He and It Chapter 37: A God’s Marriage (8)

If you want more of this novel, we are accepting donations on Ko-Fi for sponsored chapters. Each $5 gets one more chapter! There is no limit on how much you can donate. https://ko-fi.com/exiledrebels

 

Thank you ElissaMarshall for the donation!

 

Chapter 37: A God’s Marriage (8)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

 

Yun Chi ate one sea urchin and refused to eat any more. He ran to the second room where the vessels were kept, found some fishing nets made of twisted gold thread and twisted them into four strands as if they were gift boxes, using them as ropes.

“Look, this way, we can get all the jars together!” Yun Chi said joyfully. 

Seeing his smug look, Sa’gya was too embarrassed to tell him that he could actually use his divine power to transport these supplies.

“Then you can put them on my back.” Sa’gya got down on the ground and instructed Yun Chi to put the fishing net with the jars on his body.

Yun Chi asked worriedly, “Isn’t it heavy?”

Sa’gya smiled, “I can carry a mountain on my back. These jars are nothing.”

Once he heard him say so, Yun Chi was relieved. The heaviest jar was a grain jar that was almost half a man high, and filled with heavy grains of wheat. Yun Chi had to struggle to lift it up.

He struggled to tighten several strands of fishing net, securing it along in an open arc. Fortunately, the golden threads were tough and malleable, so they held up.

Sa’gya moved forward a few steps. His head arched into the gap, and the net was like a double-sided pocket, hanging on both sides of the big sea otter’s body.

“Wait a minute, you lie still first!” Yun Chi let go and quickly ran to the inner room, haphazardly he grabbed a few soft cloths and robes, then lifted the sea monster’s wrist feet out. Over the otter’s spine but under the gold wire he created several padded layers, as he laughed, “I’m afraid of choking you.”

Sa’gya was stunned and looked at him blankly. He hesitated for a moment before he slowly got up. The golden threads were strained by the heavy jar and made an overwhelming “creaking” sound. For Sa’gya, it seemed like there were only two light feathers that fell on his back. He moved freely, not at all concerned.

“It’s really better. It doesn’t hurt.” Sa’gya gave him a relieved and sweet smile.

Yun Chi also smiled involuntarily. “That’s good.”

Their return route didn’t follow the original path, Sa’gya turned a mechanism and opened a tunnel in the treasure house. One man and one otter walked down the tunnel. Yun Chi held the heavy load for Sa’gya, but after walking a few steps, Sa’gya shook his body and turned his head to Yun Chi, “Sit up here.”

Yun Chi was unsure, but carefully stepped on the jar and sat down on Sa’gya’s back.

“Hold tight.”

Yun Chi complied and hugged the sea otter’s thick collar fur tightly.

Sa’gya stomped on the floor, Yun Chi suddenly felt his body was light. Weightlessness suddenly hit, and he hurriedly lay dead flat on the back of the big sea otter. With his years of experience in adventure, the moment his feet were empty, and he was suddenly weightless, the next must not be good.

Sa’gya plunged straight into the sea of ice, taking him with him!

Yun Chi was shocked as he desperately grabbed the otter’s hair. He closed his eyes and shouted, “I can not snorkel! – Wait, no. How can I still talk?”

Halfway through his shout, he realized that something was wrong, and tentatively opened his eyes.

–A round bubble wrapped around them. Sa’gya was like a big hamster running in a hamster ball, and he was the little man on the big hamster’s back.

The sea was so mysterious and deep, so magnificent, and so strangely fierce that Yun Chi forgot to breathe for a while, forgot to speak.

Through the transparent bubble barrier, his eyes were drawn to a small fish with a long tail that emitted glowing light at the bottom of the sea. When the fish swam across the darkness of the empty space, the deep water around it suddenly tossed up and wrapped the poor thing in panic. The predator appeared calm with its complex and light transparent skirt, a rosy light pink about of the dark blue water with darting tentacles as thin and soft as willow.

It was a strange creature like a jellyfish, but more delicate and flamboyant than jellyfish, and its camouflage capabilities were also high.

The fish’s shadow was soon assimilated into the haze and endlessly changing flower colors. The victor was walking and dancing, comfortable as a glowing beauty. When it was about to hide its color and return to its invisible state, a huge black tentacle swiftly and silently struck from the darker depths, clutched the body of the “jellyfish” and instantly pulled it into the unpredictable abyss of the sea.

From the prey, to the hunter, to the prey…it all happened in the blink of an eye, almost synchronized. No struggling hiss, no desperate last words. In the silent, calm, but vibrant ice sea, the killing machine was also a water-colored cascade of blades. Without light, there was no way to know where the death of a thousand cuts would come from.

Yun Chi was still in a daze. Sa’gya had already turned his head and asked worriedly, “What’s wrong? You suddenly jumped, did it scare you?”

He stopped swimming and his tone was vaguely frustrated, “I was going to surprise you…”

“No! No,” Yun Chi snapped back to attention and hurriedly stroked the sea otter’s back fur to soothe him, “No, I was just looking at the ocean floor. I’ve never seen anything like it, so I was lost in thought, not frightened.”

Sa’gya breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at him, “Okay then, look. There’s something you’ll want to eat. I’ll go catch it.”

“No,” Yun Chi habitually discouraged. “It’s not right to destroy the local ecological environment, or to interfere with the development of species reproduction, just follow your nature…”

Yun Chi said, “It’s good to follow one’s nature…” and then he felt that his mouth was full, so Yun Chi hurried to remedy the situation, “…But that’s what I think! You don’t have to worry about me. If you want to eat anything, just go get it!”

Sa’gya rubbed his head in confusion, “Okay? I’ll do whatever you want. There’s nothing really good here, but if you want to try something new, I’ll bring it to you.”

On the way, Yun Chi looked at the flourishing scene of the ice sea, and his thoughts inevitably wandered for a moment.

Sa’gya was once the God of the Sea, but the character he revealed to himself, he was neither temperamental, nor any tsunami landslide tyranny, but the most gentle and tolerant…Then the dangerous side of his character, where was he hiding it at the moment?

“Do you want to go to the sea?” Sa’gya asked, “Or do you want to see more under the sea?”

Yun Chi responded, “No, go up, then come back to see it some other time. We’re bringing something with us this time.”

The sea otter obediently spat a bubble and they moved upwards. When they poked their heads out of the sea, Yun Chi saw the sky was full of a beautiful haze that scalded the sea surface into bubbling waves of gold. When they set off, it was daylight at dawn, but now it was dusk at sunset, twilight.

With large white birds flying above their heads and the solid ice around them, Yun Chi looked at the ice and poked Sa’gya in wonder. “Look, there are lots of bird nests on the ice.”

“You want to eat bird eggs?” Sa’gya asked.

“What?” Yun Chi froze. “No. As much as I want to, we already have enough food. I don’t really want to…I mean, I don’t have to indulge my appetite to steal their eggs. Besides, this is mythical times, and I always thought that animals should all have their own intelligence.”

Sa’gya smiled in amazement as he nodded proudly in agreement, “I think it’s great that you think that way.”

With Yun Chi on his back, he swam along, taking in the sights along the way. When he saw the snowy mountains and ice formations on the sea, Yun Chi suddenly thought of something. He leaned down and asked curiously in Sa’gya’s ear, “Sa’gya, I found something.”

The sea otter inclined his head slightly, “What is it?”

“The snow in Kaleva has not stopped and the ice floes on the sea have never melted, but the clothes and shoes your devotees made for you, why do they all look like they are worn in summer?”

Sa’gya was silent for a long time, and Yun Chi, unable to wait for his answer, hastily added, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to answer, it doesn’t matter at all!”

“… Because that was the last summer. Since the current long winter, it has been a long, long time.” Sa’gya’s voice was soft and low. “There is my fault in this.”

The more time he spent with him, the more Yun Chi felt that the past was like a wound that would never heal, and the slightest touch would be a pain in the heart.

What had happened on the icy sea and land of Kaleva?

Yun Chi touched his ear and said, “I don’t know the details of the past…”

Feeling the fluffy soft round ear in his hand stiffen, Yun Chi continued, “…But as long as you don’t say anything, I won’t pry on purpose. I mean, you saved me and took care of me, and that’s a kindness that can never be erased. I don’t know what other people or gods think or do, and I don’t care what they think or do, but in my case, you’ve always been a particularly good and gentle sea otter god…You’re really not bad.”

Sa’gya’s ears slowly softened. Not just his ears, his eyes opened wide and he felt his limbs and spine soften into a puddle of water. His heart melted completely, and bubbles of happy goo kept popping up.

He lowered his head and said nothing but a vague response, “Uh-huh…”

When they got to shore, Sa’gya shook off the seawater and ice particles from his lower body and carried Yun Chi slowly towards their cabin.

“We’re home!” Yun Chi stretched with joy and began to help Sa’gya unload from his back. He hung the sea monster tentacles within Sa’gya’s reach, pushed all the jars into the small kitchen and put them in different categories, then pulled out the small clay pots where the salt and spices had been placed, ran outside and wiped them clean with snow one by one.

Sa’gya tilted his head to stare at his work, and then looked back at the lush pine forest. Back and forth, then he finally made up his mind and walked deeper into the pine forest.

As Yun Chi’s back was turned to him, admiring the small, clean, shiny and beautiful clay pots in the snow, he trudged up to Yun Chi and pulled something out of his chest pocket.

In his palm were five eggs, smaller than the usual eggs, but larger than quail eggs. The greenish eggshells looked as if they were smooth porcelain.

“Where did this come from?” Yun Chi picked them up in surprise, holding the eggs dearly.

“The winter grouse in the woods lay them,” Sa’gya said. “Their habit is to bury the eggs in the snow and wait for a month, then the eggs will break their shells and give birth to small winter grouse.”

Yun Chi laughed dumbly, “You… Did you go and steal their eggs?”

Sa’gya crumpled on the ground, wiping her face shyly with her hairy palm, “They lay a lot every year, and the animals in the woods come and go, often stepping on them, and I just…plowed up five.”

“Oh my God!” Yun Chi suddenly burst out laughing. He didn’t know what was funny about it, but he just couldn’t stop laughing. The gentle Sa’gya, the calm and quiet white sea otter, had snuck into the woods and stolen five eggs from the grouse!

He laughed so hard that tears were coming down his face. Sa’gya was unsure and pricked up his ears, wondering what was going on.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Yun Chi panted. “I feel good. We’re having sea urchin eggs over rice tonight, it’s good!”

He put the five eggs in his arms and ran into the kitchen with the small clay pot in his arms. Sa’gya didn’t know what he was going to do, so he followed him.

Yun Chi thought about it. First, he put the eggs in a bowl. Then he took out a clay pot, as a container for the rice because he still wasn’t sure about Sa’gya’s rice. For the time being, he scooped two bowls of grain, soaked it up with boiled and cooled snow water, so it was ready to wash.

Speaking of snow, the snow here was really very clean. Even if it melted into water, no impurities could be seen in the water, and when drinking it, there was a refreshingly cool and clear feeling.

Yun Chi asked, “Sa’gya, could you please bring back some sea urchins?”

“How many do you want?” Sa’gya asked, peering at the door.

“The usual amount. Are you hungry? Bring back more if you’re hungry.”

“Okay.” Sa’gya answered and turned to leave.

Yun Chi looked at the grain that was soaking, a little apprehensive. Not to mention an accumulation of aged rice, this was simply the ancestor of rice and who knows how many years it was left dry. Although nothing was impossible during God’s time, but these grains, were they really still edible?

Yun Chi tried to pick up one and put it into his mouth.

It was actually chewable, and when it was finely ground on the back teeth, it was still possible to taste the subtle fragrance of the grain…It was amazing, that temple’s storage function!

Yun Chi put down his heart, nimbly panned it three times, poured the rice water out the door, and smeared a layer of snow water on the inner wall of the soup pot. According to the common sense he’d learned from his travels, if you could use a soup pot or casserole to cook rice, if you take fat and apply it to the inner wall first, the cooked rice will be more fragrant, and the old rice can become as oily as new rice, however there was no fat here.

Although there was no fatty meat there, and fish oil seemed to be in short supply, since he couldn’t get it yet, so he made do with snow water.

After Yun Chi finished adding rice and snow water, he built a fire and started cooking. Sa’gya came back with a pocket full of sea urchins, and Yun Chi smiled. He shredded the crispy seaweed with a knife, obviously happy to be back in a smoky atmosphere again.

“Do you like to cook?” Sa’gya asked.

“Yes.” Yun Chi nodded heavily. “When I used to run around outside, the wilderness wasn’t like a restaurant. There is no choice in food, and you have to make everything yourself. I still remember one time, the expedition suddenly encountered thunderstorms, leaving us trapped in the rainforest. Our communication equipment also failed, and the seven of us were trapped for nine days, but we also ate nine days of bananas…”

His hands didn’t stop the whole time, and the shredded seaweed was put into a spare bowl, and then mixed with a little brine. “The thing about bananas is that, the first time you eat them they taste sweet and refreshing, but if you eat too much, you will feel even the root of your tongue is bitter. But then what can be done about it? To find life-saving food, means you’ve been very lucky, its only hard to eat, ah. So we lasted nine days until the rescue team came.”

“But, it’s strange to say, after two years, we finally miss bananas again. Even though it was bitter, it was the taste of life,” Yun Chi said seriously. “Food is the taste of life.”