Chapter 87: Settling the Mermaid

In truth, many members of the joint investigation team were seeing merfolk for the first time as well. The merfolk before them seemed rather different from what they had imagined.

Among them were both men and women, with a ratio of roughly nine to one, perhaps because of the severely imbalanced sex ratio within the Gold Rooster Ridge base. After all, most of the test subjects the enemy could lay hands on were men to begin with.

Though they still looked listless, both the male and female merfolk had bodies packed with muscle. Without exception, they had thick arms, powerful pectorals, well-defined abdominals, and broad back muscles; even their hips were fuller than those of ordinary people.

What differed most from expectation was their tails. Unlike the scales of most fish, these tails were more like those of loaches, coated in a layer of mucus. Yet unlike loaches, the merfolk’s tails came in striking colors—blue, cyan, gold, rose red, and more—and bore lovely whisker-like fringes as well.

“Hey,” Dragon asked after staring at them for a long while, “where do you suppose these merfolk hide their little things?”

After listening to him brood over this for so long, Zhang Xingmin could only sigh helplessly. “If you’re that curious, why not go touch one and find out?”

“Merfolk actually don’t have a gender. They’re hermaphroditic and cross-fertilize. Like other fish, the cloaca at the rear not only expels feces and urine, but also reproductive cells,” Julia explained, speaking as if giving a science lesson to the two men quarreling nearby.

Zhang Xingmin and Yang Dalong were both a little surprised by her words. On closer thought, it made sense: if they were merfolk, they would naturally inherit characteristics from both humans and fish, and might even have mutated further.

Just as the two were calming down from their surprise, one remark from Shao Gang gave them a new discovery. Pointing at a dark-blue male merfolk in the distance whose tail was about seven feet long, Shao Gang said, “I think I know that guy.”

The moment he finished speaking, Gangzi strode toward the merfolk he recognized. The closer he got, the more certain he became that he truly did know this person.

“Hello! Can you still understand me?” Shao Gang asked the male merfolk before him, whose upper body skin was dark and whose lower body was a deep blue.

The merfolk had surfaced to catch a breath, and since waking he had been utterly bewildered. He had studied his own body for a long time, trying hard to remember, but could only retrieve a few fragments. As for how he had become this way, he had no memory at all. Looking at the dazed youth before him, he only felt a vague sense of familiarity, yet could not for the life of him remember where he had seen him.

The male merfolk shook his head helplessly and said nothing.

“What do you mean, shaking your head? Can’t speak? Don’t know me? At least it sounds like you can understand me! Good, good.” Gangzi went on talking to himself. “We’ve met before. Don’t you remember?”

“I... I don’t remember... I don’t remember...” Perhaps because he had not spoken in too long, or perhaps because even his vocal cords had changed, the merfolk’s voice came in halting fragments, barely intelligible.

“Never mind if you don’t remember!” Shao Gang did not want to waste more words, and turned to leave.

“D-don’t go!” the merfolk called after him.

“You still need something?” Shao Gang asked, looking at him in confusion. Then something occurred to him, and he added, “We only met before. I don’t know anything about your background!”

“Save... save me...”

“You’re safe now!”

“Get... get me out.”

“But you’re fish now. Fish can’t leave the water.” Shao Gang was at a loss.

“I’m human. I am human. Save me!” the merfolk said stubbornly.

“All right, all right. You’re human. I’ll go ask them where they plan to send you. Okay?” After saying this, Shao Gang left, ignoring the merfolk’s pleading eyes.

“What was that about?” Dragon asked curiously, watching Shao Gang go over and talk to a merfolk for quite some time.

“Yeah, do you two know each other?” Da Min asked as well.

Shao Gang nodded and briefly explained what he knew about the merfolk. In truth, he and that merfolk had only ever met before—in the gladiator arena, as opponents. Though they had never exchanged a single word, they had seen each other many times. He knew the man had been defeated by him, and after that they had never met again.

He had never expected their next meeting to be under such circumstances.

“So you wanted to catch up with an old acquaintance?” Dragon asked.

“I was just curious!” Gangzi could not quite explain why he had gone over, so he brushed it off.

“What did he say?” Da Min asked, remembering how the merfolk had looked at Gangzi just now, as though he had something to say.

“Nothing much. He just wants out! But where can they even go?”

“Let headquarters decide,” the joint investigation team still had no idea where these merfolk should be placed.

In fact, even the higher-ups did not know where to resettle the merfolk they had rescued. If they were put in an aquarium, that would be wrong too, because they possessed independent personhood and were, in the truest sense, people, at the very least once they had been. They could not simply be treated as ordinary aquatic animals.

And yet, treating them wholly as human beings also seemed inappropriate.

In the end, after intense debate, the higher-ups decided to empty a marine world and specially remodel it so the merfolk could live there temporarily.

At last the matter seemed to have come to a close, but it was far from over. After the rescued merfolk passed through the adjustment period, their memories gradually returned, and their desire to become human again grew ever stronger. Even counseling from psychologists proved useless...

Neither side that had lost the goods intended to let matters rest. One had to remember that this kind of underground trade was a vital economic pillar for the dark organization. Even if Jin Ming wanted to suppress the matter according to the prior agreement in exchange for the Ministry of State Security’s promise to wipe out Wu Jianxue and the others’ influence, it would not be so easy to accomplish.

The news of the failed transaction spread rapidly throughout the Gold Rooster Ridge base. Like a thunderclap splitting the sky, it brought the people who had been fighting to a standstill and forced them to the negotiating table.

The internal negotiations of the dark organization did not go smoothly. All sides, no longer bothering with the usual rule against forming cliques, began to attack one another openly.

The base’s original residents, represented by City Lord Jin Ming, accused Wu Jianxue and the others of incompetence, claiming the lost goods had been deliberate sabotage meant to shake the foundations of Gold Rooster Ridge and seize power when the opportunity arose.

Wu Jianxue was not to be outdone. He firmly maintained that Jin Ming had colluded with the authorities and betrayed the organization, while not uttering a word about his own intention to take over the reins.

As for the great majority who preferred to sit on the fence, most spent their time smoothing things over and trying to scrape out a bit of profit...