Chapter 24#

The Innocent and Naive Fool#

While inspecting the wounds, Lin Xiaodong accidentally pulled at the gash on Gu Xi’s abdomen.

The pain caused the unconscious man to let out a muffled groan and wake up. But presumably not yet fully conscious of his surroundings, the man struggled to lift his head and gave him a somewhat dazed look.

“…Who are you?”

His voice was hoarse. His dark eyes seemed flawless, but Lin Xiaodong, who knew him too well, could see at a glance the deep-seated vigilance and the hint of bewildered confusion hidden beneath the man’s calm expression.

Merfolk couldn’t speak—or rather, they had their own unique language. Just as dolphins communicate with ultrasonic waves that humans cannot hear, merfolk could only be heard by the normal human ear when they sang.

So Lin Xiaodong opened his mouth, then closed it again, and began to work hard making various gestures with his hands.

Gu Xi was silent for a moment.

“You can’t speak?” He stared at the silver tail behind Lin Xiaodong and asked in a low voice, “Fine, I’ll ask the questions. You just need to nod or shake your head. Is that okay?”

Lin Xiaodong nodded with a face full of “silly-sweet” innocence, keeping firmly in mind the fact that he was a fool.

“Do you live here alone?”

Nod.

“Have you seen any other humans besides me?”

Shake head.

After asking these two questions, Gu Xi took two deep breaths. His tightly knit brows and pale face indicated he was in a very bad state. Lin Xiaodong thought to himself: I know you’re tough, but you should talk less, old man. Otherwise, if you really collapse, I’ll be crushed into sashimi.

System: “You seem quite concerned about him.”

“Of course, a day as a couple means a hundred days of grace,” Lin Xiaodong said, glancing at Gu Xi’s left hand.

On the man’s ring finger, he wore a black ring made of an unknown metallic material.

“Scram.” He let go with an expressionless face, allowing a weak-legged Gu Xi to tumble to the ground.

System: “Didn’t you just say something about ‘a day as a couple’…?”

“That’s ‘husband and wife are birds of the same forest, but they fly separately when disaster strikes,’” Lin Xiaodong said plausibly.

System: “…………”

Gu Xi propped himself up on the ground, gritting his teeth as he slowly rose. Looking up, he saw the merman’s clear eyes filled with innocence and kindness (System: Are you sure?).

The man’s expression was briefly startled, and his original suspicion was immediately discounted by seventy percent. He thought he had been too heavy, causing Lin Xiaodong to lose his footing and fall.

“One last question,” he said, pausing to catch his breath before stating the most earth-shaking thing in the flattest tone, “I have amnesia. Do you know who I am?”

Lin Xiaodong stared at him for a full ten seconds.

Finally, he silently shook his head.

Gu Xi wanted to say something more, but a puff of thick smoke wafting from behind interrupted him.

The two turned their heads almost simultaneously. They saw the escape pod, which had been mostly destroyed upon landing, suddenly self-combust. Electrical sparks crackled along the exposed wires, accompanied by a heavy burnt smell drifting with the wind. It looked like it wouldn’t hold much longer.

Lin Xiaodong’s pupils contracted: Damn, I actually forgot about this part!

“Let’s go!”

The man decided instantly. Lin Xiaodong didn’t need him to say it; he knew the situation was bad. Grabbing Gu Xi’s hand, he ran as fast as he could toward Garan Lake. But with one of them walking on a tail and the other being heavily injured, it was obvious they couldn’t run very fast.

Before long, the fire caught up.

Halfway there, Gu Xi, unfamiliar with the terrain, tripped over a piece of garbage. The moment he hit the ground, his face turned deathly pale. clutching his abdomen, he coughed twice and said to Lin Xiaodong in a raspy voice: “You go first. Leave me.”

Lin Xiaodong shook his head frantically.

If Gu Xi really died here, when the military people arrived, he wouldn’t be able to explain himself even if he had a thousand mouths!

Furthermore, Lin Xiaodong didn’t want him to die. The little merman turned back without hesitation, propped up the man’s arm, and dragged him forward stumbling.

Before they had walked even a hundred meters, a huge explosion sounded behind them.

Tongues of fire instantly spread in all directions along the garbage heaps, looking as if they were about to pounce!

Gu Xi looked at the merman beside him, who was already drenched in sweat yet still gritting his teeth and persisting. A strange feeling rose in his heart. He lowered his eyes and said nothing more, just gripped Lin Xiaodong’s arm tightly, squeezed out the last bit of strength from his weak body, and quickened his pace.

Between Garan Lake and the garbage mountain was a vast, barren clearing. Lin Xiaodong knew they would be safe as long as they reached it before the fire caught them. However, this short distance of less than eight hundred meters felt endlessly long to them now.

He could even feel the rapidly soaring temperature from behind. Waves of heat rolled from the ground, scorched by the flames, almost scalding a layer of skin off his delicate merman tail.

But Lin Xiaodong wasn’t the delicate type. He didn’t even let out a whimper, enduring the pain to forcefully drag Gu Xi onto the clearing. Then, letting out a long sigh, he slumped down beside him.

The raging fire turned half the sky red. The two disheveled figures looked at each other and burst into laughter simultaneously.

Gu Xi only laughed a few times before knitting his brows as he pulled at his wound. He relaxed his tense nerves, looking at the merman’s dirty face and a smile brighter than the most brilliant firelight. His gaze softened imperceptibly.

“Was that the aircraft I came in?” he asked.

Seeing Lin Xiaodong nod, Gu Xi silently withdrew his gaze, staring at the thick smoke blotting out the distant sky, thinking about God knows what.

Lin Xiaodong put himself in the man’s shoes. Indeed, knowing nothing, waking up to find himself lying in a garbage heap, and having the only escape pod that might hold clues to his identity burned to a crisp—anyone would be depressed.

He shifted his tail and gave the man’s shoulder a comforting pat.

“I’m fine,” Gu Xi said softly. “Thank you. Do you have a name?”

Good question.

Merfolk didn’t have names. Because of their sparse population, they hadn’t formed complex social hierarchies; they had no need for names to distinguish one another. So Lin Xiaodong thought for a moment and eventually mouthed his real name to him.

“Xiao… Dong?” Gu Xi reacted quickly. “Is it the ‘Dong’ for winter?”

Lin Xiaodong nodded.

“That’s nice,” Gu Xi said in a low voice. “I like winter best too.”

Although he had forgotten his identity and past, he still possessed basic common sense. After resting for a while, the man stood up and looked toward Garan Lake, intending to head there, but was stopped by the little merman blocking his path.

“I can’t go?” He frowned, puzzled. “Why?”

Because that is the sacred land of the merfolk, and humans are not permitted to enter, Lin Xiaodong thought.

In addition to the plot of the original world line, the System also provided some supporting information about this world. The data showed that no matter what kind of human they were, as long as they didn’t obtain the sincere recognition of a merman, they could not get within a single step of Garan Lake.

So thus far, the only human to have ever witnessed its true appearance was the Crown Prince, Lu Xing.

He was also the first discoverer of the Merman Planet.

After a series of gesticulating and hand-waving, Gu Xi finally understood the general situation. He respected the merman culture, but it was troublesome that Lin Xiaodong could never communicate properly with him.

“Can you really not speak?”

Lin Xiaodong cleared his throat and told him in a singing tone: “I can, but it has to be like this.”

The merman’s voice was as beautiful as celestial music. Even Gu Xi couldn’t help but daze off for a moment.

Fatigue and pain rushed through his body like a tide. He struggled to stay conscious for a moment, but soon fell back into a deep sleep.

“…No way, does my voice have a hypnotic effect?”

Lin Xiaodong looked at him in surprise.

But his gaze shifted, noticing the dampness on the man’s black uniform. He immediately reached out to feel it—sure enough, it was soaked with blood.

After being nearly burned to death, is he going to die of blood loss now? He let out a helpless sigh and returned to the lakeside. Under the System’s guidance, he picked some medicinal herbs capable of reducing inflammation and stopping bleeding, preparing to crush them and apply them to the wounds.

Sensing external movement, a strong sense of vigilance woke Gu Xi from his slumber.

But before the man could rise, his pupils constricted to pinpoints because of the current situation.

The silver-tailed merman had his head down, looking over his naked torso with a serious expression as if he were conducting academic research. One hand was even wandering over his abdomen, seemingly applying some sort of ointment. The black military uniform he had been wearing was folded and placed to the side, and along with the white shirt inside, it had all been stripped clean.

The faint fragrance of grass and wood wafted over. Gu Xi’s muscles tensed, and his eyes flickered rapidly.

But he didn’t push Lin Xiaodong away.

Therefore, Lin Xiaodong was able to brazenly “inspect” the man’s body from top to bottom under the guise of applying medicine.

“The abs are even more pronounced than before,” he said solemnly. “Not bad. People from the military really are different.”

System: “Shameless.”

Lin Xiaodong: “I’m just observing if he has any other wounds. Don’t talk nonsense.”

System: “Shameless.”

The essence of humanity is a “repeater” (someone who repeats words). He didn’t expect the System to be infected by this virus too. While Lin Xiaodong was condemning it with grief and indignation, he reached out his sinful hand toward the man’s lower body—

Only to be grabbed by Gu Xi.

“You can’t touch here,” Gu Xi said in a raspy voice.

The merman blinked his eyes and withdrew his hand with a look of regret.

“Who wants to,” he huffed. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it. I’ve even %￥@&… before.”

The System, unable to take it anymore, chose to unilaterally block the host for one hour.

Perhaps because Gu Xi’s “filter” for Lin Xiaodong was too deep, up until now, he hadn’t suspected that the merman in front of him was a “white-skinned but black-filled” sandwich (innocent on the outside, cunning on the inside). After the medicine was applied and the wounds weren’t so painful, he began to look around for a place to spend the night.

But Lin Xiaodong didn’t have this need.

Merfolk usually slept in Garan Lake. Although they could sleep in a bed, it wasn’t as comfortable as being soaked in water.

Seeing the man he picked up preparing to build a nest, he also enthusiastically began to help, picking up a pile of branches of varying lengths and long, thin vines from the lakeside. However, it turned out the only thing he could help Gu Xi with was “helping by making things worse.” After accidentally collapsing the shelter the man had worked hard to build for the third time, Lin Xiaodong knew he was in the wrong and obediently walked to the side, hugging his large tail and watching him work.

Gu Xi sighed.

His movements were fast and agile. Soon he had built another shelter, or perhaps “tent” would be more appropriate. It was covered with a rain canopy woven from vines and leaves. The small space was less than three square meters—not bad for a temporary residence.

After finishing, Gu Xi bent down and walked into the tent to lie down.

His expression was weary, his brows tightly locked, and his chiseled profile was hidden in the shadows as if he had endless worries on his mind.

Lin Xiaodong took a look and quietly withdrew.

Since Gu Xi was resting, he also returned to Garan Lake, allowing his body to float on the water’s surface. Feeling the ripples carry him to the center of the lake, above him was the vast, endless sky.

Garan, in the merman language, meant “Mother.”

This was the Mother Lake that had birthed the merfolk, and the last pure land on the entire planet that they would defend even with their lives.

Late at night, all was quiet.

The System suddenly spoke: “Detection shows that Gu Xi’s current surface body temperature exceeds the normal human average by about 3.2 degrees. Preliminary judgment is a persistent high fever caused by wound infection.”

Infection?

Lin Xiaodong opened his eyes and immediately remembered the posture the man was in when he first saw him during the day, lying on a garbage heap. That place stank beyond words and was full of sewage. Forget such large wounds; even a small cut on a finger would likely get infected!

“What should I do?” He frowned. “There’s no anti-inflammatory medicine here, and it’s even more impossible to perform surgery on him. I don’t know medical science.”

“If only we could contact headquarters,” the System lamented. “With your points, although you can’t buy planes or cannons, buying some medicine and gauze would be more than enough.”

Lin Xiaodong said expressionlessly: “Stop talking about impossible things now; it’s annoying.”

He searched around the lake again. As expected, the herbs he picked this afternoon were almost everything. Under the System’s guidance, Lin Xiaodong ran around almost the entire perimeter of Garan Lake just to find a pathetic five or six plants, and they were all herbs for stopping bleeding and removing bruises.

By the time he went back, in the darkness, Gu Xi’s forehead was covered in cold sweat and his lips were pale and cracked. He had completely fallen into a semi-comatose state.

He scooped up a handful of water, but Gu Xi’s lips were tightly closed. He couldn’t hear the calls from the outside world at all and wouldn’t open his mouth.

Lin Xiaodong had no choice but to take a sip himself and pass it over mouth-to-mouth.

The cool lake water moistened the parched mouth, sliding down the burning throat all the way to the empty stomach.

In Gu Xi’s chaotic mind, fragments of memories about wilderness survival flashed quickly.

On many planets, there grew a type of plant whose fruit contained a large amount of water. As long as the hard outer shell was cracked open, one could suck the juice from the pulp with their mouth. The man’s consciousness was not yet clear. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he subconsciously held that soft source of water, arrogantly wanting to demand more—only to hear a muffled groan ring in his ears.

In the darkness, the man’s eyelids flickered and slowly opened a slit.

What met his eyes was not the juice-filled fruit he imagined.

—But a little merman pinned beneath him, covering his sucked-raw lips, eyes sparkling with aggrieved and soft tears, gently shrinking into a ball.