The Fallen Merman

Rimbaud let out an insufferable hum. His fishtail curled helplessly around Bai Chunian’s calf. This unconscious behavior of his was the most arousing invitation to his alpha. Losing control, Bai Chunian pulled his hair and forced his head up to accept his deeper invasion.

Rimbaud’s fingernails penetrated into the alpha’s chest. The sharp sting of pain stimulated Bai Chunian’s eyes to turn from pitch black to dark blue. In addition, his fair skin was in sharp contrast with the dark night behind him. 

“Wu.” Rimbaud almost couldn’t breathe. His tail tip gently patted his alpha’s calf as a show of compliance.

Bai Chunian released him. Rimbaud’s eyes were misty, his lips had been kissed till they were rosy and glistening with water, and strings of saliva dripped down from the corners of his mouth, which was licked off by the alpha.

The sight of the two making out was visible to the instructors and trainees, who were assembled outside the ruins of the temple. Lu Yan dived under Bi Lanxing’s arm and used his rabbit ears to cover his eyes. “Old Black, stinky pervert.”

Firefly and Clownfish had long since seen it all, and it wasn’t uncommon for the other alphas and omegas to be inevitably emotional and jealous to the point of being expressionless.

Tan Qing and Tan Yang expressionlessly lit up the combustible gas they were holding. They didn’t know what to say, but instead decided to give the instructor some fireworks.

“Alright, now everyone knows that I’m yours.” Bai Chunian joyfully leaned down to remove the little pearls hanging from Rimbaud’s eyelashes and put them into his pocket. “Are you finally satisfied with this ceremony?”

Rimbaud wiped his lips and yanked Bai Chunian towards him by the collar, “You want… to rebel?”

Bai Chunian easily stepped onto the edge of the altar, crouched beside Rimbaud, knelt on one knee, tucked the loose hair behind his ear, and laughed leisurely, “No, but the land is my home turf after all, and I’d love to show off that I have the power to protect you here.” 

“Here, your hair’s a mess.” Bai Chunian reached out his hand, revealing a small rubber band hanging on his wrist outside the bulletproof vest.

Rimbaud pursed his lips and removed the rubber band from his wrist, gathering up the loose blonde hair and tying it behind his head.

There was a small plastic blue fish attached to the rubber band, which Bai Chunian bought when he wandered from the dock to buy cigarettes and squatted next to the stall for a long time before choosing it.

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.

Once Rimbaud was coaxed, he quieted down all of a sudden, the tip of his tail curling into a roll. 

“Qtja jvwlgjalbc jcv fzqfmajalbc?” Djl Jtecljc ibbxfv yjmx ja atf agjlcffr. “Tbe’gf bnfgatlcxlcu la. Po bcf vjs atfs revvfcis olcv bea jybea ws lvfcalas, jybea ktja’r ublcu ab tjqqfc atja alwf, P vbc’a fnfc kjccj atlcx jybea la.”

Elwyjev ibbxfv eq jcv jrxfv, “Qtja klii tjqqfc?”

Djl Jtecljc rlutfv ilutais, “P vbc’a kjca atfw ab yf jogjlv bo wf. Qfii…jiatbeut atfs tjnf jikjsr yffc jogjlv bo wf, rb atja’r olcf abb. Po atfgf gfjiis lr j vjs ktfc ws lvfcalas lr gfnfjifv, atf vloofgfcmf lc atflg jaalaevf qgbyjyis kbc’a yf atja wemt.”

Rimbaud shook his head, “I… too… have been transformed. But… the king is still the king.” 

“That’s different, you didn’t have to fit in anywhere in the first place,” Bai Chunian looked at the ground in silence, picking out the small stones in the crevice of the altar in boredom.

Rimbaud put his hand on the back of his neck and softly reassured, “You’re not scary. You have pink claws.”

“?” Bai Chunian was stunned. The kiss they’d shared a while ago was just too good that he hadn’t noticed the soft paw pads emerging on his palms. “Oops.” He covered his eyes and retracted the paw pads.

Rimbaud laughed, the tip of his tail curled into a heart shape. 

“Not a word.” Bai Chunian immediately grabbed the merman by his waist and carried him over his shoulder. He walked towards the assembly point, even patting his butt twice on the way.

Bai Chunian came back and put Rimbaud down. He walked in front of the students, who turned tense and stood up straight. They did not dare to look him in the eye, staring downward. This time, all the trainees had been wiped out, which meant they had failed the assessment. The real-time video was even sent back to Headquarters. They didn’t know how Lao Ne was going to deal with them. With his means, it wasn’t impossible for him to throw them all into the POW’s prison for seven days and nights of SERE training.

Unexpectedly, Bai Chunian said, “Well done, it was quite amazing.”

The special trainees couldn’t believe their ears. 

Instructor Zheng Yue crossed his arms and said, “We didn’t originally plan to let any of you come out alive, but it was really unexpected that you could knock the three of us out this time.”

The trainees had a faint look of delight in their eyes.

“Don’t celebrate yet.” Bai Chunian said, “Fortunately, this is just an exercise. It only depends on the outcome, not the casualties. Everyone should go back and write a post-battle summary of 3,000 words. Two days later, the squad leaders of each class will collect and hand them in.”

“Noted…” The young brats listlessly promised. 

The cleaning staff at Heart Island were responsible for providing food. Someone suggested holding an open-air barbecue. The students were exhausted and eagerly waiting for the meat on the grill to be quickly cooked.

Bai Chunian sliced off a piece of meat with his dagger, blew it cool, wrapped it in lettuce, and handed it to Rimbaud.

Rimbaud looked at the vegetable wrap and asked, “A gift?”

“No, it was rolled up to be eaten, like this,” Bai Chunian wrapped the lettuce tightly and inserted it into the tip of his dagger to feed him. 

Rimbaud opened his mouth—ridden with sharp teeth—wide, bit off the dagger along with it, and swallowed it, before regaining the shape of his small, rosy mouth.

“Tch, what’s all that for? Open your mouth just a little,” Bai Chunian patiently wrapped another one for him, held it in his hand, and stuffed it in his mouth as he whispered, “Don’t bite my hand off.”

Instructor Hong Xie coughed, “All of us are still here, but he acts like we’re six feet underground already.”

Xiao Xun knelt in a well-behaved manner, quietly cut a piece of meat, sandwiched it in a lettuce leaf, wrapped it in a regular square, held it in his hand, and was just about to eat it when he suddenly found Instructor Han beside him looking at him. 

Xiao Xun looked at him sheepishly as Han Xingqian said, “Thank you.”

“?” Xiao Xun froze while holding the vegetable wrap. He suddenly reacted and handed it to Han Xingqian in a daze, who took it with satisfaction.

Xiao Xun held a new lettuce leaf in his hand, almost forgetting what to do next, and his dog tail trembled uncontrollably.

The distance between the instructors and the trainees during the meal was much closer than usual; some trainees even had the guts to propose that Instructor K must take off his skull mask as all of them had never seen what Instructor K looked like as he had never shown his face before. 

Not only them, but also the other instructors had never seen K’s appearance, nor heard his voice. He didn’t speak most of the time, and in the cases wherein he had to, he would only make some electronically synthesized sounds.

Instructor K cut an opening with a dagger near his mouth and ate silently. Based on this, it could be inferred that he wasn’t a robot. Furthermore, he also had a beautiful jawline.

Lu Yan was still immersed in the sadness of losing to Bi Lanxing and couldn’t care less regarding gossiping about others.

If there were no students who survived this assessment, the ranking would naturally be determined according to their survival time. Bi Lanxing was the last to go down, and the bet they made had finally come to a head. 

Lu Yan was so mad that he couldn’t savor his meal, so he hid behind the ruined rocks and sullenly bit into his lettuce.

A hand with a gauntlet rested on his head. Lu Yan shrugged it off, his ears shaking along with his movement.

“Don’t be angry. There’s still another chance.” Bi Lanxing sat down beside him. He was now actually a head taller than Lu Yan. His alpha physique began to show its characteristics at his age.

“If only I had reacted faster. Aiya, I could have dodged it, I didn’t expect he would ambush me there,” Lu Yan muttered with his ears drooping. 

Bi Lanxing rubbed his hair, “Does our bet still stand?”

Lu Yan scratched the ground with his fingertips in frustration, “Say it, you want me to buy you breakfast or do something for you?”

Bi Lanxing rolled up his sleeves and extended half of his wrist toward Lu Yan.”Give me a mark, will you?”

Lu Yan pricked up his ears and stared at him with widened eyes. 

“Just this one request.” Bi Lanxing said, holding his cuff.

Lu Yan licked his lips and pretended not to care as he asked, “Just—just bite here ah..?”

“En.”

Lu Yan hesitated for a bit, then lowered his head, and took a bite at Bi Lanxing’s wrist; his sharp little teeth pierced through the skin, injecting his honey-flavored pheromone into the alpha’s body. 

A white rabbit mark formed on Bi Lanxing’s wrist, round and tiny. Bi Lanxing stared at the mark for a long time, as if it was some kind of precious jewelry.

Lu Yan instructed worriedly, “Don’t show it, your classmates might laugh at you.”

Bi Lanxing patted him on the head.

“I’ll get up at four o’clock tomorrow morning to train, no—three-thirty.” Lu Yan remembered the exam again, grabbed Bi Lanxing’s bulletproof vest, and shook it, “You’re coming along.” 

Bi Lanxing smiled and said, “Sure.”

In the morning, they took the plane and returned to Greenfly Island. The trainees continued their daily training, waiting for the instructors to compile and review the video of their year-end assessment.

Bai Chunian left Greenfly Island by helicopter for a trip. He had promised Crawler to exchange information before; Crawler hoped to meet him in person to have a detailed discussion.

Bai Chunian looked at the address of the electronic invitation and found the Shaojin Mansion. He didn’t bring Rimbaud along in consideration that he might tear the house down if they were to have a disagreement.