The sailors lowered their nets on either side of the ship, mumbling something strange under their breath.
All Bai Liu caught were fragments about a "gift from the Siren King" or something along those lines. Jeff stood at the railing, staring down at the sea with a manic, unsettling expression."They're praying to the Siren King," he said. "For a bounty of mermaids."
Before Jeff could say anything else, the sailors at the side of the boat began jumping over the edge of the net one by one. Lucy screamed in terror, "What are they doing?! I thought we were catching mermaids! Why are they jumping in themselves?!"
Bai Liu's expression remained flat. "They're fishing for mermaids."
After a long, long time, a huge net slowly rose from beneath the surface of the sea. Inside were fragmented limbs and broken fish tails—over a dozen mermaids tangled together, all dead. Their rotting tails jutted upward, slick and stiff.
The mermaids lay twisted in the net like discarded dolls in a garbage heap. Their eyes were fixed on the people aboard the ship, their expressions frozen in terror or grim resignation. Their bodies were covered in bite marks, as if they had been mauled by some ferocious deep-sea creature before being thrown back into the net.
Under the glare of the searchlight, Bai Liu examined their shattered faces, breathing slowly and evenly.
"They'll be made into wax figures and sent to the wax museum…"
"But only four wax figures will be displayed tonight," someone said. "There are only four visitors. What about the extra mermaids?"
Their faces were identical to those of the twelve missing tourists shown in the newspaper.
"Put them in the bottom warehouse first," another voice muttered. "That should buy us some time…"
The captured mermaids were soon hauled away to the back of the ship and transported to who-knows-where.
Not long after, the crew prepared and served the fresh, ordinary sea fish that had been caught along with the mermaids. The meal was placed in front of Bai Liu and his companions.
The fish carried a faint, lingering smell of mermaid, and when cooked, the taste was oddly unsettling.
Except for Bai Liu, the other three ate ravenously, sucking their fingers clean as they tore into the fish.
A plate of sashimi was pushed to the center of the table. Lucy gnawed on a wet fish head, eating so fast that even the strands of hair stuck to her cheek disappeared into her mouth.
She brushed the oil-soaked hair aside and smiled at Bai Liu. "Bai Liu, why aren't you eating? The fish tonight is really fresh."
The small, pale eyes of the fish head in Lucy's hand stared lifelessly at him.
Andre bit into a fish tail, his teeth snapping sharply. He looked increasingly fish-like—his eyes nearly invisible from the front, set far apart on either side of his face. His nose had shriveled and spread unnaturally wide, and a foul, briny fluid dripped from the corners of his mouth.
Jeff sliced into the fatty belly of the fish with his fork, barely holding onto his sanity. His hands moved faster and faster, mechanically shoveling food into his mouth.
The sailors watched Bai Liu closely as they forcefully set a plate piled high with sea fish in front of him. One of them smiled strangely. "It's a waste to come all this way if you don't eat fresh fish, Mr. Bai."
Bai Liu was about to refuse when the panel suddenly popped up in front of him again.
[Task Tip: If you do not eat the fish presented by the sailors, the fishing activity will be considered a failure.]
Bai Liu was silent for two seconds before picking up a piece and eating it.
The fish had a strange, sour, almost rotten taste in his mouth, but as it slid down his throat, it transformed into ordinary sea fish—fresh, faintly sweet.
The fish laid out before him began to radiate an inexplicable allure. Even Bai Liu, who had never had much of an appetite for fish, felt an overwhelming urge to devour it.
Seeing that Bai Liu had eaten, the sailor finally left, satisfied.
Bai Liu forced himself to stay clear-headed. He avoided looking at the table, stood up, and walked to the edge of the deck, letting the sea breeze wash over him. Lowering his head, he pressed his hand to his chest and inhaled the metallic scent of the coin he carried.
The smell of money calmed him.
He could roughly piece things together now.
After the Siren King was recovered and fell into a deep sleep, it lost some kind of control over these waters. As a result, people who died in this sea area would transform into mermaids, come back to life, and return to the world. This is actually a legend, but the mermaid corpses of the twelve tourists just now verified the authenticity of this legend.
People who died here really could become mermaids.
But that raised another question. Why would such a remote, insignificant stretch of sea produce so many mermaids that even an entire wax museum couldn't hold them? Why were there so many deaths in these waters?
When Bai Liu saw the twelve salvaged mermaid corpses, he finally understood.
This place was a dumping ground for bodies.
The missing tourists had likely been killed elsewhere, dumped into the sea, and later hauled up by the sailors under the guise of "catching big fish," only to be turned into mermaids and sealed into wax figures.
What he didn't yet know was who had killed them.
Still, Bai Liu had a vague suspicion. This town had the nature of a robbery hub, and most missing tourists had also lost their belongings. From the repeated cases of theft and disappearance, it was clear that Siren Town was no place of simple or honest folk customs.
The town hadn't grown rich through tourism itself, but through the robbery that came with it.
After all, was there any lamb fatter than a tourist who had traveled thousands of miles?
With so many dead tourists in such a vicious place, Bai Liu leaned toward the conclusion that they had been robbed, murdered, and dumped into the sea—though he couldn't completely rule out the possibility that mermaids had come ashore to hunt them.
However, judging from the mermaids' fear of strong light, it would have been difficult for them to hunt during the day. At night, during peak tourist season, the mermaids were all captured and displayed for visitors. The probability of mermaids killing tourists was, therefore, extremely low.
Wait. Bai Liu's thoughts paused.
Mermaid fishing could only happen if people died in these waters. Without deaths, there would be no mermaids.
For example, the "tourist" they had salvaged during this fishing trip was precisely the one who had gone missing last time.
The townspeople may have been deliberately killing tourists, dumping their bodies into the sea, raising them as mermaids, and then using "mermaid fishing" as a spectacle—both to attract more visitors and to make those visitors easier targets for robbery.
No wonder the museum keeper had said that without tourists, there would be no mermaid fishing. Every mermaid caught was once a dead tourist.
The mayor of this town was truly a "people-loving" man.
To promote economic development, cover up the townspeople's crimes, avoid criminal investigations, and further expand this so-called mermaid tourism, Bai Liu believed the mayor was fully capable of ordering the mermaids pulled from the sea to be turned into wax figures—or of having the corpses disposed of altogether.
Naturally, the police would never find any bodies. They had all already been turned into mermaid wax figures.
Those mermaid wax figures were infused with the corpses of past visitors. Imprisoned inside them were the ghosts of those visitors—souls twisted into monsters who, driven by vengeance, began to curse the townspeople, incubating them in a parasitic, talisman-like way.
During the process of alienation, the townspeople gradually took on fish-like traits, while the mermaid wax figures transformed into human forms—the two sides effectively exchanging identities.
The sailors who roamed the ship were no longer human. They were ghosts that had died in the depths of the sea, existing only as monsters.
Following this line of reasoning, Bai Liu realized that something was still missing.
The mermaid wax figure possessed three known forms—pupa, cocoon, and butterfly—but according to the laws of growth, it lacked the most fundamental stage: the larval form, the most numerous and fragile of all.
And the larvae were—
Bai Liu slowly pressed a hand to his abdomen. The piece of fish he had just eaten seemed to squirm wetly against the lining of his stomach. As he lowered his gaze, his fingers were beginning to glow faintly green and white, subtle fish-scale patterns surfacing beneath his skin. An itching sensation spread along his jaw, accompanied by the disturbing illusion that gill slits were about to emerge.
He turned slowly. The three people who had come with him were still eating frantically, their human features nearly gone—especially Andre.
Andre had practically collapsed against the table, stuffing his mouth with savage urgency. His hair had stiffened into bony spikes, standing upright like fins, and the bridge of his nose was covered in dark green scales.
[Warning: Player Bai Liu has entered a state of alienation. Spirit value is declining. Please distinguish carefully between game reality and illusion.]
Bai Liu thought coldly: This is the final monster recorded in the Monster Book. This is the last form of the mermaid wax figure—the larval stage.
Any tourist who entered Siren Town, or any resident who failed to leave, would eventually be alienated into this thing—a form that was the weakest, the most numerous, and the easiest to be hunted, slaughtered, and robbed.
And Bai Liu was now in that weakest state. The larval form of the mermaid wax figure.
[Siren Town Monster Book Updated — Mermaid (4/4)]
[Monster Name: Mermaid (Larval State)]
[Weakness: ????? (Unexplored)]
[Attack Method: ????? (Unexplored)]
[All pages of the Siren Town Monster Book have been unlocked. Please explore the missing entries.]
Andre wiped the rotting froth from the corner of his mouth and shoved himself away from the table. His mouth had split into rows of thin, sharp teeth, stretching unnaturally wide across his jaw. As he spoke, fragments of fish flesh fell from between his teeth.
"Bai Liu," Andre said, grinning, "do you still remember our bet?"
Drawn by the thick, fishy scent radiating from Andre's body, Bai Liu blinked slowly."I remember," he replied. "Spending the night on the boat."
Andre's grin widened grotesquely, stretching almost to the back of his head. He extended a long tongue and slowly licked the scraps of flesh from his face. "Then why don't we spend the night," he suggested softly, "in these waters full of mermaids?"