Chapter 56

Chapter 56

The Western Coastal Sea.

Their small fishing boat had capsized days ago, a victim of an unfortunate encounter with a tidal wave. Since then, Shen Qingyang had been forced to rely on his own tentacles to move through the water.

The Prophet sat perched on one of those slick, black limbs, his face ashen. "This entire journey reeks of ill omen…" he muttered.

He tried to open his eyes, to peer into the future, but a searing pain shot through them the moment the lids parted a sliver. A visceral, terrifying instinct warned him that if he looked any further, his eyes would simply crack open. He snapped them shut again with a frustrated grimace, retreating into brooding silence.

Shen Qingyang had been human for over twenty years. The tentacles were a recent addition, and he was still clumsy with them. At first, he hadn't even known how to swim. He’d had to snatch a sleeping octopus from the seabed and spend half a day mimicking its movements before he figured out the proper undulating rhythm. As payment for the lesson, he’d pinned the little creature against a dark reef and roasted it. It had been surprisingly tasty.

After a grueling, near fortnight-long drift, they finally reached the stretch of ocean the Prophet had described.

A look of nostalgia washed over the Prophet's face. "Last time I was here was fifteen years ago. The Mermaid Club was just taking shape then. I offered to help him build it into an isolated paradise, a utopia cut off from the world. In return, I would take the eggs parasitizing his body fifteen years later."

It was a classic tale of the farmer and the snake.

Long ago, an ordinary tourist visiting an island was contaminated. His face began to warp uncontrollably, and scales erupted across his skin. In those days, knowledge of the Pollution Disease wasn't widespread. He didn't become an Awakened, but neither did he complete his aberration into a full pollutant.

He was stuck in the second stage—a mutant. His evolution had aimed for 'mermaid,' but the result was more akin to the grotesque 'meat-fish': a human body topped with a monstrous fish head.

He said goodbye to his family and hid himself away, coming to this island to live alone. Nine years passed.

The long years brought endless loneliness. Then, one day, he saw Su Chenyang clinging to a piece of driftwood, calling for help.

He knew he was hideous. He hardly dared approach.

Until one night, Su Chenyang circled around to the reef where he hid. The man was clearly afraid, but he mustered a shaky smile. "It was you who saved me, right? Thank you."

To the fish-man, that smile was the most beautiful starlight he had ever seen on the lonely island.

……

……

"When I arrived at the Mermaid Club, that meat-fish had already been locked in a tiny box for ages. It was practically an imbecile by then," the Prophet said, taking a bite of his charred octopus leg. "The owner had sought it out just to beg it to send him back to human society. The fool thought it had found love. Humans are fascinating. A little affection is all it takes to make a lonely soul throw caution to the wind."

"A tiny, pitch-black metal box. Couldn't even move inside it. The owner said the very memory of romancing a fish made him sick. But he still needed the mermaid genes from its body. So he kept it locked up."

"Back then, the club's main attraction wasn't beautiful mermaids. It was the freak-show appeal of the meat-fish." The Prophet chuckled. "Tourists could buy fish feed and watch the creatures fight over it in their cages."

"I asked him, 'Would you like to have real mermaids?'"

The Prophet's tone was one of professional pride, like an artisan presenting his finest work.

Shen Qingyang coiled a tentacle tightly. "Stop."

He remembered he wasn't human anymore either. He could use mimicry, but it failed when he lost consciousness. Looking like this… Doctor Lu would probably hate it.

"You still have pity in you," the Prophet observed.

"I'd prefer a story where the prince and the monster live happily ever after. Not one where the mermaid turns into sea foam," Shen Qingyang replied thoughtfully.

The Prophet opened his mouth to tease him further, but then he froze. In his "foresight," hundreds of nautical miles away, a ship snapped into focus. It wasn't just any ship. He clearly saw the emblem on its hull: the Fifth Research Institute.

This was a combat vessel, built specifically to hunt and eliminate shallow-sea pollutants.

"How can this be? This area has always been secure!" the Prophet hissed under his breath. "We'll come back another time. We need to leave. Now."

But his warning came a heartbeat too late.

"Captain. Strong pollution source detected at bearing 235. Range 0.3 nautical miles. Intensity approximately 1700."

Thanks to Shen Qingyang's mimicry, the detected pollution value was far lower than his true level.

"Damn it! A whole week searching for that damn Mermaid Island, not a single scale to show for it. Finally, a pollutant to report!" the Captain barked. "Move in! Engage!"

Only the Captain on board was an Awakened. The rest were highly trained naval personnel. Yet, faced with a pollutant, not a single man showed fear. Their confidence came from the ship itself—a steel behemoth forged by the Fifth Institute. It might struggle against high-level pollutants, but it gave ordinary humans the power and courage to hunt the lower-level ones. Of the thirteen Research Institutes, the Fifth occupied the most land and received the largest annual budget.

Shen Qingyang was fast in the water, but not compared to a warship. And he was weighed down by the Prophet. The distance between them closed rapidly, soon entering the ship's firing range.

On the search vessel's deck, a dark steel tube extended—the barrel of a railgun.

"Fire!"

A torpedo-shaped projectile shot toward Shen Qingyang. His tentacles swelled instantly, rising nearly ten meters to weave into an impenetrable wall of flesh. The shell exploded against it. Many of the eyes covering the black tentacles were grievously wounded, and a layer of skin was scorched away, leaving blackened, carbonized scars.

Pain twisted Shen Qingyang's face.

The Captain stared, stunned. "What the hell? That torpedo should have vaporized a sea turtle with a pollution value of 2000! What kind of giant squid is this? It barely scratched it!"

The fired shell wasn't even the ship's highest-grade weapon, but judging by the minor damage, even their deep-water torpedoes would be useless. The Captain turned to his first officer. "Now! Contact headquarters immediately! Request backup! Unknown pollutant located at sea! We're pulling back—maintain distance, continue bombardment. Let Bai Qiushi's team handle the rest!"

Shen Qingyang shook his injured tentacle, turning to flee.

"Don't," the Prophet's voice was deadly serious. "They've stopped pursuit to capture us. They've called for support. If you don't deal with this ship now, we'll be surrounded. You won't get away then. We can't let it keep tracking us."

"But…" Shen Qingyang sounded miserable. "I can't outrun it."

The Prophet's tone was scathing. "Must you always run? You're a perfect evolution, a high-level pollutant! Destroy the ship!"

"But there are people on it," Shen Qingyang said.

"How many times must I say it? To humans, you are not human anymore! If you're willing to be killed, you might as well have killed yourself the day you became a pollutant! Why didn't you? Think about it!"

Shen Qingyang lifted his head above the water.

Another missile screamed toward him. He blocked it with a tentacle. This time, a segment was blown clean off.

Blue blood sprayed into the air.

He hadn't bled before. He didn't know his blood had turned blue.

A dazed look crossed his face. "K City is by the sea. Once, Doctor Lu ordered a large squid from the seafood market for a meal. It was delivered when he wasn't home, so I carried it up for him."

"He invited me over to eat afterwards. I watched him dissect the squid. He told me cephalopods have clear blood, but it turns blue when it absorbs oxygen because of hemocyanin. That was the first time I knew some animals had blue blood."

Now, that same blue blood was drenching him.

An overwhelming, profound loneliness gripped him. Nothing could have made it clearer—he was no longer human.

He coiled another tentacle around the severed one and shoved it into the Prophet's arms, using it as a buoy to keep the man afloat.

Then, Shen Qingyang dove deep, his mimicry dampening his presence to near nothingness. He swam to the underside of the warship.

A dozen thick, black tentacles erupted from the depths, coiling around the hull like monstrous pythons, squeezing, crushing. Shen Qingyang's aberration direction was gigantification and tentacles. Perhaps not even the Prophet had imagined they could swell to such a scale.

The steel leviathan, impervious to cannon fire, groaned and warped under the pressure. Seawater rushed in through the breaches.

He heard the panicked, desperate shouts. In their final moments, some called for help on phones, some scrambled to write last words, some tried to launch escape aircraft. Someone cracked their skull open, the scent of blood blooming in the saltwater.

So hungry.

They say octopuses are the most alien of animals. One main brain, eight subsidiary brains. Each with its own memory system.

The twisted tentacles thrashed with a frenzied life of their own, no longer needing instruction from a central mind.

[Talent 17 - Life Drain]

In the end, not a single person made it off the ship.

Shen Qingyang dragged the ship into the deep.

The eyes covering his tentacles were a chaotic mural—some weeping, others grinning.

A long time later, he swam back.

The Prophet had expected to see a face sickened with guilt. Instead, he was met with an expression of sated, unsettling calm.

The hunger had gnawed at him for so long. He’d dreamed of eating fish, but he’d always known it wasn’t fish he craved.

“We should leave these waters for now,” the Prophet said. “Find a place to go ashore. The fish aren’t going anywhere.”

Shen Qingyang tilted his head, a faint smile touching his lips. “I can’t go back, Teacher.”

*

Midnight.

The auction was supposed to begin right now.

But one mermaid was missing, its iron cage empty, forcing a delay. The auctioneer’s placating words did little to soothe the restless, wealthy crowd packed into the hall.

Staff reported that Yang Tianxin had taken Cage No. 6.

Yang Tianxin had been the club’s head of security for decades—his most loyal hound. Besides, the spatial anomaly surrounding Mermaid Island only allowed passage at specific times each month. The owner wasn’t worried about the man escaping with the merchandise.

He’d sent people to search. The security feeds, however, had gone dark at eleven o’clock. Only two people had the authority to shut them off: himself, and Yang Tianxin.

The owner had been hitting redial on Yang Tianxin’s pager for an hour. No answer.

Until now.

The line finally connected.

The owner couldn’t stop the torrent of fury. “Where the hell have you taken Number Six?! Get it to the auction hall now! Everyone is waiting!”

He slammed a palm on his desk. “Get over here!”

The voice on the other end answered immediately.

But instead of reassurance, a cold dread seized the owner’s heart.

The voice coming through the speaker wasn’t Yang Tianxin’s.

A stranger’s voice chuckled softly. “We’re on our way.”