Chapter 17: Siren Town

The sailors were dropping nets on either side of the boat, mumbling something oddly.

Bai Liu only hears about King Seiren's grant and whatnot, and Jeff stands at the edge of the boat looking down, a strange and maniacal expression on his face, "They're praying to King Seiren, praying to King Seiren to give them a bounty of mermaids."

Before Jeff could say anything, the sailors on the side of the boat, one by one, pulled on the edge of the net and jumped down, and Lucy screamed in terror, "What are they doing? Aren't they supposed to be catching mermaids? They're jumping off the net!"

Bai Liu's expression faded, "They're just fishing for mermaids."

After a long, long time, a giant net slowly floated up under the surface of the sea, in the giant net were fragmented limbs and fish tails, a dozen or so mermaids were trapped in the net in bits and pieces, they were all in a state of death, the tails of the fish rotting and sticking to the top.

The dozen or so mermaids looked like dolls in a garbage heap, twisted into some kind of posture in the net, their eyes looking at the people on the boat with dead eyes, their faces still wearing expressions of either hideousness or terror, and their bodies were covered with traces of being torn apart, as if they had been bitten to death by some kind of ferocious deep-sea fish and thrown into the net.

Bai Liu's breathing slowed down as he looked at the sparse [mermaid] faces in the light of the searchlight.

The faces of these mermaids look exactly like the twelve tourists who went missing from the newspaper.

The sailors on the ship were whispering joyfully:

"They'll be made into wax figures and sent into wax museums..."

"But there will only be four wax figures coming out of the wax museum tonight, and since there are only four visitors, what about salvaging those extra mermaids?"

"Let's put it on the bottom for now, it'll give us a head start ......"

The mermaids that were caught were quickly sent to the rear and transported to who knows where.

Bai Liu and his group of three tourists were able to eat some of the fresh, common sea fish that were caught along with the mermaids, which were soon prepared and delivered to Bai Liu.

These sea fish also seemed to be tainted with the flavor of mermaids, and were cooked to an extraordinarily bizarre taste.

The three men, except Bai Liu, are sucking their fingers and gorging frantically on the fish being served.

The fish is pushed to the center in a sashimi steak, and the soggy head is munched on by Lucy, who eats it so fast that she takes in strands of hair from her cheeks.

Lucy flicked her oil-stained hair out of her mouth and smiled at Bai Liu, "Bai Liu, why don't you come over and eat, the fish is really fresh tonight."

The small white eyes of the fish head in Lucy's hand looked at Bai Liu in death.

Andre, with a fish tail in his hand and his teeth clicking sharply, had become so fish-like that his eyes were almost invisible from the front and were located on either side of his face, his nose was completely deflated, and fishy-smelling birth fluids dripped from the corners of his overly wide mouth.

Jeff sliced into the fatty belly of the fish with his fork, and he seemed to be barely able to maintain his sanity, but his hands were moving faster and faster as he stuffed his mouth mechanically with the fish.

The sailors stared at Bai Liu as they forcefully placed the plate full of seafood meat in front of him with a quirky smile, "It's a wasted trip if you don't eat fresh fish, oh Mr. Bai."

Bai Liu was tempted to refuse, but once again the panel in front of him popped up with instructions:

[Mission Alert: Fishing roundups are considered a failure if you don't consume the fish given to you by the sailors]

Bai Liu sank into silence for two seconds and ate a piece.

This seafood meat enters the mouth as a very strange sour rotting flavor, but once the meat crosses the throat, it turns into the fresh sweetness of a normal seafood meat.

All the fish in front of Bai Liu become start to have a strange temptation, even if Bai Liu this kind of people who have always been not heavy appetite, at the table full of fish also have a kind of uncontrollable want to eat the impulse of the sea.

The sailor saw that he had eaten and left satisfied.

Bai Liu struggled to keep his head above water, not to look at all the fish on the table, and got up to stand on the beach with the sea breeze blowing, sniffing down at the metallic scent of the coin in his heart.

The smell of money calms Bai Liu.

He could probably reason something out.

After King Seiren was salvaged, he fell into a deep sleep and lost some kind of ability over this sea, causing those who died in this sea would turn into mermaids and come back from the dead to return to the earth, this is actually a legendary story, but the mermaid corpses of those twelve tourists just now verified the truth of this legend.

People who die here can indeed become mermaids.

But the question is why is it that such a small, remote stretch of ocean could produce so many dead people turned into mermaids that filling an entire wax museum wouldn't be enough? Why are there so many dead people in this sea.

When Bai Liu saw the twelve salvaged tourist mermaids, he finally understood how this sea could produce so many mermaids.

Because it's a dumping ground.

The bodies of all those missing tourists were presumably dumped into this sea before being salvaged by these sailors as some kind of large fish to make mermaids to pour into wax figures.

But just don't know who killed those tourists anymore ....

Bai Liu has a hidden guess in his heart, this is a town of robbery, most of the missing tourists in this town have lost their belongings, Bai Liu from the alarming number of robberies and disappearances in the newspaper can be glimpsed, the town of Siren is not a very pure and simple place.

The town was enriched not so much by tourism as by the robbery industry that came with it.

Is there a fatter lamb than a visitor from afar?

With so many dead tourists in such a vicious place, Bai Liu is inclined to think that tourists were robbed and assassinated and then dumped in this place, but of course we can't rule out the possibility that mermaids came ashore to hunt and kill them.

But from the mermaids fear of bright light habits, it is estimated that it is difficult to go ashore during the day to hunt tourists, and at night, in the town of Siren's popular tourist season, these mermaids are all going to be fished up to supply the tourists to watch, the probability of mermaids killing people is not very .....

Wait a minute, Bai Liu's got a lot of strings attached--

The mermaid fishing activity is to fish up mermaids only if someone here dies in this sea, and there will be no mermaids if there are no deaths here.

For example, Bai Liu, they are fishing this time, and they are pulling up tourists who disappeared last time .....

The inhabitants of this town may have intentionally killed people, dumped their bodies and then raised them as mermaids, and then made a gimmick out of mermaid fishing, which they used to make a tourist industry to attract more tourists and make it easier for them to rob them more conveniently.

No wonder the keeper said that without tourists there would be no mermaid fishery, and that all these mermaids caught were dead tourists.

The mayor here is a [people-loving] guy.

In order to promote economic development and harbor the crimes of the townspeople, in order to avoid the townspeople's criminal records from being discovered, and in order to further expand this [mermaid tourism industry], Bai Liu felt that this town mayor was perfectly capable of making wax statues of fished out mermaids, or corpses irrigated and put them in wax museums, or just letting the residents dispose of them.

Of course the police couldn't have caught or found any of the bodies, they were all disposed of and then dunked into wax figures.

Those mermaid wax figures are irrigated with the bodies of previous visitors, and imprisoned within them are the ghosts of previous visitors, which turned into monsters and began to hatch curses in general on the town's inhabitants in order to avenge them, turning those inhabitants into their talismans.

Whereas the inhabitants of the alienation process become like fish, the mermaid wax figures change into human beings and the two exchange identities.

Such that a warehouse of amulets down there are actually townspeople of the town of Siren, and the sailors who roam this ship are ghosts who died in the depths of the sea, and are no longer even human, they are monsters.

By that reasoning, there's one more thing missing.

The form of the mermaid wax figure, pupa, cocoon, butterfly are all three kinds of all have, but Bai Liu narrowed his eyes, according to the law of growth, the mermaid wax figure still lacks one state, that is, larvae, the most numerous and also the most fragile larvae.

And the larvae are...

Bai Liu slowly covered his belly, the piece of fish he had just eaten seemed to be writhing wetly against the walls of his stomach, Bai Liu looked at his fingers that were beginning to blanch, and the fish scale patterns that loomed on his skin, he could feel the sides of his jawbone begin to itch, and had the illusion that gill slivers were going to grow.

He slowly turned around, the three men he had come with were all still eating like crazy and were on the verge of losing their human forms, especially Andre.

He was practically on his back on the table furiously shoving things into his mouth, his hair had turned into bone spikes that stood up like fins, and the bridge of his nose was covered in dark green fish scales.

[Warning: Player Bai Liu has entered an alienated state, his mental value is dropping, please be careful to distinguish between game reality and game illusion]

Bai Liu thought in his mind, this is the last kind of monster in the monster book, this is the last form of the mermaid wax figure, the larval state.

Any visitor who enters the town of Cyrenaica, or any resident who doesn't leave in Cyrenaica, is alienated into one of these things, a form that is the weakest and easiest to consume and slaughter and loot.

And Bai Liu is now the weakest form of the mermaid wax figure, the larval form.

[The Monster Book of Siren Town Refresh - Mermaids (4/4)]

[Monster name: mermaid (larval state)]

[Weakness: ???? (unexplored)]

[Attacks: ???? (Unexplored)]

All the pages of the Monster Book have been unlocked, so please explore the missing parts of the Monster Book!

Andre wiped the rotting meat froth from the side of his mouth and pushed away from the table, his mouth had turned into one of those fine sharp teeth, his mouth went all the way across his entire chin, big as a clown, with more bloody bits of fish falling out of it as he spoke, "Bai Liu, remember our bet?"

Bai Liu was intrigued by the fishy, distinctive aroma of Andre's body, and he blinked slowly, "I remember, spending the night on a boat right?"

Andre cracked a hideous grin that went all the way to the heel of his head, then stuck out his long tongue and licked the remnants of the flesh around his face, "Why don't we just spend the night in these waters full of mermaids?"