Recap
The ship sailed into the darkening sea. In the past, such journeys would summon the ghosts of his ancestors, their presence in his mind a suffocating weight, a constant reminder of the thousand years of expectations resting on his shoulders. He would feel compelled to push forward, to never stop, lest he be swallowed by the darkness.
But tonight was different. He stood beside Long Shiyu at the railing, the wind whipping their hair. Unseen by others, Long Shiyu’s tail swayed happily, a joyful dance in the wind. He had held the princess’s hand, twice, and the princess had promised not to send him away.
Amidst the crashing waves, Shen Chaomu spoke, his voice low and steady. “One day,” he promised, “I will tell you the story behind every scar.”
The warship sped toward the bridge, its immensity growing more apparent with each passing moment. The seawater here was an unsettling, restless black, devoid of the usual sparkling stardust. The underwater world was a terrifying abyss.
Long Shiyu peered over the railing into the depths. Faint white lights gradually materialized—the telltale reflections in the eyes of skeletal mermaids. Shen Chaomu tugged him back by the scarf. “Don’t fall,” he warned.
“I’m not that clumsy,” Long Shiyu retorted.
“You’re the least qualified to say that,” Shen Chaomu said dryly.
“But you said I was a smart dragon before.”
“Only that one time.”
Long Shiyu grumbled.
The mermaids below remained silent, their skeletal forms a massive, unsettling presence. The ship’s sharp bow occasionally emitted a cracking sound as it collided with the creatures. Only a heavy icebreaker like the Yermak or Pied Piper could truly withstand their onslaught. Their small warship was vulnerable.
Three kilometers from the bridge, the number of mermaids was staggering, the sea teeming with points of white light. Yet, they showed no aggression.
Reaching the bridge pillar, Shen Chaomu deployed signal flares and twenty underwater robots. Weighted for a rapid descent, the robots relayed real-time images of the underwater scene. His spiritual power spread outward, a golden barrier shielding the robots and holding the mermaids at bay.
The sea glowed with the reflected light, a golden wave beneath the surface.
“It’s so beautiful,” Long Shiyu breathed, mesmerized.
Shen Chaomu smiled. “Shiny things, right?”
“Not just that. I just like it.” Something flickered in the depths, and Long Shiyu’s eyes turned to molten gold. “But I think I saw something.”
“My spiritual sense isn’t detecting anything unusual,” Shen Chaomu said, studying the real-time images from the robots. “No problems here, and no new corpses.”
The screen showed the golden expanse of water. Beyond the barrier, the skeletal mermaids swam peacefully, still showing no signs of aggression.
“But I really saw it.” Long Shiyu stood on tiptoe, pointing. The object was barely visible in the depths, and without spiritual power for investigation, he leaned further over the railing. “Look, it’s over there.”
His heavy down jacket shifted, and he overbalanced. His feet left the deck, and he started to tumble headfirst into the sea. The scarf tightened around his neck, and Shen Chaomu lunged, grabbing for his tail, his own spiritual power ready to deploy. But Long Shiyu’s tail had already whipped around the railing. With a powerful yank, he swung himself back onto the deck.
“See? I told you I wouldn’t fall.”
“Have you practiced that?” Shen Chaomu asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Not yet.”
Shen Chaomu breathed a sigh of relief and sent a tendril of spiritual power in the direction Long Shiyu indicated. The movements of countless mermaids, each flick of their tails, each dull rotation of their eyes, even the flow of the water itself, came under his control. The world sharpened, as if countless eyes aided his vision, revealing every detail.
“I don’t like this coat,” Long Shiyu complained. “I’m a fire dragon; I’m not afraid of the cold. My hands are warmer than yours.”
“No,” Shen Chaomu insisted. “You have to wear it. Plenty of people think that way and end up catching a cold.” He tugged on Long Shiyu’s scarf again, not realizing how tightly it was wound. Fortunately, Long Shiyu wasn’t bothered.
His spiritual power reached the designated area. Golden light swept back and forth, then abruptly seized on an anomaly. It pierced through the swarm of mermaids like a searing blade, a meteor in the underwater world. Bones shattered, and the water itself trembled. The light exploded, and a spear condensed from golden light flakes impaled a mermaid through the spine. The force was perfectly controlled, pinning the creature without shattering its bones, then dragging it back toward the warship.
The skeletal mermaid thrashed, its six sharp fingers embedded in a corpse it hadn’t had time to release. It wasn’t the corpse of a crew member, but a mantis.
“Why are they transporting this?” Shen Chaomu wondered aloud.
“I don’t know. I don’t know why they were fighting either,” Long Shiyu said, studying the black mantis. Its shell was slightly swollen from the seawater, and bore the claw marks of the skeletal mermaids.
“Not just those scars,” Shen Chaomu said, his spiritual power sweeping over the mantis. “There’s also that corrosive spiritual energy. Was the Shen Di you mentioned here?”
The last time they had encountered the sky settlement was in the snowy mountains. The mantises had been searching for Shen Di, the one who had caused their settlement’s downfall and forced them to seek refuge in Bei En.
Long Shiyu was about to reply when he noticed a large white mark on the mantis’s shell. It was a long, irregular scar, like a burn.
They grow in strips, occasionally criss-crossing a large area, like burn scars.
That day, even for a moment, he saw a similar mark on Shen Di’s right wrist. If placed on a human body, it looks like a scar left after the skin and flesh have been pulled hard.
Seeing Long Shiyu fixated on the scar, Shen Chaomu explained, “That’s probably a mark left from the mantis splitting too many times.”
“Splitting?”
“Yes. They have no gender and reproduce by splitting. There’s a spiritual connection between the split individuals, like with Wilpan. After splitting, they can’t do it again until one of them dies, because their spiritual power isn’t enough to maintain the connection.”
“If we call the original individual A, and the split individual B,” he continued, “it’s always B who dies. A, as the main body, keeps splitting, and that causes this kind of strain. We haven’t researched this phenomenon extensively, but we call it ‘twinning traces.’”
Long Shiyu’s eyes widened slightly.
“What’s wrong?” Shen Chaomu asked.
“Nothing,” Long Shiyu replied, shaking his head. He was torn between shielding Shen Chaomu from Shen Di and informing him of the potential danger. Guilt gnawed at him, and his tail curled nervously.
“So,” Shen Chaomu pressed, “did Shen Di come to this planet?”
“How would I know? Ahhh, don’t shake me!” Long Shiyu wailed as Shen Chaomu seized his horn. “I didn’t lie.”
“Does your tail agree with that statement?” Shen Chaomu asked pointedly.
Long Shiyu glanced at his betraying tail. “Ying.”
“Acting cute won’t work.” Shen Chaomu shook him again. “Tell me, is Shen Di here? Why do you keep lying about him?”
Long Shiyu buried his head in Shen Chaomu’s arms and nuzzled him. “Ying.”
Before he could stop himself, Shen Chaomu was stroking the dragon’s head. “Okay, okay, I won’t ask.”
Shen Chaomu mentally cursed himself. The “Ying” attack was devastatingly effective. He felt his resolve crumble; he couldn’t bring himself to press further. It was another form of mental attack. Perhaps this was why Long Shiyu had no spiritual power—he had this ability instead.
His confidence as a dragon hunter plummeted. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t ignore this. It wasn’t just about Long Shiyu’s privacy anymore; Shen Di was a dangerous anomaly. His ruthlessness towards strange beasts was exactly as described in the stories from his childhood. Was he still the hero, or had time changed him? If he was alive, did the elders know?
Golden light flakes lifted the mantis’s body onto the boat. On the terminal, the underwater robots reached the seabed. There was nothing unusual about the bridge pillars; they didn’t even find more corpses.
Long Shiyu, still clinging to Shen Chaomu, heard him say, “Let’s head back to the defense line. There’s nothing here.”
The warship turned, riding the waves—
And Shen Chaomu spun around.
The towering Damocles Bridge was empty, only stardust swirling around it. But atop the pillar lay a single, bright red rose. No one should have been able to reach that height. It was dizzyingly high, even the bridge deck seeming distant. A single misstep would mean certain death.
A rose with thorns, blood staining its stem. Someone had held this flower, tightly.
Shen Chaomu couldn’t see the rose, but he felt a flicker of spiritual energy, the same energy he had sensed on Long Shiyu and in the Yermak’s engine room. Someone had just been there.
The energy signature was faint. With his wound throbbing, Long Shiyu hadn’t noticed it. He looked up at Shen Chaomu. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone was on the bridge,” Shen Chaomu said. “But they’re gone now. We’ll meet those we’re meant to meet.”
“Okay.” Long Shiyu nuzzled him reluctantly before releasing his hold.
Behind them, the mantis’s corpse bobbed in the waves. Other strange beasts floated nearby, their eyes wide and lifeless, victims of the skeletal mermaids.
As the warship disappeared, the mermaids sprang into action as if on cue. Their movements were masked by a powerful, corrosive spiritual energy that disrupted all monitoring equipment. Corpses piled up beneath the bridge pillar, forming a macabre mound. Faint singing filled the water as the bodies transformed into bone. The corpses of strange beasts, unlike humans, held a more potent energy, capable of breeding stronger mermaids.
Bone upon bone.
A new lair was rising.
The warship cut through the waves, returning to the hunters’ defensive perimeter. Shen Chaomu briefed the others on the situation at the bridge and sent the mantis corpse back to the research station.
Fang Qing reported good progress, stating that the mermaid poison would be ready within two days. He also praised his student, Lu Shanyao, for his contributions.
Half an hour later, a ship arrived from the research station, carrying newly developed signal flares. These flares optimized the wavelength range of red light and mimicked dolphin sound waves for a longer duration, more effectively repelling the mermaids.
Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction.
Shen Chaomu returned to the warship’s cabin. Long Shiyu lay on the bed, nodding off as he scrolled through his terminal. Flamingo Lily dozed on the windowsill, his usual disdainful expression softened in sleep.
“Go to sleep if you’re tired,” Shen Chaomu said, hanging up his windbreaker. He realized they had both been awake all night.
Long Shiyu yawned. “I’m waiting for my bedtime story and goodnight kiss.”
Shen Chaomu remembered his promise and coughed. “What do you want to hear? Another princess story?”
“Yes!” Long Shiyu pulled back the quilt. “Come lie down with me.”
Unable to resist his eager expression, Shen Chaomu joined him on the bed. Long Shiyu immediately snuggled close, seeking warmth and comfort. Shen Chaomu thought for a moment, then began, “Once upon a time, there was a princess who lived by a lake. She was very beautiful and charming.”
Long Shiyu’s eyes sparkled.
“One day, at her eighteenth birthday party, an evil dragon swooped down and kidnapped her. The king was furious and declared that any hero who could rescue the princess could marry her.”
“There was a hero who already knew the princess. He mounted his trusty steed, gathered his gold, and set off. He followed the dragon’s trail and finally found the princess in a ruined castle.”
“The last dragon you mentioned also kept the princess in a ruined castle,” Long Shiyu pointed out.
“Okay, he found the princess on top of a volcano,” Shen Chaomu amended. “The dragon was ferocious. They fought for three days and three nights, from the volcano to the glaciers, until finally, the earth cracked, and the mountains crumbled. They ended up back at the princess’s home by the lake. The dragon was exhausted, and just as the final blow was about to be struck, the princess said…”
“How could the princess keep up with them while they were fighting?” Long Shiyu interrupted.
“Don’t worry about it. Just listen to the story.”
“Okay.”
Shen Chaomu continued, “The kind princess approached the weary hero and said, ‘I brought this spring water from the Elf Forest. Drink it, and it will heal all your wounds. When you slay the dragon, my parents will bless our wedding.’ The hero took the waterskin—”
He suddenly remembered that Long Shiyu had a princess he cared for. Perhaps it was the one who gave him the origami rose. Or maybe it was Shen Di, the one Long Shiyu seemed to be protecting.
The thought was a sharp pang in his chest. “Then the hero kicked the princess into the lake and yelled, ‘You owe me eight million and haven’t paid it back! You stole my chickens and mocked my humble origins! I’m not here to save you, but to collect my debt! You only want me because I’ll be famous after killing the dragon! I won’t marry you!’”
Shen Chaomu’s voice rose with each word. “Then the hero poured the spring water into the dragon’s mouth, healed its wounds, and they rode off happily together. The end.”
Long Shiyu stared at him, speechless.
Shen Chaomu, feeling strangely vindicated, ruffled Long Shiyu’s hair and kissed his forehead. Still feeling a twinge of possessiveness, he kissed him again.
___
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