The cultivation chambers on both sides continued pressing inward. By now, only thirty centimeters remained between them. Bai Chunian could not even stand sideways, and the air had begun growing thin.
Suppressing his heartbreak, he dragged Lan Bo into the cultivation chamber that had previously held Pearl.
The space finally widened slightly.
At last, Lan Bo could stretch out and lie in Bai Chunian’s arms, weakly resting in the crook of his elbow, eyes half closed, pale golden lashes trembling softly.
In unbearable agony, Bai Chunian bent over him, choking back sobs as he kissed Lan Bo’s eyes over and over.
“Lan Bo… you can recover, right? There’s nothing you can’t do, isn’t that true? Tell me. Please tell me quickly.”
“I have many things I can’t do.” The color gradually drained from Lan Bo’s lips as he raised pale fingertips to cup Xiao Bai’s cheek. “For example… I can’t save you.”
Bai Chunian could no longer control his mimicry. Lion ears pressed tightly against his hair, the fear buried deep in his heart laid bare through instinct.
“I shouldn’t have come here. I should’ve gone home with you. I was too greedy—I wanted to stay with you a little longer… From the beginning, you were always accommodating me. You stayed on land for me, risked coming into the institute for me. I’m sorry…”
“I’m messing with you. It’s just a small injury.” Lan Bo used the tip of his thumb to wipe away his tears.
Bai Chunian immediately lifted his head, the tip of his nose red as he looked at him, sniffling. “Really?”
Lan Bo wiped at his eyes, then turned to look at Pearl, who had awkwardly stopped at the doorway.
Pearl had also taken Lan Bo’s shot through the chest. The Heart of the Dead Sea rock bullet had pierced through his body. Black smoke drifted from the wound left by the bullet, unable to heal. As his soul fractured, Pearl’s body gradually became more broken.
Pearl knelt on the floor, carefully holding onto the doorframe, not daring to enter. Only after Lan Bo crooked a finger at him did he hurriedly crawl forward on his knees, sitting obediently beside Lan Bo, his small hands cautiously resting on his lap.
“Siren.” Pearl lowered his head with his hands behind his back, his forehead nearly touching the ground as he displayed submission to his leader.
Lan Bo was not entirely sure what had happened, but he could guess: the corpse of Pearl outside, the one following the immortal undead, had ultimately chosen to submit to him. That was why the undead summoning body before them had suddenly stopped attacking and surrendered.
With difficulty, Lan Bo raised a hand and gently ruffled Pearl’s soft, curled hair. Hooking a finger beneath his chin, he made him lift his head to look at Xiao Bai.
“Do you know who he is?”
Pearl stared blankly at Bai Chunian, then shook his head.
Lan Bo taught him syllable by syllable:
“daimi. (Daddy.)”
“daimi.” Pearl repeated softly. Obediently, he scooted over to Bai Chunian’s side, nudging his hand with his head like a puppy.
Bai Chunian froze, his raised hand uncertain what to do. Just moments ago, murderous intent had surged in him because of Lan Bo’s severe injuries. But now, it extinguished again.
He still could not bring himself to hate this pitiful child who had never gotten the chance to be born.
The only people he hated were Aileen—and himself.
“daimi, daimi.” Pearl seemed to sense the gentle pheromones radiating from the alpha before him. Instinctively, he longed to be touched and comforted, clinging softly to Bai Chunian’s arm, greedily absorbing the soothing pheromones he should have had, but had been denied for so many years.
Bai Chunian opened his arms and pulled both Pearl and Lan Bo into his embrace, releasing a great amount of soothing pheromones, sheltering them protectively within the circle of his body.
Lan Bo lightly kissed Pearl’s forehead, then took Bai Chunian’s hand and placed it against the back of Pearl’s neck. In a mellow, magnetic voice, he slowly whispered by Pearl’s ear:
“daimi gave you a beautiful name. Bai Aixing. Do you like it?”
Drowning in boundless happiness, Pearl closed his eyes and nodded.
“En.”
The bullet wound in his back still leaked black smoke. His gravely injured soul was fading away. One of Pearl’s hands and one of his feet had already disappeared, and the bullet hole in his body widened more and more, devouring his gray-white form.
“Do you accept this name?” Lan Bo asked him.
Pearl’s body continued deteriorating and dispersing. By now, he could no longer even kneel steadily. He could only linger, pressing his cheek lovingly against Bai Chunian’s and Lan Bo’s hands as he answered sincerely:
“I accept it.”
The moment he answered, his body suddenly stopped dissipating.
Instead, it gradually compressed and solidified, becoming smaller and smaller, squeezed by the air into a tiny glass sphere.
The Divine Messenger M2 ability—“Annihilation”—preserved souls in the form of a spherical amorphous object. If the glass sphere were crushed, the annihilated person would be erased from the world’s memory. Except for Bai Chunian, everyone else would lose their memories of that person, along with any interest in seeking proof they had ever existed.
Forgetting was a departure purer than death.
Though Pearl’s undead summoning body had been gray-white, the glass bead that landed in Bai Chunian’s palm was pink-white, like solidified strawberry milk.
Bai Chunian clenched the bead tightly in his palm, hugging Lan Bo close and burying his face in the hollow of his neck. Tears soaked through the moisture-retaining bandages wrapped around Lan Bo’s upper body.
Lan Bo grew even more exhausted, lying weakly in Bai Chunian’s arms, his breathing becoming fainter.
“randi…” Lan Bo struggled to raise a hand to the back of his neck, tracing teasingly over his gland in an almost indecent manner. Forcing the corner of his lips into a weak smile, he murmured:
“obe?” (Want to mate?)
Bai Chunian’s head felt like it would split apart; he could barely breathe. He shouted at him:
“At a time like this, what the hell are you even thinking about?!”
The little cat had hissed at him.
Lan Bo looked slightly aggrieved and frowned as he coaxed him:
“I’m immortal. No force can truly kill me. Throw me into the sea, bury me in sand—the ocean will sustain me until I recover. After a few decades, I’ll be completely fine again.”
“But when I wake up, I’ll never see you again.”
“I’ll have to guard the ocean floor, searching through hundreds of millions of starfish just to find the one you turned into?”
“Stop talking. I’m getting you out of here.” Bai Chunian gently laid Lan Bo down, then broke off the fragment of heart Lan Bo had once given him from the mineral fishbone earring. Carefully, he pressed that piece of stone back into the gaping hole in Lan Bo’s chest.
The missing fragment restored the gap in the mineral heart, and the cracks began slowly knitting back together. Though the healing was painfully slow, it was better than nothing. Lan Bo seemed to feel somewhat better and closed his eyes to rest.
Seeing the faint trace of peace return to Lan Bo’s expression, Bai Chunian finally realized:
That tiny fragment Lan Bo had broken off to make into his earring had never been some insignificant piece. It had been indispensable to Lan Bo all along.
Perhaps every single day without that fragment of his heart, Lan Bo had been quietly enduring pain.
But he had never cared.
Merfolk love was obsessive and mad.
Bai Chunian slapped himself hard across the face, forcing himself to stay awake and calm. Inside the cultivation chamber, he ran his hands along every inch of the walls, searching desperately for an exit.
If he could not find one, this cultivation chamber would become the transparent coffin where all of them would be buried.
Then Bai Chunian noticed the Heart of the Dead Sea rock heavy machine gun Pearl had left behind.
He quickly ran over and carried it inside.
Through the now-transparent metal walls of the cultivation chamber, Bai Chunian could see numerous A3-class experimental subjects sleeping in their own chambers.
If he destroyed the cultivation chamber to escape, he would inevitably release the other experimental subjects.
Each of them had second-generation combat chips implanted inside their bodies. Their bloodlust would make them recognize no family, no allies—only slaughter and destruction.
Cooperating or communicating with them in the short term was impossible.
Bai Chunian hesitated and looked back. Lan Bo was curled up on the ground, folding himself into a half-ball. Though he said nothing about his pain, Bai Chunian could still feel it.
Bai Chunian dropped his backpack, removed the ammunition belts from his body, and reduced his load as much as possible. Then he slung the Heart of the Dead Sea rock heavy machine gun over his shoulder, supporting it with one hand, and used the other to lift Lan Bo.
Lan Bo could barely open his eyes anymore. He asked weakly, “Heavy?”
A three-meter fish tail was indeed heavy, but he truly no longer had the strength to shift into a human mimic form.
“Hold on to me. It’s fine.” Bai Chunian lifted his knee slightly to brace Lan Bo more firmly. “I can lift a two-ton car. What’s a two-hundred-jin wife?”
“Lifting it and running with it are the same thing?”
“You’re not the same as a car either.”
“Hn.”
Bai Chunian stepped back and pressed against the chamber door, raising the heavy machine gun. He fired at what he judged to be the weakest point of the cultivation chamber.
The gunfire made his eardrums ring. Dense bullets struck the chamber wall at extreme speed. Black casings flew out and were reformed into bullets, fed back into the belt.
The chamber wall deformed under the impact, a breach appeared, and Bai Chunian fired while charging out.
But it wasn’t just one chamber that was destroyed. The reinforced cultivation chambers collapsed and stacked together, trapping them in the innermost layer. Bai Chunian had to fight his way straight through from the center.
As the chambers were destroyed, the cultivation fluid drained rapidly, and the experimental subjects began to awaken one by one.
Bai Chunian sprinted forward as low growls rose behind him. Strange, deformed experimental subjects slowly stood up inside their chambers and roared skyward.
The infinite-ammo Heart of the Dead Sea rock heavy machine gun remained in his hands as he broke through one door and one wall after another. Burning debris still blazed through the corridors. Hot casings flying from the gun scraped his face, leaving blood trails. He lowered his head and pressed his cheek against Lan Bo’s to shield him from exploding flames.
At last, they retreated to the collapsed rear of the inspection area. A ten-meter-wide chasm yawned before them, flames surging upward. Bai Chunian stopped and looked back. The lights on the wall cast silhouettes of countless monsters chasing them.
With a heavy machine gun strapped to him and Lan Bo in his arms, with almost no running start, there was no way Bai Chunian could leap across the gap.
He dropped the machine gun, wrapped Lan Bo tightly in his arms with numb hands, and rasped, “Hold on tight.” His breathing was rapid; his throat felt as if it were burning dry, his voice hoarse like a broken extinguisher.
His vision blurred. He steadied himself against the wall. His strength was exhausted; every step forward was sustained only by willpower.
Lan Bo wrapped his arms around his neck and asked softly, “Outside… has the sun already risen?”
He did not answer.
Lan Bo spoke again, “We’re reaching the end.”
Bai Chunian’s eyes slowly reddened. He clenched his fist and slammed it against the wall. “Impossible. Don’t think you can get rid of me. We already got the certificate… the chairman said once you’re married, you’re together for life…”
“randi, I need to confess something to you.” Lan Bo smiled faintly. He raised his right hand, tore open the webbing between his fingers with his teeth, found Bai Chunian’s hand, and laced their fingers together.
“I’ve hidden this for a long time.”
“What?”
“When I left the research institute and regained consciousness, my first thought was—I would lead the sea clan to devour the land.” As he spoke, Lan Bo kept kissing him, soothing his helpless lover. “After leaving the institute, I deliberately let myself be captured by human traffickers, just to give myself a legitimate reason when I invaded the land. But then you appeared. You came from the sky to save me. So I shelved the plan.”
“What? Wasn’t it you who requested IOA to send me?”
“What are you talking about? I never asked IOA to save me. My original plan was, when I flooded the land, to go to IOA and take you back to the merfolk island in the Caribbean to make you my queen. I don’t know why you came on your own. Why did you come to save me?”
Bai Chunian was completely confused. “Wasn’t it you who contacted IOA and specifically requested me? The chairman said you used Morse code to send two words—white lion. Wasn’t that calling for me?”
“A.” Lan Bo froze, then closed his eyes and gave a sudden, understanding smile. “So that’s how it was. In your language, that means white lion?”
“Enough.” Lan Bo closed his eyes. “This goodbye is enough. Erase me. Take me out of here and throw me into the sea. I will be reborn in the ocean. The outcome is the same as taking my body out with you—we still cannot meet for a long time.”
“When you miss me, go to the seaside and wait for a seashell to wash ashore. Pick it up and listen through it. I will let the sea send it to tell you I have not gone far.”