The subsequent tale of Xing'er was known to all; he did not perish of starvation in the Sea of the Departed. Instead, he encountered Ming Xiaoyu, Wang Jue, and Hou Dayong. When the kind-hearted Wang Jue took him into his arms, Xing'er, having learned a bitter lesson from his mother's abandonment, unleashed his innate power, making it impossible for Wang Jue to let go. Thinking of Hou Dayong’s previous attempts to harm him, Xing'er grew furious and used the Man-Eating Nether-Worms to send himself back to his old home in the Sea of the Departed.

Some readers might ask if Xing'er would have remained so cruel had he not been abandoned by Yingzi. That is a question we cannot answer. Survival is the most primal behavioral motivator shared by humans and animals. To survive, Xing'er chose to coerce Wang Jue and eliminate Hou Dayong. Had he not been abandoned, would he have continued to consume human or monkey blood for survival, turning Yingzi into a second Xiao Linghua, killing infant monkeys one after another? However, what offered some solace was that beneath his bloodthirsty habits, a shred of human conscience remained. At the most critical juncture, he charged forward alone, shielding Ming Xiaoyu and Ali from the spiders' overwhelming assault—the very singular lesson his mother, Yingzi, had labored to teach him.

With Xing'er’s departure, the story temporarily bids him farewell. His destination was already made perfectly clear to the readers through previous plot points. We now turn our attention solely to the experiences of Nangong Ying.

After seeing Xing’er off, Yingzi was consumed by unimaginable anguish, curling up alone on the shore, weeping until the heavens and earth blurred, ceaselessly, as if she would not stop until she had purged every fiber of her being.

Yet, how could a child conceived over ten months be so easily cast aside? Watching that small skiff drift slowly toward the horizon, disappearing from sight in mere moments, Yingzi went mad and rushed into the water, sprinting toward the tiny boat. She did not stop even when the lake water gradually submerged her neck. At that moment, even the author could not discern whether she intended to pursue Xing’er or to forfeit her own life. Fortunately, the water of the Sea of the Departed could not drown a person; if she sought to become a water spirit, she had chosen the wrong location entirely.

However, just because she could not become a drowned ghost did not mean the Sea of the Departed was without peril. Just as the water was about to crest over her head and swallow her whole, a colossal wave surged violently from the horizon. The monkeys who had followed Yingzi stood on the shore like ants on a hot pan—some chattering incessantly, others beating their chests and jumping frantically, and the bolder ones leaped into the water, grabbing Yingzi’s hair and attempting to tow her back. Yingzi’s half-head was submerged, her nose below the waterline, and relying on instinct, she held her breath but felt no panic, nor any sensation of oxygen deprivation.

As she wondered why she wasn't suffocating, Yingzi suddenly felt searing pain in her limbs, as if seven or eight awls were stabbing into her flesh. On instinct, she swiped her hands around her body as if shooing away mosquitoes and felt two or three slippery fish. These fish were extremely alert; the moment they touched her hand, they darted away, only to instantly return like darts, taking a nip of her flesh before fleeing again. She suddenly understood: when that group of monkeys watched Xing’er’s boat leave, they merely fretted on the shore and did not advance to stop him. It was because of these ferocious fish in the water. Since they dared to attack a human, the monkeys were surely no match for them.

The monkey that had been pulling Yingzi's hair saw the Nether-Fish surging forward. It immediately hopped, skipped, and jumped onto Yingzi's shoulder, clutching half of her head and trembling incessantly. Yingzi smirked inwardly, thinking the monkey was quite clever; jumping onto her head would surely take less time than swimming back.