Chapter 268: Chapter 266: School of Fish
Little Fish swam at the center of the moonlight, wrapped in a band of light, like a pupa in a chrysalis.
Specks of light sprinkled into its body, and the scars on Little Fish slowly vanished without a trace.
The band of light gently caressed Little Fish’s head before slowly drifting into the distance.
Little Fish watched the band of light with yearning. At that moment, the moonlight became the most beautiful symbol in its heart.
"It’s beautiful, isn’t it?"
Jeff said suddenly.
"So beautiful you want to claim it for yourself."
Hearing this, Mo Ling paused.
"What do you mean?"
"It’s nothing..."
Jeff fell silent again.
Before Mo Ling could process it, Little Fish turned its head and burrowed toward another membrane.
The beautiful moonlight gradually faded from the enveloping membrane.
’Where are we off to next?’
Mo Ling had expected another natural scene, but when Little Fish passed through the membrane, the sight before him plunged him into confusion.
It was still an endless darkness.
But within this darkness, countless tiny white dots hung suspended in the void. They were arranged in perfect order, stretching into the infinite distance.
They formed a grid, each one perfectly equidistant from the others. They were like soldiers in formation, only they were arrayed in neat ranks within a three-dimensional space.
Upon arriving, Little Fish had no idea what it was looking at. It swam curiously through the gaps between the white dots, like a troublemaker who had slipped into the ranks.
The white dots didn’t react at all, remaining perfectly still, suspended in silence.
Finally, Little Fish could no longer contain its curiosity and gently bumped into one of the white dots.
But that single bump triggered a massive chain reaction.
The dot it struck suddenly expanded like a kernel of popcorn. Its once perfectly stable spherical shape instantly began to distort and change.
It seemed the change in this one dot destabilized the structure, and the surrounding dots began to tremble rapidly.
The dot’s shape changed swiftly. In the blink of an eye, it had transformed into a perfect, identical copy of Little Fish.
Little Fish stared at this flawless replica of itself, and the two looked at each other, bewildered.
But it wasn’t over. The other trembling dots also began to mimic the first dot’s transformation, slowly expanding and distorting to take on the form of Little Fish.
Before long, several more Little Fish appeared, and they too began to stare at one another.
Soon, even the white dots farther away began to tremble violently...
"What are these white dots?"
This time, Mo Ling couldn’t guess the meaning behind the white dots. It was simply too abstract.
Jeff’s standard Fishman tongue once again echoed in his ears:
"This is the ’Swarm’."
"As in a ’Swarm of Fish’."
"This is when the Fishman Race truly became a race—a race capable of infinite expansion. This is the ability granted to us by the ’Swarm’ permission. It was the first permission the Fishman Race obtained; you could say it’s our very foundation."
Jeff explained calmly.
"The first permission?" Mo Ling seemed to understand something.
"That’s right."
"The Sun, the Moon, the Sea, the Swarm... all of these are permissions?"
Hearing Mo Ling’s question, Jeff replied with satisfaction, "Correct. You understand now. These are permissions. It took the Fishman Race a very long time to figure this out."
Hearing Jeff’s definitive answer, Mo Ling’s mind struggled to keep up.
’Everything is a permission? Just what kind of world was the Fishman Race born into?’
The "Swarm" was still expanding, and Little Fish couldn’t wait any longer. It had no choice but to lead the swarm and continue exploring.
With the swarm, Little Fish’s expedition became much livelier. The swarm could often help it scout ahead. It was also very clever, memorizing the connections between the various membranes and regions and gradually familiarizing itself with this strange world.
Mo Ling also witnessed all sorts of scenes from Little Fish’s perspective:
An empty desert, composed entirely of sand.
A void filled with trees, with no soil, their roots dangling in the air.
And some scenes that were incredibly abstract, seemingly without any meaning...
All these scenes, without exception, shared one characteristic—
Purity. They were incomparably pure.
Sand was just sand, trees were just trees, with no other impurities. It was just that these places possessed some very wondrous abilities:
The sand could create desiccation.
The trees could control souls.
While experiencing these varied scenes, Little Fish also began to try and obtain the same permissions they represented.
At first, it could only try to trigger the more abstract and bizarre scenes. Once their stability was disturbed, these scenes would rapidly collapse.
After the collapse, Little Fish would obtain the permission corresponding to that scene.
Little Fish distributed these permissions to the swarm and then controlled the permissions by controlling the swarm.
Next, Little Fish began to try and touch the permissions that had a concrete form.
It discovered that if it couldn’t make a scene collapse on its own...
...then it would destroy the scene manually.
After destroying the forest in the void, Little Fish was astonished to find that after it distributed the ’tree’ permission to the swarm, the replicas, which had previously only obeyed orders, began to have "souls."
"Who am I?"
A replica that had just gained a soul asked Little Fish this very question.
It was the first dot Little Fish had touched in the "Swarm," its very first replica. Little Fish remembered it well.
"You are Lingyi."
Little Fish thought for a moment before giving it such a name.
"You are Ling’Er."
It then turned its head and said to the second replica.
"From now on, it will be like this. Just follow the sequence, Ling’Three, Ling’Four... then I won’t have to keep coming up with names."
Little Fish was pleased with its own brilliant idea.
And so, Little Fish got a taste for destroying scenes. It continued to lead the swarm, conquering all sorts of new places.
After acquiring more and more permissions, the swarm’s power grew stronger and stronger, and they began to conquer scenes that were much more difficult to destroy.
Once the swarm possessed souls, Little Fish no longer needed to make every decision itself. It just had to hand over permissions to the replicas below and let them expand freely while it reaped the rewards.
The replicas were extremely obedient. They would not defy Little Fish’s commands, which also seemed to be an effect of the "Swarm".
It was a Swarm of Fish, after all. The ’Fish’ always came before the ’Swarm’.
Throughout this process, the replicas also grew smarter and smarter.
Among them, Lingyi was particularly satisfying to Little Fish. Lingyi was extremely clever, adept at using the permissions it held—even using them in new and inventive ways—and its management of the other replicas was impeccable.
So, Little Fish gave it more permissions, and it did not disappoint, leading the swarm to conquer even more scenes.
"Is that you? Jeff." Mo Ling couldn’t help but ask, watching the replica Lingyi darting back and forth, busy with its tasks.
"Yes."
Jeff replied softly.
