The Little Mermaid Fell for the Jiaoren 25p1

Chapter 25 p1: Ten Billion

Si Jisheng tapped the table lightly twice. The system, receiving the instruction, automatically turned on the lights. His cold voice was normal as he spoke, “Is the research institute acting up again?”

The adjutant walked in and stood before the desk, saying strangely, “Weren’t all the gene data related to you in the research institute destroyed before? How can a Jiaoren suddenly appear out of thin air now?”

Logically, it should have been impossible for the research institute to create a new Jiaoren through human experiments.

The adjutant asked tentatively, “Could it be the one from before?”

He couldn’t help but think of three years ago, when the military had discovered that the research institute had secretly created a Jiaoren. When they wanted to search for the Jiaoren’s whereabouts, they were irrefutably rejected by the Marshal.

To this day, the military had no news about the Jiaoren that the Council of Elders and the research institute had created by stealing the Marshal’s genes. As a result, the adjutant had been on tenterhooks all these years, afraid that the research institute would secretly use this Jiaoren to develop a new drug that was detrimental to the Marshal.

Just like on the battlefield back then, when he was forced to go berserk and lose his reason. That was a tragedy that had taken the Marshal three years to recover from, and the military still spoke of it in hushed tones.

Such a failed experiment that could very well be detrimental to the Marshal, of course, the sooner it disappeared, the better. Every extra day it lived was a hidden danger.

Si Jisheng paused for a moment, then asked with a normal expression, “Where was it captured?”

The adjutant replied, “It is said that the skull was on a backward, primitive, fringe planet.”

“A planet that is all ocean.”

His silver eyes instantly narrowed. After Si Jisheng nodded, the adjutant immediately opened his comm and presented it.

The blue screen clearly displayed a bewildered and helpless face.

Golden hair and blue eyes.

Si Jisheng’s breath instantly hitched. His silver eyes narrowed, and his congested heart seemed to have stopped beating. The cold blood seemed to have solidified in his blocked vessels.

The next moment, the monitoring system in the treatment room suddenly sounded a deafening alarm, sharp and piercing. The language system, which had only recovered after three years of treatment, seemed to be on the verge of crashing again amidst the incessant “beep, beep—” sounds.

In the chaotic noise, many memories wrapped around him like a dense, airtight net, almost suffocating him. The last memory was of the four cold words, “end the deal.”

It came to an abrupt end.

Si Jisheng closed his eyes, and only then did the external sounds enter his ears. It was the adjutant’s panicked cry, “Activate the treatment pod immediately—”

His vocal cords seemed to have been ground to a halt by gravel. Si Jisheng’s voice instantly became low and hoarse. “No need.”

The special magnetic field in the treatment room suppressed his mental sea again. Si Jisheng’s cold gaze swept over the skull logo in the live stream room. “Have the investigation team come over and confirm the skull’s real-time location.”

·

The camera showed a deep blue underwater world. Danger was breeding in the silence. The auction item huddled in a corner, small and weak, but each giant great white shark was ten times its size. And there was not just one, but a full ten of them.

An absolute crushing advantage in terms of size and numbers.

If the target of the great white sharks’ ambush was not an alien, the bullet comments would definitely be on the edge of their seats, or they would have simply called the Interstellar Alliance Police for rescue.

But at this moment, the bullet comments were a scene of cold-blooded revelry.

“The organizer has really gone all out. These great white sharks should also be aliens in their atavistic form, right? That’s not easy to find.”

“They’re definitely aliens. The wild ones have probably all been rounded up by the environmental protection bureau.”

“Aliens in their atavistic form attack indiscriminately. They’re even more terrifying than the wild ones. I’m getting excited!”

“No one’s going to be so clueless as to start bidding and ruin everyone’s fun, right?”

“How could that be? Everyone knows the rules.”

…

There was an unwritten rule at the dark web auctions.

The host also issued an announcement at this time: [Starting bid is one billion. Each bid must be no less than one hundred million. The auction warm-up begins. When the first bidder appears, the warm-up show will end.]

The warm-up show was to show whether this auction item was worth the price. And the veterans all knew that if they started bidding before the auction item had shown its strength, the warm-up show would immediately end.

Bidding without knowing the bottom line would not only increase the possibility of their own losses, but also spoil everyone’s fun.

The price of ten billion was too high, and no one dared to bid recklessly and bear the consequences.

Therefore, although the number of bidders at the bottom of the live stream room quickly exceeded “100,” no one bid on top of the ten billion, interrupting the auction’s warm-up.

When the great white sharks surrounded the corner, the bullet comments reached their peak. And Deng Xi, who had been curled up in a ball, closing his eyes to rest due to his weakness and discomfort, finally belatedly sensed the danger.

A merman’s sensitivity to crisis was etched into their instincts.

But because of the excessive tranquilizer in his body, Deng Xi had only just sluggishly opened his eyes.

The moment he saw clearly, a chill ran down Deng Xi’s spine. His already low-temperature blood seemed to have turned to ice in an instant. His mind went blank, his face was drained of all color, and he was so panicked and afraid that even his buzzing gills stopped trembling.

That was the fear of a fragile merman at the bottom of the ocean’s food chain for the terrifying great white sharks, which could look down on all other species in the sea. It was a fear that was naturally etched into his bones.

Mermen were more fragile than crystal. Their naturally keen sense of crisis was also a mechanism to help them escape when they encountered other species in the sea.

The fear that rose from Deng Xi’s soul came from the inheritance of his species. It was the fear of extinction that he had felt when he had hatched from his merman egg on this blue planet of the sea, only to find that he was the only one left in the entire world.

He wanted to escape.

But there was no space to escape.

Deng Xi could only helplessly curl up in a corner, hugging his tail tightly, and burying his head in it as if to escape.

Don’t eat me.

Don’t eat me.

The scent in the water was the foul smell of blood on the serrated teeth of great white sharks, overwhelmingly salty and metallic. Ten gaping maws were about to swallow Deng Xi. In front of these great white sharks, he was like a tiny, weak ant, so fragile he could be crushed with a single step, not even enough to get stuck in their teeth.

Tears overflowed from the corners of Deng Xi’s eyes, but they silently drowned in the seawater.

But no one cared about Deng Xi’s panic.

The bullet comments urged, clamored, and questioned why this Jiaoren was not standing up to fight back, to tear these great white sharks apart with his bare hands.

No one knew.

Deng Xi was just a weak little merman. He was so fragile that a single careless mistake could cause him to be annihilated and disappear in the long river of time.

Not some alien, not some Jiaoren.

The last merman in the entire galaxy, the only one, the most precious one.

Deng Xi’s body was trembling nonstop. Tears flowed from his blue eyes, drop by drop. No one could see these tears that had dissolved into the seawater.

Deng Xi tried his best to overcome the fear in his heart.

Don’t cry.

He could still sing.

He didn’t even need to sing, just make a sound, just a little bit. Even in the water, a merman’s special ability could be transmitted through sound waves.

Deng Xi opened his mouth without a sound.

No sound.

Not a single sound.

The dose of tranquilizer for a Jiaoren was more than ten times the normal dose for a fragile merman. They had made Deng Xi’s brain extremely sluggish, and his speech center could not function.

It had made a merman who was born to love singing unable to make any sound, not even a tiny bit.

Deng Xi fell into a bottomless despair.

He had not yet found the little mute, but he was about to die first.

Deng Xi was completely surrounded by the sharks.

He gripped the electronic lock ring on his neck so tightly that his fingertips turned white. The heavy restraint had created a red mark, and the throat of fate seemed to have been choked as well. The feeling of suffocation was like a shadow.

But Deng Xi couldn’t help but still grip it tightly.

He didn’t even have the ability to protect himself now.

He was so scared that he had even lost track of time. Had a minute passed, or two?

A great white shark could kill a living creature in a few seconds. And the result of ten of them attacking at once would be Deng Xi being torn to pieces in an instant.

But he was still alive.

Deng Xi couldn’t help but quiet the trembling of his gills. The little ostrich, curled up in a ball in the water, fearfully peeked through his fingers, cautiously observing his surroundings.

The ten great white sharks were leisurely swaying their tails, maintaining their encirclement, staring at Deng Xi, but they did not take another step closer.

Why?

Deng Xi lowered his hands in a daze.

Why hadn’t they attacked him?

Deng Xi relaxed his guard.

But the bullet comments once again expressed their dissatisfaction.

“What’s the meaning of this? Is this a setup?”

“Don’t tell me they’re playing around? They’re not willing to let this ten billion go to waste?”

“I’m out, I’m out, it’s all an act.”

…