couple of mushrooms inevitably fell off from the flower pots, just like shooting stars sliding down the sky.
For a while, both robots had forgotten that they were still trudging underwater.
However, someone soon came out to remind them of this unpleasant fact.
“Xiao Mei! Th-there’s something down there!” In the midst of silence, Rong Gui’s voice suddenly jumped into Xiao Mei’s mind again.
“Yes, I saw it.” Xiao Mei, who didn’t let down his guard even while enjoying the scenery, said coldly.
“What…what is it? I can’t see it clearly from my angle.” All of a sudden, something appeared in this forever empty, desolate place. Rong Gui finally panicked.
He wanted to move his head, but found it to be completely out of his control.
That’s right. The system in his current body had been taken over entirely by the car system, and the car system was now operated by Xiao Mei.
He only felt that he saw something, but not quite clearly.
Not exactly a foolhardy person, Rong Gui immediately became a little scared.
“It’s a fish.” Xiao Mei’s cold voice instantly appeared in his mind, and then…
Strangely enough, as soon as Xiao Mei spoke, Rong Gui’s heart settled down.
“Ah…so it’s a fish~”
“Hey?! Is it a fish?! My god, my god! I haven’t seen anything alive since I woke up!”
Rong Gui’s noisy chatter rang in Xiao Mei’s head right away. Pausing for a moment, he added:
“Er – aside from our own bodies.”
Having stayed with Xiao Mei for a long time, he more or less learned to be a little more precise in his speech.
“What kind of fish is it? What color is it? Is it good-looking?” Soon, Rong Gui’s mind was fully focused on that unknown fish.
“It’s black, not good-looking.” Xiao Mei’s voice was a flat monotone.
“Hmm, not good-looking…Thought so, there’s no sunshine here anyway. Speaking of which, I’ve seen a group of photos of deep-sea fish before, and all those fish are as ugly as they can be!”
“And someone commented: They all live in deep sea anyway, so none of them can normally see each other in the dark, and they just grow as arbitrarily as they want!”
“As arbitrarily as they want…does it even work? Hahahaha, I nearly died from laughter at that time.”
Rong Gui laughed stupidly.
Xiao Mei, however, was utterly unaffected.
As the operator of the system, he could adjust his head in order to maximize his visual field. Moreover, the scanning system in his body was more advanced than Rong Gui’s. In such situation, that “fish” which Rong Gui couldn’t see at all, had never escaped from his sight from the beginning – he could see it all very clearly.
There was indeed fish below them – not many, just one.
As he had told Rong Gui, that fish was indeed black, and not good-looking.
But such description was too simple to even be called a description.
And only someone like Rong Gui would be satisfied with such a portrait without any decent description.
So what did that fish actually look like?
That fish looked E-X-T-R-E-M-E-L-Y U-G-L-Y.
Not only ugly, but hideous, and enormous as well.
It’s even bigger than Rong Gui’s current eighteen-year-old body in the freezing cabin!
It’s gigantic teeth were exposed outside, and its eyeballs in the sockets almost shriveled into a pair of grayish-white dots. The fish – rather than a fish – was more like a sea monster.
Oh well, we had a river here, so it should be called a river monster.
Xiao Mei’s head looked down from high above at the hideous monster below. The monster, likewise, was looking back at him from the deep water.
Whether it’s Xiao Mei or Rong Gui, both of them were now within the hunting range of that monster.
In the black water, Xiao Mei and the monster gazed at each other.
Rong Gui was still chattering in Xiao Mei’s mind.
Xiao Mei noticed that – the monster quietly swam up a little.
It was approaching them.
In face of the approaching monster, Xiao Mei was calm.
In fact, a little too calm.
However, this calmness came neither from blind self-confidence, nor from indifference to life.
But from past memories –
This wasn’t the first time he met this fish.
He encountered this fish almost every time in the past, not long after he pushed open that Gate. To keep going forward, he had to cross the black river alone, and in the waters on the other side, he would bump into this fish.
Every time, that fish had been following behind him, attempting to attack him.
And every time, he killed that fish.
The huge swim bladder from the fish could store enough air for him to use for about four hours, and every time, he counted on such air from the swim bladder to cross the deep water.
He knew the weaknesses of this fish like the back of his hand. If he wished, he could kill this fish in a thousand ways.
So he merely stayed there silently, looking coldly at the fish below.
That fish also seemed to sense the danger, and quietly went down a little.
Then it went up a little again.
It went up a little more.
As they got close to each other, Xiao Mei looked at that fish even more carefully. The more he looked, the more he was certain: this was indeed the fish that he used to meet every time.
Yet why –
Why did he still meet it even though he didn’t push open the Gate?
Are there other paths underwater which lead to the outside world? Or did this path originally lead to the outside to begin with?
The real “outside”?
Xiao Mei sank into deep thought.
But undeniably, at this moment, he once again had an unquenchable killing intent for the fish below.
Anyone who had done something tens of thousands of times, would ultimately become numb to it.
Such thing as killing, was no exception.
However, it was still Rong Gui’s “loud voice” that interrupted him.
“Xiao Mei, is that fish still following us?”
“Do you think if it is hungry?”
“Do you think if it has eaten the mushrooms that fell off, so it swims up to find more?”
Even just by reading the text, one could feel that sense of innocent naivety which was in Rong Gui’s unique way of speaking.
“You can throw another pot of mushrooms to feed it~ We have plenty of mushrooms anyway.”
Rong Gui continued to urge from aside.
Since he urged for too long, Xiao Mei sent another instruction to the car system. The rope tied to a pot of “mushrooms” instantly broke apart, and that pot of “mushrooms” slowly drifted down under the gaze of the two robots.
“It won’t hit the fish, right?” Rong Gui was suddenly a little worried.
Xiao Mei didn’t speak.
“Is it still there?” Rong Gui asked once more.
“It is.”
“Then let’s drop another pot~”
“Is it still there?”
“Yes.”
“Drop one more!”
In this way, the two robots, one asking, the other responding, threw down a total of four flower pots in succession. When Rong Gui asked again, the answer he got was finally “it isn’t there”.
“It’s full, so it left. Let’s continue our journey!” Rong Gui said happily.
“It must be a big guy.” He added.
It’s the only interlude along their water route.
Two hours after this incident, Xiao Mei announced that they were about to go ashore.
Author has something to say:
Some readers asked why Xiao Mei didn’t make lamps to produce lights.
Let’s invite Xiao Mei to answer this question:
Xiao Mei: No need. We can see.
Cough cough
He’s as succinct as usual~
So readers, do you understand now?
(Translator’s note: Remember our fish friend, we will meet it someday again ^_^)
Bye bye Fishy~ See you later~
Thanks for the chapter~ =w=
Thank you for the chapter. Deep sea fish are scary looking. 😱
I’d have died in that deep dark water with a hideous-looking deep sea fish.😵 I think it was the right thing to let the fish live. After all, it’s something new that XM has never done before, and I guess that’s the right way to the outside world.
I thought they’re talking about a smol unpleasant looking fish HAHAJAKJSKSKS I forgot they’re in the deep part of the river or ‘sea’ as Ah Gui call it. I was imagining which dish they’d taste best TWT
I wonder if this fish will be an ally or an enemy. I hope it’s the former.
But them looking at the glowing earthbeans tho. Gosh, it’s so adorable and romantic!