Chapter 96: Big Fish
Sending things to dead people?
Drake’s eyebrows twitched in surprise, his nostrils slightly flared, and his throat felt somewhat clogged as he said: “Your brother… died?”
“Mm, he was in a car accident last year…”
“Can you send things to dead people from here?”
The boy nodded and said seriously: “The things I leave here will eventually be sent out.”
Hearing this, Drake was stunned, then chuckled helplessly. “I see. It seems I can try sending some things in the future too.”
As he spoke, Drake glanced at the things the boy wanted to “send out.” “The things you’re sending to your brother seem pretty precious. Are you really okay with it?”
The boy showed some hesitation but still gritted his teeth and nodded. “These are his favorites, and they’re things I’ve already read and played with. Although I’m a bit reluctant, if it’s for my brother… I’m willing.”
Drake smiled faintly. In his view, this was a somewhat naive but very kind boy, so to protect this boy’s pure thoughts, he decided not to expose the cruel truth.
After bidding farewell to the boy, Drake walked along the road, looking for an interesting breakfast shop while rethinking everything.
“It seems that tunnel isn’t anything special. I should reorganize everything again when I get back. Mm, tonight I need to set up a camera to record, tie myself up, and set up some mechanism…” Drake thought. To prevent himself from entering a “sleepwalking” state and walking into the sea again, he had to prepare something.
After watching Drake walk away, the boy turned back. He looked at the box of treasures at the tunnel entrance, closed his eyes, and murmured a serious prayer: “Bro, the big treasures you loved most in life, I’ve sent them to you. I hope you like them.”
After silently praying in place for ten seconds, the boy opened his eyes and suddenly smiled knowingly.
That box of treasures had indeed been sent away again.
After eating breakfast, before returning to the hotel, Drake first went to a nearby electronics mall and supermarket to make some purchases. Back at the hotel, he began setting up the recording equipment placement points and installing a trigger “wake-up” mechanism. If he sleepwalked again tonight, the mechanism would wake him up in time.
After doing all this, Drake used his mysterious investigator identity to have the hotel pull up the hotel surveillance recording of himself after he fell asleep last night. He wanted to see what his “sleepwalking” state was really like.
The hotel was very cooperative. After verifying Drake’s identity, they immediately granted access, allowing him to go to the security room to view the surveillance.
Upon checking, Drake was surprised to discover that he had indeed walked out of the hotel room at around 3 a.m. today as if sleepwalking, and left the hotel premises within the next ten minutes.
Drake believed his sleepwalking was influenced by an anomaly. He had never had sleepwalking symptoms from childhood to adulthood. Before coming to Shenzhou, his sleep had always been very stable. The sleepwalking started after arriving in Shenzhou, and on the second day at that.
“What exactly is causing it?” Drake reviewed his case analysis again, feeling a headache coming on. At the same time, since he was now caught up in it, he felt a sense of urgency and unease in his heart.
Real-life detectives don’t have any superpowers or lucky buffs. They are also targeted as prey by the “culprit,” not to mention that the “culprit” remains unidentified, and he had no clues at all.
Drake took a few drags on his cigarette to ease his anxious emotions. In his other hand, he held his mobile phone, with the screen stopped at the dialing interface for a string of numbers. That string of numbers was left by the contact person for this mission, most likely the personal contact number of someone from the mysterious group.
Of course, he actually knew that the best way to solve his current problem was to seek help from Shenzhou Region’s professional organization, the mysterious group, but he didn’t want to do that.
He had to admit he was a bit arrogant, firmly believing he could handle everything. He had reason to be so confident; at least from childhood to adulthood, he had basically solved problems independently.
Additionally, he loved freedom, the kind that walked the gray line. So the thought of possibly facing personal restrictions made him unwilling to inform the mysterious group of his situation.
Drake didn’t make the decision to dial even after finishing one cigarette. He then directly locked the screen, prepared to go to bed and sleep. Before sleeping, he tied himself, the quilt, and the bed with circle after circle of black rubber straps. He also put shackles on one hand, with the other end locked to a post at the head of the bed.
After making all preparations, Drake slowly fell asleep.
Daydreaming, Drake gradually lost his self-consciousness and cognition, forgot that he was in slumber, and gradually entered a dream.
In the dream, Drake heard the call from daytime. The voice was still so low and full of pleading emotion. He thought sluggishly.
Who is calling me?
Why is she calling so sadly, so pitifully?
Is she begging for my help? Or for my mercy… or forgiveness?
Drake considered himself something of a romantic veteran. As a detective, a profession that constantly walked the gray line, plus he wasn’t one to follow rules, but rather loved challenges. Spending a wonderful night with various types of women from red-light district bars was also a challenge for him, so he usually played quite freely.
But though he walked through the flowers, no leaf clung to him. He didn’t remember ever truly falling for any woman, nor any woman being so dependent on him…
To find the owner of the voice, Drake followed the sound in the dream. He walked across an endless desert, with dark clouds covering the sky and yellow sand flying. After walking who knows how long, he suddenly smelled the salty sea breeze.
Drake stopped on a sand dune, a surge of throbbing emotions welling up in his heart. His rapid breathing carried a bit of panic. He saw the sea in the distance, and a terrifying storm at sea was brewing on the sea, constantly approaching his side.
Lightning and thunder, storm tsunami… no matter which, for Drake, this insignificant human, he was powerless to resist.
Drake turned to run, but looking back, he saw a pair of bright, bulb-like swollen eyes almost bursting from their sockets. A deep green humanoid creature covered in scales and fin-like organs stood face-to-face with him, eye-to-eye, staring at each other.
Staring into such lifeless, stiff eyes, Drake only felt a wave of fear surging into his mind. Bizarre images were madly squeezing his reason, his soul seeming to be assimilated by this pale, powerless gaze.
He stepped back, away from what seemed like a merman-like monster from legends. However, his fear didn’t lessen at all. With a clearer view, an even greater terror appeared before him. Behind him, groups of ferociously-faced mermen stood on the sand dune. Their sturdy bodies stretched the fabric of their clothes, sharp fin-like organs tearing through the clothes. They seemed to lack independent consciousness, walking step by step past him, ignoring him, heading toward the stormy beach behind him.
Every merman was opening its mouth, emitting obscure, incomprehensible whispers and roars. Their hands cooperated with their upper bodies in some ritual prayer pose, praying something while walking.
Drake suddenly realized they might really be worshiping something. He couldn’t help turning back to look toward the sea, but this time, seeing the scene at sea, he deeply regretted his rash action, as if his soul was about to scatter in an instant.
On the vast, oppressive sea, water met sky, dark clouds intimately contacted the tsunami. Vaguely, a giant crouched harmful beast piercing the sky was carrying lightning dark clouds and earthquake tsunami, stepping toward here. The huge harmful beast’s face surprisingly resembled the mermen passing by beside him, as if proclaiming that these mermen were its descendants or subjects.
This time, Drake turned without hesitation to flee, but as he took one step, he felt resistance on his left hand. Stunned, he looked back and saw two mermen with humanoid female features gripping his left arm wrist with their webbed hands, while other mermen looked at him blankly, as if puzzled why he wanted to escape this place.
Drake went mad trying to break free from the restraint, to escape these mentally abnormal merman madmen.
That giant harmful beast was approaching, the storm tsunami was closing in. They would devour everything, especially tender-fleshed, mentally vulnerable humans like him.
Drake gritted his teeth, yanking his arm hard. But these female mermen were incredibly strong. Their hands with claws and hard scales rubbed his wrist, producing burning pain. The harder he pulled, the stronger the pain.
Breathing rapidly, the shaking grew closer, the giant beast’s gasps and the sounds of storm and tsunami also drew nearer, until a huge dark shadow blotted out the sky and earth, completely covering his tiny shadow.
Drake looked back in terror, only to see the sky-obscuring harmful beast pushing massive waves forward. Its gaze turned downward, fixating on him, this outsider.
Boom!
Seawater crashed down like a mountain, shattering his soul and spirit into pieces, crushing his remaining reason completely.
Just as he thought he would slumber under this damp, cold ocean, in the black waters, he saw a scaly merman arm reaching toward him. On the verge of suffocation, he gripped it purely by survival instinct. The owner of that hand responded, gripping his hand and taking him away.
Drake felt some regret. He thought he shouldn’t have reached out that arm. These mermen worshiping that giant harmful beast shouldn’t aid him.
The merman grabbing his arm now wouldn’t take him to the surface, but dive with him into the extremely deep sea trench at the seabed, into the world where only they mermen could survive…
However, soon, Drake felt several beams of light coming from above his head. With his consciousness fading, he looked up and realized the merman taking him away wasn’t diving into the abyss as he thought, but swimming toward the surface.
“Gah!” Drake startled awake from the dream, but as his whole body tried to spring up from the bed, a powerful restraint bounced him right back, his raised head slamming heavily back onto the pillow.
Looking at the familiar environment around him, the fear and dream memories gradually faded. As his mind cleared, he suddenly let out a long breath, lying quietly on the bed, greedily breathing the room’s air, feeling the intimate contact of his skin with the bed quilt fabric.
“It was a dream.” Drake pulled his hand out from under the covers, wiped the cold sweat streaming down his forehead to the back of his head, feeling as if he’d just come back from getting drenched in rain.
“Hiss.” Soon, Drake felt pain in his left hand. Looking up, he discovered his left hand, shackled, was covered in blood, scraped into bloody flesh wounds along the shackles’ outline.
Helplessly, he had to get up immediately to treat the wound. Drake unlocked the shackles, removed the bed restraints, got out of bed bypassing the mechanism, sat at the desk, took out the medicine box and mineral water from the cabinet, preparing to properly bandage his wrist.
He rinsed his wrist—partly scabbed, partly still bleeding—with mineral water, grimacing in pain.
Once the wound was cleaned, Drake finally saw its appearance and instantly went stiff all over.
Drake swallowed, tremblingly took tweezers from the medicine box, slowly inserted them into the wound. After a face twisted in pain, he successively clamped out three bluish-black, semi-transparent, regular small flake-like objects from the wound.
Fish scales…
“Mermaid disease?” After a long database search, Yu Lianyun finally found text information in the branch organization database related to the female student’s abnormal phenomenon.
About 500 years ago, roughly during the Zhu Ming period, there was a secluded island on the sea boundary under Liuhua Port’s jurisdiction at the time. The secluded island had a small town, and one day the small town suddenly broke out with a terrifying epidemic of unknown cause.
Anyone infected with the epidemic would gradually lose their human form, turning into mermaids covered in fish-like features and extremely savage in temperament. But only a minority of humans could fully transform into mermaids; most died before completing the transformation because their bodies couldn’t withstand the changes.
The initial symptoms of mermaid disease were coughing blood, with the mouth inexplicably rotting, indicating the patient’s vocal cords were transforming into those of a mermaid. In the mid-stage of mermaid disease, the patient would nearly lose their normal voice, and could emit strange fish chirps.
Further along, the patient’s lower body would slowly fuse together, leg hair falling out, replaced by fine dense scales and various fin-like organs.
Ultimately, the end-stage of mermaid disease was either death or turning into a inhuman humanoid beast.
“Could she have mermaid disease?” Yu Lianyun couldn’t help guessing. “Then were the other victims of mysterious disappearances also patients of mermaid disease?”
Please collect and vote or whatever.
