Marry Shrimp

Ye Chaosheng, a female diver in a fishing village in the East China Sea, volunteered to become a tribute bride to the shrimp man prince of the deep sea "Long Beard Kingdom" in order to save the whole village from famine. According to legend, shrimp people shed their shells every hundred years. During the molting period, they degenerate into juvenile shrimps, which require human body temperature to harden their new shells. The mission of the tribute bride is to guard those twelve fatal hours with her life. Once completed, the "shrimp beads" in their bodies will be dug out and exiled to the abandoned city, turning into half-human, half-shrimp monsters. Ye Chaosheng sank to the bottom of the sea with the dagger her father gave her. She didn't plan to die, nor did she plan to stay - she just wanted to survive the twelve hours and find a way to escape. But what she saw outside the Shell Shedding Hall was not a cold carapace monster. But a man who would lock himself in a pile of old shells every time after shedding his shell, and repeatedly smash his old shell with his fist for three hundred years. The cracks on his old shell were not caused by battle, but cracks from the inside. She should have pierced his body with a dagger on the first night of molting, but the transparent young shrimp instinctively pierced her heart. It couldn't speak, it just trembled. She held the baby shrimp in her palm and felt the faint light inside it converge with her heartbeat. She told herself: She didn't kill him because the time was running out. Later she discovered that he had a crystal box with a faded purse locked inside. The lace of the purse is tied with a double-strand knot. Shrimpman's hands cannot learn this human knotting method, so he takes it apart and ties it again every day, practicing it repeatedly - it is the only relic left to him by his mother who died three hundred years ago. She finally understood: he was not a monster, he was a trapped beast that had sealed himself in a shell for three hundred years and did not know how to be treated as a "human". She began to use the stubbornness of the haenyeo to pry his shell layer by layer. He imprisons her with his morbid possessiveness, but every day he picks up old human belongings from the ruins floating in the deep sea and piles them silently beside her pillow. He would not allow her to leave, but he would put the dagger back into her hand every time she shed her shell. He pointed at the gap in his carapace and told her: "Follow this gap and point three fingers up, which is the heart." "Remember?" "I just want to know in whose hands he died." Under the deep sea, the seabird demon Bai Ling King, who has been suppressed for thousands of years, is awakening. He invades everyone's mirror with illusions and tells you what you most want to hear in your ears. He said to Ye Chaosheng: Destroy his old shell, the curse will be lifted, and you will be free. He speaks in the voice of her long-lost mother, who knows the weaknesses of all people. On the night of the great molting, King Bai Ling launched a general attack. Ye Chaosheng stood next to the old shell with a dagger in his hand. In front of him was the perfect illusion woven by the White Ling King - the exit to the land, his long-lost mother, and freedom within reach. She took off her red wedding dress and wrapped it in his old shell. Twelve hours. She uses human body temperature to protect the last memory of a shrimp, and uses her own heartbeat to awaken the dragon's blood that has been sealed in the old shell for thousands of years. The moment the old shell breaks, what comes out is no longer a shrimp. It's a dragon. He hovered over her, his dragon eyes reflecting her face. He said: "I had a long, long dream. In the dream, I kept smashing a wall. For three hundred years, until the sound of a person's heartbeat came from the other side of the wall." "…Then the wall crumbles on its own." He changed her mind. Use half of the keel in exchange for the shrimp bead that grows together with the heart in her body. From now on, she is no longer human, and he is no longer a shrimp. Her life was tied to his. She said: "Aren't you still locking me up?" He knelt in front of her, resting his forehead on the back of her hand - this was the only gesture of weakness he had learned in three hundred years. "This time, the key is in your hand." Concept: The shell is both a cage and a shelter. She used her body temperature to protect his most fragile body when he shed his shell. The keel that he spent three hundred years smashing grew back with the sound of her heartbeat. Identity can be taken away, but love can transform a person from a shrimp into a dragon.