Jing Yuan gasped deeply. Every breath he took was laboured. He could feel the salty sea air burning inside of his lungs. It was hard to move. His scaly body had been washed ashore, and with a harpoon buried deep within his side, he was unable to make his way back into the water. Those damned bounty hunters. Jing Yuan had been lucky to have made it even this far. Usually, if one were unfortunate enough to run into a bounty hunter, they would never be seen or heard from again.

With the sun rising higher in the sky, the tide only made its way further away from Jing Yuan. His sparkling red and gold scales were starting to peel from dehydration, and the magnificent tail he once had has long melted away, leaving behind a pair of scaly legs. There were no clouds in sight. Oh, how cruel this world seemed to be.

Each hour that passed drove Jing Yuan into a deeper state of delusion. He was starting to hallucinate, and at this point, he craved the sweet relief that death promised. The merman's mind was beginning to wander, thinking about what would have happened if only he had allowed the bounty hunters to take him. Maybe then he would have met a quicker end instead of having to suffer like this.