Heart of the Ocean (7): He is dangerous

The newly named immortal jellyfish huffed and puffed as it crawled up to the second floor, leaving a long, watery trail on the stairs as well.  

The three-story house had a large kitchen on the first floor, along with a fireplace and a spacious living room. A fish tank filled with fish was placed in the living room on the first floor.  

Thus, the first floor only had one room for storage, while the second floor had none of these amenities. The owner had renovated it into four rooms—four bedrooms and two bathrooms. One bathroom was shared, while the other was inside the largest bedroom.  

Tan Xiao himself slept in the master bedroom with the ensuite bathroom, which was centrally located and closest to the stairs. The other three rooms were now packed with all kinds of supplies.  

The shared bathroom was also quite crowded, filled with stacked water containers holding clean tap water collected over the past two days.  

Having lost a lot of moisture, Wen Yi didn’t rush to find food when it reached the second floor. Instead, it went to the sink in the shared bathroom to replenish its fluids, submerging its entire body in a clean basin filled with fresh water. The water was instantly absorbed.  

The jellyfish used its tentacles to turn on the faucet, enjoying a comfortable bath, and even remembered to turn it off promptly to avoid the sound of dripping water being heard. The faucet made no sound when water fell on the jellyfish because the droplets were absorbed the moment they touched its body.  

An adult human male’s body is about 60% water, but the immortal jellyfish is different—it’s 98% water, truly a creature made of liquid.  

As a deep-sea creature, the jellyfish’s body should technically contain seawater. But Wen Yi had just feasted heartily earlier. Some of the under-rehydrated kelp or wakame it ate had been preserved in salt, making its meal quite salty. A bit of fresh tap water was just what it needed to balance things out.  

Though it looked extremely fragile, as delicate as glass, Wen Yi was actually quite resilient—a hardy and unfussy immortal jellyfish. After all, if it were truly that fragile, it would have long since perished as a failed specimen during those repeated experiments.  

Once fully hydrated, Wen Yi continued its journey. It first explored the other rooms, hoping to find something more delicious, but the second floor had none of the seafood it craved.  

The second floor was stocked with many things: self-heating hot pots, self-heating rice meals, instant noodles, various types of noodles and pasta, vacuum-sealed bags of rice…  

The only items remotely related to seafood were some snacks Tan Xiao had bought: dried shredded squid and small packets of seasoned seaweed salad. But these were all vacuum-sealed, with no scent escaping.  

Forget it, it was not worth the effort. Too much trouble for so little reward.  

Wen Yi was clearly no mindless jellyfish—it was shrewd and calculating, never willing to suffer even the slightest loss.  

Leaving the storage rooms packed with goods, the immortal jellyfish turned its attention to the tightly shut master bedroom door. When he went to sleep, Tan Xiao had, as usual, locked the door from the inside. However, considering Xiao Bai was outside, he hadn’t placed a door stopper inside the bedroom—only setting up barriers at the yard and the first-floor metal security door.  

Since it was just a one-month rental, Tan Xiao hadn’t bothered replacing the bedroom door with a perfectly sealed one. Thus, there was a small gap beneath the door—less than a millimeter wide.  

The enlarged jellyfish shrank with effort, quickly reducing itself to the normal size of an immortal jellyfish—about four or five millimeters. But jellyfish aren’t as solid as humans. As mentioned earlier, they’re 98% water. The four-millimeter jellyfish flattened itself into a thin pancake and—whoosh—silently flowed through the door gap.  

The scene felt eerily familiar, as if Wen Yi had done this before. But there were no such memories—after all, the research institute had surveillance everywhere, and the cultivation tanks were completely sealed.

Wen Yi had managed to escape because the ship transporting numerous experimental specimens had capsized, plunging all the test subjects—along with the researchers—into the sea. As a deep-sea creature, Wen Yi seamlessly blended into the ocean, finally attaining the freedom it desired.  

However, for some unknown reason, it later washed ashore on the beach near this small town and was scooped up by someone who sold it for profit.  

Of course, it might have lost some of its memories—after all, fish only remember things for seven seconds, and the immortal jellyfish didn’t seem much better than a goldfish in that regard.  

This jellyfish was clearly skilled at romanticizing itself. In its memory, it was purely an innocent victim—beautiful, delicate, and pitiful. It had completely forgotten that the disaster that sank the laboratory’s specialized vessel wasn’t a natural catastrophe, but rather a tsunami it had deliberately summoned.  

Immortal Jellyfish No. 1036 had been marked as a high-risk specimen. But apparently, it had forgotten all about that, now disguising itself as a harmless, fragile creature and sneaking into the home of a kind-hearted tourist to freeload food and steal Tan Xiao’s fish.  

Actually, it hadn’t just stolen seafood from Tan Xiao. Before this, the shop owner who sold the aquarium to Tan Xiao had also lost a few small ornamental fish. Back then, the jellyfish only operated late at night, and since the ornamental fish weren’t very tasty, it hadn’t eaten much from the store.  

Not long after, Wen Yi—along with the expensive large aquarium—was sold to Tan Xiao, a wealthy and free-spending customer, becoming a jellyfish that belonged solely to him.  

Wen Yi shrank to pass through the door gap, then expanded again once inside. Shrinking made it easier to slip through the narrow space, while growing larger allowed it to move faster—at its smallest size, its movements were painfully slow.  

Its body enlarged by over two hundred times, transforming from a 4-millimeter jellyfish into a one-meter-tall gelatinous mass. Without the buoyancy of seawater in the room, Wen Yi couldn’t move very quickly. Fortunately, the beach house had smooth tile flooring, so the jellyfish could spray a bit of water onto the ground and whoosh—slide effortlessly from the door to its destination.  

Spray, glide. Spray, glide. After repeating this several times, Wen Yi successfully made its way from the door to the foot of Tan Xiao’s bed.  

The master bedroom was spacious, even featuring a small balcony. But now, at night, the two layers of balcony curtains were tightly drawn. The room was decorated in a “starry sky” theme—though not a particularly high-end version. The curtains consisted of a thin white gauze layer and a thicker dark blue curtain with star patterns, the latter facing the bedroom.  

A small moon-shaped nightlight cast a soft glow, and turning on the ceiling light would project a starry sky across the room. This trendy, Instagram-worthy decor was photogenic—flashy and visually appealing, but ultimately cheap.  

Wen Yi gazed at the black-haired young man lying in the center of the bed. Nights by the sea were relatively cold, and Tan Xiao had even turned on the AC, sleeping soundly under a plush comforter.  

This human possessed skin more delicate and fair than pearls, and hair as dark as midnight. In the depths of the ocean, there was endless darkness—to Wen Yi, this man’s jet-black locks reminded it of the abyss thousands of meters below the surface, dangerous yet mesmerizing, like an unfathomable whirlpool.  

When those eyes opened, they were more perilous than any whirlpool, capable of ensnaring anyone effortlessly. Even an ordinary immortal jellyfish like itself couldn’t help but be drawn in. It liked this human, just as it loved the enigmatic depths of the sea.  

The man on the bed stirred slightly, his eyelashes fluttering as if he were about to wake. Wen Yi instinctively took a few steps back—humans on land were truly alluring, yet dangerous.

Tan Xiao did wake up. Normally, he was an easygoing person, but compared to the previous instances where he had been completely unaware, his overall condition in this scenario was noticeably worse.  

Moreover, Wen Yi had transformed from a human form into a jellyfish, which made him constantly worry. Preoccupied with these thoughts, it was no wonder he couldn’t sleep soundly.  

However, Tan Xiao only opened his eyes briefly. Hearing no unusual noises, he simply turned over and closed his eyes again to continue sleeping.  

Meanwhile, Wen Yi, who had just slithered under the bed in panic, immediately wriggled back out. The space beneath the bed was rarely cleaned—thick layers of dust had dirtied its pristine body!  

Wen Yi refused to be a filthy jellyfish. It quickly slipped back out through the door crack, thoroughly rinsed itself off until it sparkled anew, then returned to Tan Xiao’s room.  

The grudge-holding immortal jellyfish decided to punish this human just a little—after all, he had startled it earlier, so now it was only fair to return the favor!  

That’s right. Due to its poor memory, the jellyfish couldn’t hold onto grudges for long, so it always settled scores on the spot.  

The room had a ceiling height of about three meters. The bed was 50 cm tall, and combined with Tan Xiao’s own height and the slight space taken up by the starry ceiling fixture, there was still nearly two meters of empty space above the bed. The jellyfish huffed and puffed as it expanded—from its original 4-millimeter size to a full two meters in diameter, its upper half pressing directly against the ceiling.  

It clung to the ceiling light, and when its watery body came into contact with the electrical wiring, it caused a short circuit.  

Pure water doesn’t conduct electricity, but the water inside a jellyfish is far from pure. Blue currents surged through the immortal jellyfish’s body, making its tentacles curl up in shock.  

“Zzzzt—!”  

The circuit breaker on the second floor tripped, followed by the main breaker.  

The lights in the courtyard suddenly went out, startling Xiao Bai awake. The dog barked twice before rushing from its wooden kennel into the pitch-black living room.  

Tan Xiao jolted awake at the noise and instinctively reached for the bedside switch—but the room remained dark. A power outage?  

Xiao Bai, worried about Tan Xiao, had already dashed up from the first floor to the second, barking at the door: “Master! The courtyard lights went out—are you okay?”  

“It’s fine, Xiao Bai. Probably just a blackout.”  

Even in the city, power outages happened occasionally. Tan Xiao didn’t sense any danger.  

He then fumbled for his phone, turning on its flashlight to illuminate the room.  

Since the door was locked from the inside, Tan Xiao would have to get up to let Xiao Bai in.  

But as the light swept across the room, he noticed something off: “…There’s someone else breathing in here!”  

The rest of the room was dark, but the ceiling faintly shimmered with an unusual glow.  

When Tan Xiao aimed his flashlight upward, the translucent mass on the ceiling refracted rippling, prismatic light.  

Almost as soon as he spoke, the mass detached from above—plummeting softly onto Tan Xiao.  

But what fell wasn’t a round, gelatinous jellyfish.  

Instead, it was a crystalline, ethereal youth—  

With flowing, translucent blue hair that shimmered like dancing electric arcs, eyes like crimson gemstones, and skin that glowed like polished crystal.  

A breathtakingly beautiful, completely naked boy, as fragile and luminous as glass.