Chapter 58

Chapter 58

Lu Yan didn't leave immediately.

He stood on the shore, admiring his handiwork.

Modified by the mermaid genes, Su Chenyang's constitution was robust. He didn't die right away.

Not a single patch of his skin remained intact. He struggled, clawing towards the beach to escape, only to be dragged back into the surf by his ankles each time, leaving long, smeared trails of blood in the sand.

The boss's cries for help grew progressively hoarser, weaker, until they were finally swallowed completely by the water.

He should have had a loyal dog. Or perhaps someone who truly loved him.

[Go on back,] the system said. [If he manages to live through that, I'll rip my own head off, cook it up as a side dish, and serve it to your precious son to go with his drinks.]

Lu Yan thought the system was full of it. After all, as everyone knew, it didn't have a head.

A search vessel had already arrived and docked nearby. Out of caution, they were conducting preliminary reconnaissance.

Lu Yan glanced at it, then looked away, disinterested.

He decided to find a container for the golden egg first. Keeping it in his pocket just seemed wrong.

[I suggest you consume it quickly. It's nearing the end of its incubation.]

"What happens when it finishes incubating?" Lu Yan was genuinely curious.

[Nothing good. It loses all nutritional value, and the world gains another pollutant.]

Lu Yan immediately headed for the kitchen.

Thanks to the chaos in the middle of the night, the back kitchen was deserted.

These low-level workers had no idea what was really happening. They only knew some ugly pollutants had attacked the headquarters, and had unanimously chosen to find a safe place to hide.

Lu Yan snipped open the membrane of the fish egg. The contents spilled out.

He poured it into a bowl. It looked like a freshly cracked egg.

The difference was the yolk—slightly elongated, golden yellow, and sporting four tiny legs.

It was clear the vitality of the King Fish incubating within this egg was already quite high. It even managed a feeble kick while in the bowl.

Lu Yan snipped the umbilical cord connecting it to the egg fluid.

"Definitely a farm-raised egg, fed on pellets," Lu Yan remarked, scooping the golden King Fish from the bowl. "Free-range eggs have yolks that are orange-red."

The retrieved King Fish cooled rapidly. Laid on the cutting board, it was a small thing.

Lu Yan maintained a respect for his ingredients. He decided to prepare this fish as sashimi, to be dipped in soy sauce and wasabi.

When sliced, the flesh inside was a semi-translucent white, the skin edged with a thin line of gold. No internal organs, no bones, no blood vessels. Yet, when cut, it secreted a golden, viscous fluid.

"Never seen a fish more suited for sashimi," Lu Yan said with sincere appreciation.

Years of cooking experience had given him excellent knife skills. The 10-centimeter fish was cleanly sliced into 100 pieces of sashimi in under two minutes.

To better suit his own palate, he made some localized adjustments to the dipping sauce, adding slivers of ginger, minced garlic, and chopped scallions.

He dipped a piece, placed it in his mouth. The flavor and texture were somewhat reminiscent of otoro—the fatty tuna belly—he'd once had at an Omakase restaurant.

It didn't look particularly oily, but once in his mouth, the fat exploded, rich and unctuous.

It was truly delicious. A shame there was no rice; otherwise, Lu Yan could have easily polished off two large bowls.

He raised his chopsticks, then set them down again. "What exactly is a King Fish?"

The system answered, [It is a part of the physical form of what is called a 'god.']

"This god must be disappointingly small," Lu Yan said, his tone not without regret.

It simply wasn't enough to eat.

[...]

The system lapsed into silence, pondering whether the flaw lay in its own education or in the upbringing provided by Lu Yan's father.

This time, the rejection reaction was especially swift and violent.

Almost the moment Lu Yan set down his chopsticks, a sharp, wrenching pain seized his lower abdomen.

Lu Yan's tolerance for pain was exceptionally high. After all, he'd had his head knocked off and reattached, and could still chat and laugh afterward.

But now, he couldn't help but double over, clutching his stomach.

His face paled, a cold sweat beading on his forehead. "Is this the price for eating raw meat?"

[If you insist on thinking of it that way, I won't stop you.]

The fish scales on his body emerged uncontrollably, lifting like they were dehydrated.

Head down, he quickened his pace all the way back to his guest room. He didn't even have time to see Xu Guanyue.

The overall environment of Mermaid Island offered little sense of security, but right now, there seemed to be no better choice.

He kept drinking water, but the craving for it screamed from every cell in his body.

Lu Yan opened his suitcase, pulled out the remaining special medicine, and tossed it all into his mouth.

Unlike sedatives, if you didn't swallow the special medicine immediately, it left a nauseatingly bitter aftertaste.

Over a broadcast, he heard: "Good evening, tourists. We are members of Team Two, Special Operations Department, under the Pollution Disease Control Division. Please proceed to the landing point at Mermaid Bay for assembly. Our vessel has personnel specially assigned by the Control Center..."

Lu Yan took his knife, slung his bow and arrows over his shoulder, lifted the glass floor panel, and plunged into the water below.

In the sea, the surrounding moisture, the embrace of the water, barely alleviated the painful, parching thirst.

Fifteen minutes in. Lower abdominal agony, high fever, relentless thirst.

Lu Yan swam all the way to the merfolk gathering area, marked by a patch of red seaweed.

Many of the merfolk had gone to the Mermaid Club, but a few remained behind to guard the place. Upon seeing Lu Yan, they let out excited, bubbling croaks.

They were asking what was wrong with him and what had happened at the club.

"The boss is dead," Lu Yan said. "My condition is unstable. I need a quiet place to rest. Please keep watch."

The merfolk nodded.

Thirty minutes after taking the medicine, Lu Yan's consciousness blurred, slipping into semi-consciousness.

[It's safe here for now. You can rest,] the system said.

But Lu Yan seemed not to hear. Feeling himself on the verge of blacking out, he drove his knife into his own thigh without hesitation.

Blood welled up.

The fresh, sharp pain kept him anchored to awareness.

He felt his leg. A row of new scales had grown there, and for now, they wouldn't retract.

Back in Mermaid Bay, the captured mermaids sniffed the water, lifted their heads, expressions of desperate craving and inner conflict twisting their features.

They were currently trapped, each ensnared in fishing nets in the bay.

A harpoon struck a blue-scaled tail.

The mermaid with the azure tail let out a mournful, hauntingly beautiful cry.

A uniformed worker snarled, "Think about running again!"

These mermaids were genuine pollutants, and currently the only identified pollution source.

The blue mermaid, stung by the pain, went still, but her gaze remained fixed into the distance, her face etched with deep concern.

That very night, Lu Yan had saved her.

And now, she caught the scent. The scent of Lu Yan's blood.

*

Mermaid Island.

2 AM. The place was ablaze with light. The pink-tinged seawater was gentle and beautiful, but no one was in the mood to appreciate it.

Personnel from the patrol vessel moved back and forth, busy registering casualties, tending to the wounded, and securing pollutants.

They had arrived on a mission.

A day earlier, a search vessel had encountered a powerful pollutant at sea and was completely wiped out. Despite knowing the danger, to ensure maritime safety, headquarters had dispatched more ships, along with Awakened, to search the surrounding waters.

If they stayed in the ocean, it was one thing. The real fear was these pollutants making landfall.

Land-based pollution was only a century old. The pollution in the ocean depths had been ongoing for over two centuries. If marine pollutants came ashore, it would be a disaster beyond imagination.

Initially, upon seeing the ugly merfolk, the workers had nearly opened fire, only holding back because no pollution readings were detected from them.

Later, they saw the mermaids in Mermaid Bay, got positive pollution readings, and assumed these mermaid pollutants used their songs to infect and consume humans.

Then Xu Guanyue, with her half-human, half-fish form and clear human consciousness, explained the truth to the ship's commanding officer.

It left almost everyone present stunned.

They had patrolled these waters for years, completely unaware such a vile operation was happening right under their noses.

The captain had already notified headquarters. Barring any issues, four nearby naval vessels would converge on Mermaid Bay at top speed. The relevant personnel had been subdued.

The boss was not found, but the 7th-floor manager, security captain Yang Tianxin, and ten Gold-Tail members were shackled in the ship's underground brig, used for holding prisoners.

The manager caught Yang Tianxin's eye and whispered, "Should we get our stories straight?"

The boss's fate was unknown, but they were well and truly captured. According to current law, even if they avoided execution, they'd be looking at centuries of penal servitude.

The manager had made a point of studying the Awakened Special Management Act.

Yang Tianxin hung his head, limbs immobile, like a dead man. He gave no reaction for a long time.

The captain had assumed it would take at least two hours for reinforcements to arrive.

He never expected someone to show up a mere twenty minutes after sending the intelligence.

And the one who arrived was, by all accounts, supposed to be undergoing rehabilitation therapy at the Research Institute in City A.

Headquarters had carefully considered whether to conceal the news of Lu Yan's disappearance.

However, considering Tang Xian'an's potential reaction and mental state, headquarters ultimately decided to inform him.

History was littered with cautionary tales. Withholding crucial information "for someone's own good" rarely ended well—unless you could keep the secret forever.

The officer in charge instinctively snapped to attention and saluted. "Team Leader Tang!"

Over two decades ago, when he'd first become an Awakened, he'd had the honor of participating in the "Divine Kingdom Evacuation" operation alongside Tang Xian'an.

Tang Xian'an's performance had left an indelible impression, a respect that had endured to this day.

Tang Xian'an retracted the draconic wings at his back with a slight nod.

The officer straightened his posture. "Shall I brief you on the situation?"

"I have the general picture," Tang Xian'an replied, his voice low. "Let me see the survivor list."

The communications officer had already relayed headquarters' intelligence during his flight here.

"According to the registry," the officer reported, "a total of 317 tourists have been located on the island, including 89 Awakened who had their talents stripped. By the time we arrived, the primary combat force of the Mermaid Club had been largely neutralized."

Tang Xian'an's eyes swept down the list, processing ten lines at a glance. Lu Yan's name wasn't there.

He was not a man prone to impatience, but now, a cold, simmering anxiety and anger coiled in his gut.

Due to a spatial ability, Mermaid Island existed in a different layer of reality from the normal world.

After failing to find any trace on the open sea, Tang Xian'an had seriously considered heading to the underground city to pick a fight with the holder of the "World" talent.

He possessed "Talent 3 - Time." Where there was time, there was space.

"Talent 4 - World" was that very "space."

Especially now, with Lu Yan unaccounted for.

His nerves were drawn taut as a bowstring, vibrating on the edge of release.

The only thread keeping his rationality intact was the simple fact that Lu Yan's body hadn't been found.

At that moment, a uniformed worker approached. "Report. We've recovered a body from Mermaid Bay. Preliminary analysis confirms it's an Awakened, male, spiritual power threshold between 2500 and 3000. Approximately 180 centimeters tall. Scales present on the wrists..." The worker paused, his voice growing quieter. "The face is unrecognizable due to... extensive consumption by merfolk. We've completed retrieval, but identification is currently impossible."

Tang Xian'an's head snapped around.

The worker's words died in his throat, frozen by the gaze that met him.

Golden eyes. The pupils had contracted into vertical black slits. Where skin should have been around the sockets, a layer of dark, obsidian dragon scales had risen.

Several seconds passed in silence before Tang Xian'an spoke, each word measured and heavy. "Where is the body."