Li Li froze. “Not pearls? Then what?!”
“It's light,” Bai Youwei replied.
“Light?” Li Li couldn’t understand. “Why light? In the summer, the rain is so heavy, it’s pitch black, and you can’t see where the treasure is… How can the treasure be light?”
Bai Youwei explained, “The nursery rhyme doesn’t say the water monster can’t find the treasure, it just says it can’t see the treasure.”
“But it still can’t be light!” Li Li disagreed, frowning. “And how do you explain those pearls? Why would those pearls suddenly appear in the flooded areas?”
Bai Youwei was silent for a moment, then said, “Actually, it’s not hard to understand. The bear brought fish, so the fish could also bring pearls.”
Li Li was stunned.
Yes…
The bear brought fish, so why couldn’t the fish bring pearls?
Were the pearls they found actually a second round of rewards?
“Think about the nursery rhyme again,” Bai Youwei softly recited. “In spring, the bear wakes up, losing two children, oh so worried; in summer, the rain is so heavy, it’s pitch black, and you can’t see where the treasure is; in autumn, who has come? Look, the Nail-Tooth Monster opens its mouth, but where are its teeth…
Spring and autumn both mention the names of the guests, why doesn’t summer? The rhyme could easily have been written as—The water monster can’t see where the treasure is.
Why wasn’t it written like that, instead of ‘it’s pitch black, and you can’t see where the treasure is?’
Because ‘Pitch Black’ is the name of this water monster! It has lost its ‘light,’ it can’t see its own treasure, it can’t see anything!
And we were all misled by the word ‘treasure’!”
“You mean, what we need to do now isn’t to search for treasure,” Yan Qingwen asked, “but to help it see the treasure?”
Bai Youwei nodded. “Just now, when I fell in, it was very dark underwater. Even when the fish swam over, it was still very dark. It’s very sensitive to light sources. Also, it looks like an anglerfish, so logically, there should be a luminescent object on its fin spine…”
“It’s an adenocyte,” Li Li couldn’t help but say. “The adenocytes of anglerfish can secrete luciferin, which, catalyzed by luciferase, reacts chemically with oxygen to produce light. But where are we going to get adenocytes for it? Are we supposed to give it a flashlight?!”
“No flashlight needed,” Bai Youwei gently shook her head. “If my guess is correct, there should be a matching lightbulb for it in this house.”
“A lightbulb?!?” Li Li exclaimed dramatically! He thought Bai Youwei’s idea was completely absurd!
Yan Qingwen nodded. “This anglerfish monster can generate electricity, so a lightbulb is indeed very likely.”
Li Li was speechless.
“But there are many lightbulbs in this house, which one is it?” Cheng Laoshi asked.
“The one that doesn’t light up,” Bai Youwei said with certainty.
Everyone looked at each other.
So many lightbulbs, which one wouldn’t light up? Now the first and second floors were flooded, the power was out, and even if they wanted to test them, they couldn’t, unless…
They involuntarily looked at the rabbit in Bai Youwei’s arms.
Shen Mo spoke, “The light in the storage room doesn’t work.”
Everyone was taken aback.
“I searched the storage room,” Shen Mo said. “I flipped the switch a few times, and the light didn’t come on. I thought the bulb was broken. Now that you mention it, it seems like that’s the only place in the whole house where the light is broken.”
Hearing this, Yan Qingwen added, “In that case, you go to the storage room and get the lightbulb. I’ll go and remove the other lights that haven’t been turned on and compare them when we get back.”
Shen Mo nodded slightly.
The two men, having made their plan, went down into the water one after the other.
Outside the window, the torrential rain continued.
The rainwater submerged everything. Amidst the vast expanse of water, only a small triangular roof could be seen. The people inside the house stayed on the remaining half of the attic floor, waiting for the final news…