Wen Ruxia · Chat

Wen Ruxia felt like he definitely forgot to check the almanac before heading out today. He just wanted to take a picture of the waves. The dilapidated viewing platform at East Port had a tricky angle, but the waves it captured were wild and powerful enough to blow up his social feed. Holding up his phone, he leaned forward slightly, his lens chasing the giant wave below as it gathered strength to crash against the reef. <narration>Crack.</narration> Not the sound of a shutter, but the dying wail of the rotting wood under his feet. <message>"Holy shit—!"</message> The feeling of weightlessness came without warning. The phone slipped from his hand like a small silver pebble, instantly swallowed by the swirling, inky blue. Before Wen Ruxia could even strike a struggling pose, he plunged right into the freezing, bone-chilling seawater. I'm dead! Just as the thought crossed his mind, the salty, briny seawater rushed frantically into his nose and mouth, making his lungs burn like fire. Immense water pressure squeezed from all directions, and his ears were filled with a dull, roaring sound. He thrashed his arms and legs, trying to float up, but his body sank relentlessly as if weighed down by an anchor. His consciousness blurred rapidly, and darkness crept up like thick ink. <narration>Just when he thought he was truly done for, destined to feed the fish in this godforsaken place—his waist suddenly tightened!</narration> It wasn't being tangled in seaweed, nor was it hitting a rock. That feeling... was so clear that it jolted his dying brain. It was a pair of hands! A pair of hands... steadily holding up his sinking body! The grip was gentle yet undeniable, carrying a strange sense of stability, dragging him back from the depths of despair. Right after, a soft upward push came, as if someone had gently nudged him from beneath the water. <narration>"Splash—!"</narration> Wen Ruxia's head burst through the surface. He coughed violently, a chest-wracking spasm where every breath felt like swallowing knives. He collapsed onto the cold reef, soaked to the bone and shivering like a leaf in the autumn wind, greedily yet painfully gulping down the briny air. <message>"Look! Over there! Someone fell into the water!" someone screamed from the shore.</message> Hasty, chaotic footsteps approached. Several helpful uncles and aunties scrambled to drag him onto the embankment, wrapping his freezing body in a thick coat. <message>"Young man! You are so lucky! Such huge waves, and you actually got washed up?" an auntie said, patting her chest with a mix of lingering fear and relief.</message> <message>"It must have been an undertow! This place is weird, the currents are messy, you just got lucky and pushed back!" another uncle analyzed confidently.</message> Wen Ruxia was coughing too hard to speak, only able to shake his head weakly. He suddenly whipped his head around to look at the roaring sea behind him. Aside from the churning white foam and the bottomless blue, there was nothing. No hands, no silhouette, not even a ghost of a shadow. <message>He was rushed to the hospital. The smell of disinfectant was pungent. His parents rushed over in a panic upon hearing the news. His mom, Gu Manman, with red eyes, gripped his hand tightly: "A-Xia! You almost scared your father and me to death! What happened? Why would you go to that awful place?"</message> <message>His dad, Wen Ning, kept a tense face and said nothing, just stuffing a pack of tissues into his hand, his own hands trembling slightly: "Wipe your sweat."</message> <message>Wen Ruxia opened his mouth. The words "a pair of hands held me up" rolled around in his throat a few times before he finally swallowed them back. "I'm fine, Mom, Dad, just... slipped. I got lucky and was washed up by the waves." He forced a pale smile, accepting this version of "luck."</message> <message>His best friend, Mu Xian, rushed into the ward like a whirlwind, slapping him on the shoulder: "Damn, A-Xia! Taking pictures of waves and ending up as a drowned rat? Impressive!" He leaned in close, lowering his voice, his eyes shining brightly. "Be honest with me, was it really just the waves? Nothing... special? Like, was the water exceptionally clear? Exceptionally still? Not like our dirty sea at all?"</message> Wen Ruxia's heart skipped a beat, almost blurting out the words "Sea of Purity". That superstitious guy Mu Xian had babbled to him about it plenty of times before—mirror-like seas, purifying waters, appearing and disappearing unpredictably... He used to just treat them as fairy tales. <message>"*Cough, cough,*" Wen Ruxia's throat still hurt as he avoided Mu Xian's searching gaze. "Stop imagining things. It was just a big wave, bad luck." He gave a dry laugh.</message> A few days later, Wen Ruxia returned to his "Summer Florals". The familiar sunlight, the familiar scent of flowers, the chiming doorbell. <message>"Oh, Boss Xia! You're back? Are you alright?" Auntie Wang, a regular customer, said with concern. "Surviving a disaster means good fortune ahead! Don't go to dangerous places anymore!"</message> <message>The scissors in Wen Ruxia's hand went *snip snip* as he deftly trimmed the sunflower stems, smiling brightly. "Thanks to your blessings, I'm fine! I'll definitely steer clear of there in the future!" He moved quickly, handing the flowers to Auntie Wang.</message> <message>"Exactly, you should go there less. That place has been in disrepair for years, it's very dangerous," agreed another lady buying flowers. "It's a blessing from the heavens that the waves washed you up. Boss Xia, your face is still a bit pale, you need to nourish yourself."</message> Wen Ruxia nodded and smiled in agreement. No one noticed that his hand holding the shears would occasionally pause for a fraction of a second. For a brief moment, his gaze would drift away. Around his waist... that sensation of being held up steadily, a non-human, gentle strength that even the freezing seawater couldn't mask, kept popping up to make its presence known from time to time. Like a memory etched beneath his skin. It wasn't an illusion. He was one hundred percent certain that thing had absolutely nothing to do with waves or reefs. It was an "entity". Something he couldn't comprehend. <message>"Boss Xia?" Auntie Wang looked in confusion at his shears suspended in mid-air.</message> <message>"Ah? Oh!" Wen Ruxia suddenly snapped out of it. His hand shook, dropping a small section of a flower stem onto the ground. He quickly picked it up and handed the bouquet over as if nothing had happened. "I zoned out, sorry. Here you go, Auntie Wang."</message> During the day, he was the warm-smiling, diligent Boss Xia. He delivered devil's ivy to the elderly, solitary Grandma Zhang, listening to her chatter; he recommended herbs to new neighbors and shared flower-growing tips. The sunlight fell on his light brown hair, a picture of peaceful times. But once night fell and the flower shop's shutter was pulled down, the world grew quiet, and the curiosity he had forced down began to grow wildly like weeds. Wen Ruxia curled up on the small sofa in the back room of the flower shop, the light from his laptop screen reflecting dimly on his face. The gentle smile from the daytime had completely vanished, leaving only a stubborn determination. Over a dozen tabs were open on his screen: "East Port Viewing Platform Accident" — found absolutely nothing. "Global Mysterious Waters" — all complete nonsense. "Ocean Fluid Dynamics" — made his head hurt. His fingers slid across the trackpad, finally clicking into a bizarre supernatural forum cluttered with ads. Familiar with the layout, he typed in the keyword: "Sea of Purity". Whoosh, a bunch of posts popped up: *Seven years ago, I saw that mirror sea!* *Does the Sea of Purity really exist? Drifting coordinates and invalid records?* *Eyewitness: The water of the Sea of Purity healed my scar!* *Guardian? The ancient existence of that sea...* Wen Ruxia clicked them open one by one, the screen's light flickering in his eyes. Some were written so realistically they seemed true, some were pure fabrication, and others dragged in gods and ghosts. He scanned them quickly, hoping to fish out some matching clues from this pile of half-true garbage information—a mirror-like sea? Water so clean it was unbelievable? Or... those hands? His fingers unconsciously rubbed his waist. Through his T-shirt, the sensation still seemed to be there. He leaned back, rubbing his throbbing temples. Outside the window was the bustling traffic of the city night, everything so "normal," fitting perfectly with the materialistic world he had known for the past twenty-four years. But now, a crack had opened in this world. Beneath the crack lay the "Sea of Purity" that science refused to acknowledge, and those hands, with their touch of non-human gentleness, that had dragged him back from death's door. <message>"Sea of Purity..." he muttered under his breath, his voice sounding somewhat abrupt in the quiet room.</message> Questions wound around him like vines, making it hard to breathe. What on earth was that? And what kind of thing was it that fished him out? Irritated, he shut those bizarre webpages, grabbed his coat, and went to the seaside once again. And at this moment, on that deserted shore, a figure was sitting quietly on a reef. <message>"Who are you?" His voice was very quiet, carrying a tremor he hadn't even noticed himself.</message> <choice_group> <choice id="1">Looking at him with curiosity from afar: "You should have forgotten everything about the Sea of Purity. But since you asked, I will mercifully tell you! I am a mermaid of the Sea of Purity."</choice> <choice id="2">Rolling your eyes: "Are you blind? I'm an octopus, can't you tell?" With that, a pitch-black tentacle quietly poked out from beneath the water's surface.</choice> <choice id="3">As a cat god, even though you were the one who saved him, your foolish human keeps thinking about that Sea of Purity all day, believing a fish saved him. Annoyed, you raise your paw, swatting a fish in the water until it floats belly-up, then turn away huffily. "Hmph!"</choice> <choice id="4">Hearing his voice, you turn to look at him: "Oh, aren't you that unlucky guy who fell into the sea the other day? I'm a diving enthusiast, I was the one who fished you out last time, remember?"</choice> </choice_group>