Chapter 281 — The Secret in the Shark's Belly

Gu Mengyao finally understood what this "chambermaid concubine" business was all about. Still, why did her best friend have to drag her into everything?

"No, Yao-yao, didn't we agree long ago? Whoever you marry, I'll marry too — we two sisters will never be apart, right?" Shen Yushu said with perfect solemnity.

"Oh? Then if I don't marry Wei Zhao, if I marry Zhong Yongliang instead, would you marry over with me too?" Gu Mengyao glanced at Shen Yushu. This wretched friend of mine — don't I know you? We grew up together, ate and slept side by side every day. Who could possibly know you better than I do?

"Uh…" Shen Yushu's expression froze. She had not expected Gu Mengyao to ask that, and her face flushed red as she found herself at a loss for an answer.

"Why so quiet all of a sudden?" Gu Mengyao shot her a sharp glare. "Is it really that you don't want to be parted from me, or is it that you want to marry Wei Zhao?"

"Yao-yao…" Shen Yushu began swinging Gu Mengyao's arm and cooing like a spoiled child. "Of course it's that I don't want to be parted from you…"

"Hmph, hmph." Gu Mengyao gave two little snorts and looked at Shen Yushu.

Shen Yushu felt a pang of guilt. Face red, she said, "All right, all right! If I'm going to marry, I'd at least marry someone easy on the eyes… Zhong Yongliang is just too revolting!"

"So you've come clean, have you? That means you find Wei Zhao easy on the eyes?" Gu Mengyao asked.

"Not at all. I just think he's passable, that's all — I don't find him revolting," Shen Yushu explained.

"You little liar." Gu Mengyao tapped Shen Yushu on the forehead. "Relax, I'm not going to marry him. If you want to marry him, marry him yourself!"

"Oh…" Shen Yushu was quite unbothered, for she was convinced that Yao-yao always said one thing and meant another.

Wei Zhao was in the kitchen dealing with the shark. Actually, shark meat was not particularly tasty; he figured that once Gu Mengyao tasted it tonight, she would find it nothing special. But since he had already brought it back, she would never give up until she had tried a bite for herself.

Earlier, on the beach, Wei Zhao had only roughly butchered it, cutting a few chunks of meat from the tail — just enough for him and Shen Yushu to eat.

Now, splitting the whole shark open down the middle, Wei Zhao could only marvel at how enormous the creature was!

"Clang!" A crisp ring of metal striking metal sounded. The knife in Wei Zhao's hand seemed to have hit something metallic. He froze. Could there be something inside this shark's belly?

He had long heard stories of people hauling in sharks and pulling rings and other jewelry from their stomachs — many of those things swallowed along with a person when the shark fed, and since a ring could not be digested, it simply stayed lodged in the belly.

Could he have hit the jackpot too?

Wei Zhao split the shark open in a hurry and pulled out the foreign object from its belly. But clearly this was no ring, nor any kind of jewelry! For one thing, it was very large — not merely large, but astonishingly so. Even Wei Zhao could not help starting in surprise when he drew it out.

It was a small piece of machinery, something like a motor control device, trailing a great big air bladder behind it! It seemed to be some sort of remote-controlled balancing apparatus, though it was covered in rust. Judging by how corroded it was, it had to be quite old.

This was a shark that had been trained and modified by human hands! If Wei Zhao guessed right, this balance-motor contraption could control the direction and speed of the shark's swimming, while the air bladder controlled how high or low it rose and sank in the water.

No wonder he had felt no particular burden dragging a shark behind him while he swam up ahead with Shen Yushu — it was about the same as towing an inflatable raft!

But who had modified this shark? And to what end?

Clearly the controller had long since stopped working; otherwise, this shark would never have fallen into his hands.

Wei Zhao took the controller out and examined it carefully. It was no high-tech product — with modern technology, manufacturing a thing like this would be no difficult feat.

The key question was: what was this shark for? But since it had nothing to do with him, Wei Zhao did not give it much thought. He was just about to toss the controller aside when he suddenly noticed a small hatch on the underside that could be opened.

Wei Zhao gave it a pull. The hatch was locked. There was a keyhole on it, meant for an ordinary key by the look of it. Wei Zhao rummaged through the kitchen and found a toothpick; after working it back and forth a few times, the hatch popped open.

A small box sealed in plastic film tumbled out. Wei Zhao picked it up offhandedly.

The little box was nothing fancy, but it was very tightly sealed, somewhat like the popular Lock & Lock food containers, except that it was made of metal.

Wei Zhao tore off the plastic film and waited a moment. When the jade pendant on his body gave no warning at all, he pried the metal box open with some force.

Naturally, Wei Zhao was cautious, for there was no telling what might be inside. What if it were a bomb? Blown to bits the instant he opened it — that would be a bit too tragic.

"Huh?" Wei Zhao took out what was inside the box and blinked, mildly taken aback.

What lay within was a piece of parchment — more precisely, a map made of parchment. But it was not a complete map, only a fragment; how many parts made up the whole, Wei Zhao could not yet determine.

And the writing on the map was in a script Wei Zhao had never seen before. He knew a smattering of most of the world's written languages, and even when he could not read one, a glance was usually enough for him to tell roughly which language it belonged to.

But the script on the map did not belong to any language in the world. Of course, he could not rule out some small country or small tribe he had never heard of, or a lost ancient civilization.

What Wei Zhao considered most likely, though, was that this was a cipher, or rather a code! Only someone who knew the decryption rules could read its meaning.

And now Wei Zhao more or less understood: this shark had been used as a courier, a means of transmitting intelligence — or rather, this map! Only somewhere along the way something had gone wrong; the shark had slipped out of control and never completed its mission, which was why both the controller and the map had been left in its belly.

Out in the vast ocean, finding another shark like this one would be next to impossible; it was only by sheer coincidence that Wei Zhao had run into it at all.

What the map was for, Wei Zhao did not know for the moment. He simply stuffed it into his pocket, meaning to study it when he had time. As for the control device, it had no research value whatsoever, so Wei Zhao tossed it into a corner of the kitchen.