The Three-Year-Old Darling Raises Her Three Older Brothers With a Tidal Foraging Guide

On a tidal flat at low tide, three-year-old Su Niannian crouched beside a reef. Her chubby little hands dug through the sand and mud, and she plucked up a palm-sized green crab with pinpoint precision.

“Brothers, we’re having crab for dinner!”

Her three skinny brothers looked at their little sister in silence, their eyes red.

Su Niannian was a marine biology PhD in the twenty-first century. Now she had become the youngest daughter of the Su family in a poor fishing village in ancient times. Her parents had disappeared at sea. Her fourteen-year-old eldest brother was so hungry he could barely stand, yet still gave his steamed bun to his younger siblings. Her twelve-year-old second brother went to haul cargo at the docks and got bullied. Her nine-year-old third brother secretly tucked her in at night.

The whole village thought the Su family brought bad luck and wanted them gone.

Other people relied on luck when gathering seafood at low tide. She relied on science. Tide charts, reef ecosystems, the distribution of benthic creatures: her PhD-trained mind knew them all by heart.

Even more incredible, she had a “Tide-Gathering Illustrated Guide Space.” Every time she caught a new sea creature, she unlocked a way to keep it fresh or process it. On the first day, she dug up half a bucket of razor clams and clams. On the third, she found a nest of wild abalone. On the seventh, she discovered a fist-sized pearl beyond the low-tide line.

Her three brothers went from stunned to silent, from silent to red-eyed, and from red-eyed to ready to fight anyone who dared bully their little sister!

Su Niannian smiled. She would use the sea to raise her three brothers until the whole world envied them.

But after the tide went out that day, a faint blue glow from the depths looked just like the light inside the shell pendant their mother had left behind...