Chapter 54: You Answer Me
The younger mermaid was a bit confused, but he still obediently took the glass bottle and went to catch the little pearls everyone was shedding.
Soon, the bottom of Nan Zishi’s glass bottle was completely covered in a layer of pearls.
Wow!
They’re so beautiful! Such high-quality pearls!
Nan Zishi’s collector’s instincts kicked in. She grinned as she gazed at the male Mermaid Beastmen.
The kind-hearted Mermaid Beastmen had no idea they were being targeted by a wicked female!
Stare—
As Lanxing swam over from the side with Little Fu,
he was surprised to find circles of mermaids swimming in front of the underwater prison where Nan Zishi was being held.
For some unknown reason, all these mermaids were sobbing their eyes out.
A young male mermaid, holding a strange glass bottle he’d never seen before, was weaving through the crowd, collecting everyone’s tears.
The moment Little Fu saw her mommy, she was on the verge of tears.
She swam up to the cage and clung to the bars, trying to get closer to her mommy.
’Stupid daddy! He dragged me away and wouldn’t let me see Mommy, and now he’s locked her up.’
’I’m never going to love Daddy again!’
Nan Zishi, however, showed no awareness of being a prisoner. Inside the cage, she was vividly telling a story:
"The Mermaid Prince fell in love with a human princess from the land. He traded his beautiful singing voice for a pair of legs.
But every step he took felt like walking on knives, causing him excruciating pain.
However, the human princess mistook another prince for the one who had saved her!
When the Mermaid Prince learned this cruel truth and saw the princess and the other prince fall in love, his heart broke.
He regretted his choice. He regretted trading his voice for legs.
He wanted to go home, to return to the sea!
But without his tail, he could never return to the sea!
What was the Mermaid Prince to do?!
On the night of the princess’s wedding.
The Mermaid Prince’s brothers gave him a dagger they had acquired by trading their long, seaweed-like hair. They told him, ’Our dear younger brother, you can only return to the sea if you kill the princess.’
The Mermaid Prince was heartbroken. He was in agony.
How could he possibly kill the female he loved so dearly!
As dawn broke, the Mermaid Prince gazed upon the sleeping princess he loved. He couldn’t bring himself to kill her.
In the end, he threw the dagger into the sea.
He gave up his chance to kill his love.
He lost all hope of returning to the sea and, in the morning light, dissolved into rose-colored sea foam."
As she spoke, Nan Zishi dabbed at her eyes dramatically.
"SOB SOB SOB SOB!" The male mermaids burst into a chorus of wails, some even hugging one another for comfort.
This is so sad! This story is just too heartbreaking!
Even the young male collecting the pearls was crying as he worked.
The glass bottle in his hands filled up quickly, so he swapped it for another to continue helping the Princess collect tears.
"The Mermaid Prince’s life was so tragic."
"See? I told you, you can’t fall in love with a land-dwelling female."
"Yeah, that poor Mermaid Prince, falling in love with a human. SOB SOB SOB..."
"Walking must hurt so much. Isn’t it better just to stay a mermaid in the sea?"
"But there are hardly any female mermaids in the sea!"
"Exactly! On land, the female-to-male ratio is one-to-ten, but in the sea, it’s one-to-a-hundred! All you see are male mermaids. Where are we supposed to find a female to love?!"
Another male mermaid asked quietly, "Why is a beautiful female like the Princess locked in a cage?"
"I don’t know, I don’t know. I heard Prince Lanxing gave the order."
The approaching blue-and-purple mermaid was ethereally beautiful. With a flick of his large tail, several small fish, drawn by his beauty, swam over to circle him.
Nan Zishi called out his name in delight, "Lanxing!"
Lanxing, wearing a blue-and-purple Jue Sha veil, confronted Nan Zishi with three piercing questions:
"Answer me.
After a human female bonds with a Beast Husband who is a prince, can she no longer bond with a Mermaid Beastman?
Can’t she take the Mermaid Beastman with her too?
Why must she abandon him, make him suffer, and let him dissolve into sea foam?!"
Nan Zishi: "...?"
’This has nothing to do with me! This is "The Little Mermaid" by the great Hans Christian Andersen! That’s just how he wrote it!’
Lanxing let out a sharp breath and continued his interrogation. "So you’re just like that human female, aren’t you? You’ve bonded with a land-dwelling Beast Husband, so you don’t want a Mermaid Beastman anymore, is that it?!"
"Y-You’re talking nonsense!" Nan Zishi stammered, panicking.
"Nan Zishi! In your eyes, should a Mermaid Beastman just return to the sea? Should he be abandoned? Should he just turn into sea foam?!"
All the mermaids panicked. ’Why are the Prince and Princess fighting?!!’
’Nan Zishi was even more flustered. She had only adapted a story to trick some tears out of the Mermaid Clan People. How had things escalated to this?’
*
Five years ago, after leaving Hu Bai and his son behind, Nan Zishi had been forced to leave Stone Village in a hurry. The Childbirth System was relentlessly hounding her to have another child.
She wandered aimlessly, stumbling along the way. Although she encountered a few Male Beastmen, she was very particular about looks and found none of them appealing.
’Even if she was being forced to complete a childbirth mission, she didn’t want to compromise her standards too much.’
She summoned all her strength and ran all the way from Stone Village to the coast.
Her Childbirth System’s mission countdown had turned red and was beeping incessantly. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
Nan Zishi thought to herself, ’There are so many fishermen by the sea. If worst comes to worst, I’ll just close my eyes and form a contract with a random one.’
’They’re all just tools for the mission, anyway. At least I’ll complete the task and save my own life.’
Just then, however, she heard a fisherman’s cry.
"Fish for sale! Fish for sale! Freshly caught mermaid today!"
Nan Zishi pushed through the crowd to get a look. Lying in a fishing net was a young male mermaid, looking fragile and strikingly handsome, probably only about eighteen years old.
The mermaid’s eyes were filled with terror. He was terrified. In his despair, his gaze fell upon Nan Zishi, and he reached a hand out to her.
"Save me..."
Nan Zishi’s heart softened. She asked the fisherman, "How much for this mermaid?"
The male fisherman looked up, and his eyes lit up when he saw Nan Zishi. "A pretty female, eh? You want a mermaid? This one’s young, you can tell. Take him home, put a slave contract on him to make him a Beast Slave, and he can catch fish from the sea for you forever."
Nan Zishi asked curiously, "He’s that useful?"
’Does she want me as a Beast Slave, too?’ The mermaid’s eyes dimmed slightly.
Nan Zishi asked, "So what do you want in exchange?"
The fisherman thought for a moment. "Well, we’re by the sea here, so I don’t need anything from it. The family is short on Beast Skins, so I’ll take Beast Skins."
"One?" Nan Zishi asked.
The fisherman replied, "Ten."
"That many?" Nan Zishi said, surprised.
She had given nearly all the supplies she’d accumulated to the chief of Stone Village, entrusting him with the care of Hu Bai and his son. Her own supplies were now desperately low.
After a moment’s thought, Nan Zishi said, "I only have one Beast Skin on me."
"Then I can’t sell him to you." The fisherman turned to leave.
The mermaid grew even more panicked, his desperate gaze fixed on Nan Zishi.
’Those tear-filled, blue-and-purple eyes were just irresistible.’
’She really couldn’t bear to disappoint this poor mermaid!’
"Hey, wait!"
Nan Zishi called out to stop the fisherman. "Look at this mermaid. A lot of his scales have fallen off, he’s not perfect, not even that pretty, and he looks a little too small and skinny."
Hearing her belittle him, the Mermaid Lanxing felt a sensitive spot in his heart had been struck. He felt wronged and wanted to cry.
The fisherman knew she was just haggling. "You can’t say that. How is a healthy, strong male mermaid like this not perfect and beautiful? The scales he lost... that was just an accident when I caught him. It’s just a surface wound. He’ll be beautiful again once he heals up."
Nan Zishi said, "I really don’t have that many Beast Skins. But... I do have some common remedies for external wounds. Interested?"
"Remedies for external wounds?" The herbs in Nan Zishi’s hand clearly caught the fisherman’s attention.
Nan Zishi glanced at the gash on the fisherman’s leg. "You fishermen get hurt easily... That wound on your leg looks pretty deep. Wouldn’t you consider trading for some medicine to treat it?
The medicine from a witch doctor is so expensive, and my price is much cheaper!
Look, this whole handful of healing herbs for the mermaid. What do you say? Deal?"