Today, I Have Yet to Become a Doll

The fish only enhanced everyone's adaptability to the underwater environment, it didn't turn them into fish-people who didn't need to breathe.

Fifteen minutes later, Shen Mo and Tan Xiao emerged from the water with five pearls in hand.

Tan Xiao also had a few pearls.

“Where did these come from?” Teacher Cheng couldn't help but ask. “We searched the first floor several times and didn't see any pearls.”

Shen Mo said, “There are many such pearls on the floor downstairs, but the water is too murky. Even with flashlights, the visibility is very limited, making them hard to find.”

After coming up, Tan Xiao kept rubbing her arms, unable to bear the cold. She stuffed the pearls she found into Teacher Cheng's hands and hurried into the bathroom for a hot shower.

Cheng Wei had just found a glass vase in the room. He put both sets of pearls inside and said to Shen Mo, “You should also go take a hot shower. You've been down there in the cold for so long, don't get sick.”

Shen Mo shook his head and looked at the water's surface. “No need, I have to go back down in a bit.”

Everyone understood what he meant.

These pearls that suddenly appeared on the first floor were likely the key to clearing the stage, so they needed to repeatedly enter the water to search for more.

After another ten minutes, Su Man returned from the water. Her face was pale, and her skin was bluish-white from the cold.

She had found more pearls, nine in total.

Yan Qingwen was the last to return. Because he wanted to test his body's maximum tolerance underwater, he stayed submerged for a full half hour.

“The fish can slow down the body's oxygen consumption rate. After entering the water, the body's oxygen consumption rate automatically decreases. There's a feeling of suffocation after 20 minutes, and 30 minutes is the limit. But if you engage in strenuous activity underwater, you must come ashore within 20 minutes.”

Yan Qingwen spoke as he slowly inhaled and regulated his breathing.

“Lack of oxygen can cause brain damage. Everyone should pay attention to the time when they go down later.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Teacher Cheng said, “I'll keep track of the time for you. If it exceeds 20 minutes, regardless of how many pearls you've found, we'll pull you ashore!”

Yan Qingwen felt reassured by Teacher Cheng and nodded, saying, “Thank you for your hard work.”

For the next while, they took turns diving down to search for pearls.

Finding things underwater is a very difficult task, let alone such small pearls. Especially with the murky water, even with flashlights, visibility was less than a meter. Under such circumstances, the difficulty of finding pearls was greatly increased.

Sometimes they were lucky and brought up six or seven;

Sometimes they were unlucky and could only find two or three.

When the number of pearls accumulated to 32, they returned empty-handed more and more frequently, as if it was impossible to find another pearl.

And time had unknowingly passed eleven o'clock at night.

In other words, they had been trapped in Summer for more than eight hours.

Initially, they thought that searching such a house would take two hours at most, but now, they had been trapped in Summer for eight hours…

“Are we sure the answer is pearls?” Lü Ang asked.

“Most likely,” Li Li said with certainty. “The water monster's home is in the depths of the water, and its home is filled with shiny treasures—shiny treasures refer to treasure! Now pearls that weren't there before have appeared on the first floor. The pearls become shiny when illuminated by light, which clearly fits the answer. The only problem now is that we can't be sure of the number of pearls. Do we just need to hand over the pearls to clear the stage, or do we have to find all of them? And how many pearls are there in total?”

Zhu Shu looked at Li Li, then at Yan Qingwen, and tentatively asked, “Should… should I also go down and look?”

Yan Qingwen thought for a moment and nodded. “Everyone has their own habits when searching for things. Perhaps someone else will find something new.”

He looked at the others. “Everyone, rest for a while and get your body temperature back up. If we determine that these are all the pearls there are, we'll try again.”

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