SNAP! SNAP! SPLASH!
Down in the illuminated water beneath Pier #1, millions of two-foot-long Iron-Jaw Razor-Fish were leaping out of the waves like flying silver daggers, fighting each other over a single piece of roasted peanut skin that General Tie Zhan had dropped over the railing.
One angry razor-fish jumped four feet out of the water and bit the bottom of a wooden mooring post with a sharp crunch, leaving a half-inch tooth mark in the iron-wood before flopping back into the sea.
“Careful with your toes by the railing!” Queen Shan Hu warned, swimming up beside the pier in her new rainbow silk stage dress. “Those Iron-Jaw Razor-Fish are the most annoying pests in our ocean! Because they used to live in the boiling sulfur-acid layer, they grew three hundred tiny iron-hard Y-bones inside their meat and a sour acid sac under their gills. Even our hungry Merfolk warriors never ate them—if you try to take a bite, the tiny bones poke twenty holes in your tongue and the meat tastes like rusty battery water!”
Old Guo leaned over the railing holding his big iron wok-spatula and sighed.
“Look at how fat their bellies are, though!” Old Guo said regretfully. “There must be ten billion of those silver fish swimming around our ten floating islands right now, and they breed twice a week in the warm mineral water! If only they didn’t have those three hundred needle-bones and sour meat, we could feed ten million hungry bathers tonight without…
