God's Gift

Chapter 536 Growth

The scene before him disappeared again. Lu Keming kept moving his feet, closely following the ever-reconstructing image, afraid of missing any scene related to Youyou.

He watched Youyou grow from one meter to two meters, and from two meters to three meters. When she reached three meters, her growth rate slowed down considerably.

Lu Keming looked at Yu Youyou's body, which had almost stopped growing, and a hint of confusion flashed in his eyes.

He leaned closer to her and heard her ask the orca:

How can I stop growing up?

She lay on the coral, listlessly watching the orca, and gestured with her fin:

“I eat very little every day, but my body is still growing.”

"Why don't you want to grow up?" Lu Keming looked at her haggard appearance through the time tunnel with an anxious expression: "Youyou, you must eat well."

But Yu Youyou couldn't hear his voice; she was still complaining to the orca:

"If I grow any older, my mom won't be able to hold me anymore."

Lu Keming's gaze froze. He remained silent for a long time, looking at the dejected Yu Youyou, and gently stroked her head from a distance, saying softly, "Silly Youyou."

However, in the decades that followed, Yu Youyou's body never grew to more than one meter.

She still followed closely behind Yu Yun'ou like a tail, with a pucker in her mouth every day.

Until Yu Yun'ou's hair turned gray, her face aged, and her movements became slow.

She hovered behind Yu Yun'ou, looking at her hair and then at her face, her mouth opening and closing, talking incessantly:

"Mommy, your hair has turned white, just like Youyou's belly!"

"Mom, why do you have lines on your face? Did the waves make your face wrinkled?"

"Mom," she muttered, looking at Yu Yun'ou's increasingly shorter figure, "Mom, why are you getting smaller and smaller?"

She looked at herself and asked, puzzled, "Will Youyou get smaller and smaller like Mommy?"

Yu Yunou looked at Yu Youyou, who was still a child, with tender eyes, as if she had a thousand kinds of reluctance: "Youyou, Mommy is leaving."

"Where to?" Xiaoyu still didn't understand the meaning of death. She rubbed against Yu Yun'ou's palm and said happily, "Youyou wants to go too!"

“Youyou can’t go.” Yu Yunou patted Xiaoyu’s head. “It’s a very, very far place. Only Mom can go.”

"Oh..." Little Fish responded with a hint of disappointment, but quickly put her unhappiness aside and asked expectantly, "When is Mommy coming back?"

“Mom…” Yu Yunou looked into Xiaoyu’s expectant eyes, bent down and hugged her: “Mom won’t be coming back.”

Upon hearing this, the little fish's tail gradually drooped down.

She thought of her friends in the ocean who had left and never returned, and finally realized that her mother might also leave like those friends.

Yu Yun'ou looked at the little fish's drooping tail, tears welling in her increasingly cloudy eyes. She patted the little fish's back, as she used to soothe her to sleep, and said gently:

"It's okay, Youyou."

"Youyou and Mom will meet again."

Lu Keming stood in the dark time tunnel, staring blankly at this scene.

It turns out that at this time, Yu Yunou had already asked Youyou if they would ever meet again.

The scene in the tunnel changed again, and Lu Keming looked up and saw Yu Youyou, who had grown up a lot.

This time, however, Yu Yun'ou and her father were no longer by her side.

She has grown up a lot.

Her body seemed to have entered a belated puberty, with her long-dormant bones sprouting and growing rapidly like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. The excess flesh she once had was quickly lost, making it impossible for Lu Keming to find any trace of her childhood self in her.

Gradually, she grew larger than an orca, then a humpback whale… until finally, she grew larger than the blue whale, the largest whale in the ocean.

She still surfaces every day, greeting the sun as it rises and bidding it farewell as it sets.

She will still approach the shore, but she will no longer be able to reach the reef. She will stay near the shore, watching the humans on land from afar.

Most of the time, she stayed in the dark and gloomy Mariana Trench.

There were no clownfish she kept there, no seaweed that had grown into a forest, and no colorful coral reefs.

Here, sunlight cannot reach, and life is extremely rare.

But the deepest trench in the ocean can hide her enormous body.

She gradually came to enjoy sleeping, and stopped always floating to the surface and going out to see the sun.

On one occasion, she slept for months on end.

Lu Keming stood inside the tunnel, outside the frame; it wasn't him in that dark, sunless trench...

But looking at Youyou lying quietly at the bottom of the abyss, he felt as if he were surrounded by the bone-chilling cold seawater. An endless loneliness swallowed him up, suffocating him.

Looking at the silent Youyou, Lu Keming raised his hand and pounded on the tunnel barrier, calling out in a pleading voice, "Youyou, stop sleeping."

"Youyou, wake up..."

But a gap of time separated them, and no matter how hard he shouted, Yu Youyou still couldn't hear his voice.

Warm tears streamed down Lu Keming's face. He slowly closed his eyes, knelt down beside the inner wall of the time tunnel, and silently waited for her to wake up.

After a long period of silence, Lu Keming finally woke up slowly from his slumber.

She opened her eyes and looked up at the sea.

Lu Keming held his breath, his hand resting on the tunnel ceiling, touching her through the air, and whispered:

"Youyou, let's go look at the sea. The sun has risen again."

Miraculously, as if his call had traveled through time to reach her, she actually got up and swam towards the sea.

The scene inside the tunnel changed constantly as Yu Youyou moved around, and Lu Keming followed closely behind her, running continuously through the tunnel.

He watched the seawater gradually brighten, saw the spots of light refracted by the ocean, and his lips curled into a smile as he spoke in an encouraging tone:

"Yes, that's it, Youyou."

"Let's go to the sea, let's see the sun!"

Finally, Yu Youyou's enormous body burst out of the sea. She leaped high into the air and then crashed back into the ocean, creating violent waves and churning up rings of milky white foam on the calm surface.

The splashing water droplets refracted rainbows, and the dazzling sun shone on her smooth skin, giving it a luminous glow.

She stretched her body and finally let out a joyful laugh.

As Lu Keming listened to her laughter, his gaze softened. But then, as if he had thought of something, the smile on his lips gradually froze.

Youyou once told him that after the other gods perished, she slept for a long time.

When was that?