Chapter 22: Laying Eggs

His question silenced the system for a long time.

It was so long that Wen Chu almost thought the system had disappeared again. Just as he was about to press for an answer, the system’s voice finally sounded.

[You have a gender; you are male. As for your sexual characteristics… because you are the first human to turn into a jellyfish, I hadn’t considered this issue before.]

[I just checked the relevant data. Normally speaking, your sexual characteristics should have been retained. The specific manifestation…]

[Should be all the tentacles from your human form.]

It was obvious the system tried to speak in a business-like, scientific tone, but the content was just too shameful. It paused several times before finishing.

[All tentacles from my human form?] Wen Chu was dumbfounded. [Then what about when I’m a jellyfish?]

System: […What does a jellyfish like you need that thing for?]

Wen Chu insisted: [No, I must have a gender.]

If he didn’t have a gender, how could he be partners with Xiu?

The system spoke in a business-like manner: [The orange-red part inside your body is where a jellyfish stores sperm. The four radial canals extending from your stomach sac will transport the sperm and release it through weak points on the body’s surface.]

[This is the conventional way male Turritopsis dohrnii release sperm.]

Wen Chu let out an “Ah” and accepted this quite well.

It was just dragging his gonads around. When doctors were helpless about his body structure before, he had even lived dragging his intestines around for two years.

He focused on another key point: [Then if I want to mate with Xiu, wouldn’t I have to transport the sperm to my tentacles?]

[Radial canals can’t transport to tentacles—can’t you just turn into a human? Why must you do it in jellyfish form?] The system had reached its limit.

Wen Chu asked seriously: [If I turn into a human, can I transport sperm to my tentacles? Does every tentacle work?]

The system vanished directly.

Wen Chu waited for ages but never heard the system’s voice again.

[System?]

Alright, the system left again.

Wen Chu sighed, swimming while examining his orange-red gonads.

So this place was used for that. Then he had to be careful when eating Xiu’s tongue in the future; he couldn’t eat too deeply.

Otherwise, it would be offending Xiu.

Thinking this, Wen Chu spaced out a bit.

He recalled that untimely flash of pink under the hard, cold scales again.

That place was also pink and could also eat his tentacles.

So could Xiu’s scales also be…

Pa-ji——

The consequence of spacing out while swimming was not watching the road ahead.

Wen Chu didn’t even get to follow his memories for a few more seconds before he felt his umbrella cap bump into something hard, stopping him completely.

Looking up, he saw the smooth muscle lines of Xiu’s back.

At some point, swimming side-by-side had turned into Xiu pulling him along, and he had drifted behind Xiu.

Xiu had a great figure, not the exaggerated type. His latissimus dorsi muscles were thin but powerful, like a pair of spread wings.

Narrowing gradually from shoulders to waist.

An electric throb passed through him. Wen Chu whoosh-ed back the tentacle that had almost bumped into Xiu’s waist.

“What are you spacing out for? Don’t you watch where you’re going when swimming?” Xiu turned to look at him. “We’ve arrived.”

Wen Chu retracted his tentacles and poked his head out from behind Xiu’s back.

Sure enough, the narwhal was watching him from not far away.

“I just got bigger; I’m a bit bad at swimming,” Wen Chu found a clumsy excuse for himself.

Xiu didn’t suspect anything, just scoffed lightly at him: “Stupid. Taught you, and you still can’t do it.”

“I’ll take you to the surface to swim again when the weather clears.”

Wen Chu naturally wouldn’t refuse a chance to be alone with Xiu. He threw his earlier thoughts to the back of his mind and agreed happily: “Okay!”

His tone was especially cheerful.

Xiu: …

Did Wen Chu understand that he was being called stupid or not?

Wen Chu understood, of course, but it wasn’t the first time Xiu called him “stupid.”

Stupid was fine. If he were smart, he wouldn’t be able to cling to Xiu openly.

Wen Chu greeted the narwhal happily: “Granny Narwhal, we’re back! Look, I grew another big size.”

The narwhal nodded and praised him: “Amazing.”

She never understood how Wen Chu grew so fast, nor where his ability to transfer life force came from.

But as a whale who had lived in an oceanarium for over twenty years, the narwhal had extremely strong acceptance capabilities and accepted Wen Chu’s settings very smoothly.

She even felt a trace of gratification seeing Wen Chu grow from palm-sized to now being as big as Xiu’s upper body.

The child was still young, still growing.

Xiu looked at the two of them and said helplessly, “Alright, we should head out. Wen Chu, you…”

He intended to say Wen Chu, you’ve grown up, swim by yourself, but before he could say it, he was interrupted by the narwhal.

“I’ll carry him; he’s not heavy anyway,” the narwhal said. “It won’t be too late for him to swim by himself after he learns.”

Xiu sized up the narwhal and finally agreed: “Fine.”

So Wen Chu obediently hung onto the narwhal.

Although the jellyfish had grown a lot, compared to an adult whale, he was obviously insignificant. Wen Chu hanging on the narwhal looked like a small accessory.

Although his tentacles had no substantial function in jellyfish form, after the system’s earlier science lesson, Wen Chu silently retracted all tentacles except his hands. The whole jellyfish balled up into a massive semi-transparent sphere.

He wanted to keep himself clean and resolutely not touch any fish other than Xiu.

The narwhal carried the jellyfish dumpling and followed Xiu. From afar, it looked like a whale carrying a flashing red warning light, possessing a somewhat absurd beauty in the desolate deep sea.

Xiu glanced at the balled-up Wen Chu from the corner of his eye, assuming the jellyfish was up to something weird again, and didn’t take it to heart.

They traveled until noon.

The deep sea remained calm, but Xiu swam to the shallow sea to check. The storm above still hadn’t ceased.

Therefore, Wen Chu wasn’t allowed to follow Xiu to check the route and could only continue lying on the narwhal, watching eagerly as Xiu left.

The narwhal looked amusedly at the jellyfish who was about to turn into a ‘Fish-Gazing Stone’ on her head and teased, “You like clinging to Lord Siren that much?”

“Like,” Wen Chu admitted openly.

As he spoke, he sighed maturely. “But Xiu seems to not like being clung to by me.”

Xiu hadn’t allowed him to sleep together for a long time, and just now deprived him of the right to touch his scales.

He just wanted to make Xiu comfortable.

The narwhal watched their behavior of disappearing together for hours daily and sticking together whenever free. Although she couldn’t see where exactly Xiu didn’t let Wen Chu cling, she still comforted him: “It’s okay. After all, every fish needs their own alone space.”

“Although Lord Siren only has the mission to take us to the Arctic now, he needs to constantly monitor the surroundings and check directions twice a day. When a fish is under stress, maybe they just want to be quiet for a while.”

The narwhal comforted Wen Chu as an experienced fish.

Wen Chu was stunned hearing this.

He felt the narwhal made sense.

As early as yesterday, when they saw the giant oil rig at the cold spring, Xiu admitted he chose a route avoiding human industry specifically for him.

At the time, he only felt he troubled Xiu again. Now with the narwhal’s words, it seemed he added another layer of pressure to the already busy Xiu.

No wonder Xiu didn’t sleep with him; so he needed alone space.

Wen Chu started thinking.

He asked the narwhal: “If I help Xiu with some small favors so he isn’t so busy, is it possible to continue clinging to him?”

Narwhal: “That logic isn’t wrong…”

Just as she finished speaking, she felt water fluctuations above her head.

The narwhal looked up to see the golden-haired merfolk returning, holding a white round object in his hand.

“What is this?” Wen Chu spoke first, swimming up to Xiu’s side simultaneously.

Xiu said lightly, “Seagull egg. The storm outside hasn’t stopped and blew away many things. I saw a bird’s nest on the water surface, went to check, and found this inside.”

“Egg,” Wen Chu repeated Xiu’s word, recalling, “The kind of egg that can hatch a little baby?”

“Yes, but this egg lost heat for too long. It’s dead; impossible to hatch.”

As Xiu spoke, his fingers applied slight pressure to crush the shell.

Thick transparent egg white wrapped around the yolk floated leisurely in the sea.

Xiu reached out, guiding the water flow to send the egg in front of Wen Chu. “So I thought I’d bring it back for you to taste.”

In the ocean world, the weak are meat for the strong, not to mention this was a dead egg.

Wen Chu had no psychological burden and sucked the egg into his stomach sac with a slurp.

“Delicious!” The jellyfish uttered a sigh of one who hadn’t seen the world.

Xiu couldn’t help curling his lips. “Glad you like it. There are no eggs in the sea. If I see any on the surface later, I’ll bring them back for you.”

Wen Chu savored the taste of the seagull egg and stickily leaned onto Xiu. “Can’t fish lay eggs?”

“Of course not. Fish only spawn roe,” Xiu explained. “Eggs are the product of internal fertilization and require careful incubation by parents. Birds mostly take shifts in monogamous pairs to care for them. Fish don’t have such conditions, so they lay hundreds or thousands of roe at once, survival of the fittest.”

“Oh…” Wen Chu summarized. “So the conditions for laying eggs are harsher, requiring both sides to be very attentive?”

“You could understand it that way,” Xiu said.

Wen Chu thought for a moment and said seriously, “Then I want to lay eggs with you in the future. I can create the conditions for you to lay eggs. We can also hatch hundreds or thousands of eggs.”

???

Xiu almost choked to death on a mouthful of seawater.

“I am a fish, a merfolk, a male merfolk. Fish cannot lay eggs.” Xiu picked up the large jellyfish in embarrassment and anger.

The jellyfish’s body was slippery and hollow. Being pinched by Xiu like this, it let out a ji sound.

Wen Chu looked at Xiu blankly.

He felt he just said very responsible love words.

Why did Xiu get angry instead?

Was his expression wrong?

Wen Chu reorganized his language: “Not saying I want you to lay eggs. I mean I will work hard to create conditions where you can lay eggs, just like birds—”

He didn’t finish his sentence before his umbrella cap was pinched out of shape by Xiu’s hands.

“You better shut up,” Xiu said coldly. “Or I’ll pinch you into an egg right now.”

Turning round didn’t require Xiu’s pinching.

Wen Chu retracted all his tentacles and balled himself into a jellyfish sphere. “Done, turned into an egg.”

The next moment, his vision blurred.

It was Xiu throwing this idiot egg directly onto the narwhal’s head.

“Shut up. Let’s go.” Xiu gritted his back teeth hard.

A jellyfish who didn’t even know what the egg-making process looked like was here talking big about laying eggs.

He dared not imagine what messy image he currently had in the narwhal’s eyes.

Xiu flicked his tail in embarrassment and swam away.

The narwhal looked at the Siren swimming away ahead, then at the jellyfish on her head. While following Xiu, she fell into deep thought.

So where exactly did Lord Siren not let Wen Chu cling?

They clearly reached the step of making eggs… no, making roe.

As for whether two male fish could have roe, the narwhal hadn’t considered it at all.

After all, Mom said Lord Siren was omniscient and omnipotent. Even cross-species male roe creation must be a trivial matter for Lord Siren.

The extremely accepting narwhal once again easily accepted the setting that males could also be pregnant with roe.

.
Next day.

Wen Chu still couldn’t sleep with Xiu last night and could only sleep hugging his little shell.

That shell was too small for him now, serving only as a sleep-companion pillow. But Wen Chu couldn’t put it down, hugging it every night and tying it securely to the narwhal in the morning.

Overnight, his lifespan dropped to thirty days and twenty hours. Fortunately, Xiu remembered to take him for food and kisses this morning.

Wen Chu looked at the large piece of seaweed temporarily tied to Xiu’s tail, falling into a weird silence.

Xiu crossed his arms and looked at him. “Are you kissing or not?”

Of course he was.

Wen Chu swam over, tapped Xiu’s lips with a tentacle, then whispered, “Xiu…”

Xiu didn’t resist the tentacle’s intrusion, emitting a nasal “Mn” to indicate he heard.

Wen Chu whispered even lower, “If you’re under a lot of pressure, letting me touch your scales can also reduce stress.”

He remembered this was one of the ways humans relieved stress.

Xiu didn’t understand what Wen Chu was saying immediately. It took him two or three seconds to realize.

His transparent blue pupils dilated slightly, seemingly shocked by Wen Chu’s words. He opened his mouth to say something.

But this gave the tentacle an opportunity instead. Xiu could only squeeze out a few breathy sounds in the end.

[Lifespan +3h]

From the tentacle.

Wen Chu looked at Xiu and said obediently, “Xiu, I’m too big now. If I eat you, my tentacles will hurt your throat. Can you stick your tongue out for me to eat?”

He had asked this request shortly after they first met.

At that time, Xiu rejected him coldly; he never thought he would do something so proactive.

But now, wrapped under the massive jellyfish, under the almost terrifying tentacles in his throat, Xiu very carefully extended a little bit of his tongue tip.

As soon as it came out, it was swallowed whole by the jellyfish.

[Lifespan +12h]
[Lifespan +12h]
[Lifespan +12h]

…

When finished eating, Wen Chu’s lifespan had reached thirty-three days.

Xiu panted slightly, curling his fishtail tight, and pushed away the tentacles sneaking towards his tail.

“I don’t need stress relief,” Xiu rejected with swollen lips.

“Really?” Wen Chu wanted to try again. “If it’s because I didn’t touch well last time, I’ll improve this time.”

“I don’t want it,” Xiu rejected firmly.

Wen Chu had no choice. He couldn’t force a fish against his will, so he retracted his tentacles.

After feeding Wen Chu, waiting for the abnormality in his scales to recover, tearing off the seaweed, and then taking Wen Chu to reunite with the narwhal, Xiu went to the shallow sea to check the situation again.

This time he brought back good news.

“The storm on the sea has stopped,” Xiu told the whale and jellyfish. “I can take Wen Chu to the surface to check directions normally at noon today.”

“Yay,” Wen Chu cheered.

Immediately, he remembered what the narwhal said yesterday and extended a tentacle to tug Xiu’s arm.

“By the way, Xiu, can I go to the surface by myself at noon today?”

“Hm?” Xiu was puzzled. “What do you want to do?”

“Want to let you rest,” Wen Chu was direct. “Granny Narwhal said you are very tired. I’ve learned how to identify directions. I want to help you.”

“If I help you check directions from now on, will it make you like me a little more?”

Helping = Reducing Xiu’s pressure = Letting Xiu sleep with him.
The jellyfish’s thought process was very simple and clear.

Xiu paused and looked at Wen Chu.

A jellyfish naturally had no expression. At any time, this semi-transparent jellyfish would stick to his side stickily like this.
Obedient and sincere.
Just completely misunderstanding emotions; sometimes his sincerity could anger Xiu into flipping over.

But ultimately, the starting point of all Wen Chu’s behaviors was wanting to be good to him.
Even… overly offensive behaviors like touching scales.
From Wen Chu’s perspective, he just wanted to be good to Xiu, only to be thrown off and rejected with cold words.

At this moment, Xiu couldn’t help but feel a bit of guilt for rejecting Wen Chu’s scale touching.
He should have explained clearly to Wen Chu first. The jellyfish only wanted to help him touch scales, not eat his tentacles with the scales, yet he kept overreacting.

Even in the beginning, he thought about teaching Wen Chu fish sexual knowledge during the journey. Using his own situation as an entry point would be most appropriate.

But the explanation was too embarrassing to voice.
Xiu worried that explaining would open another door for Wen Chu, making him realize just how ambiguous their previous entanglements were.
If Wen Chu proposed further requests because of this, how should he reject them?

Xiu opened his mouth, met the gaze of the large semi-transparent jellyfish, and finally admitted defeat.
Just floating up to check the situation usually wouldn’t encounter any danger.

“Okay,” Xiu whispered. “Stay safe.”

“When you return… we’ll talk alone.”

Although the jellyfish was stupid and dull, not feeling aggrieved at all, Xiu felt that at least he shouldn’t let Wen Chu always hit a wall with him just because of information asymmetry and his own embarrassment.
Even a jellyfish might get sad over time, right?

Unlike Xiu’s messy thoughts, Wen Chu was very happy. He agreed briskly and extended a tentacle to salute Xiu. “I will complete the mission well—what do you want to talk to me about? Is it that we can sleep together?”

Xiu: …

Xiu was expressionless: “Not that. We’ll talk when you get back. Can your brain contain anything other than sleeping?”

Wen Chu thought for a moment. “Then it’s that I can help you touch sca… Mmph mmph mmph!“

He was pinched out of shape by Xiu again.

A thin red appeared behind the merfolk’s ears as he skillfully tied him up and hung him on the narwhal.

“Shut up. Let’s go.”

Wen Chu was very obedient. When Xiu told him to shut up, he shut up, hanging quietly on the narwhal, swaying with the ocean currents, and fell asleep after a while.

Because of this, he completely failed to notice that after Xiu hung him fiercely on the narwhal, he couldn’t help looking back at him every short distance he swam forward.

Xiu was worried the jellyfish would be sad after being scolded.
It wasn’t until he confirmed Wen Chu was truly heartlessly asleep that Xiu let out a long sigh of relief.

.
High Noon.

Wen Chu woke up early and swam actively as soon as noon arrived. “I’m going to check directions!”

Xiu was a bit worried and instructed, “Run back if you encounter danger. If lost, wait in place. If you don’t return within twenty minutes, I will set out to find you.”

“Got it,” Wen Chu agreed. “I won’t get lost, and there won’t be danger. Don’t worry.”

Worst case, he’d turn into human form.
Although his current human form was half-human half-jellyfish, Wen Chu was confident in his strength in human form.

Xiu didn’t relax at all.
But it was something he agreed to; he couldn’t renege last minute. Xiu could only watch the jellyfish drifting leisurely towards the surface.

The semi-transparent jellyfish with an orange-red center rose bit by bit, like a gradually shrinking point of light, and finally disappeared.

Xiu stared fixedly in the direction Wen Chu left.
The second minute after Wen Chu’s figure disappeared felt as long as two centuries.

Xiu couldn’t hold back and turned to ask the narwhal, “Do you think if I secretly follow from a distance, Wen Chu will feel I don’t respect him?”

Narwhal: …
Countless thoughts flashed through the narwhal’s mind, including but not limited to “Lord Siren, you look very much like a stalker doing this,” “Is this a bit too old-fatherly,” “But Wen Chu is indeed fragile,” “Really don’t understand your gay flirtations.” Finally, she spoke slowly: “…I don’t think so?”

Not meaning any disrespect to the jellyfish.
But she felt there was a huge probability Wen Chu didn’t even understand the meaning of “respect.”

Xiu frowned, pondered for a while, and finally made up his mind.

“Wait here for a moment. I’ll be back shortly. Don’t tell Wen Chu I left.”

The narwhal gave an unsurprised “Oh.”

The merfolk flicked his tail and swam quickly in the direction Wen Chu had just left, leaving only a whale at the bottom of the sea, quietly counting sand with her head down.

Meanwhile.

Wen Chu was still floating upwards continuously.
Previously, Xiu carried him directly; this was his first time swimming up by himself.
Only by swimming himself did Wen Chu discover the distance from the seabed to the surface was actually this long. He swam for a full five minutes before barely glimpsing a bit of sunlight on the surface—he was still over two hundred meters from the surface.

Just then, a shadow flashed overhead.
A dark thing, suspected to be marine debris, fell down.

Wen Chu dodged hurriedly. Before he could continue swimming up, another black unidentified object fell.
Followed by a third, a fourth… black solids of varying sizes drifted down everywhere like snow.

“Is the surface a garbage dump?” Wen Chu wondered.
He hadn’t encountered such things when floating up with Xiu before?

Harboring confusion, Wen Chu focused his eyes on the falling objects.
The falling objects weren’t solids.
They were thick, dark brown liquid like peanut butter, just coagulated together, like loose plasticine.

Wen Chu curiously leaned closer.
A pungent smell rushed into his face.