Chapter 50

Chapter 50

The scream came from a male influencer burning the midnight oil, a man who went by Jack. His real name was Ma Jie.

He found it too provincial, so he only ever introduced himself by his English name.

Life wasn't easy for Jack. His father was seriously ill, and he was putting his younger brother and sister through school. Originally straight, he’d later discovered that a gay persona was more popular with netizens and brands, so he’d built that persona over the years. After several years of hustle, his savings had finally cracked six figures, starting with a one.

Jack couldn’t afford a ticket. He’d won his in a lottery.

As a famously high-end club, the Mermaid Club had, unsurprisingly, earned him a few envious looks from his plastic "bros."

Having tasted the glitter of the big city, Jack could never go back to his small hometown. And now, here at the Mermaid Club, the scent of high society was downright intoxicating.

Currently, the influencer’s mind was wholly occupied with how to hook a wealthy, conveniently blind sugar mama, just like the hero in Titanisk.

She didn’t need to be as beautiful as Rose. Even if this sugar mama was into… unconventional play, for the right price, it seemed tolerable.

He was just stepping out of the bathtub, a towel wrapped around him, his mind drifting into these fantasies, when he heard a thump-thump from the floor.

The transparent floor was gorgeous, the pink-tinged seawater below it gentle and sweet. A photo posted would easily rack up a hundred likes, no problem.

Unfortunately, the Mermaid Club, in the name of allowing members to "better enjoy life," had blocked all network signals.

What Jack never expected was that one day, he’d see a monster through that very glass.

Jack knew about the Pollution Disease. The state promoted prevention aggressively, and plenty of influencers had blown up live-streaming aberrations. But this was his first time seeing a pollutant up close.

It was far more terrifying than he’d imagined.

The revolting fish head and malformed body turned his limbs to jelly. It took a long moment before a strangled, cracking scream was finally ripped from his throat.

The cry scared off the fish-man beneath the glass and brought the Mermaid Club staff running.

Jack cried and made a scene, demanding a room change, insisting there was a monster in the sea. The staff assured him, repeatedly, it was just a hallucination.

"Apologies, sir. We feel your mental state is somewhat unstable," a security guard finally said sternly. "If you persist with these claims, for the experience of our other members, we will have to repatriate you to S City."

Jack wept pitifully, but the guards remained unmoved. They’d seen more mermaids than Jack had brand deals. Handsome on the outside, Jack was merely average here.

For the sake of his grand ambitions, Jack tearfully promised he wouldn’t "have another episode" or clamor for a new room.

Only then did the security team leave, satisfied.

If Jack had possessed a detection device, he would have been shocked to find his own lesion index had risen from 0 to 7 in the span of a single night.

*

Mermaid Club, 7th Floor.

Here, gold leaf and silver inlay were everywhere, the gold foil merely the cheapest decoration, an accent for the Hetian jade floors.

Ten Gold-Tail members, faces hidden behind feathered masks, sat solemnly before a long dining table.

The gaudy masks obscured their features.

But without a doubt, each was a "personage" of considerable standing. Their combined wealth might account for three percent of the world's total.

To become a Gold-Tail member required not just an invitation, but a fifty-million entry fee.

Some had even undergone "transplant" surgeries. Though they likely relied more on the bodyguards at their backs than their own innate talents.

Fresh meat dishes were served by attendants. The food here was in a different universe from what the lower-level tourists ate.

"Welcome to the Mermaid Club. I trust you all learned the rules of our fifteen-day game from your invitations. Try this—I paid a premium for this fresh ingredient from the Slaughterhouse."

At the head of the table, a handsome man smiled. He had deep blue eyes, slightly long hair, and sharp, mixed-race features.

The Slaughterhouse was also a top-ten polluted zone on the Apocalypse Forum.

This meat processing plant was located in the suburbs of X City, but no one had ever seen it, let alone knew its exact location.

It was said that if you mailed your order to the X City post office, a Butcher would deliver the meat to your door, on demand.

The Butchers' pricing was just somewhat… capricious.

Clients who couldn't pay often found themselves forced to mortgage a body part—an eye, a tongue, a hand.

"Thanks to you, I’ve never had the chance to taste meat from the Slaughterhouse," a graceful lady said languidly.

"Your favor is our club's highest honor," the man replied.

This man, the only one at the table without a mask, was the founder of the Mermaid Club.

No one knew his true identity anymore. Here, they simply called him the Boss.

An old gentleman, designated Number 03, spoke. "Thirty years ago, you looked like this. Now I have aged, yet you remain so young…"

The Boss smiled. "I’ve been on a steady regimen of mermaid gene anti-aging serums. I could sell you some, if you wish."

The old gentleman shook his head. "I wouldn’t dare take anything from you. One never gets a deal here without paying a thousand percent. The price of longevity is beyond me."

His words instantly cooled the interest of a lady who had been growing eager.

The Boss chuckled, offering no rebuttal. He spread his arms, a look of rapturous delight on his face. "Today, we gather to celebrate the opening of our annual pageant!"

The lights in the hall dimmed instantly. Behind him, twenty large screens flickered to life.

"This time, our staff have sourced twenty prospective mermaids. Their names are unimportant. In order, the screens behind me display Contestants 01 through 20."

An Arabic numeral appeared in the corner of each screen.

"Those foolish meat-fish have surely come to warn our lovely mermaids again today," the Boss said with a smile. "A pity. By tradition, we never place monitors in the mermaids' bedrooms. I’d love to see their reactions. Let's review some promotional footage from their journey instead."

"Let us all anticipate who will receive the most judges' votes and become the most precious Gold-Tail Mermaid!"

As his words fell, different scenes appeared on the screens—clandestine shots from various angles on the cruise ship, all high-definition footage from the voyage over.

Twenty beautiful faces, male and female. Yet the one that irresistibly drew every eye was undoubtedly the young man numbered "6."

He stood on the deck, facing the wind, his expression neutral. His features were more perfect than those of a fully-evolved mermaid.

A young man pointed at Lu Yan’s face on the screen. "I saw him on the cruise ship. I hope, on the final day's auction, you will all grant me some face."

*

[Every year, the Mermaid Club selects a number of "lucky" tourists from across the country, between ten and thirty individuals. Then, in July, they summon them to Mermaid Island by various means.]

[These lucky tourists are the mermaid reserves. The fifteen-day journey is a pleasant holiday for others, but for them, it's a desperate nightmare.]

The system slowly provided the background.

[Those Gold-Tail clients, wearing masks, gather with the chandelier capitalists in the top-floor hall to watch the aberration process of you reserve mermaids via surveillance.]

[There was a slight hitch this year. Your ticket originally belonged to your landlord's daughter. The landlord opened her daughter's package privately and sold the ticket.]

[In short, you are now considered a reserve mermaid.]

Lu Yan looked out the window. "So the feeling of being watched by disgusting gazes wasn't an illusion."

[No monitors in the rooms, but the entire island is covered in them,] the system said. [Perhaps the only thing you can be glad about is that, domestically, Awakened who don't join the Special Operations Department always progress slower. Your combat ability ranks in the top ten among the Awakened on this island.]

Barring anomalies caused by specific pollution sources, Lu Yan's phone could always get a signal and didn't worry about having no network.

Right now, Lu Yan opened his phone. The status bar read "No Service."

He knew it. Whenever he needed to call the Prevention Center, his phone was guaranteed to have zero signal.

Lu Yan pressed his palm against the glass, meeting the fish-man's webbed hand through the transparent floor.

Labeled a monster too many times, the fish-man had nearly given up hope. But Lu Yan's different reaction sparked an involuntary surge of excitement within it.

It opened its mouth, trying to speak, but without vocal cords, its fish-lips merely parted and closed soundlessly beneath the water.

The system listened intently for a moment. [He hasn't communicated with anyone for too long. His language ability has degraded to incoherent babbling. It might be better if he encountered some meat-fish with a lower lesion index.]

"What are the innate talents of these Awakened who turned into fish-men?" Lu Yan asked.

The system smiled slightly. [Guess where the First Research Institute finds so many "voluntary" talent donors?]

Lu Yan’s lips pressed into a thin line, his expression turning cold.

How had the Mermaid Club managed to evade detection by other Awakened organizations for so many years?

He drove his knife into the seam of the transparent glass.

An ordinary blade in an ordinary person’s hands couldn’t have managed it. But his was a spiritual weapon, and he was a D-Class Awakened. Prying open tempered glass was well within his capabilities.

Seeing the dagger, the fish-man flinched, assuming it was meant for him, and instinctively raised an arm to shield his head.

The bulb above him swung, casting a stark light over his grotesquely misshapen face.

Only when it became clear Lu Yan wasn’t making a move did the creature slowly open its eyes.

“Can you still understand me?” Lu Yan asked, his tone shifting. “Give me your hand.”

His voice took on the practiced calm of his hospital internship days—the same measured cadence he’d used while on rotation in pediatrics, speaking to frightened children. His talent for mimicry had always been sharp. He’d never just been good with wild animals; feral children tended to like him, too.

The fish-man hesitated, then extended a dripping, webbed hand. It was skinless, scaled, with patches of raw muscle visible beneath.

A thin white filament emerged from Lu Yan’s sleeve and pressed against the fish-man’s forehead.

The creature’s lesion index was high, but its innate spiritual power was pitifully low. Wang Yu fed for a moment, yet Lu Yan’s own index rose a mere 0.01.

In contrast, a spark of clarity returned to the fish-man’s eyes.

Wang Yu retracted its tendril. Even it couldn’t reduce a lesion index to zero.

The fish-man stared at Lu Yan, its horrific fish-mouth working soundlessly.

He says this place is dangerous. He wants you to leave Mermaid Island before you fully mutate. He and the other fish-men can get you out.

“And if I leave?” Lu Yan asked.

The chandelier capitalist running this show will notice a missing contestant. As a precaution, he’ll activate an emergency protocol—grab his assets and his pretty mermaids and flee the island overnight. If he can’t stay in the country, he’ll just set up shop abroad. The wealth he’s accumulated could keep an ordinary 9-to-6 office worker laboring from the dawn of civilization until humanity’s extinction. He can always start a new club.

This island is built over a live volcano. He can trigger an eruption whenever he chooses, sinking the whole place.

All the sins here would vanish beneath the waves with it. Untraceable. A clean slate.

Lu Yan fell silent for a long moment, his gaze dropping as if lost in thought.

The system couldn’t resist. What are you thinking?

“I’m thinking,” Lu Yan replied, his voice low, “about what color of lamppost a chandelier capitalist would prefer.”