Chapter 9: The small town of Siren

A silence fell over the car and everyone's faces became strangely pale.

Lucy gave an embarrassed harrumph and Andre sneered as the two men clearly didn't believe the driver.

The driver laughed out loud, "Just kidding, why would we eat mermaids? It's just the sea fish we specialize in here."

The driver pulled up calmly and steadily to a building, "The wax museum is here, get out."

Once everyone was out of the car, the driver added, "You can visit first and just call me when it's evening and I'll pick you up to watch the mermaid fishing."

He finished and drove off.

Bai Liu got out of the car and looked around him. In front of him was a building so tall that he had to tilt his head parallel to the ground in order to see the top, on top of which were some English letters in fancy script, the English name of the Siren Wax Museum.

[System Alert: Scene Unlocked - Siren Wax Museum]

The entire wax museum is painted in the dark colours of the sea and is supported on top by several thick granite columns. Bai Liu stands at the entrance and can see inside a number of silhouetted wax figures of mermaids displayed in shadows.

The interior of the Siren Wax Museum looks new, but the facade is still a bit worn, with its red brickwork.

There were also many old newspapers with notices of missing persons on the walls, which were blown into Bai Liu's face by the wind.

Bai Liu removes the old newspaper from his face and is met with a bold line of notice in bold.

[Police Notice: Twelve people are missing in Siren Town this month, please report to the police if you have seen the missing persons on the missing photos below. Please be careful when visiting Siren Town and do not play with large fish and avoid falling into the water.

Underneath the notice were twelve black and white photographs of people smiling with the joy of a recent visit to Siren Town, but the smiles of the people on the newspaper fell on Bai Liu's eyes in a strange way through the yellowed, old newspaper.

Bai Liu reads the whole paper carefully and then puts it away in his bag. After folding it twice, Bai Liu suddenly felt that the folding did not feel right and was a bit too stiff.

For a newspaper, even if it's dried and brittle from the sea breeze, it shouldn't have such a hard texture ...... as if it were more than just a piece of paper.

Bai Liu viewed from a cross section of the newspaper.

The cross-section does look thick, but there is no sign of multiple sheets, mainly because the newspaper has been blown so solidly that even if there were multiple sheets they would not be readily apparent.

Bai Liu put the newspaper away in his arms and decided to get some warm water when he went inside the wax museum to see if the newspaper had multiple layers and could be separated.

[Trigger side quest - Find the hot tub in the wax museum and separate the newspapers stuck together, points rewarded 10]

The keeper of the Siren Wax Museum is an old man with cataracts, his eyes are cloudy and white, but miraculously he doesn't seem to have any major problems seeing people.

As soon as Bai Liu and the others walked in, the old man quickly inclined his head to look over. With blank eyes and a polite, formatted smile on his ageing face, the keeper darted towards them in such a way that Lucy let out a small gasp.

The keeper looked a little peculiar and saddened: "It's been a long time since anyone has been here ...... No visitors have come to the Siren Wax Museum since last month when people kept having accidents, and it's been a long time since a new wax figure of a mermaid has come into the museum."

Bai Liu heard this and asked, "Why hasn't a new wax figure of a mermaid been in the museum for a long time? Does it have anything to do with the fact that no visitors come?"

"Of course we do." The keeper's tone began to get excited and he even waved his somewhat stiff old arms and legs, "We rarely do a large, time-consuming event like a mermaid fishery without tourists coming to ......"

He stopped abruptly at this point in his sentence, and was silent later on when asked this question any more.

" Is there always a constant flow of mermaid wax figures into the Siren Wax Museum?" Bai Liu immediately changed the question, "The capacity of this wax museum is limited, right? If new wax figures keep coming in, there won't be much room for them."

"No!" The keeper's mouth chewed on an odd smile as his white muddy eyes rolled in his eyes and aimed at Bai Liu, his tone enigmatic, "As many new wax figures come to this wax museum as there are old ones leaving it."

" The Siren Wax Museum can never be filled."

Bai Liu raised his eyebrows subtly and continued, "So where do all these mermaid wax figures go after they leave the wax museum? Do these wax figures get thrown back into the sea?"

The keeper stopped talking, as if he felt he had said something he shouldn't.

Bai Liu, however, perceptively went on to ask, "What happens when the tourists arrive?"

"Nothing will happen." The keeper whispered to himself, "You will have a pleasant holiday in Siren Town and then leave."

When asked again, the keeper refused to speak again, no matter what.

After Bai Liu had asked where the hot water was in the pavilion, he gave up on the set-up and took his ticket and led the group behind him into the Siren Wax Museum.

As soon as he entered, Bai Liu saw an imposing wax figure of a middle-aged man in gold paint at the entrance. It was a wax figure of a man in a suit and hat, very different from the wax figures of mermaids Bai Liu had seen, without a fish tail, with a golden body and an official smile on his face, waving at the visitors coming in.

The lighting in the wax museum is low and the light falling from the top casts Buming shadows on the face of this wax figure, making the polite smile on the face of the wax figure all the more bizarre.

Bai Liu went over to see the wax figure, which had been inscribed on a black stone platform - it was the wax figure of the mayor of Siren Town, which had been inaugurated at the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Siren Wax Museum.

The stone platform also praises the mayor in exaggerated terms for his contribution to Siren Town, the development of tourism after the recovery of the mermaid skeletons and the support for the construction of the very impressive Siren Wax Museum, which has made the whole of the backward seaside Siren Town a thriving place.

The stone platform is also engraved with the words - [Mayor Harris had the same unconditional love for every villager in Siren Town as he did for his own children].

Bai Liu was watching carefully when Jeff, who had been silent the whole way, suddenly approached Bai Liu and asked in a low voice, "Do you believe in mermaids? Do you think what it says about Siren Town is true?"

Certainly not all of them will be believed.

Such purpose-built hunts to promote tourism to the wax museum inside the display, although it looks decent, can have a third of truth is almost, most of them are locally fabricated false information, used to hype as a gimmick to attract tourists.

But it's a game of horror.

Bai Liu: "I think it's true."

Andre grunted heavily, as if to taunt the convinced Jeff and Bai Liu, but said nothing and followed Jeff into the wax museum.

Bai Liu and Lucy were supposed to go together, but Bai Liu wanted to go to the hot water room to separate the wet newspapers, so he let Lucy go on her own first.

After expressing her regret, Lucy said she would wait for Bai Liu in the gallery and went off on her own. Bai Liu then headed for the hot water room, as the gallery keeper had said.