Chapter 107: Nearing Farewell
Translator: Pluto Editor: Tehrn
The palm-sized, white paper crane almost vanished into the sunlight when it flew up into the blue sky. Sayo only noticed it when she heard the buzzing of its wings as it circled down from mid-air.
"The paper crane is back!" she shouted excitedly, stretching out her palm. The paper crane stretched out its wing and landed on her palm as if it was alive. Her sentence caught the attention of Hai Tianqing and the others, they stopped and quickly surrounded her.
"It’s finally back. I thought that it was already damaged by the elements out there. It has nearly been two months, I was worried…"Hu Changzai blurted out ruefully as he couldn’t help feeling nervous when he thought of that possibility.
Sayo rolled her eyes at him before leaning against Hai Tianqing’s body. She pouted her lips coquettishly as she looked up at him, "Brother Hai, I wonder where your friend is. This type of paper crane usually works extremely fast, it must be due to the distance…"
"Fine! Fine! Play the recording! Quick!" B.Rabbit said as he thumped his hind foot impatiently.
After being separated from Lin Sanjiu for over two months, her companions heard her cool, collected voice once again. The paper crane could only record for a short time of two minutes. However, they did not expect that Lin Sanjiu used less than half of that time. Her message finished very quickly, leaving them looking at each other, momentarily at a loss of what to do.
"Somewhere very far away? Can’t get out? Is she locked up by someone?" Hu Changzai was the first to speak, feeling a little unsettled by her message.
"Locked up? If she is locked up, do you think she can still send this message?! She wouldn’t even tell us clearly where she is! She obviously doesn’t want us to look for her! She even told us to find for a Consular Officer without her! Bah! Who wants her to come along anyway! She thinks too highly of herself. I will go to a comfortable New World and not bring her along!" B.Rabbit was furious after he heard the recording and his veins were definitely popping under the fur of his.
"Enough. Come on, stop it." Hai Tianqing frowned, trying to ignore Sayo’s unrestrained ogling. "I guess where Xiao Jiu is, probably isn’t that safe. Or as she mentioned, it is a place where you can enter but not escape, so she doesn’t want us to know where she is exactly…"
"That’s right," Hu Changzai sighed, "B.Rabbit, if we know where she is, we would definitely go look for her. If we get trapped there and we have no visas, who knows when we will ever meet again once we are sent to random worlds. So just cut it out, we need to think about what we should do next."
"What else can you do?" Sayo interjected. Among the four of them, she was the only one who was in a good mood. She smiled widely as she clung on to Hai Tianqing’s arm, "Just as your friend said, we should go get our visas! Once you have a visa, she might be able to look for you in the future…"
Hai Tianqing quickly pulled back his arm, looking at her sternly, "If you continue touching me, you don’t have to follow us anymore. Our problem here is finding a Consular Officer."
On top of that, if they actually manage to find a Consular Officer, Hu Changzai and B.Rabbit cannot show their faces. Who knows if Puppeteer already publicized their names and faces? It would be troublesome if someone reported their whereabouts to him.
Sayo chuckled and suddenly said to Hu Changzai and B.Rabbit, "You two can enter my shell."
Even though the beautiful white house was not physically attached to Sayo, it moved forward slowly with Sayo. Once she stopped, the house stopped at the same time, some distance away from her.
"Huh, what’s going on?" Hu Changzai said as he carried B.Rabbit and entered the house cooperatively.
As she saw the door close behind him, Sayo smiled at Hai Tianqing and whispered, "Brother Hai, you have to reward me." Before he reacted, she suddenly raised her arms and shouted, "Mr. Ark! Ms Meihuan!"
Both human and rabbit in the house were shocked.
Hai Tianqing widened his eyes, puzzled— because he could not see anyone in front of them, it was still the same vast stretch of yellow sand and ruins.
However, after Sayo shouted for a few times, two people indeed appeared behind a desolated half-collapsed building.
"Who called me?"
A short fat young man who looked rather unhappy poked his head out from behind the building, he looked a little guarded. Without even asking, Hai Tianqing could tell from one look that this man was not originally from this world. There was a unique black ink marking on Sian’s forehead. It looked like an abstract drawing of a bird preparing to fly. He wore ten over earrings on one of his ears and nothing on the other.
Having a resting sad face, Sian appeared unhappy even when he spotted Sayo’s familiar face, "It’s you. No wonder you can find me immediately." He probably knew how slow Sayo was, so he walked toward the two of them impatiently as he said that.
Sayo looked behind him and questioned in surprised, "Who’s she? Where is Ms. Meihuan?"
"She spoke without thinking and nearly implicated me. Who knows where she is right now." Sian replied with the same bland expression as if he was talking about a stranger. He clearly had no intention of introducing the tall and slender woman behind him. "Hey, regarding this [sleeping bag] you gave me… How many people can recognize it other than you? If someone can find me every time I am resting, wouldn’t I die from overworking?"
"Nah, no one else." Sayo quickly smiled, "Mr. Ark, I need four visas from you."
"Umm.." Sian took in a sharp breath of air as he eyed the two people in front of him.
—
While Hai Tianqing and the rest waited anxiously for the answer from the Consular Officer, Lin Sanjiu, who was a few thousand meters below sea level, was thinking about the same thing. A fearful howl rang out and scared her.
The howl seemed to come from a person scared out of his wits, that was none other than Shen Lianqi who was still hanging on the wall, "Ah! Aghhhh! Is there anyone around! Help! Help me!"
"Splat." Lin Sanjiu threw down a fish which she was descaling and took out her [Ability Polishing Agent]. She flashed the silver light on his face and asked grumpily, "Why are you shouting? Did you have a nightmare?"
Once the light hit his face, Shen Lianqi narrowed his eyes involuntarily. He only recognized Lin Sanjiu after a few seconds, "Miss Lin?! Why...why are you here? Wait, where am I?" He looked down and saw that he was tightly bounded, he quickly complained, "Why did you tie me up?"
Lin Sanjiu wasn’t even a bit surprised by Shen Lianqi’s reaction.
After sending off the paper crane, she did not allow Shen Lianqi to touch even a drop of that Mermaid Cultivation Drink in the following two months. The first few weeks were alright but recently he had started showing signs of such bewildered behavior— it was as if whatever was possessing his mind was losing grip due to the lack of the cultivation drink. Occasionally, Shen Lianqi would even forget that he was once a merman.
But this was the first time he actually seemed lucid as if he had woken up from a long dream.
"Look at your own feet." Lin Sanjiu sat down and continued descaling the fish.
The patches of scales on Shen Lianqi’s legs have lessened by quite a bit, the gills on his cheeks were also starting to seal. However, his feet were still in a tail-like form. Thus, when he saw them, he screamed again, "Ah! My legs! My… how did it become like this? Hey?"
His words suddenly became sluggish.
"So, you remembered?" Lin Sanjiu threw him a sidelong glance.
Shen Lianqi’s face instantly turned pale green, his lips even started to tremble. He was completely different from his past optimistic and carefree merman self. "How did I… I become a merman?"
Apparently, the effects of the Mermaid Cultivation Drink was finally wearing off. Lin Sanjiu guessed that he would probably remember everything soon so she released him from the bindings. He immediately slid to the floor probably because his limbs were too numb from being tied up for such a long time.
"How do you feel now?" Lin Sanjiu asked, feeling slightly curious.
Shen Lianqi was in a bewildered daze. He seemed to be at a loss after his memories started flooding back to him. After quite a long time, he responded, muttering, "It feels like I’m watching a movie. I can still remember what happened… but it is like I’m watching a documentary...Uh, wait?"
His face suddenly turned white and he looked on the verge of vomiting, " What are those three bloated, rotting things? Duoluozhongs? Corpses? Ah, I actually use this hand to hold that dead female arm?"
[This is how a normal person would react.] Lin Sanjiu was pleased to see that but an impish thought suddenly crossed her mind, "You didn’t only hold her arm, you were even quite fond of her. I apologize for breaking up your relationship."
Shen Lianqi was almost about to cry. This feeling was like he had woken up to find that he had eaten a pile of shit when he was sleepwalking. It was so disgusting that he didn’t know how to process it.
After a long time, he gradually calmed down. He wiped his face before he spoke to Lin Sanjiu in a serious tone, "Miss Lin, you saved my life and I don’t know how to return the favor. But I’m indebted to you, I won’t forget this. Don’t worry. In the future, if you need help, you just have to tell me and I’ll definitely…"
"Alright, alright. I didn’t really do much." Lin Sanjiu felt rather embarrassed by his display of gratitude so she wanted to change the subject quickly, "You should be hungry, right? I just caught a fish. We can eat it together."
Shen Lianqi looked at the fish and his face turned pale again, "Ugh… Are we going to eat…that?"
"What’s wrong?"
"That looks quite...quite gross…"
Gross was really an understatement. If Lin Sanjiu didn’t identify it as a fish, he would never have thought that it was a fish.
"Don’t be so squeamish," Lin Sanjiu shook the fish in her hand, a dozen legs around its belly started swaying with the momentum. "You have been eating this for the past two months."
Just when he felt his gastric juice rushing toward his throat, he stopped when he suddenly realized something. His nausea even abated. "Miss Lin, how long have we stayed at the bottom of the ocean?"
"It is too dark here. I can’t tell you the exact number of days. But I think it could be around three months."
Three months was her estimation from the day she saw the paper crane.
Shen Lianqi looked upward, trying to count the number of days. After a long time, he suddenly exclaimed, "Ah!"
"What?" Lin Sanjiu asked. Seeing him constantly frightened and flustered after he turned back to human, she felt, in some sense, that he was a little more affable when he was a merman.
"It is almost time…" Shen Lianqi frowned as she looked at her, his face was still a little pale, "I would probably leave this world tomorrow night. Miss Lin, it should be about time for you too?"
Lin Sanjiu took quite a while before she understood what he meant.