Qi Hanyi and Su Su added each other as friends.
There is no need to queue up at the registration point. Registration forms will be released every hour. However, you cannot pick them up directly. You need to take an audition test, which is much more difficult than the entry assessment.
When Su Su and Qi Hanyi arrived, there were still ten minutes before the hour, and the registration point was already crowded with people who wanted to register.
The two waited at the door for a while, and Su Su suddenly received a pop-up reminder that a friend was online.
Then I received another message
[White]: Your starship has been modified. Come to the guild to get it.
Su Su suddenly became excited. He wanted to run to the guild to find Yan Bai right away, but the hour was almost up.
Su Su thought for a moment and thought it would be better to sign up first. After all, he was already here.
【White Shark】：Can I come later? At the registration point.
Yan Bai replied quickly. [Bai]: Do you want to sign up for the Starship Driving Competition?
Before Su Su could reply, two more messages popped up.
【白】：Don’t sign up yet.
【Bai】: I have something very important to tell you.
Su Su stared at his own dialogue box, confused? Why did they ask him not to sign up yet? Was it because they were afraid that his identity would be revealed if he participated in the competition?
That's right, after all, his account is fake.
"What's wrong?" Qi Hanyi asked after noticing that Su Su, who was standing in front of him, hadn't made any movement for a long time. He couldn't see Su Su's dialogue box, but he could see his fingers tapping lightly in the air as he typed in the dialogue.
Su Su closed the dialog box: "My friend wants to talk to me about something urgent."
"The friend who taught you how to play games?" Qi Hanyi asked.
"Well," Su Su waved the shark doll's short hand, "I have to go first."
"So urgent?" Qi Hanyi glanced at the time. There were less than three minutes left before the registration time.
"Yeah." Su Su didn't know what to say, so he just followed Qi Hanyi's words and admitted, "I am a little anxious."
Qi Hanyi didn't ask too much about the other party's personal affairs, after all, they were not familiar with each other yet. The registration time is three days in total, and the same applies tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.
"See you next time then."
"good."
The guild hall was much busier in the afternoon than at night, with many players chatting in groups of three or four.
Some were discussing the Starship competition, and some were talking about the video that suddenly went viral last night.
Among them, Su Su saw a familiar face. It was one of the guild members he had met last night. He was talking excitedly to another person: "Don't disbelieve me, that [Shark is so hard to name] is the new member [White Scale Shark] who just joined our guild last night. I watched him change his name with my own eyes!"
Feeling Su Su's gaze, the member looked towards Su Su, his eyes fell on the name above his head, his eyes lit up: "Hey, there he is! He is the boss who pretended to be a rookie and beat the [Star Pirate Leader] in the video yesterday. I say, boss, you are too low-key, I didn't notice it at all last night. I was wondering how our president could really recruit a rookie into the guild."
As he spoke carelessly, many players around him looked towards Su Su, staring at him and making him look confused.
"I didn't, I'm not..." Su Su waved his hands repeatedly. He did kill the [Star Pirate Leader] but he was not a big boss, nor did he pretend to be a rookie.
"He is not the player who killed the [Star Pirate Leader] last night." Yan Bai appeared in the guild hall and directly denied it on behalf of Su Su.
"Huh?" He obviously is.
Su Su became even more confused, but before he understood what Yan Bai was trying to do, he did not expose him rashly.
"But I saw it with my own eyes yesterday." The player who just spoke was not convinced: "President, you obviously saw it too."
"Okay, even jokes should be done in moderation. If you keep talking, people will take it seriously." Yan Bai pulled Su Su to his side and sent a private message to the player who spoke.
【Bai】: Just pretend you didn’t see what happened yesterday and don’t tell anyone.
An additional 100,000 Star Coins transfer will be added.
This is a full 1,000 yuan outside the game. The generous hush money made the guild player change his words: "I just wanted to see if anyone would really believe it. After all, both of their names have "shark" in them, which is quite a coincidence. Hahahaha, I didn't expect that I could really fool so many people."
Su Su was even more confused. He guessed that Yan Bai must have said something to the player in private, but he didn't understand why Yan Bai did that. He looked at Yan Bai blankly, but was pulled into a separate lounge by the latter.
The lounge was decorated in a modern style. Yan Bai sat on the sofa and patted the seat next to him: "Sit down."
Su Su sat down next to Yan Bai.
"I'm sorry. I just took it upon myself to conceal the fact that you changed your name. After all, your video yesterday was too high-profile. If someone spots you, it will be troublesome." Yan Bai leaned against the sofa and said, "I have just sent a group message to the players who knew about it yesterday, informing them to keep it secret. As long as you don't reveal it, no one will know that you and the player in the video are the same person."
The more Su Su listened, the more confused he became. He had fought with a player called "Star Pirate Leader", but...
"What video?"
"Oh, I forgot you can't access the human network." Yan Bai patted his forehead. "It was the video of you fighting with [Pirate Leader]. The other party was a streamer who was broadcasting live at the time. The audience recorded the whole process and posted it online. After that, you became famous. Now everyone is discussing this player named [Shark Naming Is So Difficult]."
Speaking of this, Yan Bai himself was also surprised. Everyone thought that Su Su was a big guy with experience in driving a starship who came to the game to bully the newbies. However, he knew that Su Su was indeed a newcomer who could not be any newer. After only driving a starship for an afternoon, he performed such a terrifying operation.
Yan Bai had not seen this video at first. He had been dealing with the work at hand after waking up. It was not until his adoptive father Yan San came in person to ask about Su Su and showed him the video that Yan Bai found it hard to believe that all those operations were done by Su Su.
What shocked him even more was that after Su Su released this video last night, the official announcement of the starship driving competition was released this afternoon. The prizes in it were very valuable, and it was obvious that the military was behind it.
This made Yan Bai worried that Su Su might have been targeted by the military.
If Su Su participated in the competition, it would undoubtedly further increase the risk of exposure, so the first thing Yan Bai did was to go online to prevent Su Su from signing up for the competition.
However, he wanted to win over Su Su, so he didn't want to do it too bluntly. He hoped to pull Su Su to his side in a subtle way.
"Let's not talk about this anymore. Weren't you anxious to open a new starship yesterday? Now that it's ready, I'll take you there."
Yan Bai brought Su Su to the bottom floor of the guild. Through a layer of glass curtain, Su Su saw a silver starship that was much larger than the one he had driven before.
Its streamlined body is like a mythical silver pterosaur. Compared with ordinary starships, it has two more retractable side wings. It can move flexibly like a fish, and fly like a dragon with its wings spread. Its flexibility is definitely the best in "Star Wars".
In addition, its appearance is also top-notch. The starship is silver-white, with smooth lines and full of power. Its surface material is a luminous alloy. The seemingly flat surface is actually inlaid with layers of scales. In the dark universe, it flashes a sharp cold light, eclipsing the stars behind it.
"It's so beautiful!" Su Su said excitedly, his face almost pressed against the glass, the toy shark's face was squeezed flat. A pair of short, fat little hands pressed against the glass surface, as if they couldn't wait to break through the window and hug their own starship.
"It's called Silver Dragon, and it's the predecessor of the Bai Ze main starship currently in service. It was severely damaged in a battle thirty years ago and retired from space. At the beginning of this year, it was completely reproduced in the game. It has become the most popular starship in the game." Yan Bai introduced it to Su Su.
"Is it the predecessor of the Bai Ze?" Su Su's eyes flashed with an inexplicable light.
Was it the predecessor of the Bai Ze that he had admired since childhood and that always accompanied him in the night sky? This realization made Su Su inexplicably excited, and he felt that the starship in front of him became more intimate.
Yan Bai misunderstood and said in a cold tone, "Yes, it is the predecessor of the Bai Ze starship driven by your current partner, Qi Hanyi."
"Ah!" Su Su realized at this moment that the Bai Ze was actually driven by Qi Hanyi. His favorite human was driving his favorite starship. Su Su didn't know who to envy for a moment.
"Come to think of it," Yan Bai changed the subject: "After I told you last time, have you tried to test Qi Hanyi?"
"Yeah, I tried." Speaking of this, Su Su's excitement cooled down, and his expression also revealed a bit of depression: "He doesn't agree with me playing games."
Yan Bai was not surprised by this result: "Oh, what did he say?"
"He said that humans never considered mermaids as their own kind, and that humans only married mermaids to have children." Su Su recalled Qi Hanyi's words: "He also said that mermaids cannot log into the human network, and being discovered is a capital crime."
"He is honest." Yan Bai did not expect Qi Hanyi to speak so bluntly to Su Su. In Yan Bai's opinion, humans always like to whitewash their behavior hypocritically, and deceive and exploit mermaids under the banner of equality, cooperation, and symbiosis.
But since the other party is willing to confess, it saves me from wasting any more time.
"So what do you think now? Do you want to leave the Qi family?" Yan Bai asked Su Su.
Su Su shook his head: "Why should I leave?"
Here he has food, drinks, and games to play. Although he did feel a little uncomfortable after hearing what Qi Hanyi said, it actually had no impact on his life. Besides, he had promised Qi Hanyi that he would cooperate with the other party's actions and guarantee that the other party would not pursue the responsibility of the Mermaid Country.
"Qi Hanyi clearly didn't treat you as an equal. Don't you hate him? He didn't respect your personality, restricted your freedom, and kept you like a cat or a dog, calling you when he wanted and sending you away when he wanted. Don't you get angry?"
Su Su thought for a moment and said, "Yes, I feel a little uncomfortable in my heart."
In fact, Su Su doesn't care much about what others think of him. Respect, equality, personality, freedom, these words are too empty for Su Su. Just over a month ago, he was still a little shark who only thought about what to eat next.
But Qi Hanyi is different from others. After all, she is the one he likes. Everyone hopes that their love can be reciprocated. But Qi Hanyi hates mermaids. He is also a mermaid, so Qi Hanyi should also hate himself.
Yan Bai added: "Do you know that mermaids and humans actually have the same ancestors? Even hundreds of years ago, mermaids were the masters of this land."
"Really?" Su Su opened his mouth in surprise. This was indeed something he had never heard of. This part was not mentioned in human history textbooks either.
Yan Bai took the opportunity to tell Su Su the history of mermaids and humans.
Long ago, humans built a highly civilized city here, but a sudden tsunami swallowed up the land. In the disaster, some humans escaped on the prepared spaceships and left the land, but more were abandoned and drowned by the tsunami, and sank silently into the sea along with the land.
But the humans who sank into the sea were not completely defenseless. They had predicted the tsunami many years ago. They extracted the genes of many fish and tried to change themselves and find a way to survive in the sea.
There is no exact record of whether they were successful or not.
But after that, a strange race, mermaids, was born on this land.
Mermaids have lived in this sea for thousands of years, relying on fragmentary records pieced together from the ruins in the sea to understand that ancient civilization and reproduce in the ocean.
Just three hundred years ago, a great low tide exposed some of the land that was originally covered by the ocean. Some mermaids living in those areas were also suddenly exposed on land.
Some mermaids died after being stranded on the beach, but others grew legs and became human after adulthood.
If it were just like this, perhaps mermaids would eventually come ashore one day, and perhaps they would be able to walk freely in the deep sea and on land, and build a new civilization.
However, those humans who left on spaceships and wandered for thousands of years also discovered this exposed, new land.
The spaceship landed and they returned.
They woke up from hibernation in large numbers and built a new empire on the new land. At the same time, they also discovered mermaids, and found that these, without their knowledge, had evolved into new humanoid creatures, who seemed to want to become the rulers of this land.
The war broke out between humans and mermen. The wanderers who returned from the stars and the mermen who had just adapted to the new environment started fighting over this new land.
It would be more appropriate to call it a unilateral massacre.
Faced with the advanced technological weapons of humans, the mermaids, whose level of civilization is comparable to that of primitive people, were beaten to pieces and could only flee in a desperate manner towards the farther seashore.
The original story should have ended here, with humans taking control of the land and mermaids returning to the sea. But during this process, something unexpected happened.
Mermaids are naturally beautiful, regardless of gender, and they all have extraordinary looks. After leaving the water, except for a few scales behind their ears that won't fade away, their appearance is no different from that of humans, which has given some people an idea.
The captured beautiful mermaid became a plaything of the nobles and the army. Later, one of the mermaids gave birth to a human child, who looked completely human.
This mixed-race child was sent to a research institute. After a series of genetic tests, people were shocked to find that his genes were no different from those of humans, but compared to his father, he seemed to have been optimized to a certain extent. Whether it was his appearance, his inner thinking ability, his health, or his potential life span, they were all much better than normal reproduction levels. What was even more amazing was that these humans born from mermaids also inherited the unique talent of mermaids - excellent mental strength.
As a result, more mermaids were put into breeding experiments, and people repeatedly confirmed one result in the accumulated data: mermaids can indeed help humans obtain more optimized genes.
Thus, new possibilities emerged in the deadly hostility between the two sides.
In other words, humans have found a way to deal with mermaids that is more in their interest than killing them.
In the black market, the industry of capturing, plundering, and selling mermaid slaves has quietly emerged.
The Empire is more moderate. They protect mermaids on the surface, but secretly do the same thing under the banner of intermarriage.
They promised humans to guarantee the life safety and basic rights of mermen, give them equal treatment with humans, and provide them with weapons and knowledge.
There is only one thing that mermaids have to do. Apart from maintaining the necessary number to reproduce the population, other mermaids must return to human society and marry human nobles after they reach adulthood.
These mermaids were forced to marry human nobles as sacrifices. They enjoyed a rich but not free life and bred offspring for them. In exchange for the right of their people to live.
In order to obtain the protection of the Empire and learn human civilization, the mermaids sent generations of female mermaids to marry. In return, the Empire did help the mermaids a lot, helping them build cities in the sea, teaching them how to plant, raise and hunt in the sea, and providing them with various weapons and supplies. To a certain extent, their lives have become more and more stable and prosperous. But they also lost their freedom and were domesticated and kept in captivity by humans.
This cruel history has long been covered up and whitewashed in the long river of time, and even the Mermaid Kingdom deliberately let future generations forget it.
But there is one group of mermaids who always remember.
"Our grandmother was one of the few mermaids who knew about this history. She told this story to her two mermaid daughters, hoping that they could do something in the future." Yan Bai said, "But your mother didn't want to get involved in this hatred. She chose to leave the mermaid kingdom and live with sharks. Later, she gave birth to you. Since then, she has lost contact with us."
"My mother later gave birth to me with a mermaid, and used drugs to modify my genes when I was very young, turning me into a human. She then gave me to my adoptive father, Yan San, the head of Yan's Shipping."
“Although I am walking on land as a human now, in my heart, I will always be a mermaid, and I always want to change the situation of mermaids.”
Yan Bai turned around and looked Su Su in the eye: "Now that you have heard this history, Su Su, my cousin, what do you think of this past?"
What did he think? Su Su blinked, coming back to his senses from the long and heavy history.
He seemed like he had read a book or a story, with sympathy and sadness, but at the end of the story, he was still himself.
As a shark who grew up alone, he doesn't have a strong identity with mermaids. Although he has received education, the courses in Chip contain more theoretical knowledge than humanistic thoughts. Su Su's mentality is more like that of a shark who always acts on instinct than that of a human or a mermaid.
The feeling of hunger in his stomach brought Su Su back to his senses.
"Hmm." Su Su licked his lips and honestly expressed his true thoughts at the moment: "I'm a little hungry."