Chapter 17: The small town of Siren

The sailors lowered their nets on either side of the boat, mumbling something oddly.

All Bai Liu heard was a gift from Siren King or something like that, and Jeff stood looking down at the boat with a strange and manic expression on his face: "They were praying to Siren King for a bounty of mermaids."

Before Jeff could say anything else, the sailors on the side of the boat jumped over the edge of the net, one by one, and Lucy screamed in terror: "What are they doing? I thought we were catching mermaids? Why are they jumping down themselves!"

Bai Liu's expression was muted: "They're just fishing for mermaids."

After a long, long time, a huge net slowly floated up under the surface of the sea, with fragmented limbs and fish tails, a dozen mermaids trapped in the net in pieces, all dead, their tails rotting and sticking upwards.

The dozen or so mermaids looked like dolls in a rubbish heap, twisted into some sort of pose in the net, their eyes dead and staring at the men on board, their faces still wearing a grim or frightened expression, their bodies covered in bite marks, as if they had been bitten and thrown into the net by some fierce deep-sea fish.

Bai Liu's breathing eases slowly as he looks at the sparse [mermaid] faces in the light of the searchlight.

The faces of these mermaids look exactly like those of the twelve tourists who disappeared from the newspaper.

The sailors on board whispered in joyous tones.

"They will be made into wax figures and sent to the wax museum..."

"But the wax museum will only have four wax figures out tonight, because only four visitors are coming, what about salvaging those extra mermaids?"

"Let's put it in the bottom position first, it will give us relief for a while ......"

The caught mermaids were soon sent into the back of the house and transported to who knows where.

Bai Liu and his three visitors were able to eat some of the fresh common sea fish that was caught along with the mermaids, which was soon prepared and served to Bai Liu.

These sea fish also seem to be tainted with the smell of mermaids and are cooked to taste extraordinarily strange.

The three men, apart from Bai Liu, are sucking their fingers and gorging themselves on the fish being served.

The fish was pushed into the centre of the sashimi steak, and the wet head was held and chewed by Lucy, who ate it so fast that she even ate the strands of hair on her cheeks.

Lucy ruffled the oil stained hair out of her mouth and smiled at Bai Liu, " Bai Liu, why don't you come over and eat, the fish is really fresh tonight."

The small white eyes of the fish head in Lucy's hand look deadly at Bai Liu.

With a fish tail bitten in his hand and his teeth clicking sharply, Andre has become so much like a fish that his eyes are almost invisible from the front, situated on either side of his face, his nose completely deflated, and fishy, foul-smelling birthright dripping from the corners of his overly wide mouth.

Jeff sliced the fatty belly of the fish with his fork, as if he could barely maintain his sanity, but his hands were moving faster and faster, stuffing the fish mechanically into his mouth.

The sailors stared at Bai Liu as they forcefully placed a plate full of sea fish in front of him with an odd smile, "It's a waste of time coming here if you don't eat fresh fish, Mr. Bai."

Bai Liu was tempted to refuse, but once again the panel in front of him popped up with the instruction

[Task Tip: If you don't eat the fish presented by the sailors, the fishing roundup will be considered a failure]

Bai Liu is quiet for a couple of seconds and eats a piece.

This sea fish meat has a very strange sour and rotten taste in the mouth, but as the meat cuts through the throat, it turns into a normal sea fish meat with a fresh sweetness.

All the fish in front of Bai Liu's face began to have a strange allure, and even for someone like Bai Liu, who has never had a strong appetite for fish, the urge to gobble it up was overwhelming.

The sailor saw him eat and left satisfied.

Bai Liu tried his best to keep his head above water, not to look at the fish on the table, and got up to stand on the beach in the sea breeze, sniffing down at the metallic scent of the coin in his heart.

The smell of money calms Bai Liu.

He could probably reason out a few things.

Siren King was recovered and fell into a deep sleep, losing some kind of power over these waters, causing those who died in these waters to become mermaids and come back from the dead to return to earth, which is actually a legendary story, but the mermaid corpses of those twelve tourists just now verified the truth of this legend.

Those who die here can indeed be turned into mermaids.

But the question is why is it that such a small piece of remote sea can produce so many dead people turned into mermaids that filling an entire wax museum is not enough? Why are there so many dead people in this sea.

When Bai Liu saw the twelve salvaged tourist mermaids, he finally understood how this sea could produce so many mermaids.

Because it is a dumping ground for dead bodies.

The bodies of those missing tourists were presumably dumped in these waters before being salvaged by these sailors as some sort of large fish and made into mermaids to be poured into wax figures.

But I just don't know who killed those tourists anymore ....

Bai Liu has a sneaking suspicion that this is a town where robberies are common, and that most of the missing tourists in this town have lost their belongings.

The town was not so much enriched by tourism as by the looting industry attached to it.

Is there a fatter lamb than a tourist who has travelled a long way?

With so many dead tourists in such a vicious place, Bai Liu is inclined to suggest that the tourists were robbed and assassinated and then dumped in this place, although of course it cannot be ruled out that the mermaids came ashore to hunt them.

But judging from the mermaid's fear of bright light, it is probably difficult to hunt tourists during the day, and at night, during the popular tourist season in Siren Town, all these mermaids are caught for tourists to watch, the probability of mermaid killing is not very high .....

Wait a minute, Bai Liu...

Mermaid fishing is only possible if people die here in these waters, and there will be no mermaids if there are no dead people here.

For example, Bai Liu, the tourist they picked up during this fishing trip was the one that went missing last time .....

The inhabitants of this town may have deliberately killed people, dumped their bodies and then raised them as mermaids, and then made them into a gimmick for human fishing, to be used as a tourist industry to attract more visitors and make it easier for them to rob.

No wonder the keeper said there would be no mermaid fishing without tourists, all these caught mermaids were dead tourists.

The mayor of the town here is a [people-loving] guy.

In order to promote economic development and cover up the crimes of the townspeople, to avoid their criminal records being discovered, and to further expand this [mermaid tourism], Bai Liu feels that the mayor of this town is perfectly capable of making wax figures of the fished up mermaids, or corpses irrigated and put into wax museums, or just having the residents dispose of them.

It was certainly impossible for the police to catch or find any of the bodies, which were disposed of and dunked in the waxwork.

Those mermaid wax figures are irrigated with the corpses of the previous visitors, and imprisoned inside are the ghosts of the previous visitors, who turned into monsters and began to incubate the inhabitants of the town in a curse-like manner for revenge, turning them into their talismans.

While the process of alienation involves the inhabitants becoming like fish, the mermaid wax figure changes into a human being and the two exchange identities.

The sailors who roam the ship are ghosts who died in the depths and are no longer human, but monsters.

By this inference, there is one thing missing.

The mermaid wax figure has all three forms, pupa, cocoon and butterfly, but Bai Liu narrows his eyes and says that, according to the laws of growth, the mermaid wax figure is still lacking one state: the larvae, the most numerous and fragile of all.

And the larvae are...

Bai Liu slowly covered his belly, the piece of fish he had just eaten seemed to squirm wetly against the lining of his stomach, and as Bai Liu looked at his fingers, which were beginning to glow green and white, and the faintly visible patterns of fish scales on his skin, he could feel the sides of his jawbone begin to itch, with the illusion that gill flakes were about to grow.

He turned slowly to the three men who had come with him, all still eating furiously and already on the verge of losing their human forms, especially Andre.

He had practically slumped against the table furiously stuffing his mouth, his hair had turned into bony spikes standing up like fins, and the bridge of his nose was covered in dark green fish scales.

[Warning: Player Bai Liu has entered a state of alienation, his mental value is dropping, please be careful to distinguish between game reality and game illusion]

Bai Liu thought in his mind that this was the last monster of the monster book, this was the last form of the mermaid wax figure, the larval state.

Any visitor who enters Siren Town, or any resident who does not leave in Siren Town, is alienated into this thing, a form that is the weakest and most vulnerable to edible slaughter and robbery.

And Bai Liu is now the mermaid wax figure in its weakest form, the larval form.

[Siren Small Town Monster Book Refresh - Mermaid (4/4)]

[Monster Name: Mermaid (Larvae state)

[Weakness: ????? (unexplored)]

[Attack Method: ????? (unexplored)]

[All pages of the Siren Monster Book have been unlocked, please explore the missing parts of the book].

Andre wiped the rotting froth from the side of his mouth and pushed away from the table, his mouth had turned into one of those thin sharp teeth, his mouth went all the way through his entire jaw, big as a clown, with more bloody bits of fish falling out of it as he spoke, " Bai Liu, remember our bet?"

Bai Liu, attracted by the distinctive aroma of Andre's fishy body, blinked slowly, "I remember, spending the night on the boat, right?"

Andre cracked a hideous grin that went all the way to the heel of his head, then stuck out a long tongue and licked the remnants of flesh from the side of his face, "Why don't we just spend the night in these waters that are full of mermaids?"