Chapter 16: The King’s Pearl (16)
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: KarateChopMonkey
Unlike Raperth, whose scales were black and fierce, Lady Red was like a swimming cloud of haze, a thousand magnificent morning light and twilight flowers projected on the female mermaid at the same time, the lightest scales glowing with the pink halo of white roses, and the heaviest fin membranes as red as dripping blood. Her wild beauty was far beyond the limits of what human beings could imagine.
Lady Red was already badly wounded when she was captured, and her struggles and resistance were fierce to say the least, but nowhere near as profound as Raperth’s ā she couldn’t even make a sound, let alone manipulate infrasound.
“ā¦The result of successfully subduing her infused the Institute’s top brass with hubris and laid the groundwork for their contempt for you.” Jiang Mian said dully, “They were too happy, too pleased with themselves that they forgot, a grand orgy of celebration that went on all night long, as if the blood in their veins had been replaced by champagne. They celebrated the fact that humans had finally caught a living mermaid, that they could finally test their delusional conjectures and theories on herā¦”
His smile was sour, “In fact, Lady Red wasn’t the first mermaid humans got, but the first living one. In fact, the first mermaid to be recovered was nothing more than a mermaid’s skeleton, and the remains of the one named ‘Adam’ were like a real Pandora’s Box that opened the ambitions of too many people.”
Jiang Mian paused to explain to the attentive Raperth, “Adam is the first creature created by God in mythology, Pandora’s Box is also a mythical box full of plagues and misfortunesā¦ Just, to use an analogy, you understand the meaning.”
Raperth nodded knowingly and asked, “What did the humansā¦ find?”
“Their biggest, heaviest discovery, the age of the bones of the remains.” Jiang Mian took a deep breath, “512.8 years old, no more than 2 years difference from actual biological age, and not natural old ageā¦ The lifespan of a mermaid, that’s the only trigger.”
“The curse of wisdom.” Raperth said.
Jiang Mian looked at him, “What?”
“The reasoning that circulates under the sea.” Raperth said, “The curse of wisdomā¦ is to make a fishā¦ swim away from the cycle of eating and being eatenā¦ to seekā¦ what does not belong to it.”
Jiang Mian smiled, “While we call it greed.”
“Goodā¦ simpler.” Raperth expressed approval.
“So while there are many who seek the secrets of immortality ā I don’t know the progress of research elsewhere ā Iām certain that the Sigma Institute is the furthest along in this.” Jiang Mian looked down, at the reflected waves of light on the water, “They used mermaid blood as the main ingredient to develop a potion known as ‘Immortal Life Elixir’, which not only cures disease, but supernaturally extends the life of those who are about to die.”
“Do you see that man up there?”
He pointed his finger at the lighted viewport, “The scholars there, the oldest old people, all drank the so-called Immortal Water so they could live until now, until today, six years later.”
Jiang Mian says, “The Sigma Institute, and my adoptive father, usedā¦ Lady Red’s blood and flesh as a core resource for research experiments. Anesthetics were ineffective against mermaids, and a portion of the decision-making hierarchy likewise rejected the use of neurotoxins, believing it would ‘contaminate the purity of the Immortal Waters’… The method they took, therefore, was dissection in vivo.”
Jiang Mian’s throat was dry and sore, and the fragments that flashed back in his mind made his teeth chatter and his nails dig deep into his arms.
The violent twisting of the fish’s tail, the silent hissing and screaming, the cut and polished fangs and claws, the ear-splitting hum of the wheel cutter, the torn fins like dried bloodā¦ The lights of the lab were cold and bone-chilling, like a 10,000-watt death star.
[Because they are human, and youāre not of their kind.] Raperth whispered.
“ā¦I cannot justify my foster father,” Jiang Mian curled his body, “nor can I justify my incompetence and bystandership; any description would be but a fancy taboo, unable to describe a millionth part of the cruel reality.”
“Is sheā¦ gone?” Raperth asked, carefully weighing his words, choosing not to interfere with the self-condemnation going on inside Jiang Mian, even though his pain was so intense at the moment.
“Not that fast,” Jiang Mian sniffled, “in fact, it shouldnāt have been so fast to take extreme measures. However, in the pre-study period, they discovered something: Lady Red’s weight was decreasing every day.”
The mermaid king heir’s ear fins flicked as he guessed the end.
“Evaporation, disappearing out of thin air, leaving no trace, and no matter how many ways they came up with, they couldn’t slow the trend,” Jiang Mian gestured, “At first, they thought it was a self-preservation instinct.”
“In human languageā¦ it’s called ‘dissipation.'” Raperth interjected, “Boundā¦ when a soul mate diesā¦ the one who is aliveā¦ goes into dissolution because of excessive grief.”
Traumatic memories interrupted, Jiang Mian’s full attention was drawn to Raperth’s words and he hurriedly asked, “Soul mate? What soul mate, is it literally, a soul mate? I’ve never heard that term before, is it a product of mermaid society alone?
Well, okay, Raperth thought quietly. Not only did I uncover Pearl’s scars and make him wince in heartache, I was so focused on showing myself off that I ended up forgetting to tell him about soul mates. I’m bound to be the clumsiest male in the sea, great.
“Iā¦ Never heard of humansā¦ and soul mates,” the mermaid frowned, explaining in as much straightforward detail as possible, “It’s rare and scarceā¦ and not every mermaidā¦ can have their soulmateā¦ but when it happensā¦ you’ll know.”
Jiang Mian’s mouth was open, completely fascinated by the concept, “Like? How can you understand something soā¦ Such a mysterious thing? Does it really work on the soul, like telepathy, mind interaction?”
“I don’t knowā¦ what is telepathyā¦ mind interaction,” Raperth’s gaze was gentle, “but as the more powerful oneā¦ it must be able to senseā¦ and react toā¦ any hint of hurt in the soul mate.”
Jiang Mian temporarily forgot the self-flagellating feelings of remorse that he, as part of the researcher, was enthusiastically encouraging to divert his attention, “It’s amazingā¦ There are simply no words to describe it! It seems more like an encrypted protection measure, not for the individual, but for the connection of the two parties.”
“The bondā¦ after the bindingā¦ will be even stronger.” Raperth said, “If there is no bindingā¦ one party diesā¦ the other will only experienceā¦ the feeling of death. The damage is greatā¦ but theyāre still alive; if they areā¦ together through many hot flashesā¦ they will be bound as soulmatesā¦ if one party diesā¦ the other will dissolve. Because the soul is inseparableā¦ the bond is deeply rootedā¦ deathā¦ uprooting one soulā¦ the other soulā¦ will be fragmented.”
Raperth concludes, “What you mean is, Lady Red, experienced such disintegration.”
The conversation turned, its mysterious charm faded, and the light in Jiang Mian’s eyes was extinguished.
He said dejectedly, “So she has no power to resistā¦ Even her voice was lost.”
Raperth asked, “And what happened?”
Jiang Mian breathed deeply and spat the words out with difficulty, “Later, they found a way to slow this ‘dissipation’.”
The male mermaid frowned as he heard Jiang Mian say, “A large, excessive amount of wounds, avoiding the vital areas, used to stimulate the mermaid’s powerful healing factor. Yes, she was fading, evaporating, her end was irreversible, but she was still incredibly resilientā¦ Fabian, the gray-blue-eyed, brown-haired man who was then just a deputy at the Institute, came up with this solution: to use the subconscious survival instinct to fight the broken soul of the mermaid.”
In the old days, Fabian, with his radical proposition and cruel and ruthless way of acting, stood out among a number of researchers vying to scramble and climb the ladder, gaining the preference of another segment of the population ā those Sigma patriarchs whose physical bodies were winding down and whose brains were the only ones still exuberantly active. Even though Jiang Pingyang was already a genius recommended by all, the patriarchs still didnāt have extra time to wait patiently for his research results.
It was also since that moment, that Jiang Mian keenly aware of Fabian’s mind: his hidden jealousy of Jiang Pingyang; his contempt for his own buried contempt; and his self-proclaimed superiority of all living things, but across the board, such a strange and heavenly creation as mermaids, could be stronger and longer-lived than humans.
āāHe therefore hated deeply, and hatred was followed by outrage.
“Blasphemy!” Raperth hissed, turning his golden eyes, his beady gaze, stealthily glancing at the light-radiating viewport.
Jiang Mian whispered, “I pleaded with my father, I pleaded for humanity, for the possibility of sparing her, of not torturing her again, if the Institute had gained enoughā¦ But to no avail, he only admonished me to say no more, for at that moment the eyes of the entire group were greedily watching Lady Red, waiting for the unfinished ‘Immortal Water’.”
“It’s not as if no one had a conscience and tried to get her out of here, but unfortunately, before I knew it, they failed, and the pre-mortem tragedy was assembled into an open file that was trumpeted on the Sigma Group’s LAN.”
He stopped talking, and the silence lasted long enough for Raperth to emit a soothing scent and reach out again, stroking him softly through the material of his shirt, making slow, soothing little circles on Jiang Mian’s spine like he’d seen humans do.
“A fountain pen.” Jiang Mian said suddenly, “I have a fountain pen that matches the one my adoptive father had as a set.”
Raperth thought for a moment and nodded, “I rememberā¦ I’ve seen it.”
“That’s a very nice fountain pen.” Jiang Mian bowed his head, “The ink came out smoothly, never clogged. The nib was gold-plated, heavy and moist, and when you held it in your hand, it looked like a tiny, shiny swordā¦ One day, however, it broke.”
He said to himself, “Yes, it broke, the whole pen broke completely, the parts flew apartā¦ I struggled to put it back together as it was, snapped it into the cap of the pen, and went back to visit Lady Red. I should mention that I was particularly good at calming her down, she was usually much calmer with me around, though I don’t know why that wasā¦”
The voices grew fainter and fainter, and Raperth waited patiently for a long time for Jiang Mian’s voice ā he was already full of tears.
“I don’t haveā¦ I don’t have the pen anymore,” the youth clenched his teeth, shutting his sobs in the back of his throat, “Because I lost its nib and I can’t find itā¦ There’s no wayā¦”
He was shaking and finally bawled, covering his face with his breath, “I couldn’t set her free, I couldn’t save her! I could only leave her with a broken penā¦ I was too impotent, too cowardly, Iā¦”
He cried so hard he couldn’t breathe. It was a secret, a secret that had been suppressed for many years, known only to Jiang Pingyang, who had been forced to sweep up for his adopted son.
āāOn that day, Jiang Mian used his authority to throw a sharp, broken pen tip through the protective net and into the fresh wound of Experiment 001.
In the excruciating pain of near death, the mermaid seized this only opportunity to manipulate the healing flesh and blood so that the small sword-like pen tip was hidden in the seventh hollow vertebra. After Jiang Mian left, in the dead of night when no one answered but the blood dripping, the small sword was ready to strike on the side of the heart ā the mermaid’s extraordinary muscle sequence finally worked, and the gold-plated parts were like sharp arrows, penetrating both of her hearts from left to right. Jiang Pingyang later read the first version of the autopsy report, the outbreak of elasticity instantly blew up the most important blood pump in the body, her death was crisp and clean, without the slightest lingering moment.
In fact, on the face of it, Jiang Mian couldnāt have succeeded. The all-round surveillance was on twenty-four hours a day, the corridors and cells were heavily blocked, and there were no less than forty guards just keeping an eye on the room patrols, but Jiang Pingyang’s adopted son, his withdrawn, intelligent son, was partial to calculating where that only flaw wasā According to the layout of the surveillance and guards, every sixty-three hours and seven minutes and twenty seconds, there would be two guards whose routes intersected in a straight line with the surveillance on the opposite corner. At that moment, Jiang Mian was caught in the middle, remotely triggering the alarm device in the corridor, and while the commotion was in full swing, he quickly flung his pen into the mermaid’s wound with a move that couldnāt have been more natural or casual.
It was a desperate gamble of jeopardy, and he gambled on a near impossible probability to make it happen.
That night, the first moment to receive the news of the death of the experimental body, Jiang Pingyang didnāt even have to think, his heart already knew that this must be the doing of his adopted son.
He blocked the surveillance department first, then went to the scene of the incident to hide the deformed pen, disposed of the guards present with a thunderous force, suppressed the gossip and faked the cause of death of the experimental subject. In order to divert the fury of the group’s headquarters, Jiang Pingyang lived up to his reputation as a genius and forced the beta version of the Immortal Water to come out early, thus surviving the disaster.
At that time, Jiang Mian had already prepared for the worst, he just didnāt expect that his adoptive father would be willing to defend him to that extent.
Deep in the memory was Jiang Pingyang’s tired and complicated eyes. Jiang Mian stood in front of him, watching the old man sink into that overly wide chair, pinching the metal parts that had been pushed into a ball and gently rolled over towards him on the table.
“It’s yours.” Jiang Pingyang said softly.
Jiang Mian picked up the evidence of his life’s guilt and waited in silence.
He wanted to say thank you, but the word was just too deep and heavy in his throat to spit out.
Thank you for the chapter! This was full of feels šš
Cruel and tragic. Poor JM and Lady Red.
Thank you both for the chapter.
All of this is very sad! Crying along with JM. Thanks for the chapter!!!
Poor Lady Red ššš