Chapter 52: The Merman

Ge Xiu opened his eyes.

The water surface above him was rippling, the scenery outside the pool was blurred and deformed due to it. Not far away the sound of the machine changing water could be heard. It was running all the time, ensuring the flow of water in the pool and the throughout water quality.

He felt as if he had a very bad dream, but he couldn’t remember anything.

It was like a necklace with a broken string, the beads scattered on the ground couldn’t be put together in their original order and appearance no matter what.

Although he could not remember any fragments of the dream, the residual feeling of the nightmare remained in his chest and limbs, like a slowly appearing aftermath of a disaster.

The water current slowly flowed alongside Ge Xiu’s skin and slid over his fishtail. The water plants swayed with the current, and several silver fish were swimming and playing in it.

He raised his hand and touched his head behind his ears.

The edge were soft, like a thin sponge, but there were traces of distinct fibers. With his breath, the water flowed out from it after being filtered, they were closing and opening with his breath. This feeling was really novel, even though he’s been a merman for a while now, but Ge Xiu still wasn’t accustomed to breathing with two sets of breathing organs.

He spit out a bunch of bubbles.

The snow-white bubbles were rising close together, rushing towards the water surface above his head in a hurry. Several stupid silver fish were washed away by the bubbles, looking for a cover and hiding in a panic.

Ge Xiu curled the corners of his lips childishly, and the depressed mood from previous dreams has finally dispersed a little.

“Gululu”.

His stomach growled suddenly.

Ge Xiu looked down at his flat belly, a feeling of hunger surged up, and his empty stomach cramped and tightened.

Perhaps because of the fact his race was different this time, his body in this world was always very hungry, and his appetite was also exceptionally big.

Because Ge Xiu himself did not have much desire for food, he often ate according to his previous food intake out of habit, which caused him to always be hungry.

Maybe he should remember to eat more in the future.

Ge Xiu patted his stomach thoughtfully, then swung his tail, and swam towards the water surface.

The entire glass room was illuminated by the morning sun, and the clear and transparent light filled the space in front of him without a gap. The food for him has already been placed on the side of the platform, and the fresh fruits still had condensed dew on the surface.

With the splattering sound of water, the slender merman floated on the water and slowly swam to the edge of the pool, his two white arms resting on the cold ground.

–“clatter”

Amidst the splashing water, a subtle sound of collision sounded abruptly, and a round chip fell down, rolled twice on the ground, and stopped.

Ge Xiu’s gaze followed the chip, and when it stopped rolling, he reached out and picked it up.

He placed the disc in his palm and looked at it carefully.

The chip was soft and pale pink, with rounded edges and an oval shape, and there were traced of faint blood on the end, and it looked like… a fingernail.

It seemed familiar…?

Ge Xiu was stunned for a while, then turned over his palm and found that the fingernail on his right index finger had fallen off, leaving only the soft skin that was originally covered by the hard protective layer, exposed to the air without any defense.

This……?

Ge Xiu frowned and reached out to touch the place where his nails fell off. He found that near the end of the bare skin, there were new nails that had started to emerge. They were also fresh and light pink, but they felt harder to the touch. The tips of the nails also seemed to be sharper.

What was going on?

He tried to pull the nails on his other fingers, and found that they all appeared to be loose in varying degrees, and two nails even fell off directly from his hand, revealing the hard tips hiding underneath.

Ge Xiu stared at the three fingernails of different sizes in a puzzled manner, and couldn’t understand why his body decided to change his fingernails for a while.

At this moment, he felt that in his mouth…there was something strange.

Ge Xiu licked his teeth with the tip of his tongue, and felt the familiar soreness. This feeling was like a thunderbolt from the sky, making him instantly freeze in place.

No, that’s not possible! This time he almost didn’t eat candies at all! And he had paid great attention to dental hygiene since the first world! There had been no tooth decay since that time! Moreover, every night before falling asleep, he even carefully chewed several seaweeds to clean his teeth… This, it shouldn’t be!

Ge Xiu felt very wronged, and the whole fish’s mood fell.

After the tooth was licked, it swayed unsteadily a few times, and then fell off—

but it didn’t hurt much.

Ge Xiu was stunned for two seconds and then spit out the tooth. There were still a few traces of blood at the bottom of the tooth, which looked a bit terrifying.

He tried again to lick the place where the tooth used to be—a small tip emerged from the soft gum, which caused a slight pain when licked with his tongue.

Was he… changing teeth?

Ge Xiu held his chin, and suddenly this inexplicable thought came through his mind… but it seemed unexpectedly reasonable.

But doesn’t this kind of thing often happen only in the process of growing up? According to the conversation he heard between the trainer and the Grand Duke, he should be a fully grown up, or were the other mermaids also like this?

After all, he didn’t know much about his own race.

Ge Xiu tried his best to choose soft and easy-to-chew foods and fill up his stomach as quickly as possible. This time he consciously increased his food intake to ensure that he would get enough nutrients during this time.

He turned in the water, left the shore, waved his tail fin, and swam toward the center of the pool.

The long fishtail was a dazzling and gorgeous blue-purple, when it swung in the water it looked like a colourful wave.

Sunlight came in through the top of the glass house, shining on the pool water warmly, and Ge Xiu floated on the water surface, squinting his eyes slightly, like a lazy and drowsy cat basking in the sun.

He turned over and looked around the entire glass room.

He couldn’t see a figure in his sight, nor could he hear any sound, which almost made him wonder if the glass house was built in the wilderness.

However, according to the character showed by his new owner, Ge Xiu was very confident that the outside of the glass room was surrounded and guarded.

He glanced at his fishtail.

If it wasn’t for his race this time that could only swim in the water, according to the current level of technology in this world, whether he would still be trapped didn’t need to be said.

——However, even if he had legs, Ge Xiu didn’t intend to escape this time.

Compared with the previous world, the conditions and environment of this world were superior enough. The judge who took pleasure in torturing him and the people behind them would never give him such an easy way out.

From his own amnesia, arrest, to trial, and even the identity of the wanted criminal, there were suspicious points throughout the whole process.

And what does that “P”… “Pandora Project” represent?

Ge Xiu was now certain that they definitely had other plans—and not just to punish him for being an outlaw.

Therefore, he was now very interested in this Emperor.

Ge Xiu hit the water with his tail fin, and dove headfirst into the pool, and after a few seconds, his head emerged on the other end of the pool.

He tucked his long hair behind his ears and looked straight at the hidden camera, as if he knew that someone was watching him on the other side. He did not shy away from it and asked straightforwardly: “It’s so boring here, I want books, any electronics and more sugar.”

Rowett stared at the merman on the screen and raised his eyebrows in surprise, his eyes full of interest.

The face of the merman was so beautiful that it almost transcended the boundaries of gender and race, he didn’t look like a real creature that could exist in this world.

Even when he said the request, his expression was light, with a certain kind of casual laziness — neither flattering nor coquettish, neither arrogant nor reserved. On the contrary, he also gave off a sense of alienation and indifference, as if he was talking about something natural and righteous, and people could only obey.

He beckoned to the attendants on the side:

“Send these things over.”

After saying that, he moved his gaze away from the screen, and looked at the leaders of the army sitting by the round table in front of him indifferently—there was dead silence in the conference room, and everyone was concentrated and holding their breath, waiting for the Emperor’s further instructions on the actions of the army-—none of them dared to express any opinions on the Emperor’s contempt and neglect. They all pretended that nothing happened just now, turning their gaze away.

Rowett tapped the tabletop with his fingertips, and said lightly:

“All captured enemy troops should be put to death, beheaded, and then airdropped into their city-states with a flying vehicle.”

The expansion of the empire always requires victims, doesn’t it?

·

Ge Xiu quickly got the items he wanted.

Stacks of books, game consoles with special waterproof layer, and tablets with simple functions.

The tablets were closely monitored at all times, and the network he used was fully restricted. Basically, everything that could be seen and found by him has been strictly screened.

Ge Xiu casually played with these products, and he knew now the exact level of technological development in this world.

This also affirmed his conjecture on the way—all the construction of virtual worlds required perfect logic and self-consistency, so although they could virtualize the magical world, they couldn’t simulate a higher level of technology than the already existing technology—the development couldn’t be subjectively guessed. After all, if something could be fully simulated from principle to application, and it could already appear in reality, it wasn’t the from a higher technological level.

These things were like children’s toys in his hands, and they could be completely cracked by him if given two minutes.

However, Ge Xiu was not ready to show his strength under the surveillance of the cameras.

According to the experiment just now, the monitoring person obviously cared very much about him, so he wouldn’t miss any of his abnormal behaviour.

Moreover, this level of information was enough for him for now.

Ge Xiu laid on the edge of the pool, flipped through two novels at random, searched the Internet for information about mermaids and information about the world, and then started playing games—colourful pixelated villains on the screen were skipped one after another. A character played by him has experienced different tragic deaths over and over again. The big red letters GAME OVER flashed on the screen, and then RESTART appeared again and again—

finally, the little man stopped moving.

When Rowett walked into the glass room, he saw this scene.

A slender merman was lying on the edge of the pool. His long blue-purple hair was half-dry, and the fluffy hair on the top of his head showed a beautiful golden colour under the sun. His lower part was still submerged in the water, covering his slender white back. Only small fragments of white skin was exposed in the gaps between strands of hair.

The handle of the game console fell aside, and the merman’s hand rested loosely on it.

He fell asleep.

Rowett walked forward lightly, and the merman’s figure gradually became clear.

His pace halted.

Under the cover of his hair, his eyebrows were tightly furrowed, his face was pale, and his back and shoulders trembled from time to time…It looked as if he was having a nightmare that he could not wake up from.