Chapter 1656

In a recollection from his previous life, Fang Yuan collects black oil in the pitch black deep sea, seeing dimly through a new Gu he exchanged for. Breathing through gills made from transformation path Gu worms, he draws droplets of the oil into his palms with the blue light of a Gu worm. Low on primeval essence, he turns to surface, but impact currents hit him and fracture his bones, and he can only dodge by luck. Once his essence is gone, a current pushes him into the black oil, which covers him completely. He smiles bitterly, having hoped to buy a cure for his own black oil corrosion with the profit. Peaceful and indifferent to death, tired from years of wandering, he shuts his eyes. ^{ch. 1656}

He wakes dazed to attendants objecting that their saintess saved a human thief of the mermen’s black oil. The saintess answers kindly that a lone Gu Master is innocent and that his risks show how troubled he is. He sees three blurred figures, white, blue and red, with human bodies and fish tails, and thanks them and asks their names. The attendants refuse repayment. They say the saintess is Xie Han Mo and that he must remember it. She says she has healed his injuries and leaves him a Gu worm for the black oil corrosion, which she cannot heal in one try, and then he blacks out. ^{ch. 1656}

Fang Yuan returns from the recollection to find that he has led the village Gu Masters back to the island. In a house at dusk, the mermaid he saved lies unconscious, a young woman whose pale face is turning rosy again. She looks very different from Xie Han Mo, though both are equally beautiful. She is similar only in disposition. The biggest difference is scale color, since Xie Han Mo is a white scaled saintess of the mermen tribe, white being very rare, while this girl has common blue scales. White scaled mermen can become saints or saintesses, while black scaled ones are deemed cursed and killed at birth, often by their own parents. ^{ch. 1656}

The old village head and the middle aged Gu Master greet Fang Yuan with utmost respect, for his strength, the water shell Gu and his promise to create a Gu worm for them. The head offers food, and the middle aged man offers to care for the mermaid and bring her to Master Chu when she wakes. Fang Yuan declines and asks them to let her go once she wakes, for though her act is close to theft on human territory, she has a hard life. They promise no trouble, and the head adds that many mermen have stolen black oil over the years, ignored since the village cannot extract it all. Fang Yuan had soul searched the head and the girl, and learned that merfolk and humans here live at peace, even intermarrying. In the outside world merfolk rank below humans, and the two often fight. He concludes that this grotto-heaven seems to be a paradise for humans and merfolk. ^{ch. 1656}