He and It Chapter 3: The King’s Pearl (3)

Chapter 3: The King’s Pearl (3)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: KarateChopMonkey

 

The next day, Jiang Mian put on his protective suit and hurriedly ran to the experiment station.

When he rushed in, it was already bustling and busy like a food market, and Ted was swamped in it, standing in front of the observation window, recording something in a hurry.

“I told you this would take time, it’s not time to decipher the sonic frequencies—”

“We’re on a tight schedule! Synchronization is advised—”

“Do you want me to remind you again? The sonic blocking control device is not yet able to fully cope with the flexible and changeable form of communication of mermaids, it’s still—”

Jiang Mian sneaked around the heatedly arguing crowd and made his way to Ted’s side.”What are they arguing about?”

Ted was startled and slightly relieved to see it was him, “Hey, you little creeper, next time don’t come up so silently!”

He then lowered his voice and explained to Jiang Mian, “In order to crack the mermaid’s language system, some of them insisted on not giving the experimental subject a silencer, so… Some people are starting to fear for their lives.”

Jiang Mian looked down, half worried, half curious, Raperth quietly standing upright in the water, as if ignoring gravity, even with the body weight of more than a thousand pounds of alloy chains, like he was weightless, looking wobbly, floating.

Jiang Mian couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of awe for this amazing strength.

“The mermaids won’t use sound waves to shatter your internal organs,” he smiled helplessly, his brow mild and soft, “The outer walls of the observation room are laminated with nearly half a meter of polyurethane fiberglass, not to mention the vacuum protection belt. If that doesn’t dispel their doubts, then I really don’t know what will.”

Ted glanced backward, lips unmoving, and muttered in a whisper, “It’s not a matter of silencing or not silencing. When you have the ability to live longer, I’m afraid only an old genius knows exactly how to fear death.”

“Gentlemen and ladies! Please be quiet.” Fabian finally spoke up, “This is indeed a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and I know you are all excited to see the creatures below, and I can hardly contain the surge in my heart as well. But!”

He increased his volume, “Please let’s be united, isn’t that the noble thing about human beings? Now, tell me, which gentleman, which lady, would like to step up to the glass window of the observation room and have a historic meeting with our distant guest from the deep?”

Ted coughed uncomfortably softly, hands down, scribbled a quick line in the margin of his notebook, and Jiang Mian couldn’t help but curl the corners of his mouth as he dropped his eyes to glance at it.

Ted, “Cunning guy, he wouldn’t dare to be the first one to eat crabs.”

However, while laughing, Jiang Mian inevitably felt puzzled, Fabian was indeed a rotten man, but he was at the same time a rotten man with a lot of guts. In the mermaid’s home ocean, he dared to deploy a plan to capture Raperth, while in the heavily insured, impermeable Institute, he couldn’t do the same?

In a moment’s time, Jiang Mian and Ted’s small movements seemed to have been locked by the German with sharp eyes like a falcon. Through the crowd, Fabian smiled and called out Jiang Mian’s name, “What’s up, Jiang? Not only am I impressed by your bravery, but your expertise in the field of mermaid husbandry is equally amazing. Would you like to?”

With dozens of eyes focused on him, Jiang Mian couldn’t help but wince as he stared at Fabian, knowing this was only a matter of time. He could only nod slowly.

“…Okay.” He said.

Jiang Mian got off the elevator, followed by four heavily armed guards. He tried to ignore them, ignored the condescending stares from the experiment station, and slowly, tentatively walked towards the cell that had been empty a day ago.

The closer he got, the more excited his heartbeat became and the more heavily he breathed. Jiang Mian stepped forward step by step, as if walking on cotton, from behind, his pace actually wavered, as if he was slightly drunk.

In fact, Jiang Mian was indeed dizzy, like he was drunk, and the blood flowing rapidly in his body made his body temperature rise rapidly in a short period of time. The thin sweat drenched his sideburns, bright beads of sweat dotted his forehead, reflecting the flowing waves of light, the silvery light of the ground, then shimmering like a broken diamond.

What kind of magic is this? He questioned himself skeptically. Could the unconscious mermaid also launch an indiscriminate sonic attack, and then boil his internal organs from the inside out?

Ominous speculation rose in his dizzy brain, Jiang Mian gulped and turned his head backward to look at the guards following him, although they were quite far away, they didn’t seem to have any problems… 

Or was it that yesterday, before going to sleep he was thinking too much, had a nightmare, and fell ill?

Jiang Mian shook his head slightly. No, now wasn’t the time to think about that.

His mouth was dry, the sound of blood flowing rumbled through his ears, and Raperth, only by staring at him up close could he realize how incredible he was. Jiang Mian knew he had to examine all this in a more calm, rational manner, because he had to give Fabian and the other scholars a full and unhurried oral briefing when he got up there… But he really couldn’t avert his eyes.

Raperth’s eyes were closed, his long, rich, luxurious black curls rippling down his back, his marble-carved face indifferent as if it were a great work of art left over from the Renaissance.

Up close, his fishtail wasn’t entirely rich as black ink, but under the action of the water, it turned a layer of seven-colored shimmer, only to be crisscrossed with scars to destroy the complete beauty. The black scales were layered and closely nested, transitioning all the way to his fit and solid belly, causing the skin there to be a phantom color from dark green to light green, light green spreading all the way to the bottom of the pectoral muscles before changing to a more closely human skin, bloodless cold white.

According to available information, the skin and scales of deep-sea mermaids could perfectly withstand the horrendous pressure below 4,000 meters ¹ below sea level, and even if they surfaced in a very short period of time, their internal organs wouldn’t be shattered into a pulp because of the sudden change in air pressure. Some scientists speculated that this may be the extraordinary muscle sequence of mermaids at work. Because humans only have 639 muscles, but the mermaid’s body, buried in nearly 3,000 tough as steel muscle groups.

Now, Jiang Mian gazed at Raperth’s body and finally believed the accurate judgment from the data. He was like a little bookworm who was too greedy for fairy tales, unable to resist the attraction of the unknown, forgetting what a terrible cold-blooded monster he was dealing with.

“Go up and open the feeding port,” the instructions from the experimental station in his headset coldly instructed, “and try to stimulate its reaction with raw meat.”

Jiang Mian was startled and jolted, as if someone had thrown a scoop of ice water on his head.

He had to carefully walk to the side of the conveyor escalator, the holding cell wasn’t fully enclosed, it was placed on both sides of the narrow feeding opening, enough for a grown man to fit half a shoulder in.

Jiang Mian explored the food dish and clumsily grabbed a piece of raw fish. Through the thin rubber gloves, he could feel the sticky fish blood gurgling down from his fingertips, the slippery soft flesh was slowly warmed by his unnatural body heat. As he held it in his hand, it almost felt like the small ball of living thing would soon wriggle. The fishy smell stimulated his sense of smell at the same time, and even made his nasal cavity start an unbearable itch.

He was nervous, not only from the stirring of facing the unknown, but also partly because of more realistic reasons.

——He did have an unspoken affinity for mermaids, but six years ago, Jiang Pingyang was worried that the female mermaid would make him a prey target, so he was never put in charge of feeding matters, and Jiang Mian basically had to stand by in full protective gear, sometimes not even at the sidelines.

Now, he grabbed the bait, the flesh of the fish was soft and tender to the touch, and the research institute provided all the freshest sea fish, making sure it was cut into a shape suitable for eating, with no spines and no bones… Jiang Mian suddenly clenched his teeth, because his cheeks were strangely sore, and saliva was secreted abnormally.

At this moment, Jiang Mian was thinking in his mind that due to his allergy-prone constitution, he had never eaten a single bit of raw or cold meat, and he had also stayed away from sashimi, and strictly followed medical advice in his daily life. Could this be the reason for his strange appearance at the moment?

Just as he reached down, ready to slide the fish in the opening, Raperth’s inorganic golden pupils snapped open, and the two eyes were sharp as knives were pointed at his face.

Jiang Mian, as if a spell of immobilization was cast on him, stopped in place.

His five fingers unconsciously loosened, and the fish fell silently into the water, first wavering and haloing a faint, gauze-like light red, then tumbling down, between him and the mermaid, creating a smoke-like barrier.

“Hey…” Jiang Mian looked blank and said slowly, “Do you… do you want some?”

There was a long silence before someone at the experiment station mumbled something.

“…God, this kid’s a real social butterfly.”

—

Weak.

That was Raperth’s first impression of this human.

Not that the other land people weren’t weak, but the human in front of him was a little more extraordinarily thin. He was wrapped in a bright white protective suit, his wrist bones, thin shoulders, oversized, transparent mask down to the neck, faintly exposing two eloquent collarbones.

The human skin was pale, even more so than his kin living in the deep sea, only his cheeks flew with a hazel-like red, looking uncannily beautiful.

Strange… how? This human looks like a small pearl. Raperth thought.

The kind of small pearl that was poorly bred and slender in shape, because the large pearl took over too much space, so it could only cower and grow into a small crescent-shaped pearl.

Raperth stared at him, and had he not been a land person, Raperth might even have commented that he was a very cute little thing.

Then the pearl… The human spoke.

He spoke tiny and slurred, timidly, with that nervous scent that Raperth could smell from under the water. He seemed eager to hide behind something before he could talk to him. But his voice… 

Raperth was reluctant to admit that the human voice contained a naturally pleasant rhythm that brushed against his ears, just as charmingly pleasant as the warmth of the ocean, almost causing him to narrow his eyes slightly.

This was really bizarre, mermaids were very sensitive to sound, their talent allowed them to distinguish any kind of frequency of sound waves. They sang, talked, cried, whistled in anger or growled… 

All changes in mood were reflected in the sound. The most mercurial and suspicious mermaids could even turn dozens of different scales in an instant to express their mood.

Therefore, the human’s rough vocal system was usually considered harsh, and Raperth certainly recognized this fact. The human in front of him, however, was actually completely different from his kind.

This caused him to hesitate in a rare moment.

——According to the rules of hunting, mermaids usually made the first prey they saw on the hunting grounds their primary target, even if it meant fighting with another of their kind.

However, this human was a rare provocation for Raperth, and the thought of ripping open his white, delicate body and pulling out the hot, scarlet guts and entrails made Raperth ponder: No, this person, I’d like to handle him differently, maybe without having to let him die, or make him suffer.

This thought should be wrong, he knew that he didn’t have much time to spare, rampaging through the building, and slaughtering the human who dared to take advantage of the situation and stain the glory of the king, was the right thing to do. After all, he had important business to attend to.

[Do you perhaps know where my lost soulmate is, little human?] The strong and massive fish tail swung slowly, and the mermaid sang softly with his head tilted. His appearance was clearly evil, but his expression was pure and impeccable, [If you can tell me, I will forgive you, and of all the people, I’ll only spare your life.]