After transmigrating into the infamous, vicious female of the Sea Beast Tribe, Lin Xi opens her eyes at an auction block in the black market. Five black pearls are clutched in her hand, and she's about to sell her newly adult merman brother-in-law to an old female who wants to boil him down for mermaid oil to light her lamps!
Looking at the silver-haired youth in the iron cage, his tail fin brutally torn off, still fiercely protecting a few rotten strips of seaweed he had saved for her, Lin Xi hurls the pearls at the black market boss. "I'm done with this deal. I'm taking him with me!"
The whole island laughs at her madness. The cold tide is coming, and they don't even have a fish hide to keep the wind out. If she doesn't sell this crippled merman, she'll also have to support his blind older brother, a merman who has gone pearl diving in the deep sea and may never return. The three of them will end up as food for sea monsters!
Lin Xi sneers and touches the sensitive sea otter ears atop her head. How could anyone starve beside a primitive tidal flat strewn with gold?
She weaves bamboo baskets, sets up ingenious traps to catch sea creatures, and cracks open poisonous reefs to dig out premium blood abalones and sea lingzhi! She steams the bitter sea urchins the tribe despises into golden, silky sea urchin custard; she smashes the iron-shelled giant crabs no one dares touch and boils them into rich, milky seafood porridge fragrant for miles!
While other females are still fighting tooth and nail over half a frozen fish, a blazing charcoal fire burns in Lin Xi's stone house. The two battle-scarred mermen whom the whole tribe once scorned now gleam with iridescent scales, their eyes red as they compete to place exquisite purple pearls, formed from their blood and tears, at her feet!
