MASG chapter 86

 

No language could express Xia Yu’s feelings at that moment.

But his next thought was that Talos really wasn’t human.

He must be some kind of unfathomable monster to be able to stand firm on a raging ocean. He was a living fossil of the sea, possessing unparalleled courage and wisdom.

The vertical drop of the whirlpool was increasing, forming a terrifying funnel. Silver Fang’s ship had disappeared without a trace, swallowed by the whirlpool. The icy seawater was like knives cutting flesh. It wasn’t just psychological oppression and fear; it was also very real physical pain. At a time like this, no matter how good one’s swimming skills were, they were useless. Whether you could swim or not made not the slightest difference.

If not for Xiang Xing’s mycelium, they would have been smashed apart by the waves long ago. It would have been impossible for them to stay together, let alone find each other.

Talos hadn’t expected them to encounter trouble at the hatchery. Despite their hurried journey, they were still a step too late.

Although Meng Qingqing wasn’t double-tailed, the sirens seemed to sense the pain of their kin. Talos didn’t have such miraculous telepathy. All he sensed was… that things were really bad.

“Ta… Talos… Ta…”

Xia Yu wanted to cry for help. He should have been the best swimmer of those who fell into the water—he was a jellyfish, after all, and could hold his breath for over ten minutes. But he couldn’t escape alone. He couldn’t abandon his companions and go by himself to the calm middle layer, where he could hover quietly and watch his companions struggle on the sea surface before eventually turning into floating corpses.

Besides, the water temperature was far too cold. All Xia Yu could do was hold on to everyone, trying his best until Talos brought the ship over.

“This is really a big problem. Good thing I came,” Talos said as he started the ship. The ship seemed to have a life of its own, actively twisting its direction. The wind and snow kept intensifying. This strange, large ship abandoned the traditional method of cutting in with the current and instead cut across sideways.

Only the head of the Silver Fang remained above the sea surface. When he saw Talos cutting across horizontally, despair filled his mind. They were all dead for sure!

Cutting across horizontally meant using the side of the ship to face the impact of the waves. The force bearing on the ship should have caused it to capsize. Yet, once again, Talos proved his miraculous ability. A complete, thick wall of water blasted up on the right side of the hull. Seawater washed over the deck unrestrained, yet the ship didn’t tilt.

It stood upright in the sea, becoming an anchor point.

Between two points, a straight line is the shortest. Talos didn’t have time to slowly circle inward, ring by ring. If he had used the traditional approach, by the time he steered the ship to the rescue point, the four people in the water would have disappeared. In Xia Yu’s eyes, the ship became a true “Noah’s Ark.”[mfn]The story of Noah’s Ark is often viewed as an ancient flood narrative that developed from earlier Mesopotamian myths. Accounts of a great flood that destroys nearly all life begin to appear during the Old Babylonian Empire period, most notably in works such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Atrahasis Epic. In this tradition, the story centers on a man who builds a massive vessel to survive the catastrophe, bringing his family and pairs of animals with him to preserve life. After days of relentless rain and rising waters, the flood eventually subsides, the vessel comes to rest on high ground, and the world enters a phase of renewal, reflecting long-standing ancient themes of destruction, survival, and continuity.[/mfn] The moment he saw the rope ladder, he felt like an animal saved from the great flood.

No one had the strength to grab the ladder firmly—the seawater was surging too violently. Mi Dou seemed to have already fainted. Xiang Xing exhausted his mycelium. Someone who rarely felt pain experienced the tearing sensation that a living being could perceive in this very second.

His arm and shoulder felt as if they had split open completely. Countless spores sprayed out, only to die in the seawater.

“Get up quickly!” Xiang Xing lifted Silver Fang and stuck everyone’s hands onto the rope ladder. More spores fluttered away from his body. As their vitality left with them, Xiang Xing’s body rapidly decayed.

When Xia Yu saw this scene, a bad thought arose in his heart. What if Xiang Xing releases all his spores and dies? The purpose of this type of fungus was to reproduce.

“Hold tight!” Talos activated the winch.

The rope ladder began to rise, pulling the group upward. The ship remained unaffected, like a lighthouse by the shore—nothing could destroy it. But people were different. Silver Fang was at the top, but his body was too heavy. Several times, he almost slipped downward.

Xiang Xing reached out again, sending most of his mycelium toward Silver Fang.

“You should take care of yourself!” Silver Fang also saw that something was wrong. In just a few seconds, Xiang Xing looked withered and skeletal. “Stop it!”

The rope ladder was still rising. Mi Dou was about to fall, too—he had really fainted. The life preserver could only ensure that he wouldn’t drown; it couldn’t ensure that he wouldn’t freeze to death. The left half of Xiang Xing’s body turned into mycelium, holding Mi Dou firmly to the rope ladder. Xia Yu coughed several times. He could no longer tell whether what drifted before his eyes were spores or snowflakes.

“Grab me quickly!” Xia Yu was closest to Xiang Xing. His right hand could barely grasp Xiang Xing’s fingers.

“Sigh.” Xiang Xing suddenly let out a sigh.

“Grab me!” Xia Yu didn’t want to hear him sigh.

“It seems I can’t accompany you to Yukun City,” Xiang Xing said, turning the last few fingers of his right hand into soft, reluctant mycelium. “Jingwei will definitely be able to find the map of Yukun City, right?”

“It can’t! Grab me!” Xia Yu could no longer clearly see Xiang Xing’s face. The spores were like mist, reminding him of the thick smoke around the Tide ship. The face, identical to his own, flickered faintly, already losing its features. The white spores merged with the snowflakes, turning into crystal-clear ice points.

“No, Jingwei will definitely be able to find it. I believe it because I’ve already seen it. It can fly; it has dreamlike wings. Xia Yu, I was so happy during that time with you in the virtual world. I think I finally understand my innate ability and fate. I’ll turn into spores, won’t I? I’m very happy. I’m even happier that I didn’t cling to virtual happiness and chose to stay in the real world. I walked out, fully awake. As expected…” Xiang Xing’s face also turned into mycelium. “The real world is still more beautiful.”

“Grab me! Grab me!” Xia Yu reached forward, but Xiang Xing suddenly let go.

His body floated in midair. In just one-third of a second, he was blown to dust. His final words lingered.

“I should go home… to the institute’s laboratory…”

A fierce wind swept past. Wind and snow intertwined. Xiang Xing’s final strands of mycelium landed on Xia Yu’s face and turned invisible. Inside the transparency were nothing but spores. At first, they could be seen as a clump, but the next gust of wind blew them away.

The remaining three people were firmly attached to the rope ladder, and the waves could not harm them.

Xia Yu stared blankly into the air. His entire body was completely immobile. He could clearly feel his body, yet it was as if his consciousness no longer existed. Thought and action were two separate systems that didn’t match up. Xiang Xing? Xiang Xing? He didn’t hear himself call out, yet he heard an enormous sound. He called to him in his mind, but there was no response.

Where was their mushroom Xiang Xing?
Where was the Xiang Xing who looked exactly like him?

Every spore was him, yet they were all gone, drowned in the sea.

By the time Talos hauled them all up, Xia Yu was on the verge of losing control. Silver Fang wasn’t seriously injured. Once the seawater was drained from the machinery, he could move on his own. Mi Dou was still wearing the clothes and life preserver that 107 had given him. He was unconscious. Xia Yu, however, struggled, punching and kicking in Talos’s arms.

“Xiang Xing! Where is Xiang Xing? Where is he?”

“Calm down! Calm down!” Talos had personally witnessed Xiang Xing’s death. “Even if you go down there, you won’t be able to save him!”

“I don’t believe it. It’s impossible.” Xia Yu shook his head and tried to rush toward the rope ladder again. “Where’s 107? Why didn’t he get on the ship? Where is he? Where is he?”

Talos tried to grab Xia Yu. At that moment, Xia Yu was incredibly strong. As Talos pulled, Xia Yu lunged toward the sea, having lost all reason. Talos heard creaking sounds—Xia Yu was grinding his teeth, clenching them tightly to keep from screaming. But it was useless. Every movement Xia Yu made was a howl. Pain seized his scalp, trying to tear him apart alive.

“Xia Yu!” With no other choice, Talos pinned him down on the deck. But Xia Yu couldn’t utter a word. He was speechless.

“Xiang Xing didn’t get on the ship, and 107 didn’t come up either!” Xia Yu spoke as if he were making an emergency report. His eyes were wide open, and he was rambling nonstop. Shock filled his gaze. “107 was smashed into the sea by Silver Fang’s ship. He’s a Mermaid—he didn’t surface! Xiang Xing didn’t get on the ship either!

Silver Fang bit down hard on his back teeth. Although he didn’t know 107, the situation sounded extremely grim. Silver Fang’s ship wasn’t an ordinary wooden boat; it was a fully metallic mechanical ship. Once the wind and waves picked up, the hull itself became the greatest danger.

A mermaid smashed into the sea and never resurfaced—whatever happened afterward certainly wasn’t optimistic. It was likely that the mermaid named 107 had been torn to pieces.

“I’m going to save them!” Xia Yu climbed back up.

The sky still showed no sign of brightening, though the wind and snow had stopped. Talos’s ship was moving away from the center of the whirlpool, but the seawater’s rotation hadn’t completely ceased. Xia Yu staggered twice, his knees giving out, and then collapsed onto the ground. Snowflakes slapped against his face and slipped into his soaked collar.

He wanted to use the cold to calm himself, to make himself suffer—he hoped his body would hurt until it was unbearable. Yet Xia Yu couldn’t feel pain. He bit hard into the skin between his thumb and index finger. Blood flowed out, but the wound wasn’t deep.

The wound healed right before his eyes.

What a terrifying ability! What a cruel body. He was destined to be someone who wouldn’t die easily. Even if Nuwa wanted to kill him, it might not be possible to kill him instantly with one blow. Instead, he would lose one companion after another. Just moments ago, they were sitting together on Silver Fang’s ship, wrapped in blankets and drinking hot tea. They were talking about how they would act after entering Yukun City and discussing what life would be like afterward.

In just a short while, they were gone.

Xia Yu bit again. It didn’t hurt. Still no pain.

It was all his fault. He had been too arrogant, thinking that he could grab Nuwa by the throat with the three basic clauses and negotiate with the world’s number one artificial intelligence. If humans really won that easily, they wouldn’t have lost back then. Nuwa wouldn’t have betrayed them. Humans also wouldn’t have set up the third power plant before the crisis to shut Nuwa’s mainframe down in an emergency.

So many highly intelligent programmers couldn’t solve it—what right did he have to think he could?

Look at this now. Nuwa only used a single whirlpool at sea to indirectly kill the people closest to him. At this moment, it seems as if Xia Yu has gained the ability to foresee the future. Nuwa definitely wouldn’t let him die first. He was cruel and cold, devoid of human emotion, and self-centered. He would let the people around him die in accidents, one after another, turning lessons and grief into nails that would be driven deep into his memory.

‘I’d rather you just kill me directly’. Xia Yu bit into the web of his hand again. The wound he had bitten open the first time was no longer bleeding.

“Xia Yu, Xia Yu!” Silver Fang grabbed his wrist, wanting to persuade and comfort him, but not knowing how to begin.

In the sea, Mo An was swimming toward the surface.

He clutched his left arm. His beautiful fin had been torn open by a bullet. Now it was his turn to bleed pale blue blood. He was so exhausted that he almost snapped his tail off. His pure black, asymmetrical tail fin spread fully and swayed magnificently in the sea. Yet, his mind was in chaos, worried about both the seabed and the surface.

He had left the seabed to Meng Qingqing, but could the double-tailed ones survive? Could the pitiful mermaid hatchlings endure the catastrophe created by humans?

What about the surface? Had Silver Fang’s ship capsized?

Just as he finished thinking this, a massive mechanical ship brushed past Mo An’s dorsal fin and sank downward. Silent and enormous, it prepared to be buried in the deep sea. Mo An’s heart sank with it. This was Silver Fang’s ship!

If the ship had capsized, then what about the people on board?

Mo An changed direction, using all his strength to swim toward the surface and avoid the seawater’s rotation. He suddenly thought of Xi Ban. When they went into the water, they were together. Now, only he was returning.

Get up there first. Meng Qingqing said that Talos had already arrived. His ship might have rescued the five people already. Everyone might be fine. Mo An had already seen the shadow of the ship’s bottom—it really was a peculiar ship.

In the blink of an eye, Mo An stopped in the water.

It wasn’t that he wanted to, but he suddenly realized that he couldn’t swim anymore.

It was as if the seawater wouldn’t let him float, wrapping tightly around his body. Mo An couldn’t believe it. He had never been in this situation before. He tried to swim again, but he only made it two or three meters before he was pulled back to the same spot.

It was as if an enormous suction force were dragging him toward the abyss.

What’s going on? Mo An turned his head and met a pair of scarred eyes directly.

“Hello there, little merman.”

The transformed Leviathan was right behind Mo An. He clamped one hand firmly around Mo An’s neck and squeezed out pale blue blood instantly.

“Just a bit more, and you’d be an adult. I’ve never killed such a large juvenile before.” The Leviathan pulled Mo An closer. Endless darkness stretched out behind him. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time. Turns out, you’re a male siren.”