Chapter 63: The Merman
Rowett was indeed swimming in earnest.
His posture was very standard. The well-defined muscles on his back stretched and contracted gracefully in the water waves. His slender and vigorous figure broke through the water waves, and in the blink of an eye, he rushed forward several meters.
However, he was still far behind Ge Xiu’s speed.
After all, mermaids belong to the ocean, and every inch of their body was created to control the waves. This was their way of living and survival.
Although Ge Xiu didn’t like sports much, he still couldn’t resist his body’s instinct to play in the water.
However, after swimming a few laps happily in the pool, he had mostly finished venting the urge accumulated in his body, and once again returned to the lazy and tired look.
Ge Xiu curled up lazily at the edge of the pool, his long blue-purple fish tails rested on the steps below the water surface, and he sipped the orange juice served by the attendant, watching Rowett swimming around in the water.
He was obviously very physically strong, and he swam for a long time at an even pace without showing any signs of fatigue.
The morning time was spent leisurely, the sun above their heads gradually climbed to the center of the sky, and the air around them gradually rose in temperature.
At this time, a soldier in an army uniform hurried up to the top floor, looking as if there was an important message to convey.
Rowett came ashore and wiped his face with the towel draped beside him.
Ge Xiu was still curled up on the steps occupied by his fishtail, too lazy to move.
From this distance, he could only hear a vague conversation, but not much of the specific content.
Ge Xiu narrowed his eyes lazily, like a cat with its belly up spread out in the sun, a look of laziness of someone who didn’t care about anything.
After listening to the soldier’s report, Rowett tossed the towel on the side and slowly slid into the water again.
This time, he swam in Ge Xiu’s direction.
Ge Xiu raised his eyelids carelessly, watching Rowett emerge from the water, then moved his fishtail and sat down on the steps as well.
“Frontline battle report.”
Rowett picked up a glass of orange juice and took a few elegant sips: “They sent troops to attack one of the areas you pointed out, thereby successfully destroying the protective military front on the south side.”
Go Xiu was not surprised.
He picked up an orange-flavoured candy from the tray, slowly unwrapped it and stuffed it into his mouth, and answered vaguely: “Oh.”
Rowett stared at him with interest and asked, “How did you know the exact location of the weak point in the opponent’s defense?”
Of course he could see it.
After all, the defense measures were derived according to the technological level of this world, and relevant countermeasures could be found through previous his experience.
Piece of cake.
Ge Xiu yawned disinterestedly, directly ignoring his question, just raised his brows and asked:
“You dare to let your army follow my command without knowing if I were sure of it?”
Rowett raised corners of his lips: “I’m sure about you.”
“You’re sure about a merman that has never been on the battlefield? Are you stupid?” Ge Xiu tilted his head, showing a pure and harmless smile, like poisonous sweet honey, a sharp blade hidden in the silk: “Aren’t you afraid that my purpose was to send your main force to death?”
Rowett pondered for a while, then replied:
“Actually… I didn’t expect that result just now.”
He put the orange juice back on the tray, with a faint smile on his lips: “If they are loyal to me, they must be ready to sacrifice at any time, if these corps die, the next troops will fill in.”
The was a look of cold ruthless in his eyes, and he said lightly: “If sacrificing a few troops can make you happy, then I’ll sacrifice it.”
Ge Xiu: “…”
He narrowed his eyes: “So you didn’t think the location I pointed out was accurate at first, right?”
This question was really tricky.
Rowett suddenly choked.
The merman in front of him turned around and plunged into the water. The huge tailfin set off snow-white waves, and that splashed in revenge on Rowett’s face. The half-drunk cup of orange juice on the tray was instantly filled full. The yellow-orange drink in the glass swayed slowly and flowed down the tray.
Rowett raised his hand and wiped his face, combing back his black hair, he couldn’t help deepening the smile on his lips.
—His answer just now was absolutely honest.
Regarding the bet, pretending to be gentle and dedicated to lure the merman into falling in love was naturally the best option to achieve the goal.
But Rowett was not going to do that.
What he hoped was that the other party would know his pure and true self, cruel and selfish, arrogant and domineering, who didn’t care about anyone other than himself. If something could make him happy, even if the blood was flowing like river, it doesn’t matter—how many people who admired him were blinded by the dazzling halo of power and wealth, and indulged in the hypocoristic supremacy? Rowett knew very well that if any admirer full of enthusiasm and anticipation saw what his true appearance, he would shrink back from disgust and fear.
He guessed all possible Ge Xiu’s reactions to his answer—
pity, fear, hatred, flattery…
But what he did not expect was that the other’s first reaction would be like this.
Rowett narrowed his eyes, stretched his arms, and leaned comfortably on the steps, watching the shadow of the merman swimming fast underwater, his eyes burning with deep fascination and pride.
Their essences were so similar, their natures were so compatible.
They were meant to be together.
·
Over the next month, almost the entire Empire learned that their emperor had fallen in love with a young man of unknown origin, to the point of being obsessed with him.
The most terrifying thing is that he didn’t shy away from it.
His Majesty the Emperor was obedient to the young man, and even collected all of the rare treasures of the entire Empire for him, and offered them all unconditionally.
Valen Rowett was a tyrant.
He used absolute rule and pressure to control the public opinion in the empire. All slander and insults against the youth himself were directly and brutally suppressed. According to rumours, all the nobles who were fiercely opposed to this disappeared silently.
The tyrant’s reputation has grown worse, and everyone feared him even more.
—But rumours couldn’t always be completely eradicated.
No one knew where the young man who captured the Emperor’s heart has come from. Some people say that he had a peerless appearance and everyone who saw him was attracted to him, but his heart was vicious, and he will have to pay for this. Others said that he was just a handsome man, and he firmly grasped a man’s heart with his skills in bed.
But the most widely circulated and the most superstitious one was indeed the most sensational one.
It was said that the young man was a monster that confused people’s minds. He had a ferocious nature, fed on people, and bewitched the king with his beauty to lure him into making him a slave, just to satisfy his endless desires.
——In a sense, it was actually close to the truth.
Being in the center of the whirlpool, Ge Xiu didn’t seem to be affected by these rumours in the slightest.
Right now, he was lounging in the expanded pool, idling away and playing video games.
Loud game music filled the room, and the on-screen villain run and jumped at his command, before dying in one weird way after another.
Finally, Ge Xiu yawned in boredom and threw the remote control aside.
Rowett’s ‘expansion’ was actually a humble statement.
The pond has nearly doubled in size, almost like a small pond. The bottom of the pond had an open room specially made for mermaids with beds made out of coral stones. The rare treasures collected from all over the country were decorating the place and were embellished everywhere, and it looked luxurious to the extreme. There was even a negative pressure room built, which was like a glass bubble in the water, which could be used whenever Ge Xiu transformed into human form for entertainment and leisure.
During this time, Ge Xiu was not idle.
He easily invaded the laboratory’s firewall and built a backdoor to automatically save the decoded gene data. Although Ge Xiu didn’t know much about the science of mermaids, he could already see that the sequence of decoded genes looked very different from a normal mermaid.
But not knowing why, the scientists who studied mermaids have not reported their research results to Rowett for a long time.
It seemed like…they have encountered problems in some areas, and they had a frown on their faces everyday.
On Rowett’s side, there also wasn’t much progress with Ge Xiu.
Due to the issue of the border war, Rowett has been very busy recently. Even though he was arrogant and selfish, he was resolute and wise in handling state affairs and wars.
Rowett seems to have an innate talent for leadership and management. He was intuitive, ruthless, and had an outstanding talent for leadership and operations—after all, if it weren’t for this, according to his erratic and moody temperament, most likely he would long have been overthrown by uprisings in the empire.
Whether he invested his energy depended on his interest, and expansion wars were clearly in that category.
Not long ago, the war came to a critical juncture, and Rowett was also very busy.
But even so, no matter how excessive and absurd Ge Xiu’s request was, even if it was peculiar and self-willed to the point of being unreasonable, he always answered his request—just like a man who was truly captured by love.
This made Ge Xiu doubly unsure of the other’s true intentions.
To make matters worse…his nightmares intensified during this time.
The inescapable nightmare followed him like a shadow, but everyday after waking up, he couldn’t recall the slightest details and pictures from the dream. He could only clearly feel the remaining dark feelings that the nightmare left on him.
These nightmares even began to affect Ge Xiu during the day.
He gradually became lethargic and sleepy, and he could sleep with his head tilted all the time, which wasn’t a good feeling.
And… Not knowing why, Ge Xiu had a strange intuition.
The content of the dream was very important.
He tried many methods to record his dreams, but to no avail.
Ge Xiu slowly plunged into the depths of the pool without making the slightest splash in water, the long fishtail glimmered with a faint blue metallic lustre in the night.
Those little silverfish that were put into the pool at the beginning have grown a lot from then, swimming quietly around the water plants, they have long been accustomed to the existence of Ge Xiu, so they are boldly surrounded him. They lightly pecked and kissed the gaps between his scales.
Ge Xiu felt a little itchy, waving his tail in order to scare them away.
But they seemed to have long understood that there was no danger to their lives from this mermaid, and they quickly surrounded him again after having dispersed briefly.
Ge Xiu was too lazy to care, so he let them go.
Tonight was actually a celebration feast.
A breakthrough was made in the battle on the front lines, the capital of the enemy country was breached, and the emperor of the enemy country has surrendered.
Rowett tried to invite Ge Xiu as well, but he declined.
The reason why Ge Xiu agreed before was mainly because he had only seen the so-called dance party in books and videos, but he had never actually attended it.
And he had already been experienced it once, so he naturally lost interest in the second time.
Coupled with the fact that Ge Xiu was recently disturbed by the nightmares, he was even more lazy to leave the pool.
He habitually spit out a few bubbles, then narrowed his eyes and watched the snow-white bubbles float toward the water surface.
at the same time.
Outside the glass room, a few people quickly approached, taking advantage of the darkness of the night.
The two people in the lead talked in low voices:
“Are you sure this will works?”
“Not sure, but so far this is the only method that we can try.”
The guards were called away at some point, and the entrance to the glass room was empty.
“It seems that the Duke does have some means.”
“Of course, he was His Majesty’s uncle. If it weren’t for him, he wouldn’t want his nephew to be confused by this misfortune of unknown origin, otherwise we would not be able to get here through this path.”
The man said as he slowly pushed the door open.
At this time, the glass room was already several times larger than before, and the faint moonlight quietly shone down from the skylight, reflecting on the pool surface, and glimmering on with sparkling waves.
The air was cool and humid, and it felt very refreshing.
These people were employed by certain nobles who didn’t want the Emperor to be deceived. They were afraid of His Majesty’s tactics and coercion and did not dare to do anything to the young man who was said to be highly favoured, so they had to take a side method.
And the merman, who was still being properly raised by the Emperor’s side even when he favoured the youth, became their breakthrough.
It was rumoured that he even dragged away a certain Viscount from the banquet for this merman before.
This also proved the status of that merman in His Majesty’s heart.
Maybe… this merman could shake the young man’s position in the Emperor’s heart?
This wasn’t a very good idea.
But after the expansion campaign, Rowett’s prestige at home and among the army has risen, which has made his power more and more unshakable, and also made some nobles invested in the power fights more and more panicked.
They’ve gone all out.
And… this method was good, although the probability of success wasn’t very high, but even if it failed, the consequences wouldn’t be too bad.
After all, they just wanted to prove a point to His Majesty the Emperor.
——That young man was not irreplaceable.
The leading man carefully took out a reagent tube from his pocket.
It was halfway filled with a light blue viscous liquid, it swayed slowly in the thin glass tube. Under the moonlight, it reflected a faint brilliance and flashed with a strange and eerie light.
This was an obtained through underground channels, a precious medicine that must be used to the mermaid in order to meet a certain need of the nobles.
According to a nobleman who had a lot of experience in the habits and training methods of mermaids…
it could induce a mermaid to enter estrus earlier.
————————————–
The author has something to say:
Nobles: Your Majesty, instead of playing with men, we think raising a merman is a healthier hobby.
Ge Xiu: …
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