The Fallen Merman

The bone-chilling cold penetrated the thin coat, making Bai Chunian wrap his clothes tighter. His legs still couldn’t stop trembling, and a kind of nausea stemming from his physiology made his muscles extremely stiff all over.

The buzzing in his ears caused by the violent explosion had worsened increasingly, and all the sounds around him moved far away from him. At first, Rimbaud hugged him tightly, and soothing pheromones with the fragrance of Himalayan musk rose surrounded him. But when Bai Chunian wanted to hold Rimbaud’s hand, he found that he couldn’t move at all. 

He couldn’t control his vocal cords and only felt a type of repressive force filling the swollen glands, wanting to break his bones and come out. However, a tepid hand was placed on his gland. Han Xingqian tightly stifled his desire and impulse to destroy, pouring a large amount of soothing pheromones into his body. The fresh and clean scent of delphinium consolida let him obtain a hint of strength to stay awake.

He completely couldn’t hear any sound from the outside world at all, only seeing a single snow-white horn grow again on Doctor Han’s forehead. The feeling of intense sleepiness struck him, and Bai Chunian gradually drifted off.

Before he lost consciousness, a fiery red butterfly decorated with bright gold landed on his cheekbone.

When he woke up again, he first perceived the scent of disinfectant, and the familiar smell scared him instinctively.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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Bai Chunian was caught in a reinforced glass box by himself. He raised his head. Hundreds of reinforced glass incubator boxes were neatly stacked on the three walls of this place that acted as a laboratory. A young feline cub crawled inside each one, each of different species and coloring. One portion of them was cats, and the other portion was cubs of lions, tigers, and leopards. Their times of birth varied from three hours to three days ago.

The main observation objects of this batch of embryo experiments were feline animals. All the cubs showing up here were handpicked experimental embryos developed in vitro after the breeding base strictly selected from fertilized eggs. They were completely healthy, their every indicator was excellent, and were very wonderful little guys. 

A thin needle connected to an infusion tube was pierced through his weak vein, and some precise instrument electrodes were connected to his body. But Bai Chunian couldn’t feel the pain, because it was too small. He lay on the bottom of the box, unable to move, like a lump of red, white-haired small meat.

This process was very long. Every once in a while, a researcher wearing a sterile protective suit would come to feed him milk. Bai Chunian instinctively resisted his fiddling, but the person said to his colleagues beside him with a smile, “It’s still alive. There aren’t many left.”

Time passed very slowly, and Bai Chunian stared blankly at a sheet of darkness, tormented.

His body was growing rapidly under the effect of drugs, and researchers also paid more and more attention to him and began to incessantly change him into larger incubators. 

Bai Chunian was able to open his eyes gradually, but he didn’t have the energy to pay attention to the few remaining companions around him, because after one’s brain and nerves matured, the degree of one’s sensitivity to pain would also become higher and higher. When a tube of the liquid drug was injected into his body, it would always bring unbearable agony, and he suffered from this pain every minute.

The fur on his body became increasingly denser and softer until he no longer needed to have medicine injected every day. At this time, someone began to take him out of the laboratory to try to have him contact the outside world.

A large, withered hand resembling curled branches petted his back with his finger pads. An old voice patiently placated him, skillfully carrying him into his embrace.

Bai Chunian struggled to prop his body up and saw the one holding him with gloves was an old man in a white uniform. An old-fashioned “Rimbaud’s Poetry Anthology” was inserted in his jacket pocket, and a name tag hung on his chest, which had his name written on it. “Bai Tingshen” – the old researcher who had been taking care of him all along. 

The old man often read poems to him. Once, taking advantage of a time when there were not many people in the breeding base, he put him in a lioness’s cage of his own accord and watched the lioness lick his fur.

Bai Chunian was in pain for too long. He stretched out his four limbs in the lioness’s embrace, calling ‘ying ying’ and digging into the lioness’s warm and thick belly fur. His numb body gradually obtained feeling, only after her naturally barbed tongue licked his back.

This lioness was in her lactation period and even had four cubs to feed. The entirely snow-white Bai Chunian was very out of place mixed among the several golden cubs. The lioness probably saw that the cub’s coat color was not like her own family’s babies, so she held Bai Chunian’s nape with her mouth and took out the white fur ball, throwing it aside.

But the feeling of being picked up with his nape and being held in her mouth made him feel very safe. He didn’t know he was picked out and hurriedly crawled back to lick the lioness’s mouth intimately. 

“So obedient. Play for a bit more.” Bai Tingsen watched Bai Chunian purr comfortably in the animal’s cage with a kind gaze. Seeing that it was late and that the leader of the guard post checkers was coming back, he hurriedly carried the little guy out, disinfected him, and put him back into the incubator.

But it was this experience that made Bai Chunian’s brain sulcus evolve. He began to have consciousness, things he wanted, and he even used violent destruction to attract the attention of researchers. He wanted to return to the lioness’s animal cage, but the researchers couldn’t understand his demands and could only increase the dose of the liquid drug so that the painful struggle would consume Bai Chunian’s excess physical strength.

His body was still changing, and within a very short period of time, his face and torso first underwent humanoid evolution, then his tail disappeared, and his four limbs elongated.

Along with his constant evolution, his destructive power was also beginning to show a bit. The ordinary tempered incubator could no longer bear his fists, so it could only be exchanged with a double-layer bulletproof glass incubator, along with alloy manacles locking his four limbs and neck. Most of the time, he could only lie in the limited space of the glass box, with cannula needles and electrode pads attached to his body. 

Electric shock points were placed on the inner ring of the alloy manacles. If Bai Chunian struggled, an electric current would be released. The stronger he struggled, the stronger the electric current. However, he still bit arbitrarily in the incubator every day, going mad. The more his body hurt, the more he agitated he was until he exhausted his physical strength and fainted.

The researchers tried many methods to no avail. Only Bai Tingsen found that when he was reading poetry, the little monster would have a rare moment of calmness, sitting at the bottom of the box, hugging his legs, and staring blankly at him.

So Bai Tingsen read the old poetry anthology to him every day. Bai Chunian was very picky. He only listened to this book and not any other. Through the thick bulletproof glass, he pointed his finger at the words on the cover of the old poetry anthology, producing a sound with great effort.

“Lan…” 

Bai Tingsen sat down and taught him patiently: “Rimbaud.”

“Lan, B.”

“Have your tongue like this, stick it to your upper cavity, “Rim.”

“Lan…Rim.” 

“Very good. Close your lips, then pout. Baud.”

“Lan Bo, Rimbaud.”

This was the first term he learned, and it was his only sustenance, where he found peace.

When a cub obtained self-awareness and showed the desire to learn, it was declared that the experimental subject had entered the cultivation stage and could start the formal experimental transformation and combat training. 

Bai Tingsen also gave him a name: Bai Chunian, amassing wounds for continuous months, in pain year after year.