The Fallen Merman

The IOA Alliance special agents with public identities couldn’t leave the country without permission, nor could Bai Chunian easily leave the Alliance’s sphere of influence. He was different from Rimbaud, he worked for the Alliance and was highly protected by them. After the previous International Prison arrest, the Alliance’s Technology Department eliminated all surveillance records and traces of entry and exit for Bai Chunian. The top officials of the Alliance negotiated with the International Prison in person, preventing an arrest that had a very strong focus from happening and turning it into nothing, and then let Bai Chunian return to the completely closed-off Greenfly Island. Only the IOA Alliance could provide him with such comprehensive protection.

The International Prison was targeting Rimbaud. Not because they thought Rimbaud was worth more than Bai Chunian, but because the price for arresting Bai Chunian was too high which was a loss on their side. 

Rimbaud was different. He joined the IOA as the leader of a clan, which was essentially an alliance between the two forces. The Alliance wouldn’t interfere with Rimbaud’s freedom to return to his original place. Besides, Rimbaud would be safe by the sea. He could dive into the deepest parts while traveling at the speed of light. Detecting submarines and torpedoes were of little use to him, so theoretically his safety was really high.

After some analysis, Bai Chunian felt relieved.

For the past two weeks, he had been closely following the developments in the Caribbean Sea. The Technology Department sent several teams to secretly travel around the world a while ago. Duan Yang’s mission was located in Jamaica, and a new batch of miniature signaling devices was secretly installed from Kingston under the protection of members of the special team, which could monitor the tracking cells developed by Han Xingqian. If the octopus experimental subject does reach the Caribbean Sea, the monitoring devices will receive accurate signals.

There were no combat classes scheduled today. Only a few students in the huge classroom took the initiative to take additional classes. The instructor of the combat class, Dai Ning, was sitting at the bar looking bored while drinking cocktails. He was staring at Hong Xie’s Moments, who was flaunting the video of his favorite student, Bi Lanxing’s awesome operation, swearing, “You dare to show off after taking my student, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it. I wish you trip over when you go out.”

The instructors occasionally come to Dai Ning to have fun.

Bai Chunian leaned against the protective band guardrail to wrap his loosened hand strap. He lifted the hem of his undershirt to wipe off the sweat. The trainees practicing in the corner couldn’t help but glance at his abdomen.

He only wore a sleeveless black undershirt, the chilling blue fish patterns on his arms hadn’t faded yet, but the color was much lighter than when Rimbaud had just bit him. And because pheromones in the maturity stage were more intense, the marks left behind lasted longer.

Han Xingqian leaned against his side, his glasses were idle by his hand. He fastened the button of his camouflage coat to the top. He didn’t sweat that much, but the violently undulating chest and the white horn that was forced out of his forehead showed the results of this pairing exercise, when a high-level alpha was forced to reveal part of their mimicry, it proved that their self-protection mechanism was triggered. 

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The both of them glanced at each other, looking down at each other.

“It’s so boring. Is there anything new out there recently?” Bai Chunian finished drinking the iced water, squeezing the bottle tightly and using his fingers to balance it. 

“There is.” Han Xingqian held the thermos cup and turned to lean against the guardrail, “We did an inspection on the HD agent you brought back from the triangular pyramid cabin.”

Experimental Subject No. 324, Invisible Stalker, prepared a big prize for players who walked out of the triangular pyramid house within 24 hours. It was locked in the password box, and a silver incubator was placed in it, which was brought back by Bai Chunian. In the incubator was the HD agent (horizontal development), the effect of which was the random emergence of a permanent associated ability immediately after injection.

“The HD horizontal development agents are much rarer than the AC enhancers because the raw materials are extremely difficult and time-consuming to refine. We estimate from the perspective of raw materials and technology that the entire 109 Research Institute can produce at most two as of now.”

Bai Chunian had a deep impression of the institute and knew its technical strength very well, so he didn’t trust the estimates of the Medical Association very much. 

“It’s been a long time since this happened, and it’s still not late for the institute to continue creating it. After all, so many forces have provided them with funds.”

“Not necessarily.” Han Xingqian said indifferently, “We detected your DNA in its basic functional components.”

Bai Chunian frowned, and subconsciously touched the cigarette case in his pocket.

“Be careful, you are one of the raw materials.” Han Xingqian said, “As long as you are still alive, the Institute won’t give up on you so easily, and secret attacks in international prisons may also happen to test on you.” 

“But they were willing to give up on you three years ago. Maybe they have saved enough data, or maybe you’re no longer valuable to them, but you should still be careful.”

“And the Alliance’s informant at the International Prison sent a test report back saying that no HD agent components were detected in 324’s body.”

“But one is missing in the box. If 324 didn’t inject it, where is the other one?” Bai Chunian recalled the details of the triangular pyramid cabin. At that time, he thought that the self-replication ability of 324 was an associated ability that appeared after the injection of the HD agent. It seemed that even the ability to self-replicate was imitated by him.

“Who was he imitating…” Bai Chunian had no idea. 

The multi-angle TV above them began to show the afternoon news, and today’s headlines were far more eye-catching than the usual light-hearted reports.

[Marine Conservation Society finds blue merman in Honduras Bay, Caribbean Sea]

Bai Chunian was refreshed, picked up the remote control, turned up the volume, and sat on the ground to watch the news carefully.  Han Xingqian took a sip of water, leaned on the guardrail, and raised his head slightly to stare at the screen.

The reporter was interviewing the members of the association on the ship. It was apparent that the weather looked bad, and the waves were surging. The people had to grab onto the railing to stand firmly on the deck. 

Red tides of seaweed covered the sea, and rotting carcasses of fish that were floating around could be seen at the farthest point where the camera could see, it was extremely filthy. A reef stood in the middle of the dirty sea. A blonde merman with a glowing dark blue tail* could be seen sitting on the reef, looking lonely on the endless sea.

The tip of his tail swayed in the seawater, and the accompanying scientists discovered a magical scene. The water within a three-meter radius from the end of Rimbaud’s tail turned to a crystal clear blue-green color which looked incredible.

Bai Chunian stared intently at the merman in the shaking camera.

It was Rimbaud. 

The camera could only capture Rimbaud’s silhouette. He was sitting alone on the only pure patch of land in the sea of ​​dirty corpses, like a god descending into this filthy world. The sun blocked by the gloomy clouds cast a layer of light on his face, making him look like a lone divine being.

Heavy guilt suddenly filled Bai Chunian’s heart. Every time Rimbaud called him “jideio” affectionately, he would always treat him with indifference and aggression. As Rimbaud said, jideio was a kind of warm address, and its meaning covered the word family.

Then Rimbaud probably thought he didn’t want to be his relative. Even though he was a king, he was sitting there like a homeless wanderer.

The Russian scientist being interviewed by the reporter on camera excitedly said, “Our predecessors observed him in the mid-Pacific ridge 70 years ago, but the equipment was outdated back then, and the environment was harsh, so they weren’t able to continue keeping watch. At the time, he led the merfolk group to migrate. It could be seen from the attitude of the other merfolks towards him that he is the king of the entire merfolk tribe.” 

“But he disappeared after that observation. Later, there was no shadow of him in the merfolk group we observed, but now we have rediscovered him. Many of us have only seen his beauty in the video data. We didn’t expect to see him again but in real life.”

“In our many years of research, we found that this mysterious creature can purify the sea, but he has been sitting on the reef for over 96 hours, and it seems he doesn’t intend to do so soon.”

“All the problems can clearly be solved as long as he goes into the sea, but our king seems to have his own ideas. He doesn’t want to do it. What is he waiting for?” The scientist shouted at the wind, “Right now we are trying to drive him off by ship and encourage him to get off the reef to save his people and see if it works.”

“What is Rimbaud doing…” Bai Chunian didn’t notice that his palms were sweating, he held his breath, and his eyes became more and more focused. 

The members of the Marine Conservation Society carefully drove the ship close to the reef where Rimbaud was and tried to reach over with wooden sticks wrapped in cotton wool, trying to evict Rimbaud into the water while trying to avoid injuring and scaring him.

Rimbaud turned his head indifferently to see these tiny hardworking humans reflected in his sapphire-blue eyes. He raised his hand gently, and a gust of wind swept the waves as if an invisible hand pushed their ship away.

One of the scientists yelled, “Amazing!” over the noisy background.

Bai Chunian couldn’t help but stand up when seeing those scientists try to drive Rimbaud away with sticks wrapped in cotton, but seeing that they couldn’t touch a single hair on Rimbaud, he sat back down with peace of mind. Nervous, he took out his phone wanting to hear Rimbaud’s voice. Then it occurred to him that Rimbaud had left all his stuff with him. 

Holding the thermos cup, Han Xingqian stood with his hands on the guardrail and laughed, “It’s a good thing, otherwise it would definitely be called amazing if Rimbaud had taken out a phone and answered it.”

But Bai Chunian still chose to make a call.

He called the TV station.

“Hey, let your channel’s reporters tell those foreigners on the ship that they should stop poking my Rimbaud with those sticks. If he won’t go into the water, then he doesn’t have to. Stop fucking driving him away!”