In his previous life, Lin Haitao was a fishing king worth hundreds of millions, but a tuna dragged him into the depths of the South China Sea, where he drowned.
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in 1983, a poor boy from a fishing village in Zhejiang who had failed his exams. His big brother worked himself to the bone at a salt farm, his sister-in-law quarreled with people over a few cents, and the family could not afford a single meat-filled meal.
Then his fingers touched a basin of purple mussels, and the ancient text The Sea-Shaking Classic, left behind by people three thousand years ago, flooded into his mind. His Qi-Sensing Art opened his eyes, and the entire tidal flat became a treasure map: swimming crabs, clams, octopuses, and splendid spiny lobsters. Others could dig down three feet and find nothing, but he found something with every rake. His Water-Commanding Art awakened, and the deep-sea currents fifteen meters below became an extension of his hand. No giant of the deep could escape him.
From trading two swimming crabs for five yuan to selling a marlin for a thousand; from three mu of abandoned buildings once used by educated youth to a workshop monopolizing the county's specially supplied dried seafood. Everyone thought he was just a beachcombing genius with incredible luck.
Only he knew that the increasingly clear pulse beneath the sea was calling to him.
Three thousand years ago, someone used seven stone pillars to hold down the thing beneath the East China Sea that should never awaken. Three thousand years later, the pillars are crumbling.
And he is the only one who can understand the ocean's breathing.
From the tidal flats to the abyss, from a fishing village to the whole world. Forty years later, when Starlink's monitoring signals cover the entire Pacific, sixty-two-year-old Lin Haitao stands on a tidal flat at low tide and reaches out to touch the wet sand.
That pulse is still there, exactly as it was when he first reached into the sea forty years ago.
The sea is still here, and so is he.
