Chapter 1
On the day I was sent away, Mom said:
“Sansan, things are really difficult for us. Please don’t resent us.”
I glanced out through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
A brand-new private aircraft sat on the landing pad.
“How difficult are things, exactly?” I asked.
Mom dabbed at her tears.
“I’ve just canceled my Mars Club renewal. All those other wives are laughing at me!”
Our family’s total assets scrolled in real time across the floating screen in the living room.
[987,621,004.]
Dad stared at the number, sighing over and over.
“Sansan, once you’re down there, you must behave yourself.”
“That octopus made a very generous offer. It’ll cover some of our losses.”
I thought I’d misheard.
“An… octopus?”
My second-oldest sister emerged from her bedroom with a faint smirk.
“What else? Did you think some big shot from Beijing’s elite would take an interest in an ugly girl like you?”
My little brother, the youngest of us, asked excitedly:
“Sansan, do you think the octopus will bite your toes? Just thinking about it is hilarious!”
Mom patted his forehead, her voice indulgent.
“Sweetheart, once she’s in the deep sea, you won’t have her to play with you anymore.”
He curled his lip.
“So what? I don’t care! She’s stupid. Even my robot puppy’s more fun than she is…”
With that, he went back to his gaming pod.
Dad had just bought him an immersive Cosmic Amusement Park. It cost 2.3 million.
That afternoon, a deep-sea courier came to collect the package.
I stood in the entryway and looked at them one last time.
“Mom, Dad, do you actually care about me?”
Mom spoke through her tears.
“You’re our third daughter. How could we not love you?”
“Don’t worry. As soon as our assets are back up to ten figures, we’ll bring you straight home!”
With Mom’s tears to see me off, I boarded the submarine.
Apart from the courier and me, it carried several hundred urns of ashes.
Having one’s ashes buried in the deep sea was humanity’s ultimate dream.
What people didn’t know was that the true deep sea wasn’t blue. It was pitch-black.
Six hours later, the submarine reached the seabed.
The city here had been abandoned for hundreds of years.
Plankton drifted through the ruins like clusters of ghostly flame.
At the center of those points of light stood an underwater lighthouse.
“There. The lighthouse is where the octopus lives. You’ll have to go in yourself.”
The courier shoved an oxygen mask into my hands and sprayed me with some deep-sea survival spray.
“The spray only lasts twenty minutes.”
“If you don’t get inside in time, the water pressure will crush you flat.”
He said it casually, then pushed me out through the hatch.
Icy seawater closed around me. Pain stabbed through my eardrums.
I looked toward the distant lighthouse.
Lavish glass windows studded its walls, interspersed with red coral.
The submarine had already turned and disappeared into the dark.
All I could do was follow the stone path, one step at a time.
I was about to ring the doorbell when the ground suddenly trembled.
I turned and found myself staring into a pair of cold eyes.
It was an enormous octopus.
With its dark red body and eight arms spread across the sand, it looked like an ancient sovereign.
The next second, something tough and strong whipped toward me.
It coiled around my waist and dragged me into the lighthouse, luggage and all.
“Aah!”
I shot upward as though riding a vertical elevator.
Seconds later, I landed on a metal floor, my oxygen mask knocked askew.
I was about to straighten it when an octopus arm reached over.
Pop.
It took my oxygen mask away.