Free Web NovelThe curator told Bai Liu that the hot-water room he was looking for was tucked away in a remote corner of the museum. A few of the light fixtures had stopped working, so he should watch his step.
He also warned him about the mermaid wax figures stacked haphazardly in the area, cautioning him not to bump into any of them.
The man wore a distinctly ill-intentioned smile as he spoke.
Bai Liu moved between the marble columns. Each pillar was so wide it would have taken two or three people to wrap their arms around it, standing like massive white sentinels along the center of the corridor. Mermaid wax figures lined both sides of the passage at regular intervals.
Every figure stood in a different pose, tails brushing the floor, faces blank and lifeless. Bai Liu noticed that nearly all of them were staring out the windows.
As though they wanted to escape this place.
The hot-water pool sat at the very end of the corridor. Someone had left it running. Water poured endlessly from the faucet with a steady rush, steam filling the air and clouding the hall in dense white mist.
Under the heat, the wax figures looked ready to melt apart. Wax dripped slowly from their bodies, and their postures seemed to shift ever so slightly.
Walking through the corridor felt like crossing the surface of a fog-covered sea, mermaids swaying beneath the water around him.
After only a few steps, Bai Liu noticed something strange.
The wax figures lining the corridor had turned their heads.
Their necks twisted little by little, stiff and unnatural, until their expressionless faces were aimed directly at him.
At the same time, the figures ahead of him and behind him were inching closer from both sides at a pace subtle enough to escape notice if one wasn’t paying attention. More wax dripped from their bodies as they moved.
The vast European-style hall loomed overhead in silence and darkness. Bai Liu’s footsteps echoed softly against the polished floor.
Every time he blinked, the figures seemed closer than before.
Their expressions changed too.
Faint smiles spread across faces that had once been vacant and corpse-like. Their tails dragged greasy streaks of wax across the marble behind them.
Pale. Perfect. Like ghosts frozen in place, capable only of moving inch by inch.
Bai Liu silently counted them while occasionally glancing back to control their movement speed.
There were simply too many.
Whenever he focused on the figures behind him, the instant he turned back around, the smiling wax figure nearest him would already have reached forward impatiently, fingers nearly brushing his throat.
By now, Bai Liu had roughly calculated their speed.
He timed every movement carefully, deliberately using the columns to break their formation and prevent them from surrounding him completely.
The real danger wasn’t their strength.
It was their numbers.
And the fact that they couldn’t be destroyed.
Once they fully boxed him in, escaping would become nearly impossible.
The figures continued to close in.
Then Bai Liu realized something else.
These wax figures were no longer behaving like lifeless objects.
They were becoming alive.
At first, all the mermaid faces had looked nearly identical to him—the generic features of mass-produced Western-style mannequins. But now they were changing.
The closer they drew to Bai Liu, the more their melting faces began to resemble his own.
One by one, the figures twisted into distorted versions of Bai Liu himself, smiling with grotesquely exaggerated grins as they crept toward him with claw-like hands outstretched.
At last, Bai Liu arrived at the hot-water basin the curator had mentioned.
The old sink was stained yellow with age. Rust-colored marks spread across the faucet—whether rust or dried blood was impossible to tell.
Above it sat a rectangular iron heating tank, boiling loudly.
Ignoring the sound of rushing water, Bai Liu calmly slipped the newspaper from his coat into the sink before turning around.
Rows upon rows of wax figures stood behind him.
Their faces now resembled his own by seventy or eighty percent, crowding together so tightly that the exit behind them had vanished completely.
They lowered their heads.
In the dim museum lighting, their hollow eyes were swallowed in shadow. Their smiles stretched unnaturally wide, split nearly to the jaw.
The expressions radiated unmistakable malice. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
The melted faces looked warped and hideous, carrying a suffocating sense of threat.
The figures stared greedily at Bai Liu.
Bai Liu stared back.
It felt as though he had been surrounded by dozens of copies of himself.
They were hunting him.
Just moments ago, Bai Liu had assumed these creatures lacked the intelligence necessary to coordinate an attack.
Apparently, they had learned.
Fast.
Like humans.
Bai Liu remained perfectly calm.
Hot water overflowed behind him, spilling from the sink onto the floor, but he didn’t turn around.
More accurately, he couldn’t.
The moment he looked away, these things would pounce.
He couldn’t even blink.
Without taking his eyes off «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» them, Bai Liu reached behind himself and shut off the faucet.
He blinked once.
The figures advanced another inch.
Their expressions grew even more twisted, but Bai Liu behaved as though he hadn’t noticed. Instead, he studied them thoughtfully, rubbing his chin as he muttered to himself.
“Incubation... is that what this is?”
“The closer they get to me, the more they resemble me. Which means whatever eventually hatches will probably look exactly like me.”
“Hm. The fishy smell on my body also got stronger once they approached. So I’m being affected during the incubation process too.”
“Are the townspeople incubating as well?”
