A Little Jellyfish's Undersea Adventures

[Updates daily at midnight. Upcoming stories: The Little Fighting Fish’s Mountain and River Adventures and The Black Hole Kitten’s Interstellar Travels. Their blurbs are below.] Tang You was a very, very small immortal jellyfish, translucent and as soft as a strawberry-filled gummy. After saving a human who was close to death, he was forced to return to his polyp stage and fall into a long slumber. Most marine creatures were simple and kind. Tang You helped hermit crabs find suitable shells, removed barnacles parasitizing sea turtles, chatted with clownfish and cleaner shrimp among the coral, and made more friends than he could count. He wanted to find his way home, but his jellyfish body was tiny and slow-moving. He became a lonely little strawberry candy in the ocean. The little jellyfish met another loner, a merperson. The merperson had dazzling silver scales and deep blue eyes, but seemed rather clueless and could barely manage to swish his tail. Tang You taught him how to swim and showed him where to find plenty of food, deeply worried about how he would survive. But his merperson friend seemed different from the other creatures of the sea. He was agile and a fierce fighter, daring to provoke even the most terrifying sharks. Before long, he had united all the merfolk. The little jellyfish, who had somehow ended up living in the merfolk palace, held the giant luminous pearl his friend had given him. A question mark slowly appeared over his head. “I hear there’s a young human lord on the East Coast. He’s powerful, but cruel.” Merfolk were supposedly fond of the strong and hopeless romantics, so the little jellyfish took his merperson friend aside and gave him a careful warning. “Don’t turn into the mermaid from the fairy tale, grow legs for love, and then become sea foam.” The youngest merfolk chieftain in history, the strongest lord on the East Coast, a half-merman who had grown a tail for love: Shen Jixiao: ... Watching the little jellyfish bob in the glowing sea, his blue eyes filled with endless tenderness. “I’ll listen to you.” *A healing little jellyfish bottom x a lovestruck half-merman top. A reverse Little Mermaid story. *Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, with imaginary plants and animals. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. (Don’t believe any species facts in the story.) *Weibo: @Yue Shang Miao Miao Tou. The Little Fighting Fish’s Mountain and River Adventures, [A fish who’s insanely good-looking and outgoing x a top-tier shut-in, socially anxious introvert dragon] As a wild betta fish, Lan Ya was accidentally caught and taken to a completely unfamiliar city. Desperate to escape, Lan Ya leapt out of his fishbowl and struggled his way into an old well in the courtyard. The water was cool, and when he looked up, he saw the round patch of sky above the well. When he looked down, he saw... a tiny, slender fish with long whiskers and a body as black as night. They were both fish stranded far from home, so Lan Ya and the little black fish became companions. The old well connected to an underground river. Lan Ya and the little black fish went on one adventure after another, meeting translucent blind fish in the cold, dark depths and guarding a little snake as it laid eggs in a beautiful karst cave. At last, they reached the hills outside Ancheng, where a stream flowed past. Ancheng had a warm, humid climate, lush tropical plants, tender leaves and sweet fruit in every season, and all kinds of flowers, birds, snakes, and insects. Lan Ya had the time of his life, showing off his beautiful red-and-blue fins in the sunlight, like a brilliant long skirt trailing behind him. Bettas loved to show off their beauty, and they were lively and combative. Whenever Lan Ya played and joked around, he could see the little black fish watching him from the shadows, its pitch-black scales seeming to absorb all the light. Poor little black fish. Lan Ya tried to spare his friend’s feelings. He stopped boasting so much about his own beauty and brought the little black fish something tasty whenever he went out. Still, loving beauty was in a betta’s nature. One day, Lan Ya overheard some children watching a cartoon by the river. He turned to the little black fish and asked, “Do you think if we swim to the end of the water, we’ll turn into dragons?” The little black fish: ? “Let’s go leap through the Dragon Gate together!” Lan Ya said happily. “We’ll become the most beautiful fish ever!” Across mountains and rivers, plains and lakes, they stood up to injustice and boldly competed to be beautiful. Even the quiet little black fish gradually grew livelier, swimming all around with Lan Ya. They never found the Dragon Gate. Only spring blossoms drifted across the water, forming rings of flowers. The red-and-blue betta leapt into the petals and caught a perfect flower in his mouth. He wanted to tell the little black fish that it was okay if they couldn’t become dragons, because being happy every day made them the most beautiful fish. He turned around and saw the little black fish leap out of the water and transform into an elegant, slender black dragon. Its scales were smooth and fine, a dazzling, many-colored black, the most beautiful color Lan Ya had ever seen. The well-dwelling Dragon King, who had not left Ancheng in a thousand years, merely climbed onto a flowering branch. Pink peach blossoms brushed the water, his whiskers swaying gently, as he accepted the peach blossom Lan Ya offered him. “That’s right. You’re the most beautiful fish.” Upcoming story: The Black Hole Kitten’s Interstellar Travels Xuan Qi was a black hole who had cultivated a human form. When he transformed, he accidentally chose a type of small black hole that looked just like a black hole, and became a pure-black kitten. It was all right. Kittens could still run and jump. He had to find someone. As an obscure, feeble black hole, he was rarely observed. Through the long, hazy ages of his existence, no one had ever paid him any attention, not even for a moment. Until one day, Xuan Qi sensed a gaze from very far away. Instinctively, he swallowed that gaze and looked back. A human observed him, day after day. So Xuan Qi began to notice that tiny life, too. Xuan Qi figured the person observing him had to be a delicate, artsy researcher in a white coat and gold-rimmed glasses, dark circles under their eyes as they wrote papers. At last, he found the owner of that gaze. One meter ninety, sun-kissed skin, solid muscles, dressed in work clothes, with a rugged, dashing air. He was Lin Chengxing, a hugely popular explorer and veteran researcher. Xuan Qi meowed for a while on the spot, then decided to follow him anyway. Captain Lin had a cat now, so interstellar exploration was no longer lonely. Sure, the chicken legs on the table disappeared, the little tomatoes the crew had grown got gobbled up, and half of the hard meteorite they’d hauled in got chewed off... Lin Chengxing picked up the cat, holding the eighth alloy cat bowl it had bitten in half. The kitten thought it was about to get a beating and curled into a ball like a black hole. The black hole secretly opened one eye and peeked at him. Lin Chengxing said, “Meteorites are radioactive.” “The meteorite jumped into my mouth by itself!” When Captain Lin clearly didn’t believe him, Xuan Qi jumped up, transformed into a human, and planted a quick kiss on Captain Lin. “I can jump into your mouth by myself, too.” Lin Chengxing: “...” Lin Chengxing thought he’d met a very rebellious black hole. It brazenly demanded his attention and affection, then gave it back to him twofold. For ten years, day after day, he had gazed at a part of the universe that had never been explored. There were no celestial bodies or life in that abyss, just like his desolate heart. Until a little black cat came running out of the abyss. And meowed at him. Theme: Stay optimistic. Every day is a fairy tale.