Chapter 60 You must feel that honor comes first
"Hey, Mr. Mermaid, are you from out of town? Would you like to have some tea in my teahouse?"
"Hey hey hey! Mr. Mermaid is so elegant, he must come to our bar to dance!"
"Tsk! What are you looking at? Don't lead Mr. Mermaid astray. Why don't you come to our store and take some artistic photos?"
"Don't go, I'll give you a discount, a broken bone!"
Yu Li had just entered the dividing line of the Saar Federation when he looked up and bumped into merchants from various industries soliciting customers on the side of the road.
It was strange, he had never encountered such a proactive human before.
Yu Li ignored them. He wrapped himself tightly and put on a hat and a mask.
When he turned to cross the street, he saw many blue mermaids queuing in front of a store, apparently registering something.
He remembered that there were very few mermaids in the Saar Federation. They were almost impossible to find on the streets before, and one had to go to the Special Species Research Institute to encounter mermaids.
"Everyone line up! If you push forward again, you will have to go to the end of the line and line up again!" the registrar shouted in a hoarse voice and slammed the seal in his hand on the table.
He held a half-smoked cigarette askew in his mouth, squinting his cloudy eyes as he scanned the group. He scribbled twice on the registration book with his pen, then suddenly grabbed the gill slit of the mermaid in the front row. "Number 23454! You've participated in the experiment, haven't you? The scales you took haven't grown back yet?"
The mermaid nodded cautiously. "It will grow out soon."
The registrar waved his hand, grabbed the rusty copper stamp, and stamped it on the mermaid's wrist.
"Next! Open your gills! Don't make me say it again! If you've lost too many scales, wait a while before returning. We don't accept loss-making merchandise!"
Yu Li moved a little closer and saw that there was someone sitting inside the store.
This person looked familiar, and Yu Li looked at him carefully.
It turned out to be the mermaid teacher Bessemer who wanted to hurt him when he went to school that year.
He remembered that Qi Sheng sent him to prison.
Yu Li looked at the mermaids who kept coming into the shop. He stood at the end of the queue and asked the mermaid in front of him.
"What are you doing?"
"You...you are a special red fish!"
The seemingly young blue mermaid revealed a surprised expression. "Then why don't you come here to register? There's an agency downtown that specializes in accepting red mermaids. The salary is five times higher!"
Yu Li frowned: Is this a job?
He had originally wanted to persuade him not to get close to Bessemer, but after hearing what he said, he wanted to hear what he said next.
Blue Mermaid: "This is a gamble. If you lose, you may not know where you are."
"Bet?" Yu Li had been away for two years and had gradually forgotten some human words, but he knew that the word "bet" meant "very bad".
The blue mermaid sighed and said, "Yes, those who enter here voluntarily give up the right to survive in the Saar Federation and are sent to the mermaid gathering place - Antia.
Almost every wealthy family there keeps a few mermaids as ornaments. If you meet one that particularly likes you, you can apply to marry the owner. That way, us mermaids can live without worries."
"But aren't you doing well in the Saar Federation? There's an alien school here, and I remember there were mermaids working as actors..."
The blue mermaid smiled. "You're talking about the former Saar Federation, right? You haven't been back for a long time? Have you been living abroad?"
Yu Li nodded quickly: "Yes, I, I came to see a friend."
"Have you contacted your friend yet?"
"No."
Yu Li didn't have a cell phone and couldn't contact Qi Sheng, so he could only look for his home according to his original memory.
The blue mermaid shook her head helplessly, took out the news from her mobile phone and handed it to Yu Li.
“This place is completely different from what it was two years ago.”
"Ever since the Liberal Alliance came to power, a large number of mermaid species have been introduced here to live. I came here because I saw it was a high-paying place."
"As a result, not long after we arrived, it was revealed that the Freedom Alliance tricked us into coming here for some experiment to extend human life!"
"But it's easy to get in, but hard to get out. If we want to leave, we must complete the mission assigned by the Free Alliance and give birth to five healthy mermaids. However, the medical conditions here cannot help mermaids give birth, and many mermaids die during childbirth..."
The blue mermaid kept chattering on and on.
But Yu Li didn't listen at all.
He only saw a piece of news on his phone:
[The death of President Qi Feng completely ended the era of federal rule]
Qi Feng is dead?
How is that possible!
Blue Mermaid: "Hey! Where are you going? The address I just mentioned is in the city center, 300 meters away from the ruins of the government building!"
His raised voice attracted the attention of the nearby mermaids, so he had no choice but to shut up and mutter, "Don't trust others. Red-scaled mermaids are very popular. They need rare species like you as experimental subjects the most."
"What are you making such a fuss about?! Say one more word and you'll be disqualified!" the administrator threatened. "Behave yourself! Do you still want your chance to leave?"
The mermaid next to him immediately responded, pointing at the mermaid who was showing Yu Li the way, "Sir, he was the one who just spoke nonsense! We didn't say a word!"
The commander glanced at the mermaid and interrupted him just as he was about to retort: "Get lost! With your character, you'll be eliminated even if you go!"
——
Yu Li rushed to the government building according to the route he remembered.
He didn't believe it, he didn't believe that anything would happen to Qi Sheng's brother, but!
If it's true? What about Qi Sheng? Where is he?
No...
He's so powerful, he'll be fine!
He staggered towards the coordinates in his memory, the government building that once stood majestically.
But when he turned the last corner, his pupils suddenly contracted.
The once magnificent government building is now only left with some ruins.
The steel bars were supported fiercely as if they had been gnawed by a giant beast, and the concrete walls were covered with honeycomb-shaped bullet holes.
The dome of the main building had long since collapsed, leaving only half a broken column pointing to the sky, like a burnt finger bone.
The marble steps at the main entrance were broken into pieces, with seemingly tenacious weeds growing out of the cracks.
His gaze slowly turned to the ruins.
The neon sign of the milk tea shop was still flashing the words "Second cup half price".
He remembered buying ice cream here many times, and the scenes in his memory slowly emerged.
But Qi Sheng’s workplace shouldn’t be like this!!
He rubbed his eyes, and rubbed them again, and rubbed them again...
The gray buildings have not yet regained their former grandeur.
"Buzz—"
There was a buzzing in his ears.
In his field of vision, he saw fashionable young people standing by a bullet-riddled wall, taking selfies, and a car driving around the concrete blocks on the ground towards the entrance of the alley...
People seem to have gotten used to it.
He slowly approached the ruins in front of him.
He crossed the warning line and the area marked "forbidden" and walked in amid the surprised gazes of some passers-by.
Yu Li actually saw human bones...
He didn't dare to get any closer.
He fell onto a half-broken marble column, and the sharp edges of the broken stone pierced his palms.
But he felt no pain.
The concrete beneath my fingertips seemed to retain the residual heat of the explosion, like a gradually cooling tombstone.
His shoulders began to shake uncontrollably, starting with slight tremors and gradually developing into spasms throughout his upper body.
Then, suppressed sobs escaped from between her teeth, and tears fell onto the charred ground, spreading into small dark dots...
"Qi Sheng..."
He wanted to call out his name, but only uttered a few broken words weakly.
"Where are you?" His clenched fists were shaking, he wanted to know the answer -
moment!
The air behind him suddenly began to distort, and a majestic spiritual body gushed out uncontrollably.
His spirit body turned into the shadow of a huge wave, and the mermaids that were looming in the waves swam back and forth like crazy.
As Yu Li's breathing became more and more rapid, his spirit body continued to expand and rise, until it enveloped the entire ruins in an illusory white mist.
Countless illusory mermaid shadows slowly circled around the ruins. They rose slowly and angrily, quickly surrounding the entire ruins!
The mermaid's scales fell off as she swam, turning into countless red-glowing stardust, resonating with the whimpering sound of the cracked steel bars.
Circle after circle, circling above the entire building!
The mermaid's shadow suddenly raised its head and let out a silent scream—
Afterwards, passers-by outside the ruins saw a white cloud covering the surrounding sunlight, and the white quickly turned into black, as if swallowing the place in one gulp.
Suddenly, heavy rain fell within a radius of 100 meters, washing away every burn mark, as if in this way, the abandoned ruins could be restored to their original state.
Yu Li's fingertips glowed red, and his nails began to grow rapidly. He gently scratched the skin under the fish's gills.
The scales protected by the gills were gouged out, and the moment they left the body, there was a sound of breaking metal.
The skin hidden under the gills was left with only bloody and ulcerated skin after losing three scales.
The mermaid hides under her gills and has three precious reverse scales. Every time she uses one, she is moving towards death.
At the same time, he also lost an opportunity to save himself.
The scales contain mermaid-specific memory peptide chains, which can be quickly activated when the next scale is used, quickly replaying the moment of the previous redemption like a revolving lantern.
The blood flowing from Yu Li's body mixed with the rain and condensed into blood crystals, which fell on the scorched earth with a clanging sound.
He held the small piece of fish scale in the palm of his hand.
He wants to know the truth! He must know the truth!
He can do this at any cost!
He used all the attack power of his spiritual body on this "life-saving scale".
Crush it and you can see Qi Sheng.
All the scales on Yu Li's tail stood up, and all the cells were using their self-protection abilities to resist the master's self-destructive and crazy behavior!
"Life will eventually wither. You died on my way to him. You should feel that honor is supreme."
His cracked lips trembled as he squeezed out these words, the last word stuck in his throat with difficulty and turned into a whisper.
After he finished speaking, he suddenly became quiet, as if he had forgotten to breathe, with only a pair of dead eyes staring into the distance.
He hoped the scale could be softer. He was a little tired and couldn't pinch it anymore.
After a few seconds, it seemed to understand that it was going to die, and slowly and warmly melted in Yu Li's palm.
The memory peptide chains in the scales reveal a picture—
Qi Sheng stood in the middle of the crumbling corridor, with a shattered glass curtain wall behind him. A bullet pierced his shoulder and he almost fell to his knees!
Then came the second bullet that hit the head directly!
At the critical moment, a dazzling red light suddenly burst out from Qi Sheng's chest, and the scales seemed to break out of his body and intercept the bullet as fast as lightning!
The moment the metal collided with the scales, a visible shock wave exploded, shattering all the remaining glass around.
The bullet was deflected away, and the scale turned into liquid metal, flowing along the blood vessels in Qi Sheng's neck and into his heart!
Zhai Wenxi dragged Qi Sheng, who was shot in the chest, and ran wildly through the fire, leaving a long trail of blood behind him...
The entire dome was collapsing, and steel bars were falling like rain. The scales that had merged into Qi Sheng's body suddenly burst into a dazzling light, forming a unique barrier that bounced off all the falling steel bars...
In the rain of blood, his ear fins began to peel off and his long golden hair turned gray at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The life-saving scale eventually turned into a pool of water, washed by the rain onto the ruins...
The security guard's shouting could be heard in the distance, and passers-by outside the warning line held up their mobile phones to take pictures of this strange localized rainfall.
No one saw the transparent mermaid gradually fade away in the rain, just as no one noticed that when the last spirit dissipated, the accumulated water somewhere in the ruins suddenly and strangely flowed upstream, piecing together a vague human outline in the air, and then disappeared in a flash...
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
