The sailors lowered their nets over both sides of the ship, chanting strange incantations under their breath.
Bai Liu caught fragments—something about the Siren King's blessing. Jerf stood at the rail, peering down with a wild, feverish expression. "They're praying to the Siren King, begging him to grant them a bountiful catch of mermaids."
No sooner had Jerf spoken than the sailors, one by one, gripped the edges of the nets and leapt overboard. Lucy shrieked in terror, "What are they doing?! Weren't they supposed to be fishing for mermaids? Why are they jumping in themselves?!"
Bai Liu's expression was calm. "This is how they fish for mermaids."
After a long, long while, a massive net slowly surfaced, tangled with severed limbs and fish tails—over a dozen mermaids, their bodies mangled and broken, caught in the mesh, all unmistakably dead, their tails rotting and clinging to the net.
These mermaids resembled discarded dolls in a rubbish heap, twisted into grotesque postures, their eyes wide open in death, staring up at the people on deck, faces frozen in terror or rage, bodies covered in bite marks, as if they'd been savaged by some monstrous deep-sea predator before being tossed into the net.
Under the harsh glare of the searchlights, Bai Liu studied the shattered faces of the "mermaids," his breath growing shallow.
Each face was identical to those of the twelve missing tourists from the newspaper.
On deck, the sailors whispered gleefully:
"They'll be made into wax figures for the museum…"
"But only four wax figures will be displayed tonight, since only four tourists arrived. What about the extra mermaids?"
"Store them in the hold for now. We can have a little taste ourselves…"
The freshly caught mermaids were quickly taken away, destination unknown.
Bai Liu and the other three tourists were served some of the ordinary sea fish caught alongside the mermaids. The fish was prepared and brought to their table.
Yet even these fish seemed tainted by the mermaids' essence, their flavor disturbingly strange.
The other three fell upon the fish with ravenous abandon, sucking their fingers and devouring the flesh with wild delight.
Sashimi was pushed to the center of the table, and Lucy, clutching a wet fish head, gnawed at it so quickly that strands of her own hair were caught between her teeth.
She pulled the oily hair from her mouth and smiled at Bai Liu. "Why aren't you eating, Bai Liu? The fish is so fresh tonight."
The dead, white eyes of the fish head in her hand stared unblinking at Bai Liu.
Andre gnawed on a fish tail, his teeth now sharp and jagged. He had become almost entirely piscine—his eyes had migrated to the sides of his head, his nose flattened, and viscous drool dripped from his grotesquely wide mouth.
Jerf, still barely clinging to reason, sliced open a fish belly with his fork, but his movements grew ever more frantic, shoveling meat into his mouth with mechanical urgency.
The sailors watched Bai Liu, forcing a plate of fish in front of him, their smiles twisted. "If you don't eat the fresh fish, Mr. Bai, your journey here will have been for nothing."
Bai Liu wanted to refuse, but a prompt flashed before him:
[Mission Hint: If you do not eat the fish offered by the sailors, the mermaid fishing event will be considered a failure.]
Bai Liu paused for two seconds, then took a bite.
The fish tasted at first of strange, sour rot, but as it slid down his throat, it transformed into the familiar sweetness of fresh seafood.
Suddenly, all the fish before him seemed to radiate an uncanny allure. Even Bai Liu, who had never been gluttonous, felt an almost uncontrollable urge to gorge himself.
The sailors, satisfied, left him in peace.
Bai Liu struggled to keep his mind clear, refusing to look at the fish, rising to stand at the ship's rail, letting the sea wind wash over him, breathing in the metallic scent of the coin at his chest.
The smell of money steadied him.
He could deduce a few things now.
After the Siren King was dredged up, he fell into a deep sleep, losing his power over these waters. Now, those who died here would be reborn as merfolk, returning to the world of the living—a legend, but the twelve mermaid corpses just hauled up proved its truth.
Those who died here truly could become mermaids.
But why did this remote patch of sea yield so many merfolk—enough to fill the entire wax museum and more? Why were there so many dead?
When Bai Liu saw the faces of the twelve tourists among the mermaids, he finally understood.
This was a dumping ground for corpses.
The missing tourists' bodies had all been thrown into these waters, then fished up by the sailors as if they were some rare catch, made into mermaids, and poured into wax.
But who was killing the tourists?
Bai Liu had a suspicion. This was a town of thieves; most missing tourists had also lost their valuables. The sheer number of robbery-disappearance cases in the newspapers made it clear—Siren Town was anything but innocent.
The town's wealth came not from tourism, but from the robberies that tourism enabled.
What better prey than travelers from afar?
In such a ruthless place, with so many dead tourists, Bai Liu suspected they were murdered for their possessions, their bodies dumped at sea to be reborn as mermaids—a spectacle to lure more tourists, and thus more victims.
No wonder the caretaker had said there could be no mermaid fishing without tourists. Every mermaid caught was a dead visitor.
And the mayor—so "devoted" to his people.
To boost the economy and shield the townsfolk from prosecution, to expand the "mermaid tourism industry," Bai Liu had no doubt the mayor would have the mermaids—these corpses—made into wax figures for the museum, or simply let the townsfolk dispose of them.
Of course the police would never find a body; they'd all been processed and sealed in wax.
The mermaid wax figures were filled with the corpses of former tourists, their ghosts trapped within, transformed into monsters bent on vengeance, cursing the townsfolk by hatching and turning them into amulets.
The mutated townsfolk became more and more like fish, while the mermaid wax figures took on human forms—their identities exchanged.
Thus, the hold full of amulets was actually the townsfolk of Siren Town, while the sailors prowling the ship were the ghosts of those who had died at sea—no longer human, but monsters.
By this logic, one thing was missing.
The mermaid wax figures had three forms: pupa, cocoon, butterfly. But by the laws of metamorphosis, there should be a fourth: the larva, the most numerous and fragile stage.
And the larva…
Bai Liu slowly pressed a hand to his stomach. The piece of fish he'd just eaten seemed to writhe slickly against his gut. He looked at his fingers, now tinged with a bluish pallor, and the faint shimmer of scales on his skin. He could feel an itch along his jaw, as if gills were about to sprout.
He turned to see his three companions still devouring the fish, their humanity nearly gone—especially Andre.
Andre was sprawled over the table, shoveling food into his mouth with animal ferocity, his hair now a crown of bony spines, his nose covered in dark green scales.
[Warning: Player Bai Liu is entering a mutation state. Sanity is dropping. Please distinguish between game reality and hallucination.]
Bai Liu realized: this was the final monster in the book, the last form of the mermaid wax figure—the larva.
Any tourist who entered Siren Town, or any resident who failed to leave, would be mutated into this: the weakest, most easily slaughtered and consumed form.
And Bai Liu was now a mermaid wax figure in its most vulnerable state—the larva.
["Siren Town Monster Book" updated—Mermaid (4/4)]
[Monster Name: Mermaid (Larva State)]
[Weakness: ??? (Unexplored)]
[Attack Method: ??? (Unexplored)]
[All pages of the "Siren Town Monster Book" have been unlocked. Please continue to explore the missing details.]
Andre wiped the rotting flesh from his lips and shoved the table away. His mouth had become a gaping maw lined with needle-like teeth, stretching from ear to ear like a clown's, bloodied fish meat spilling as he spoke. "Bai Liu, do you remember our wager?"
Bai Liu, drawn by the peculiar stench radiating from Andre, blinked slowly. "I remember. We're to spend the night on the ship, aren't we?"
Andre's grin split his face to the nape of his neck. He extended a long tongue, licking the scraps from his cheek. "Why don't we spend the night right here, in this sea of mermaids?"