Reborn One Week Before the Apocalypse

After much thought, Tang Mo decided to go see Da Jing.

She had first entered the sea from that fishing village, where she encountered Da Jing and ultimately obtained the Life Energy Pearl.

Time had passed, and things had changed. When Tang Mo arrived at the fishing village, it was completely deserted.

Unlike other places, this village was by the sea. When the Ice Age arrived, the seawater froze rapidly, making the coastal areas even colder. Any surviving humans in the vicinity would have migrated elsewhere long ago.

Old acquaintances were nowhere to be found, but an old whale might still be around.

Tang Mo gazed at where the ocean used to be. The sea was no longer visible. The solidly frozen surface was covered in a thick layer of snow, making it look no different from any other stretch of land.

However, now imbued with energy, Tang Mo could still sense that a world of its own lay beneath the thick sheet of ice.

The pink ball of light swiftly passed through the thick ice, sinking continuously downward.

The ice layer was incredibly thick. Her consciousness-form sank for what felt like an eternity before she finally saw a familiar, flowing Space.

It was the ocean, beneath the thick layer of ice.

If there was any final paradise left in this Ice Age, it was undoubtedly the ocean.

Although the temperature had dropped drastically, the ocean’s depth prevented it from freezing solid. At most, only the topmost layer was frozen.

Because the surface was sealed by ice, it insulated the water below from the frigid air, keeping it well-protected.

Tang Mo couldn’t feel the temperature, but the deeper she sank, the more sea creatures she saw swimming freely. She knew this place hadn’t changed much from before.

‘Good thing I’m just a ball of light right now,’ Tang Mo thought. ‘I can go wherever I please. If I had come in my physical body, I would’ve had to dig through that thick ice to get down here. What a chore that would’ve been.’

Tang Mo looked at her current pinkish self and found that she had actually grown used to it.

A pink ball of light entering the water naturally attracted the attention of many sea creatures. Lots of pretty little fish swam around Tang Mo, circling her curiously.

Some even tried to brush against the pink orb with their tails, only to grow more curious when they discovered they couldn’t touch it.

Time was the one thing Tang Mo had in abundance now. She playfully swayed her consciousness-form, teasing the little fish.

She swayed back and forth as she sank, perfectly at ease with the colorful swirl of fish that now surrounded her.

Tang Mo had discovered on her last visit that although most of the fish in the ocean were mutant beasts, they were lively and innocent. Most were friendly toward humans and not aggressive.

She wondered if it was because of Da Jing’s influence. They weren’t like the mutant beasts on land, which would fight to the death the moment they saw a human, as if driven by some deep-seated grudge.

Just as Tang Mo was lost in these miscellaneous thoughts, a familiar suction force finally appeared.

Tang Mo, along with the school of small fish surrounding her, was rapidly pulled down toward a huge, dark abyss below.

The other fish struggled desperately, trying to resist the pull, but it was all in vain.

Tang Mo looked at the small fish apologetically.

‘Sorry about this, everyone,’ she thought. ‘Playing around is one thing, but leading you down here to become Da Jing’s lunch… as a friend, that was a little uncool of me.’

Of course, the little fish couldn’t hear Tang Mo’s inner thoughts. Otherwise, they would have cursed her out for being Da Jing’s shill, specifically hired to lure in other fish.

Following the suction, Tang Mo smoothly entered Da Jing’s mouth and fell all the way down to that familiar, soft place: Da Jing’s stomach.

Once inside the stomach, Tang Mo looked around. She couldn’t help but sigh as she watched the steam rise from the soft, tender flesh.

‘If those people who tried so hard to escape before had known that the environment they’d face later was even harsher than this stomach, I wonder if they would have regretted leaving.’

‘This place is great,’ she mused. ‘You don’t get cold, and you can just pick up some little fish to eat when you’re hungry. In a pinch, you could even just slice off a piece of meat.’

Tang Mo stared at the pink flesh all around her. ‘If this meat were grilled,’ she thought, ‘it would definitely taste amazing.’

The more she thought about it, the more her mouth watered. Tang Mo couldn’t help but look away.

“You don’t come visit me for so long, and the first thing you think about is grilling my flesh? How shameless.”

A huffy voice suddenly echoed through the enclosed space.

“You’re the shameless one, Da Jing! You were eavesdropping on me!”

Caught red-handed in her shameless thoughts, Tang Mo flew into a rage out of humiliation and decided to go on the offensive.

“Talking? You don’t even have a mouth. How could you talk?”

The voice on the other end snorted.

‘Oh, right.’ Tang Mo suddenly remembered that she couldn’t actually speak. Everything just now had merely been a passing thought. ‘How could Da Jing hear me?’

‘Besides, I haven’t even had a chance to knock on the door of its sea of consciousness yet. How did it know I was here?’

“Your consciousness-form is imbued with the aura of Life. That’s the treasure I gave you, so of course I can feel you. I know everything you’re thinking, so don’t you dare curse me in your head!”

Da Jing warned Tang Mo mercilessly.

‘Is there no such thing as privacy anymore?!’

Tang Mo protested silently, but it was obviously useless.

“How have you been lately?”

Tang Mo immediately decided to change the subject.

“I’m okay. Just a little bored. There’s no one to play with me.”

Da Jing’s voice sounded a bit forlorn. It’s lonely at the top. In this part of the ocean, it was an invincible, all-powerful ruler, but for that very reason, it had no friends.

‘Who would dare play with you?’ Tang Mo thought. ‘One wrong move and they’d get swallowed and eaten.’

Tang Mo grumbled internally, but then, remembering Da Jing could hear her thoughts, she quickly shut down that train of thought.

“Your consciousness should be able to cover the entire ocean, right? In a sea this big, with so many little fish, little shrimp, and little turtles, isn’t there anything fun going on?”

Tang Mo had only been here for a short while and already found the colorful little fish quite amusing. ‘Anywhere there’s Life, it shouldn’t be boring,’ she reasoned.

Tang Mo had only asked casually to make conversation, but she would soon pay the price for her ignorant question.

“Well, that’s not exactly true! You have no idea, the fish, shrimp, and sea corals in this ocean never get a moment’s rest. There’s this seahorse to the west—it mutated and now it pops out babies every single day, and then its babies have babies. Being a hermaphrodite is just insane… And speaking of turtles, there really is one! It was originally a land tortoise, a really huge one, but after it mutated, for some reason it just hangs out in the sea all the time. And let me tell you, it uses its old age as an excuse to tease the fish and shrimp all day long. So disrespectful for its age! And you know that giant octopus? He’s something else. Eight wives, can you believe it?! And also…”

Da Jing had probably been alone for too long. Normally, no other fish would talk to it. Now that it had finally found someone to converse with, it was rambling on and on, unable to stop.