Chapter 20: The small town of Siren

As Bai Liu was about to be bitten, the audience was so desperate that they turned into grumpy old men and shouted at the small TV.

"Wake up! Get up and fight the monsters!"

"Can't we sleep when we get out? You're missing this one hour of sleep! Didn't your mother ever teach you not to hang up when you play games!"

"I've been watching gameplay videos for so long, I've never really seen such a giveaway, when it's clear you can win, it's really a hard giveaway."

Bai Liu opened her eyes as if woken up by the noise of the crowd on the small TV.

He looked towards the fishermen who had cut through the surface water and half of the fish's heads surfaced with their mouths open towards his boat.

Bai Liu could see their legs beneath the surface turning into eel-like tails, slithering and flipping underwater like snakes as they darted towards Bai Liu on the surface.

Not far from Bai Liu, Andre's boat is covered in blood and a skeleton of broken flesh.

Andre's skeleton's lower body had begun to fuse, becoming somewhat fish-like, while the cloth of his clothing was torn and draped over the side of the boat, floating alone on the surface, showing what a fierce group of creatures these mermaids were.

In the nick of time, Bai Liu slowly dipped the quilt into the sea and pulled it back up to cover the boat, shivering under it as if he was running away from himself, an act that triggered a frenzy of incompetence from the onlookers.

But Bai Liu continues to perform even this action with great difficulty, as if his body is freezing.

Bai Liu's originally white fingers are beginning to spread with marble veins.

He was now in the same condition Lucy had been in before - his whole body temperature had dropped so much that he felt like he was slowly turning into a rock, and he was not very sharp in either his head or his movements, which was why he was shaking uncontrollably.

Bai Liu looks at the barrels of alcohol in his panel and orders: [Take out a barrel of alcohol]

[System Alert: Removed]

A barrel of alcohol appeared on the boat, weighing it down a notch and making the spectators more and more frightened to watch.

The monster has almost reached Bai Liu's boat!

Bai Liu pulls a box of matches from his pocket and huddles under the wet blanket, shivering and shaking his hands several times before lighting it.

His expression remained calm, and after rubbing a match, Bai Liu lifted a corner of the quilt, stood up, stepped on the bucket of alcohol, and laboriously poured it out to sea.

The audience covered their eyes in disbelief at this operation.

"Pouring alcohol into the sea ...... Did he come up with that trick because his spirit level was down?"

"It's not that we can't burn it, the highly concentrated alcohol can still float on the surface for a few minutes, but it's a drop in the bucket, and it won't work on these mermaid monsters, they're not afraid of fire."

Throwing the match onto the sea where the alcohol had been poured, a fire burst into flame, and Bai Liu, draped in his wet blanket, looked down at the approaching mermaids in the warmth of the blaze, looking as peaceful as if he had been waiting for them to come close for a long time.

A searing bonfire burns in the deep black cold sea, and mermaids approach the boat, swimming around it and waving their tails greedily as Bai Liu sits in the boat in the middle of the bonfire, his eyes reflecting the tongues of fire and the sea.

With pupils the colour of fire and alcohol, Bai Liu looks more like a Siren siren snorkelling from the depths to shore than the strange monsters beneath the boat, his alienated face having a magical appeal.

The moment the mermaids, desperate for food, poked their heads out of the sea, they were swept up in the flames with the bleeping sound of fish being grilled, and the mermaids let out an ear-splitting scream as they flipped their bellies open and floated to the surface to struggle.

The burned fish gave off an eerie aroma and the mermaids that had been approaching the boat went to eat the burned mermaids, with the ear-piercing sound of bones and flesh cracking around the boat.

The strong smell of blood and fish thickens in Bai Liu's nostrils, turning into a strange, delicious smell that makes Bai Liu lick his lips, but his face is still devoid of emotion.

He was surrounded by mermaids biting each other, while Bai Liu sat still, his face, pale and gloomy from alienation, baked with alcohol and fire to a healthy flush, and he looked at Andre's empty boat and somehow smiled.

It was a contented, gifted and rewarded smile, the same expression on the faces of mermaids who were munching on fish to their heart's content, but a little more creepy.

Bai Liu whispered softly and hoarsely, "Good night, Andre."

[Side Quest - Ship of True Love, ask player Bai Liu to win a bet against Andre, complete and receive 100 bonus points].

[Side Mission - Jeff's Bloody Plot, 90% Progress]

[Main Quest - Participate in Mermaid Fishing Convention, completed, reward points 50]

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

[Monster Name: Mermaid (Larvae state)

[Weaknesses: fire, light, more fragile, close to humans].

[Attack: Biting and scratching, does not trigger alienation status, low intelligence, does not use tools].

The monster book for this page has been assembled, we hope you will continue to work on it.

A long list of rewards and achievement panels popped up, almost dazzling the viewers guarding the small TV.

After a long, long wait, the spectator who had said Bai Liu's lying delivery earlier spat out a tone of voice incredulously, "Fuck!"

The fuck was like a snap of the fingers, bringing back all the spectators who were engrossed in the scene they had just witnessed, all of them questioning frantically in unison.

"What's going on here?!"

"Lying delivery my ass! This dude actually won lying down, this operation is bull."

"Shit, I looked stupid and flew onto the forum to ask God Mu what was going on!"

"Why didn't that alcohol he used dissolve in water?!"

"I searched for the alcohol he bought, and holy shit, guess what I found in the dozen pages of instructions for this alcohol - it's actually a permanent oil-based semi-solid alcohol that has been modified to be insoluble in water, I'm convinced, how did this new guy find this alcohol?"

"Did he read through all the instructions?"

" God Mu got back to me! He said that mermaid sculptures are not afraid of fire and mermaid sailors are not afraid of fire, but mermaid larvae are afraid of fire, which means that a mermaid without an amulet is afraid of fire."

"And Bai Liu was smart enough to figure out that cooked mermaid meat is highly attractive to these mermaid monsters, so he used fire to cook some of the mermaid larvae and instead of attacking the players, the mermaids would go for the cooked meat ......"

......

[2,300 people liked Bai Liu's TV, 2,670 people favorited Bai Liu's TV, 499 people charged Bai Liu's TV, player Bai Liu got 499 points].

[Player Bai Liu has gained over 2000 likes in under a minute and his reputation is rising rapidly!

[Congratulations to player Bai Liu for getting the promotion position and entering the recommended position in the single player partition system, the number of views is rising rapidly .....]

......

Bai Liu sits bored in the boat watching the mermaids bite each other, with a wet blanket over his body to prevent him from getting burnt.

Once the mermaids had finished tearing each other apart, he poured the alcohol down again and lit it.

The grilled fish was much more attractive to the mermaids than Bai Liu, so the mermaids did not attack Bai Liu, who sat in his boat like a barbecue chef, searing mermaids for the monsters to eat.

Bai Liu made a rough estimate in his mind while grilling - probably four or five barrels of alcohol would last until dawn, which is only 45 points, or a fraction of 140 points for two water bubbles.

And he still had 5 large barrels of alcohol left.

Bai Liu bought the alcohol because he heard the keeper of the Siren Wax Museum tell him that mermaids can be cooked, including grilled, and that everyone loves them.

It is surprising then that it can be grilled, that a hot fire attack is effective, and that the cooked mermaid should be no less attractive for its mermaid.

Just look at Andre's craving for fish and chips, he didn't eat as much raw fish tonight as he did this morning.