The male merman is not actually a merman; he is now a human being named Nineteen.
He was even a minor.
This was only asked when Xiao Cheng forced him to write the blackmail letter.
"Are you underage?" Xiao Cheng squinted at him suspiciously.
"Looking old won't do!" Nineteen started to get angry, but Xiao Cheng slapped her down again and made her behave.
"So your real name is Nineteen?" Xiao Cheng gave him a look that said, "Are you kidding me? You really just made that hasty decision?"
"I'm not lying to you, I'm the nineteenth in my family. They simply don't have the time or inclination to name us."
Nineteen, with a conspicuous handprint on his head, was almost in tears. He felt like he had the worst luck in eight lifetimes to have encountered such an unreasonable plague god.
"Besides, as I said, it's pointless to write this down. No one will come to save me. The least valuable thing here is people. As for those merfolk you mentioned... I really don't know anything about them. Why don't you go look somewhere else? I'm begging you, sister."
"Write it, even if it's pointless, you have to write it." Xiao Cheng was completely unmoved by him, coldly pressing down on the back of his neck. "Don't you have an older sister who's sending people looking for you? Write it for her!"
The sister he mentioned earlier is most likely a mermaid.
Although I don't know why there are no merfolk here, the fact that the black box brought me here means it must be related to the bet.
This might just be the past of this brother and sister.
Nineteen lay on the ground, writing an extortion letter in a miserable manner. His handwriting was crooked and messy, barely better than a dog's crawl.
Xiao Cheng frowned as she watched, and couldn't help but pat his forehead: "You should practice your handwriting a little more."
"At a time like this! The world is about to end! What's the point of practicing calligraphy!" Nineteen seemed to have made up her mind that she wouldn't really do anything to him, and even dared to talk back to her.
Xiao Cheng turned her head to look around thoughtfully.
It must be said that the environment is indeed dilapidated and desolate; calling it the end of the world wouldn't be a big deal.
"Natural disaster? Man-made disaster? With this much chaos, there probably aren't many survivors left here, right?"
She looked up at the gray sky.
"If I said it was because of an invasion from another world, would you believe me?" Nineteen suddenly looked up and asked her with a serious expression. "All kinds of monsters, everything, they're trapping different people in other dimensions."
Xiao Cheng stared at him quietly for a moment, then, under his hopeful gaze, revealed a harmless smile.
Then she uttered two words calmly.
I don't believe it.
Nineteen immediately lowered her head in disappointment: "I knew you wouldn't believe me either. You and my older sister are the same. You're both so self-righteous, but you don't know anything at all."
He continued writing his extortion letter with his head down, his hands never stopping and his mouth never stopping: "But I saw with my own eyes that those people were swallowed up by those alternate dimensions and never appeared again."
"The more people go missing, the more severe the damage to the real world becomes. This is the squeezing and erosion between different worlds, which is beyond human intervention."
“I once saw a monster emerge, but it was quickly wiped out, completely vanished, like the delete key was pressed.”
"That's why I named those alternate dimensions... copies."
"Duplicate?" Xiao Cheng was surprised to hear such a familiar word from him. She felt as if she had found an important clue.
“Yes, the dungeon!” Seeing that she had finally piqued his interest, Nineteen quickly continued to explain, speaking very fast, as if afraid of being interrupted.
"In my imagination, those alternate dimensions are like game instances, and the monsters are like the bosses guarding the levels. There might also be many smaller monsters inside, with their own storylines. As for the missing people, they are the players chosen by the game!"
Xiao Cheng's gaze gradually deepened as she looked at him.
"Oh? I see." She gave a barely perceptible smile. "A very interesting idea. And then?"
"That's it." Nineteen shrugged matter-of-factly, stood up, and casually crumpled the half-written extortion letter into a ball and tossed it aside. "But..."
He lowered his voice mysteriously, "The merman you're looking for might be in those dungeons. If you can manage to break in..."
"Am I crazy?" Xiao Cheng interrupted him. "Knowing that no one who goes in ever comes out, why would I go in and die for some random merman?"
Nineteen: "..." Unfortunately, I couldn't fool her.
"And I've thought of an even more serious problem," Xiao Cheng continued, her face serious.
A bad feeling began to rise in Nineteen's heart.
Then Xiao Cheng said quietly, "A handwritten extortion letter isn't very intimidating. What if your older sister doesn't come? So let's just peel off a piece of your skin to make paper, and then replace it with your blood letter."
Upon hearing this, Nineteen's knees buckled, and he almost knelt down before her.
"I'm not lying to you, I really am not lying to you." He sobbed pitifully with red eyes, "I ran away for these dungeons... My other seventeen brothers were all caught up in them, and only my older sister and I are left outside."
"Are you the only one who knows about the dungeon?"
"I don't know... but I overheard my older sister talking to her men! They're also investigating spatial erosion! I heard them talking about something... a black box!"
"A black box?!" Xiao Cheng's pupils suddenly contracted.
It was another word that completely surprised her.
"How much did you hear? Tell me everything, and I might consider letting you go. Otherwise..."
"Actually, I didn't hear much," Nineteen said somewhat guiltily. "They were talking in a very mystical way, it sounded very unbelievable. They said..."
"An omnipotent god lives in the black box. Find that god and you can save the world."
As Shijiu spoke, she felt increasingly uncertain. She cautiously lifted her eyelids to observe Xiao Cheng's expression, only to find her frowning and lost in thought, unsure if she had even heard what she had just said.
"I told you, you promised to let me go."
He mustered his courage and began to move slowly, inching his way along the broken walls and ruins.
Seeing that Xiao Cheng didn't react, he breathed a slight sigh of relief and quickened his pace. He was just one corner away from escaping this place.
Suddenly, a cold, sharp blade silently emerged from behind the corner of the wall and pressed tightly against his neck.
There were many nicks and chips on the blade, and he could even feel the uneven texture.
But there is no doubt that if the hand holding the knife had exerted just a little more force, it could have cleanly severed his throat.
"Please wait a while before you leave," the man with the knife said in an unusually kind tone.
"I'm also very interested in what you just mentioned about copies and black boxes."
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