“Ten thousand parasitic barnacles across twelve sixty-mile whales,” Ye Xiao murmured on the upper observation bridge, tapping his brass abacus until the wooden beads clicked in a rapid, frustrated rhythm. “Even if Grandpa Fu and the merchant crews scrub around the clock with hand-paddles, removing ten thousand deep-rooted shell parasites by hand will take eleven days. And if we try to yank them off dry, the barbed hooks inside their mouths will tear the whales’ silver blubber to ribbons.”
Down on the forward starboard promenade, twelve colossal Astral Void Whales floated side by side in the shimmering indigo mist of the Asteroid Corridor. The matriarch rested her scarred, mountain-sized chin against the edge of the Cloud-Steamer Courtyard’s brass railing, letting out a low, rumbling groan as thousands of jagged black Blood-Barnacles pulsed along her spine.
Every time one of the parasites twitched its iron-toothed shell, the matriarch’s translucent starlight fins shuddered in misery.
“Who said anything about yanking them off dry with hand-paddles?” Gu Changsheng asked, stepping out of the courtyard laundry shed with a wooden tub of steaming, mint-scented yellow soap paste balanced on one shoulder and his brass whistle swinging against his collarbone. “When Tuntun rolls in thespirit-mud behind the turnip patch and gets burrs stuck in her hair, do I pull them out dry?
