MASG chapter 97

 

All the fish began examining that strange “person.”

Nixida grabbed Aituoda’s tail immediately: “Don’t go over there!”

Aituoda hadn’t moved yet, but his curiosity urged him to go take a look. “Give me some face. At least I’m an adult fish now.”

“This is really too strange.” Aibaoyin also pulled her younger brother back. Everyone knew how curious he was, but curiosity could get a fish killed.

This time, not even Ku Ni spoke up. This wasn’t a hybrid or a sea slave who had eaten mermaid flesh. This was just an ordinary human with two legs.

From the back, he looked like a man. His skin had turned pale from soaking in seawater, but he wasn’t bloated like a corpse. Instead, he was very agile. With the water’s buoyancy, he could hang there and walk; yet, he wasn’t crushed by the deep sea’s pressure.

This wasn’t right. Humans couldn’t possibly be alive here.

“So what do we do now?” Nixida wanted to go over and take a look. “How about you stay here while I figure out what’s going on?”

“Better not act rashly. I’ll do it.” Ku Ni stopped him first. A siren’s combat power wasn’t something to use casually.

“You?” Nixida led the two siblings back several meters. Then, he saw the Black Siren siblings’ ear fins fold down, covering their ears.

Ultrasound! Nixida hurriedly covered his ears, but when Ku Ni let out a shrill scream, his eardrums still felt like they were being stabbed. A few more seconds, and he would have thrown up. As the weakest branch yet to possess such a weapon, Nixida sighed at the greatness of life and the wisdom of evolution as he watched that person on the seabed explode into blood bubbles.

This posed no difficulty for Ku Ni. The abilities of the Abyssal increased with age. She was already forty years old, so blowing up one person was nothing to her. However, after the explosion, just before she was about to swim over to check the remains, the mass of blood-red liquid reacted in a way they had never seen before.

That person… how did it start boiling?

“Not good! Run!” Nixida didn’t understand either, but he sensed danger. Aibaoyin and Aituoda turned around as soon as they heard his order. Ku Ni, however, reacted more slowly and swam slowly. By the time she turned around, the expanding, boiling bubble had burned her tail fin.

She was the closest and took the hit head-on.

Nixida couldn’t care about anything else. He wrapped an arm around Ku Ni’s waist and swam backward. By the time he reached Aibaoyin and Aituoda, there was no time to say anything. He just swung his tail over. Aibaoyin grabbed his dorsal fin and tightly seized her brother’s wrist with her other hand. They could never win against sirens in speed. While fleeing, they had to rely on their pursuers’ speed. They also didn’t understand what had happened behind them. It was like a volcanic eruption!

Hot! The deep sea, ten thousand meters down, was boiling!

“Faster! Hurry!” Aibaoyin urged.

It wasn’t that Nixida was swimming slowly. This was already far beyond the swimming speed of a Black Siren. But a continuously expanding bubble mass was behind them. As its radius grew, danger followed closely behind like a shadow. Aituoda curled up his fishtail, afraid the tip would burn in the bubbles. He couldn’t help but look back. Shock outweighed fear.

“What kind of ghostly thing is this?” Aituoda almost curled into a ball. He had never been this miserable at nineteen years old. He narrowed his eyes and carefully observed the movement behind them. Inside the bubble mass were countless small bubbles rolling rapidly, like white smoke. The small bubbles collided and became big bubbles, far more violent than an undersea volcano.

Any small fish that failed to escape were swallowed by the bubbles and never seen again.

Just when Aituoda thought the bubbles would keep expanding, they gradually headed toward destruction. Like an overexpanded planet that has released its maximum energy, it finally turned into a black hole. The boiling seawater began to cool. Without an energy supply, the bubble mass turned into emptiness. The seawater developed a strange smell. Besides the smell, the skeletons of small fish and the stirred-up stones on the seabed proved that something abnormal had happened.

Nixida glanced back. The danger behind them seemed to have passed. However, he still didn’t dare relax, continuing to lead everyone forward at a sprint for several thousand meters.

“Alright, alright, we can stop now.” Ku Ni kept patting the siren’s shoulder. “All right, save your strength. Don’t be so tense.”

Only then did Nixida stop. Looking at her tail fin, he asked, “Are you injured?”

“Just a minor injury. It’s nothing, just a burn.” Ku Ni was stronger than she looked. The pale blue blood flowing from her tail fin looked familiar to Nixida. He then looked at his own chest. When he was injured back then, it should have looked like this, too.

“A burn? Are you sure?” Aibaoyin swam over to check Ku Ni’s injury and applied medicine with mucus. “How’s your mental state right now?”

“If you’re not in a good mental state, we can sing you a song. Black Siren songs have healing powers.” Aituoda also swam over to help. The mucus spread out and wrapped Ku Ni’s slender, pale blue fishtail in a layer. Her scales were extremely small, only about one-tenth the size of a siren’s. Only by looking closely could one see the gradient blue.

The closer to the tail fin, the deeper the blue. Unfortunately, the tip of the tail fin had been burned yellow. Fortunately, the fishbone wasn’t damaged.

“Yes, this is indeed a burn. I feel the pain of a burn. But it’s different from ordinary wounds.” Ku Ni shook her head. This was too strange. “How is that possible? I’ve used ultrasound so many times. This is the first time the target exploded like a boiling-water bomb.”

Nixida swam nearby, still on guard. “This may have nothing to do with ultrasound. The answer is probably on that human’s body. I need to retrieve his body and examine it…”

“That’s too risky,” said Aibaoyin. “His body could explode. We should avoid it.”

“We can go directly to find the Abyssal Beast,” Ku Ni agreed. Finding the Abyssal Beast would allow them to meet Haisiruola beforehand. Then, all the answers would come to light.

But Nixida shook his head. “It’s fine. My swimming speed is very fast. Even if there’s another boiling-water bomb, I can dodge it. I need to investigate clearly. When the smell in the seawater disperses, I’ll go.”

No one could stop him, so they could only agree. A pungent smell lingered in the seawater, making the mermaids feel danger and unease. Nixida found an underwater cave and hid his companions inside properly. “Take good care of Ku Ni. I’ll be back soon.”

“I’ll pray for you,” Ku Ni said, nodding.

Nixida turned around and swam toward the spot where the accident had just happened. The seawater flowed, and the smell hadn’t completely faded yet, but it was enough for the sirens to change the air. He swam close to the seabed, and his skin gradually took on the colors of its surroundings. Soon, Nixida was perfectly hidden in the seawater, resembling a ghostly sea monster.

His long fishtail swayed in an S-shape, and the tip of his nose almost touched the rocks. All around him were fish remains—lives that hadn’t managed to escape. Nixida continued forward. The seabed had originally been clean, but it was now unusually murky.

The explosion earlier had blasted a pit in the rocks, and what he was looking for was inside the pit. He didn’t linger; he grabbed it and swam straight back. He only stopped after swimming back to the cave in one breath.

“Only this is left!” He threw it in front of everyone.

It was a human head. To be precise, it was only half of one, the upper half. Everything below the nose and the entire mouth cavity had been blown away. Nixida said, “None of the other remains were left at all. They were completely burned clean. Take a look—was this a mermaid or a human?”

Ku Ni picked up the half head. “This is definitely a human. Mermaids are not creatures that leave behind skeletons. But how could a human get to the seabed? They need oxygen.”

“Could he have been carrying an oxygen tank? But that doesn’t seem right either…” Aituoda immediately dismissed his own idea. “At that time, he was completely naked. I didn’t see an oxygen tank.”

“Even if there were an oxygen tank, do you think humans could withstand the water pressure? Forget ten thousand meters down—even at ten meters, the human body would have problems. Humans are not born to belong in the ocean, and the ocean doesn’t welcome them either.” Aibaoyin took the lead. “We can only see what’s inside.”

“Sis, you’re not planning on prying it open, are you? That would be so disgusting.” Aituoda couldn’t take it anymore.

“If we don’t pry it open, how will we find the answer? Mermaid society doesn’t have anatomy, but human society has a specialized field for it.” Aibaoyin rolled her eyes and easily split the human head in two with her sharp claws. The burned human brain matter immediately fell out. Aibaoyin touched it. “Cooked.”

“Like a boiled egg?” Ku Ni also touched it. “At least now we can confirm one thing—that it really did burn just now. Have humans evolved the ability to spontaneously combust?”

Nixida crossed his arms and thought. Judging from the physical evidence, the human body had indeed reached boiling point instantly, causing the brain matter to turn solid. Under Aituoda’s shocked gaze, Nixida picked up the chunk of brain matter and held it up to examine it carefully.

“Have you ever seen a human brain before?” he suddenly asked.

The other three mermaids shook their heads. Who had seen that thing?

“I guess even if the human brain is different from ours, it shouldn’t be like this, right?” Nixida broke open the solid brain matter and pulled out a thick black line from inside. At first, he thought it was the corpse of a parasite that had died with its human host. But once he pulled it out, he realized it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t a parasite—it looked more like a plant.

“I’ve never seen it.” Aituoda spoke first.

Ku Ni leaned closer and poked it a few times with her finger. “Looks like a branch. A vine?”

“This should be a plant,” inferred Nixida. “I suspect the reason that person could survive on the seabed has to do with this thing. As for why he could spontaneously combust…that’s still unclear.”

“Wait, let me take a look.” Aibaoyin extended her pitch-black hand. She grasped the thick black line in her hand and tried to activate her precognitive abilities. After confirming that no premonition appeared, she twisted the black line between her fingers and asked doubtfully, “Could it be a fungus?”

“What’s a fungus?” Nixida hadn’t heard of it. Or maybe he had heard of it before and knew it well, but had forgotten.

“It’s a kind of organism. Neither animal nor plant. I’ve seen something similar on land before. This looks like magnified mycelium.” Aibaoyin offered her opinion. “Was that person’s head full of mycelium?”

“Oh god, I’m going to puke.” Aituoda covered his stomach.

“Don’t puke yet. This is important information.” Aibaoyin handed the human remains to her brother. “Hold it properly. Don’t lose it, no matter what. Let’s hurry and see if there are more people like that. If there are, it’ll be bad. Innocent companions will swim over out of curiosity, and either get infected by the fungus or burn to death by spontaneous combustion.”

“All right, then. Let’s rest for half an hour and set off. This time, I’ll lead everyone.” Nixida said, already having a bad premonition. Humans had released silver machinery and fragments into the seabed. That counted as a third type of weapon. What would come next? Biological weapons?

At the same time, far away in the underground research facility, the humans had also reached a dead end.

Mi Dou, Yan Xia, Lao Gui, and Silver Fang lay flat on the ground, not making a sound. A small map projection was cast onto Yan Xia’s palm. Beside it was the cafeteria, which they had to pass through.

However, the cafeteria was now in complete chaos, filled with strange creatures they had never encountered before. They finally understood where all the corpses in the research facility had come from. They were all in the cafeteria, but it looked like those people weren’t dead at all!

Everyone sat on the ground, their skin nearly merging with the mycelium. In the center of the cafeteria, a black fungus took root, extending tentacle-like mycelium that connected to the humans and pierced their throats deeply. The fungus seemed to provide nutrients to the humans while absorbing a special substance from their bodies. The two had reached an ecological balance and were self-sufficient.

The stench of rot was unbearable, and the squelching eating sounds made it even more unsettling.

We have to pass through here. Yan Xia gestured to everyone.

How do we pass? Silver Fang asked with gestures.

Kill that big thing? Lao Gui asked with gestures.

Only Mi Dou remained silent. He was using binoculars to observe the enormous man-eating fungus. Suddenly, he saw a strand of mycelium crawl out of a person’s mouth and crawl back to the main body on its own.

Oh god—this fungus can actually survive independently now? If so, then the mother body must have puppet-like offspring. As long as they have its mycelium, they can survive. But… where are its offspring?