Beauty and the Beasts

After doing bad things together, the purple merman totally regarded Silver as his confidante. Without Silver having to sound him out, he kept talking non-stop.

“I hear our female has red hair. Her red hair will definitely be very compatible with my purple one.”

The purple merman seemed to be very satisfied with his color. Seeing the cold expression on Silver’s face, he even comforted him, “But since you have strong capabilities, you have a higher chance of mating with her. It’d be good if I could just meet her.”

“What if the leader forbids us from mating with the female?” Silver asked in an equivocal way.

Empathizing with that question deeply, the purple merman bowed his head dejectedly.

“Of course, them higher-ups will always want to have the female all to themselves. For every additional mating partner, they will have one fewer chance. Getting up there is as difficult as climbing up to the sky. But it can’t be helped since we’re no match for them. Everything depends on capabilities.”

So the other tribes were like this too.

Silver’s heart was as calm as a dead well. He stopped paying attention to the purple merman and shook his fishtail to leave.

“Hey, where are you going?”

The purple merman called out after him twice. Not receiving any response, he also left.

Silver went to meet with his tribe’s mermen. They were most concerned about the issue of getting a spouse. Right away, someone couldn’t resist the urge to ask, “Have you found the female?”

“Yes,” replied Silver.

Euphoria erupted in the group of mermen before Silver went on to douse their enthusiasm.

“Now’s not the time yet. Let’s return to our tribe first.”

Silver didn’t divulge a single word to his people. The more mermen knew about this, the greater the likelihood it would spread to their father’s ears. Their father would then be even warier of them.

Everyone had great faith in Silver’s capabilities and followed his lead. Upon hearing this, they restrained their curiosity and followed him back to their tribe.

In any case, since even Silver had yet to find a spouse, they weren’t anxious. They decided to just listen to his orders.

By the time they got back to their tribe, it was already a month later. As they brought back quite a lot of precious items, Bluepool didn’t berate them, but the seeds of suspicion were sowed in his heart.

At least 1,000 mermen would be added in a year. Today, after 20 years, their tribe had close to 30,000 mermen. This was considered quite sizable. They no longer had to be overly nervous about the size of their tribe.

However, An’an’s stomach uncontrollably puffed up again.

Bluepool was also helpless. He already exercised great restraint, and the number of times he mated with An’an in a year could be counted on one’s fingers. Yet, she always conceived without fail.

“It’d be great if you can give birth to a mermaid for them. After that, we’ll live by ourselves, just the two of us,” Bluepool said with anticipation as he gently caressed An’an’s belly with his big palm.

As she frequently applied specially concocted skincare products, the skin on An’an’s belly didn’t get tight during her pregnancy and instead had great elasticity. Also, she recovered speedily after giving birth.

An’an also stared at her stomach and reached out to dig into it once again.

Bluepool hurriedly grabbed her hand, caught between laughter and tears. “Why do you keep trying to eat them?”

Never mind those that were born. After realizing that she couldn’t eat those, An’an started having designs on the kids in her stomach. As a result, they had to keep an eye on her at all times.

As for the reason, it was actually very simple.

The fruits on the trees were delicious, so she wanted to try her own fruits as well. She had to seize the time. Or else after they came out, Bluepool would take them away to the sea.

Bluepool could only wrap his arms around An’an and stroke her belly from time to time.

As the population of their tribe increased, Bluepool was also very concerned about their breeding issue.

Beastmen on land had come to them and offered to exchange females for salt, but the mermen had turned their nose up at them and returned the females.

It shouldn’t be surprising though, seeing as how back then he hadn’t found the females on land appealing either.

But where could he find a female that appealed to the mermen’s aesthetic senses?

The only solution that Bluepool thought of was to give birth to one with An’an himself.

Mermaids only become pregnant with a female when their life was about to come to an end.. He could only hold the extravagant hope that being a female of another tribe, An’an could shake off these shackles and give their kids a female baby.