Chapter 1042: There Are Sea Creatures in the Sea (7)

Water temperature that wrapped around her whole body that was cool... not really.

Well, summer seawater had never been all that cool to begin with. It only felt cool because the air outside the sea was hotter by comparison.

And in this dim rain, with Qing in particular spending her days wrapped in cold air thanks to the air-conditioning function of her Cold Aura, well.

Still.

It was not as though she had jumped into the sea because she wanted to cool off.

Above the shallow water spread over the mudflats, Jayeo—held aloft by Qing’s two raised arms like she was being lifted into the sky—let out a half-ultrasonic laugh that sounded somewhere between a dolphin and a seagull.

BLUB BLUB BLUB...

At her ears was the dull, muffled background hum peculiar to being underwater, with the sound of air bubbles slipping free. But only for a moment. Qing suddenly threw up her upper body and rose straight back above the surface.

Once she planted her generous backside on the muddy bottom and sat down, the water level only brushed around her collarbones.

Well, of course. In a broad mudflat sea like this, how deep was it really going to get?

At the same time came the frantic sound of SPLASHING and flailing.

Turning her head, she saw Gongsun Yoye’s legs and arms popping above the water and dropping again, then one arm shooting up and vanishing only for another arm and then a foot to burst up in turn, the cycle repeating in rapid succession.

But that only lasted a moment too. Soon Gongsun Yoye stood stiffly upright in place with an unbearably embarrassed look on her face.

Standing there in water that only reached the upper part of her thighs, Gongsun Yoye slid her eyes away as if she herself found the whole thing mortifying.

“Jayeo too, Jayeo too.”

“Heh. Right, Jayeo has to get in too.”

Qing slowly lowered Jayeo, whom she had been holding up in both hands, down into the sea.

The child’s eyes immediately rounded, fascinated by the squishy feel of the mud beneath her feet.

“Jayeo, seawater is salty.”

“For real? Bleh.”

Jayeo took one little taste and made the most awful face imaginable.

Well, of course. It was saltier than she expected—so salty it almost tasted bitter.

And behind her, cutting through the water with sharp, fluid strokes, was Seol Iri.

Her form was that of someone who had properly learned how to swim, and her speed was remarkable. She cut left and right through the water like a fish that had finally found its proper home.

Seol Iri had always been a strong swimmer.

Given where she came from, that only made sense. Whether the Northern Sea was a real sea or not was another matter, but in any case, over there, anyone who could not swim died, and anyone who swam too well could still die if they failed to find their way to an opening through water frozen over with ice. It was survival swimming more than anything else.

Even so, whenever somebody suggested going to play in the water, she had always been the most excited one there. Outwardly she stayed expressionless and calm, but if you looked closely, her nostrils would flutter just a little with barely restrained delight.

That lightning-fast response of kicking off her shoes the instant she was caught had not come out of nowhere.

Exactly. Playing {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} in the water!

People of the Central Plains played in the water too.

It was not that people of the Central Plains disliked water games. They just did not enjoy the sea. At streams and rivers, they splashed around and played just fine.

At scenic spots along rivers, it was common enough to see a whole group seize a companion by the arms and legs, rush over together, and hurl them straight into the water several times a day.

You could even occasionally see the same thing happen on bridges spanning rivers and canals.

In other words, throwing your friend into the water was practically national law in the Central Plains too.

Unfortunately, though, there were no swimsuits.

The obvious common sense, when going into the water, was simply to wear the clothes you already had on. In that sense it was even practical—water play and laundry at the same time.

If people came fully intending to fool around, they might bring light inner robes, essentially sleepwear, but that was only when a group planned to go somewhere secluded and play among themselves.

Which meant that people of the Central Plains did not really have any objection to getting into the water fully dressed.

That was also why Qing had simply tucked a friend under either arm and hurled them in without hesitation.

And as with all water play, once you were soaked through even once, that last bit of psychological resistance melted away.

So there they were, three fully grown women splashing around in delight—though, to be fair, this was exactly the age when water play was still at its most fun.

And little kids, of course, were creatures that discovered fun the moment they got into water, even if there had been none there before. They floated. They splashed. They dove for no reason, popped back up, paddled around...

Meanwhile, the one person who had not entered the water—

Peng Daesan crossed the mudflats with soft, wet steps.

To Qing he might count as a novice, but every member of the group was already in the realm of Harmonization. By ordinary standards, all of them were more than skilled enough to be called experts.

And surprisingly enough, to a true expert, mudflats were not especially dangerous.

After all, were not all those techniques by which martial artists ran, leapt, sprang, and moved their bodies collectively called the art of lightening the body?

Lightening the body—training that made the body light.

Of course, that did not mean the body became physically lighter in any literal sense. It meant training that made one’s movements light. How to place the feet. How to distribute weight. How to move faster. How to move more slowly and quietly. All of that lay within the study of lightness.

And was not the knack to walking across mudflats contained entirely within those principles?

In any case, Peng Daesan crossed the mudflats.

The sensation of the mud warmly wrapping around the soles of his feet and clinging to them, the particular feel of mudflat silt slipping up between his toes and tickling them, was unexpectedly pleasant.

He had said, what kind of sea trip is this on a rainy day, but the world around them—settled, quiet, all softened by the patter of falling rain—had its own kind of atmosphere.

Even the sight of the others splashing about in childish delight pierced that atmospheric landscape without quite clashing with it, becoming instead one more leisurely part of the scene.

His clothes were already wet from the rain anyway. Entering the sea would not have been such a bad idea.

The problem was that slipping into the water now, after coming this far, felt embarrassingly awkward.

And stepping into the middle of women already at play felt even more awkward.

So he could not quite bring himself to jump in immediately.

Still, if he went close enough to be noticed, with that peculiar friend’s equally peculiar personality, there was no way she would simply leave him alone.

She would definitely come charging over and throw him into the water or shove him under on the spot...

That was the sort of mood he was in: watching a friend get thrown into the water while secretly hoping, Am I next?

So Peng Daesan merely crept closer to the shoreline, trying in his timid little way to be noticed. It was, frankly, not a very manly performance.

If Qing had known what was going on in his head, she would have thought, Ah, I’ve been terribly inconsiderate, and promptly hoisted him up and dumped him into the sea.

Unfortunately, Qing was busy watching Jayeo.

Because unlike Seol Iri or Gongsun Yoye, who could get themselves out if anything happened, Jayeo could actually be in danger.

Of course, Jayeo was the sort of child who would spring awake from sleep at the mere mention of playing in the water, and as a little swimmer in the making she was fairly decent already.

Even so, that was no reason to get careless.

So Qing stayed right beside her, splashing along with her, then suddenly grabbing her and spinning her round and round, or floating on her back with the child perched on top of her belly like some kind of otter or sea otter.

“EEEEK! KYAAAH! HEE-HEE-HEEK!”

The child’s laughter rang far and wide.

It was a little husky, perhaps, but once she got excited enough to enter that shrill falsetto range as though possessed by a dolphin, Jayeo was no different from any other child.

There was something enchanting about the laughter of children.

Jayeo, perhaps because of that naturally husky laugh of hers, currently sounded like some bizarre scream halfway between a dolphin and a roe deer.

But it was still a child’s laughter.

Joy, when a child gave voice to it, was something the ear understood on its own. It carried a peculiar enchantment that made whoever heard it feel better too.

Peng Daesan’s gaze followed Qing as she played with Jayeo.

When a woman played with a child, she was supposed to hold the child’s hand and walk slowly, or quietly admire flowering trees and wildflowers together, or put on a display of modest refinement with calm activities like embroidery or painting.

But just look at that.

There was not the slightest trace of affectation in the way she played with the child. She behaved like some rough, mischievous uncle handling a niece. It was a sight no one could possibly mistake for ladylike.

Yes. Their mental ages are exactly the same.

Isn’t this just one child playing with another?

He mocked her inwardly, yet an utterly pleased smile had blossomed at the corner of his mouth.

Then it happened.

Qing, who had been floating with Jayeo on top of her belly, rose to her feet. Jayeo dropped into the water with a splash, then bobbed up at her side. The two of them—some absurd pair who looked like they could be either mother and daughter or father and daughter—locked eyes with Peng Daesan all at once.

And there was a smile on Qing’s face.

Then, before his eyes, the nature of that smile gradually shifted into something more and more like that of a mischievous brat.

Just as expected. It looked like the time had finally come for him to be dragged into the water.

So Peng Daesan pretended not to notice and quietly prepared himself to enter the sea when—

In his field of vision, where only Qing’s face had seemed enlarged until now, her whole body suddenly entered focus: the shape of her drenched clothes plastered shamelessly tight to her, those violent curves...

At that, Qing tilted her head.

He had come all this way to linger around near the water, then met her eyes. It seemed pretty obvious what was in his heart.

She had assumed he wanted to get in, but found it awkward for the sake of appearances, and was silently asking her to grab him and drag him in by force.

But instead, all at once, he whipped his head away like the sight of her offended him.

Hm? What was that?

So in the end he did not want to get in after all?

Honestly. At times like this he should loosen up and play along. Instead he was always strict, solemn, serious, putting on that low, weighty voice of his.

Did he actually think that was cool?

No. What was cool was working hard when it was time to work, and then playing hard when it was time to play.

Well, whatever. If he did not want to, then he did not want to.

Qing turned her attention instead to Gongsun Yoye, who was drifting along in the water.

Gongsun Yoye had a pleasant smile on her face and was just bobbing around with only her shoulders above the surface.

To begin with, her not-very-long life thus far had consisted of nothing but training, so she had simply never learned how to play.

That did not mean she was not having fun, though. Her wide, blooming face was proof enough of that.

That, too, was one of the charms of water play: sometimes it was fun simply to float there and watch your friends play.

The only thing was, considering the depth, the sight of it was so funny that Qing could not help laughing.

Even the deepest parts only reached the hips, and the shallowest no higher than the knees.

So if all one could see above the surface was the tops of her shoulders and her head, floating along while her hands waved from side to side, what exactly did that mean the rest of her body was doing below the water?

The water was shallow, so obviously she was in a seated position.

Which meant she was basically just bouncing her butt off the mud bottom to stay afloat.

“All right, all right. Yoye, can’t you swim?”

“No—well—uh. This is my first time ever going into water...”

“Then why not learn while we’re here? Come on, want to practice a bit?”

So Qing clasped both of Gongsun Yoye’s hands tight, and Gongsun Yoye lay flat on the water and kicked vigorously.

That impromptu lesson went on for a little while, until—

“But Qing... what exactly is this practice supposed to be? It doesn’t seem to have much to do with swimming... to begin with, what is even the point of kicking like this?”

“Mm. Maybe this isn’t it? Dunno.”

Asked for an explanation, Qing hit her with the devastating answer: “Dunno.”

Well, Qing had seen something like it somewhere and decided to try having her do it once, but Qing herself had never properly learned to swim either.

At most, when she had been a tiny kid, she had gone to a pool and splashed around while clutching one of those blue kickboards. That was the extent of it.

So Qing did not really know.

And from Gongsun Yoye’s perspective, being held by the hands while kicking with all her might naturally raised the question of what any of this had to do with swimming at all.

Because the modern style of swimming known as freestyle—rolling the body from side to side, windmilling both arms to push away the water while simultaneously churning both legs without rest—did not yet exist in the Central Plains.

And, in fact, it did not exist in the Western Regions either.

There were still two hundred years to go before freestyle would appear in the world, born when a peculiar stroke from the indigenous peoples of a faraway new continent spread into the West.

And in fact, in this so-called freestyle, the kicking was mostly support!

Almost all the propulsion in freestyle came from the arms. No matter how hard one kicked, it did not do much for forward thrust.

Really, it was closer to a motion meant to keep the lower body afloat, since the legs were the part with weaker buoyancy.

In this era, if someone in the Central Plains genuinely knew how to swim, that meant breaststroke—plain old frog-swimming.

The history of breaststroke stretched all the way back to the primitive, primitive, primitive age four thousand years ago when humanity first began gathering food from the water.

Just as a dog naturally dog-paddled when it entered the water, a human being naturally swam like a frog.

“Mm. Then should we learn from Iri?”

“Yes.”

“Good grief, you startled me. When did you get here?”

“Just now. Just now.”

Seol Iri had risen up beside them before anyone noticed and had already answered.

Her face was faint in expression as always, but to Qing—who had grown skilled at reading that face—she looked extremely excited.

And so, an unexpected swimming lesson began.

Since they were all martial artists who made their living through the use of their bodies, it had felt awkward, but not difficult for them to imitate once shown.

How much time passed like that?

With the whole sky covered in clouds, it was hard to judge the time exactly, but going by the slowly gathering hunger, it seemed like it ought to be somewhere between the Monkey and Rooster shichen.

And as it happened, it really was around then. Qing’s stomach clock was impressively accurate.

“Mm. I’m getting hungry. I was thinking it’d be nice if we could catch a fish or something, but fish my ass.”

In Qing’s imagination, the sea had been a place where beneath water glittering like jewels, in some transparent coral-reef sort of seabed, she would catch fish with quick little motions, pick up crabs and sea cucumbers and clams and the like, and then in the evening everyone would grill them together and eat.

Transparent, my ass. It was mud-water. You could not see a damn thing.

Still, it had been fun. So, whatever.

Maybe Peng Daesan had lit a fire, because far off on the darkened land there was a single bright flame.

But when they tried heading back toward the carriage, it somehow felt much farther away now.

Not that it only felt that way. The water had kept receding the whole time, so it really had become farther away.

Qing headed back toward the carriage with Jayeo sprawled limp across her back, completely exhausted from swimming the whole time.

“Oh. Over there. Crab. Crab.”

“What, a crab? Oh, come on, for a second I thought it was something important.”

At the word crab Qing’s eyes had flashed, but then Jayeo pointed over her shoulder with one finger, and all Qing saw was a tiny mud crab the size of a fingernail. She let out a little deflating breath.

As the tide went out, the mudflats near land lost their saltwater first and gradually hardened.

And once the mud hardened like that, all sorts of little creatures began wriggling around over it.

Then, suddenly, Qing spotted a slight bulge sticking out and lightly scooped at it with the tip of her foot.

Something large and pale was pushed up by her toes.

With a deft little flick, Qing kicked it into the air, caught it, and handed it to Jayeo.

“Oh. A clam.”

“Not a clam. A sea snail. A clam has shells, and a snail has... um. One shell? Clams have two, top and bottom?”

“Ooh. One shell. But can you eat this? Is it tasty?”

“A sea snail? Sure, it tastes fine, but that one’s too big. The big ones aren’t very good. They’re tough and dry. Huh. Then maybe we could catch some little clams too?”

Suddenly, from some dim half-remembered corner of childhood she could no longer place exactly, a memory surfaced.

Had it been the mudflats of the western sea back in her hometown? She remembered sprinkling seasoned salt and digging for clams—or trying to, maybe. Anyway, she remembered the whole family going together like that.

Hang on, though. When catching clams, did it have to be seasoned salt?

Or maybe, since they lived on seawater anyway, plain salt would not do anything?

It was not that any single clear scene came to mind. It was only that vague, uncertain kind of memory—just the feeling that something like that had happened once.

That was how very early childhood memories often remained: not as crisp images, but as the mere existence of the experience itself, blurred and rounded at the edges.

And yet one thing alone was vivid beyond question:

It had been fun.

That warm certainty from childhood made a smile rise on its own.

Right.

Picking things out of the mud was fun in its own way too. The kind of thing that could become a good memory.

Just as she had suddenly found herself recalling those now-faded memories of her hometown, maybe this would become the same kind of memory for Jayeo someday—a memory that would suddenly surface later and make her smile.

Mm. I really hope so.

Then Qing thought, all at once—

Tonight... no, wait. Nighttime mudflats might be a bit dangerous. And it’s not like the mudflats are going anywhere.

Maybe tomorrow they could try foraging out here.

Today, she decided, they should find some nearby private house in Salt Town or Salt Village or wherever it was, borrow a place to stay, and get some real rest.