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The shell of the Tridacna was extremely difficult to pry open, and the fishermen were helpless without the right tools.

Liszt didn’t insist, as long as the Black Pearl was inside, it couldn’t escape. After the giant Squid was dismembered and its rotting body was thrown into the sea, Liszt ordered that the Tridacna be carried back to the Castle to be studied slowly.

The immense Tridacna had a strange shape.

Along the way, it attracted the curious gazes of many townsfolk, and upon reaching the Castle, all the servants came out to observe, having never seen anything so peculiar.

“Teacher Marcus, what do you think is the best way to open it?”

Marcus pondered for a moment and said, “Its strength is formidable, the two shells are tightly fixed together, but since its outer shell is irregular with many crevices, we could insert a stick to pry it open. A regular wooden stick won’t do; we need a thick iron bar, although, we probably don’t have such an iron bar.”

Iron was precious, no one would forge a thick iron bar specifically for prying open the shell of a Tridacna.

“Perhaps we could use fire to burn it,” Carter suggested.

“The shell is too thick, fire would hardly damage it,” Liszt refuted, and besides, there was a Black Pearl inside. The last thing he wanted was for it to be overheated…

“Use hooks. We can hook one on each shell and then use horses to pull them apart, thus opening its shell,” Marcus finally thought of a crude method.

However, it proved effective.

When two horses pulled on their respective ropes, almost snapping them, they eventually managed to pry apart the shell of the Tridacna. The now vertical Tridacna looked like a blossoming flower, not widely open, but enough to locate its “bands,” the muscles used to close its shell.

Marcus gripped his greatsword, his strength surging forth as he cut through one of the bands.

Snap!

The horses straining against the shell prompted the Tridacna to split into two halves, no longer able to close. Liszt’s gaze was already on a group of protrusions on the inner wall of the Tridacna, where the pearls were nestled, round and plump.

“Cut it open, but be careful. The pearls inside are wrapped in it, don’t scratch them.”

“Yes, my lord!”

Marcus personally wielded the knife, cautiously slicing through the membrane of the protrusion, and when he cut open the largest one, a shiny Black Pearl was revealed, as large as a washbasin.

“There are more beside it, cut them all open and extract them,” Liszt said excitedly.

He hadn’t figured out what these Black Pearls were for yet, but finding such large Black Pearls was unimaginable. If these were auctioned in his homeland, they would certainly fetch an astonishingly high price.

After Marcus completed the cutting, a total of sixteen Black Pearls of varying sizes were extracted.

The largest was the one the size of a washbasin.

Following that were two nearly the size of basketballs; then three about the size of a sea bowl; and finally, a bunch of smaller Black Pearls the size of apples, oranges, and ping-pong balls.

After cleaning them, Liszt cradled the largest Black Pearl and suddenly felt traces of Magic Power flowing within it. He quickly used his Eye of Magic, and then, he saw a whirlpool-like profound Magic Power inside the Black Pearl. It was a light blue in color, indicative of Water-Attribute Magic Power.

“It actually has Magic Power?”

Before, when he had used the Eye of Magic to observe the Tridacna, he hadn’t detected the slightest trace of Magic Power. Little did he know, the Black Pearls themselves possessed Magic Power.

“My lord, these Black Pearls, they seem to have Magic Power?” Marcus also noticed something was amiss, but lacking the Eye of Magic, he wasn’t certain.

“There is indeed magic power here.”

Li Si Te became lost in thought as he handled the black pearl, recalling a knight’s novel he had read. In one of these novels, it was mentioned that the song of a sea serpent could calm a raging storm, and there was a great knight who captured a sea serpent and turned it into a piece of magic equipment.

This equipment allowed ships to sail steadily through storms without being affected.

What exactly a sea serpent was, no one could say for sure. Some swore they had heard the song of a sea serpent—Kostor had just mentioned he once heard a sea serpent sing—but there were no records of what a sea serpent truly was. Most people believed that sea serpents were nothing more than tales spun by sailors.

This story had no connection to the black pearls.

What sparked Li Si Te’s imagination was the idea of a sea serpent transformed into equipment that sheltered ships from storms.

“Could these black pearls also be turned into magic equipment to withstand storms? After all, they are magic items with water-attribute magic power, and the magic power is very rich, nearly rivaling that of gemstones produced by dragons. Suppressing sea storms might be uncertain, but making magic equipment should be feasible.”

Without a magician, it was impossible to study the black pearls.

Li Si Te thought there might be other uses—for example, as an air conditioner.

“Teacher Marcus, Mr. Carter, everyone, do you feel the air has gotten much cooler?”

Marcus took a moment to feel it: “I don’t feel the coolness, but there seems to be more moisture in the air. It must be the black pearls condensing the water vapor around us.”

“Regardless, they are valuable items. How much do you think they could sell for if we put them on the market?”

“I’ve seen a fist-sized white pearl before, and I heard that one could go for at least five gold coins. I guess black pearls of the same size should fetch about ten gold coins? As for the largest black pearl, my lord, I cannot estimate its value; it’s completely new.”

“It has a very rich magic power, definitely worth more than white pearls, but the castle isn’t in need of money at the moment. We’ll have to think more carefully about its price,” Li Si Te was not very satisfied with Marcus’s valuation.

He felt that even if the black pearls were priced at twice the value of white pearls, they would still be undervalued; their worth was probably far greater than imagined.

So he said to Carter, “Mr. Carter, please move them to my study.” He himself kept a black pearl the size of a ping-pong ball in his hand, carefully playing with it.

“Yes, master,” replied Carter.

A moment later, Carter came back to ask, “Master, what about the opened Tridacna shell? Can we eat its flesh?”

“I think so… Well, let Douson try it first. If it’s poisonous, we’ll just throw it away.”

“And the two shells?”

“Clean the inner walls of the shells thoroughly. I want to see if there’s any jadeite formation.”

Jadeite Tridacna is a prized jewel in Li Si Te’s homeland, one of the seven treasures of Buddhism. In the West, Tridacna, pearls, coral, and amber are considered the four major organic gemstones. Jadeite Tridacna, the whitest substance in the world, is formed through the jade-like transformation of the inner walls of a Tridacna shell.

“Such a large Tridacna should have some jadeite parts, shouldn’t it?”

But Li Si Te soon realized his mistake, as the tremendous Tridacna shell had no signs of jadeite on its inner walls. It was only then that he remembered; a living Tridacna couldn’t undergo jadeite formation. Jadeite formation required time, much like the gestation of jade—it was the product of millions of years of accumulation and sculpting.

Jadeite Tridacna formed when a dead Tridacna was buried in sand, slowly turning into jade over millions of years.

Without jadeite formation, the shells could not be crafted into gemstones, yet Li Si Te had a wildly imaginative idea: “Mr. Carter, what do you think would happen if we made it into a bed?”

As he spoke, he imagined the animated films from his childhood—the Disney animations where the mermaid princess always slept inside a shell.