Soon, the Hongli City Police Department sent officers to take Jin Xi’s parents away. Bai Chunian ordered them to immediately apprehend the student responsible for the fall, the student who died in the fall, and their respective families. Based on the timeline of events, the parents of the student responsible forcibly took Jin Xi away first, and Jin Xi’s argument with his family and subsequent running away from home occurred afterward. If using his own body to save his parents’ patient was merely the root of his resentment, then being forced to bring the deceased student back to life was the spark that set Jin Xi’s anger ablaze.
The immortal’s spirits were causing chaos across the land, yet the immortal himself had yet to make an appearance. If one were to speculate on his most likely whereabouts, the home of the student responsible for the incident back then would be the prime candidate.
However, the student’s parents were indeed highly skilled; even the investigative team couldn’t immediately determine which school the student was currently attending. The family had hidden their child away meticulously, fearing that the old fall incident would be dug up and exposed.
Bai Chunian sat back in the car, felt around in his pants pocket but found no cigarettes, rummaged through his sleeve but found nothing either, and leaned back in his seat, feeling gloomy.
Han Xingqian glanced at him through the rearview mirror as he drove: “If you could trade your brief suffering for the lives of many people, would you be willing?”
Bai Chunian finally found a piece of candy in the crevice of the passenger seat. He tore open the wrapper, popped it into his mouth, and stared listlessly at the twilight scenery rushing by outside the window. After thinking for a while, he said, “You’d have to pay extra.”
Han Xingqian chuckled softly.
“That’s not the same thing. You’re asking if I’m willing—and in that case, I’d be willing. But if you didn’t ask me and just forced me to go by holding my head down, then I wouldn’t be willing. Even if I could go, I wouldn’t. I’m stubborn.” Bai Chunian rested his chin in his hand and massaged his temples. “This is tricky. A natural madman is easy to fool, but one driven mad is a different story.”
Bai Chunian’s phone buzzed. It was an urgent notification from the technical support team accompanying the group, reporting a massive outbreak of undead summons in the Aphid Sea and the surrounding offshore areas. He scrolled back and noticed he’d received a non-urgent notification three hours earlier, also mentioning undead summons sightings in the Aphid Sea.
“Let’s head back first,” Bai Chunian said.
He checked his unread messages and sure enough, there was one from Lan Bo, sent three hours ago. At the time, he’d been too busy gathering intelligence on Jin Xi from various sources to notice it.
Lan Bo’s voice message was brief, lasting only two seconds: “kimoanehilapojeo? (Do you need me?)”
That was the only sentence, with no additional information.
Bai Chunian was highly adept at synthesizing information. He instantly realized this must have been a simple, unadorned question Lan Bo had sent him the moment he learned of the damage to the sea area. He hadn’t described his predicament, nor had he asked Xiao Bai to make a choice; he simply wanted a “yes” or “no” answer.
Bai Chunian was lost in thought. Han Xingqian took advantage of the red light to turn his head, gently tapping Bai Chunian’s forehead with his single horn, then leaned on the steering wheel and teased, “If Xunxun were here, she could probably measure the breakdown of your emotions right now. Admiration must make up at least 80% of it.”
For once, Bai Chunian didn’t argue. He stared blankly at the traffic jam ahead: “Lan Bo is truly formidable, both physically and mentally. He’s never asked me to do anything for him.”
Han Xingqian replied casually, “In the presence of a deity, all mortals are but ants. His status dictates such a formidable character; you needn’t feel sad. He must save both his people and you; he would never abandon either.”
“Let’s go back first.” Bai Chunian’s left eye kept twitching uncontrollably as he nervously fiddled with his seatbelt.
——
Coastal residents have launched fierce protests following an emergency closure of the waters due to an aphid infestation. The area had only recently been closed off following a leak at a submarine laboratory, leaving fishermen without any income for months. Their livelihoods have become unsustainable, relying solely on subsidies from the IOA. Now, with the waters having only just reopened, another closure has prompted coastal residents to take to the streets in protest.
Moreover, the fishing boats that set out today have not yet returned, and family members who saw the news are so frantic they have nearly overwhelmed the emergency hotline.
Drones from the Ministry of Technology have detected that all the fishing boats that set out today are stranded in the open waters of the Aphid Sea; several fishing vessels have already capsized, and the fate of the crew remains unknown.
Lan Bo entered the sea from the pier, charging straight out from the shallows. Wherever he passed, a streak of blue lightning flashed by; after the lightning vanished, several blue-glow jellyfish floated in the water.
He spread his translucent fin-ears, listening to the rising and falling sounds across the vast ocean. To Lan Bo’s ears, the sea was not silent; schools of fish and seaweed whispered to one another, tails swayed in the water, and the murmurs of whirlpools in the ocean canyons intertwined with the long calls of whales and dolphins.
But this time, the normally peaceful ocean was filled with screams and roars coming from all directions. A distant dragon’s roar sent faint tremors through the water. Lan Bo sensed the vibration and turned to swim toward its source.
Mermaids move with incredible speed through the water, and he soon approached the center of the tremor.
Here, the seawater had turned murky and dark; the fine sand on the seabed had been churned up to a depth of over ten meters, obscuring everything. A thick, pungent scent of blood filled Lan Bo’s nostrils.
Suddenly, a dark shadow fell before her eyes. Lan Bo retreated two meters before she could make out that it was the severed tail of a mermaid. The cross-section, bitten clean by sharp teeth, was a loose mass of flesh and blood, washed pale by the seawater; near the fishbone, a mist of blood still seeped outward.
Lan Bo gasped in shock and lowered her head to follow the direction in which the severed tail had fallen.
The white sand on the seabed had long been stained by the mangled corpses; hundreds of mermaids lay dead here, their severed tails and limbs forming a thick layer on the ocean floor. The surging waves churned up the blood seeping from the flesh and bones; at that moment, the seabed resembled a cauldron of hell, frying the piled-up limbs and billowing with writhing, deep-red smoke.
Lan Bo surveyed the scene with cold detachment. Her fishtail shifted from blue to red, the hue of her rage growing ever more intense, and the azure ocean was instantly illuminated by a crimson glow.
“Siren.”
A faint call came from the pile of shattered coral. Lan Bo paused for a moment, then swam downstream toward the source of the voice. A white hand was rummaging through the body parts, but the speed of purification could not keep up with the gushing blood.
Finally, he saw a slender, pale arm emerge before him. Lan Bo lifted her out of the pile of corpses, only to discover that her fishtail and half her body had been torn to shreds. The current washed over her white bones, carrying away the last remnants of flesh clinging to them.
But she held a mermaid infant tightly wrapped in seaweed in her arms; the infant was still fast asleep.
She pushed the infant toward Lan Bo, struggled to point ahead with her single remaining arm, and said weakly, “Siren, goonbyangye. (King, go in that direction.)”
Lan Bo bent down to lift her up and carry her along, but she merely tore a beautiful scale from her own body and tucked it into the infant’s swaddling clothes. Then, with a flick of her fin, she propelled Lan Bo several dozen meters away, while she herself sank slowly into the sea of corpses, her form soon beyond recognition.
Lan Bo glanced down at the infant in his arms and swam forward, holding it close.
All along the way, the seawater was thick with the pungent smell of blood, and the hostile vibrations and roars grew ever closer. Soon, several large ocean-going vessels came into Lan Bo’s view. Nearly a dozen massive, gray-white plesiosaurs—each several times the size of a blue whale—surrounded the ships, repeatedly ramming their serpentine heads against the hulls. The vessels were battered and lurching, their steel hulls twisted and deformed; some had sustained damage to their engine rooms and could no longer move.
He surfaced, cradling the infant, and watched them from a distance.
The largest vessel remaining on the surface was a human warship, its hull painted with the PBB insignia. It was a rescue ship from the PBB’s Shark Division. They had already guided all the stranded fishermen in the vicinity aboard the ship, but the plesiosaur test subjects were too close for them to launch the ship’s cruise missiles to drive them off, leaving them to rely solely on the soldiers’ submachine guns and rocket launchers.
The Plesiosaur’s hide was tough and thick, and its massive size meant that ordinary human weapons could inflict only limited damage. Moreover, ammunition was scarce; if they continued to expend it at this rate, they would eventually run out of supplies.
Lan Bo burst out of the water and leaped high into the air, trying to get a clear view of the casualties on board, but the scene he witnessed left him stunned. He fell back into the water headfirst and floated silently on the surface.
He saw that on the ship’s deck, not only were there thousands of rescued fishermen huddled together, shivering under blankets distributed by the PBB, but there were also dozens of injured merfolk lying on the deck. Military medics in white uniforms were rushing back and forth among them, bandaging the merfolk’s wounds and setting broken bones.
With no common language, they could only communicate through gestures. The medics and nurses gestured reassuringly while injecting the merfolk with anti-inflammatory medication. Many fishermen who still had the strength used buckets from the ship to scoop up seawater and pour it over the merfolk’s sunburned tails.
It was the first time any of them had seen a living mermaid. Fearing these ferocious creatures might suddenly go berserk and attack, they moved with extreme caution while simultaneously emitting pheromones to calm them.
The medic ran up to an officer and reported, “Captain Wei, we’re running out of medicine. Ten people are critically injured and in urgent need of surgery, including four mermaids.”
“Got it. Go on, go calm the civilians down.”
After the medic left, Feng Lang strode across the deck, his combat boots thudding heavily as he carried his rifle. The scorching sunlight off the sea forced him to squint. “Captain, we sent our location coordinates ages ago. When is the rescue team arriving?”
“With so many monsters, they could be intercepting the relief forces in any of the sea lanes.” Wei Lan held a cigarette between his lips, looked down to count the remaining magazines on the belt, and muttered a curse: “Damn it, the monsters have destroyed all the equipment on the ship. If Old He and the others don’t make it here by tonight, we’re all going to die here.” “It doesn’t matter if you and I die, but what about those thousands of civilians on the ship? How are we going to explain this to them?”
“Wait.” Wei Lan narrowed his eyes, peering through the blinding sunlight toward the distant horizon. “What’s that?”
Feng Lang paused for a moment, then leaned on the railing and looked down. A blue streak of lightning was racing toward their boat through the water. Suddenly, the lightning broke the surface, and a幽 blue figure burst out of the water, leaping right in front of them and drawing a shimmering blue arc as its fishtail trailed behind, sending up a spray of water.
Wei Lan saw the mermaid toss a clump of seaweed toward her. She instinctively caught it in a hurry. Parting the seaweed to look inside, she discovered a mermaid child with a short, golden tail.
A strong, oppressive scent of white thorn roses filled the air. Feng Lang was the first to react: “It’s him. He’s here!”
In the blink of an eye, the scent of white thorn roses enveloped the entire ship. An aura of majesty and solemnity slowly descended. Upon sensing this scent, the mermaids immediately grew restless. Ignoring their injuries, they scrambled to their feet and called out in their uniquely ethereal, enchanting voices: “Siren.”
The fishermen on board were startled and retreated to the edge of the deck, their faces etched with fear.
The mermaids scrambled restlessly across the deck. The medics could not stop them; as if summoned by a mysterious force, they frantically crawled toward the edge of the deck, scaled the railing, and leaped into the deep waters below.
The sea remained calm for a brief dozen seconds. Suddenly, clouds began to gather rapidly in the sky. Tiny wisps of cloud appeared in the clear sky, drawing toward one another, coalescing, and gathering until they swiftly obscured the blazing sun high above. In an instant, the world grew dark, and the low pressure made it hard to breathe.
Suddenly, a blinding white light made it impossible to keep my eyes open. Six cold, blue bolts of lightning split the clouds, and rolling thunder rumbled from afar, growing closer by the moment, while a hurricane stirred up whirlpools in the distance and slowly approached.
The gray-white plesiosaurs besieging the ship were distracted by an approaching sense of oppression. One by one, they flapped their massive fan-like fins, turning their cumbersome bodies to face the direction from which the oppressive force was surging.
A torrential downpour poured down without warning, like a bucket of water dropped from the sky. The sea surface churned with spray, and the splashing droplets transformed into tiny blue-glowing jellyfish, drifting lightly into the bodies of the wounded mermaids.
Their battered bodies were mended by the blue light, and their devout eyes were illuminated by幽 blue lightning. The mermaids swam in all directions, gazing toward the same horizon, their voices calling out the name of Siren.
As the hurricane approached, it sucked seawater high into the sky. The water column, shooting straight toward the clouds, seemed to drift across the sea’s surface like a living creature. Just as it neared the ship, the hurricane suddenly dissipated, and a deep-blue shadow burst forth from the hundred-meter-high column of water.
Lan Bo’s expression was cold and impassive. The thin pectoral fins on either side of his fishtail were fully spread, and blue lightning danced between his nearly transparent fins. Shouldering a transparent quad-barreled rocket launcher made of hydro-steel, he fired four transparent rounds in rapid succession, each striking one of the gray-white plesiosaurs besieging the ship.
Seawater was blasted into the sky, and the ship shook violently. The soldiers and fishermen on board panicked; in the face of such overwhelming power, Lan Bo was as terrifying as the plesiosaurs.
But some crew members were not afraid. Instead, they joined the merman in shouting toward the sky: “Siren! Take them down!”
They were the crew who had set out with the IOA survey ship to clean up the leaking submarine—Lan Bo had been part of that expedition too—and they had all followed the crowd to kiss the mermaid’s fingertips.
Finally, one fisherman came to his senses and blurted out amidst the trembling crowd, “Is that blue mermaid here to help us?”
Hearing this, everyone turned their eyes—filled with both terror and astonishment—toward the mermaid spreading her fins in the air.
Lan Bo didn’t care whether people looked at him with reverence or fear; his expression remained unchanged—calm, composed, and confident of victory—as he swept away all calamities from the ocean.
Feng Lang and Wei Lan knew Lan Bo best; they understood that this fish had come to support them, so they ordered the crew to recalibrate the weapons and prepare to launch the missiles.
Once Lan Bo had driven the plesiosaur herd away from the ship’s vicinity, the PBBs’ cruise missiles followed close behind, locking onto their targets and tracking them into the depths of the sea.
No matter how tough the plesiosaur’s hide might be, it could not withstand the force of a single cruise missile—especially since they were merely spectral summons, possessing only 70% of their original forms’ power.
The sea churned violently as black smoke from the dissipating spectral summons drifted in all directions. Yet the largest of them—a gray-white plesiosaur with a patterned crest on its head—survived the missile strike.
The final missile exploded against its thick scales, sending billowing smoke in all directions, yet it merely let out a deafening roar to the heavens, completely unscathed.
Enraged, the last gray-white plesiosaur charged with all its might toward the ship’s hull. Given its size and weight, a full-force collision would be enough to split the vessel in two.
If Lan Bo fired his quad rocket launcher at it, the blast would also engulf the ship; his M2 high-explosive water rounds could knock targets back regardless of their level, and if a ship were knocked off course, the chances of survival for those on board would drop to zero.
At this critical moment, Wei Lan and Feng Lang could only turn and shout to everyone on deck: “Everyone, get down!”
At best, they could use their hands to force those around them to the ground and shield them with their bodies and their ability to split into multiple forms, but the other civilians on board were unable to react quickly enough to the command. This collision would likely result in an unprecedented maritime disaster.
The gloomy sky was illuminated once more by a blue light. Lan Bo leapt out of the water; the water-steel quad-barreled rocket launcher on his shoulder rapidly melted into water, merging with the seawater drawn toward the sky. In Lan Bo’s hand, it solidified into a blue water-steel trident, whose sharp, lightning-streaked tip plunged deep into the thick scales of the gray-white plesiosaur.
Lan Bo stared coldly, twisted his wrist, and flicked the trident upward, shattering the plesiosaur. Gray-white fragments scattered across the sky.
The hydro-steel dissipated into the air, merging with the torrential rain and sinking into the churning sea.
Lan Bo fell back into the water, gently guiding the currents with both hands to drive the injured mermaids toward safety.
The downpour ceased abruptly, the dark clouds dispersed, and twilight fell. The rocking deck gradually steadied, and the reeling fishermen struggled to their feet, scrambling to the railing to peer out.
The fishermen were deeply superstitious, and their reverence for the sea far exceeded that of ordinary people. They looked around in terror, whispering to one another and murmuring, “May the Sea God protect us.”
Feng Lang leaned over the railing and waved toward the water. “Lan Bo! Come up and rest! Bring all your fish on board—we’ll be handing out meal boxes in a bit!”
The mermaids all raised their upper bodies out of the water, and Lan Bo also poked his head up, brushing back a handful of wet, golden hair.
Lan Bo was breathing heavily. He had already been running on fumes before arriving here; he’d searched nearly a hundred kilometers of ocean to find this place, and had just been through a battle. Though his face remained cold and composed, he was actually exhausted, his chest heaving and throbbing.